On the October 25 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes falsely claimed that President Bush's reference to Iraqi attempts to procure uranium from Africa in his 2003 State of the Union address “has been vindicated.” In fact, the White House and the CIA have acknowledged that the Iraq-Niger reference should not have been in Bush's speech, and the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the available intelligence did not support this claim after October 2002.

In discussing the investigation into the alleged leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity by administration officials, Barnes argued that by leaking Plame's identity, the White House “was knocking down this story that Joe Wilson told and vindicating what the president said.” Joseph C. Wilson IV, Plame's husband and a former diplomat specializing in Africa, was sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to investigate a reported sale of uranium to Iraq. He found no evidence of such a transaction and publicly announced his findings in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed after President Bush referenced the purported sale in his 2003 State of the Union Address (“the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” commonly referred to as the “16 words”).

From the October 25 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume:

BARNES: The problem with some of this reporting here -- the reporting is all based on the notion that all the White House cared about was punishing Joe Wilson, and that's Joe Wilson's tale, when, in fact, he was peripheral. The fact is, what the White House was interested in doing was knocking down this story that Joe Wilson told and vindicating what the president said. Ultimately, the president has been vindicated.

But, as Media Matters for America noted, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley acknowledged on July 22, 2003, that “I should have asked that the 16 words be taken out.” Then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet similarly concluded that "[t]hese 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President." The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its 2004 “Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq” that: “Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.”

A British review of prewar intelligence, known as the Butler report, concluded that Bush's 16 words were “well-founded.” However, the Butler report produced no new evidence in support of its conclusion, and instead relied upon anonymous “intelligence assessments at the time.”