saddam hussein was buying uranium from Niger ..from memory, the americans even showed a copy of a receipt
August 26, 2002: Cheney declares that “we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons…. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.”
October 2002: The State Department acquires documents about the Iraq-Niger uranium deal and shares them with “all the appropriate agencies,” department spokesman Richard Boucher says later on July 17, 2003. A senior administration official, however, claims on July 18, 2003, that the CIA did not receive the documents until February 2003.