Lied Rice

Yahoo! News - Rice: Saddam Posed Nuclear Threat to U.S.

....A New York Times story Sunday quoted four CIA officials and a senior administration official as saying that Rice's staff had been told in 2001 that Energy Department experts believed the tubes were probably intended for small artillery rockets — and not nuclear weapons.

Rice said she learned of objections by the Energy Department only after making her 2002 comments.

During the CNN interview in 2002, Rice said the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs." In bolstering the administration's argument of the threat the nation faced, she added: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."