237 Documented Administration Lies to Public, Congress, About Iraq 'Threat,' bin Laden Ties Bye The Times
June 13, 2005 - President Bush and Administration Officials have offered 237 specific claims that intelligence had established not only a threat from Saddam Hussein, but a threat that his ''Weapons of Mass Destruction'' might be given to terrorists. Additionally, the Administration mentioned ''Saddam Hussein'' and ''9/11'' within a few words of each other over 100 times, falsely associating the two in the public's mind. [See col. 3]
Consequently, even as late as Election Day 2004, a huge majority of Republicans, and a large minority of Democrats and Independents believed one, if not more, of three false things: Saddam had WMD; Saddam was working with al-Qaeda; Saddam was connected to 9/11.
In other words, most Americans voted believing that Bush had been acting to protect us from threats, when in fact those threats were known to be either ''weak'' or non-existent by the Administration. To this day, a majority of Americans believe one of these three false things, while huge minorities believe the other two. Nobody in the rest of the world outside of the U.S. does, or ever did.
Our Press, however, seems puzzled, but not especially worried or curious, when they stumble across this fact. Most, especially Editors, explain tens of millions of Americans holding completely false ideas with ''This doesn't reflect on us. We did our job. We're marketing Great Journalism here. It's just that Americans are genetically stupider than the rest of humanity.''
Invoking the time honored principle of ''plausible deniability'' some will say ''I mean, look at that paragraph on page A18, we cast some doubt. And here, page A12, we even apologized for our failures, once.''
Had the Administration (or the Press) ever demanded unbiased intelligence, the Iraq-as-threat scenario would have collapsed, the attack on Iraq would not have been politically possible, and almost 2,000 Americans would not now be dead. Equally as important to the Administration, George Bush could not have run for re-election as a ''War President'' if he had no ''successful'' war to boast of.
Rather than seek honest intelligence with a desire to protect the nation from actual enemies, the Administration leaned on the intelligence community to get the ''facts'' they wanted. They even went so far as to create a ''special'' intelligence unit, composed of long time war advocates, charged to dig up anything, however doubtful or discredited, to tout as ''evidence.''
Numerous speeches, ''news'' show interviews, and the ''State of the Union'' speech to Congress were used to push the deceptive claims. Here are a few of those statements, with the remaining 228 also available at the websites above:
''Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003
''U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003
''We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003
''Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003
''Our intelligence sources tell us that he (Saddam) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003
''Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at [past nuclear] sites.''--Bush speech to the nation, 10/7/2002
''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''--State of the Union Address, 1/28/2003
''We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.''--VP Dick Cheney, ''Meet the Press'' 3/16/2003
''We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in.''--Bush Press Conference, 7/14/2003
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