Remember President Bush’s State of the Union Address in 2003? During his speech, Bush spoke of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium oxide -- now infamously known as “yellowcake” -- from Niger. The President’s assertion about a Nigerian uranium connection was attributed to British, not American, intelligence. I have showed why I believe President Bush’s assertions were credible, but the plot has thickened. Italy is now blaming France for trying to “make the allies [Britain and the U.S.] look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war" by distributing conflicting information about yellowcake.

Italian officials have identified a man known only as "Giacomo" who has been on the French intelligence services’ payroll for five years. The Italians claim that Giacomo distributed a combination of authentic and counterfeit documents about a Nigerian/Iraqi yellowcake connection. According to Britain’s Sunday Telegraph, the French were motivated not only by a desire to make the Iraq Coalition look silly, but by,

a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk.

Indeed, France -- along with China and Russia -- “accounted for 82% of all weapons sales to Saddam Hussein's regime between 1973 and 2002.” France also made $3.7 billion through its involvement with Saddam under the UN's corrupt "oil-for-food" program.

British intelligence claims to have non-French sources to back up its initial yellowcake claims. The Sunday Telegraph’s revelations only reinforce the widely-held belief that France has been duplicitous and is untrustworthy as a U.S. ally. It is very disturbing to know that Senator John Kerry is more worried about what the French think than about the safety of the American public from Islamist terrorists -- or "secular" ones like Saddam.