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Iraq War Lies

DYNAMITE! Documents Show Bush and Blair Secretly Planned War MONTHS before Invasion
27-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Independent: "Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday. The revelation strengthened suspicions that Tony Blair gave his agreement to President George Bush to go to war while the diplomatic efforts to force Saddam Hussein to comply with UN resolutions were continuing. Alan Simpson, the leader of Labour Against the War, said the documents were 'dynamite', if genuine, and showed that Clare Short was right to assert in her book, serialised in The Independent, that Mr Blair had 'knowingly misled' Parliament. The plans were revealed during the court martial of L/Cpl Ian Blaymire, 23, from Leeds, who is charged with the manslaughter of a comrade while serving in Iraq. Sgt John Nightingale, 32, a reservist from Guiseley, West Yorkshire, died after being shot in the chest on 23 September last year."

White House Cover-up: Chemical Fire in Iraq Was the Worst Human Release of Sulfur Dioxide in History
26-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Yet ANOTHER story the Bush admin. and its US media minions suppressed - and the BBC is only NOW getting around to! "A fire at an Iraq chemical plant has caused the largest recorded man-made release of sulphur dioxide (SO2). The fire, which broke out on June 24, 2003, produced more of the polluting gas than most volcanic eruptions. On average it generated about 21,000 tonnes of SO2 a day, which is half the daily emissions of the gas produced by the US. The fire, which was probably started deliberately, broke out at the Al-Mishraq state sulphured plant near Mosul. It burned for almost a month" - releasing over ONE BILLION POUNDS of SO2. "To put that figure in context, the giant eruption of the American volcano Mount Saint Helens in 1980, belched out about one million tonnes of SO2. [The fire] caused about $40 million of damage to local crops - along with respiratory problems in local people."

Iraqi Violence Escalates as Fantasy-Bound Bush Continues to Claim 'Progress'
23-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Reuters: "Suicide bombers killed 20 members of Iraq's fledgling security forces near a U.S. marine base west of Baghdad and at a checkpoint north of the capital on Saturday in a spate of guerrilla attacks across the country. The surge in violence underlined the scale of the task facing the U.S. military and Iraq's interim government, which have sworn to crush the guerrillas before elections in January. Hospital officials said 16 Iraqi police were killed and up to 40 people were wounded when a suicide bomber struck an Iraqi police post near the marine base. Another suicide bomber blew up his vehicle near a checkpoint manned by Iraqi National Guards in the village of Ishaqi, close to the town of Samarra, north of Baghdad, killing four guards. A policeman was killed by a roadside bomb in Samarra. There was no let up in violence elsewhere [as] Saboteurs bombed two oil pipelines...."

Even as Reuters Films the Tragedy, US Military Denies it Killed a Family of 6, Including 4 Small Children
20-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Reuters: "U.S. warplanes have killed a family of six in raids against rebels led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. A Reuters witness saw a man and a woman and four children, two boys and two girls, being pulled out of the rubble of a razed home in the rebel-held city of Falluja/ Yet the US military, as ever, claimed it hit only "terrorist safehouses" - even as a Reuters obtained footage showed men chanting "There is no God but Allah!" as they carried the body of the father of the family of six. "Is this the gift that (interim Iraqi Prime Minister) Iyad Allawi is giving to the people of Falluja?" asked one man, pointing to the small bodies of two of the children lying in the trunk of a car. "Every day they strike Falluja."

Hans Blix: Bush's War in Iraq Has Stimulated Terrorism
13-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Middle East Online: "The war in Iraq has put neither Iran nor North Korea off the idea of nuclear weapons and has 'stimulated terrorism', Hans Blix, the former UN chief arms inspector in Iraq, said Tuesday. 'I think, like everybody else, that it is good that Saddam (Hussein) is gone. The world is better off without Saddam. But the world is not any safer. If this was meant to be a signal to terrorists to stop their activities, it has failed miserably, it has stimulated terrorism...When you read Duelfer's report now you really wonder how dangerous [Saddam] was. OK, he claimed that there were programs to produce WMDs.' But, adds Blix, 'there were no documented programs. 'What [Duelfer] got out of interrogation of various people who worked with Saddam was rather that 'well he wanted to, that was probably his intention' etc, but these are straws I think for Jack Straw [and Bush] to cling to."

Bush Toady Duelfer Deleted Names of US Companies Trading with Saddam from Report
10-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Independent: "Washington and London have been accused of a concerted effort to smear France in an attempt to distract from the main conclusions of America's official report on Iraq's non-existent weapons programmes. A section of the 1,000-page report by the chief US weapons inspector in Iraq contains allegations about Baghdad's attempts to bribe and subvert." While Duelfer - who worked for Reagan during the Iran Contra period and for Bush I during Gulf War I - cites French names and companies as seeking to trade with Saddam, "unlike the first list published by the Iraqi newspaper al-Mada in January, which detailed the beneficiaries of a kickback scheme devised by Saddam," in Duelfer's report "All the American names, and all but one of the UN names, have vanished. The names of US companies and individuals had been removed 'because of US privacy laws'." Yeah, right! Privacy in Duelfer(Bush)speak being another word for "cover up."

Now We Know why Bush Insisted on Jan. Elections in Iraq: It's an Excuse to Call Up More Troops
09-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

We are SOOOOOO sick of the Bush "corporate government'" and its constant replacement of honesty and straight talk with wheeling and dealing and excuses. Against all advice, including that of the UN, Bush has insisted that Iraq press ahead with January elections. Now we know why! It isn't because he's trying to promote freedom and democracy (esp. when it was learned the CIA was trying to rig the process!). It was trumping up an excuse to call in more troops! "Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld indicated on Saturday that U.S. commanders in Iraq may yet decide they need more U.S. troops to ensure a viable national election in January. "To the extent that's appropriate or needed, obviously that makes sense." What a pack of liars! Rather than admit they need more troops because the situation is a trainwreck, they use elections - creating a far worse situation for our troops and Iraq civilians than before!

Pentagon Spinning like a Top- Now Claim Iraqi Forces 'Getting Better Every Day'
08-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Last week, the story broke that Iraqi soldiers were so badly trained, so incompetent, and so ineffectual that a whopping 40,000 of them had to be summarily fired! But now, A.merican P.ropaganda, probably at the behest of the Pentagon, put out a story about how great the Iraqi forces are doing. Here's a sample: "The good news is that the Iraqi forces are on their feet and getting better every day," said Maj. Gen. John Batiste. "Our work to train and equip Iraqi security forces is beginning to pay off in spades." But even the AP writer was skeptical, following Batiste's comment with this line: "Few if any Western journalists saw Iraqi units in action in Samarra. With reliable, firsthand accounts of the Oct. 1 battle still to emerge, it's difficult to determine whether the U.S. assessment is overly optimistic or if Samarra was indeed a milestone."

Bush Appointee Duelfer Built Bush Smokescreen into His Report
07-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

One thing must not be forgotten: US weapons inspector Charles Duelfer was appointed to his post by Bush toady and proven cover-up artist George Tenet. And thus why should anyone be surprised that Duelfer's report, while admitting that there were no WMDs in Iraq, should also be well-padded with smokescreen material for Bush to use to deflect the key, devastating finding? Here's the first smokescreen salvo by A.merican P.ropaganda: "Vivid allegations of widespread corruption at the U.N. oil-for-food program by the top U.S. arms inspector have added credibility to accusations the United Nations looked the other way while Saddam Hussein's government skimmed billions of dollars and offered kickbacks to European and Arab countries and officials." Yep, forget an immoral, bloody war! Go after the UN! Forget the US contractors, including Halliburton, who traded with Saddam - blame it all on "European and Arab countries." What a typical Bushie ploy!

No WMDS, No Programs: Nothing to Justify the Invasion
07-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

The final report of the US weapons inspectors reveals that the image presented by Bush of a Saddam Hussein armed to the teeth with WMDs was a complete fiction. But Charles Duelfer, the Bush administration appointee (let us not forget that "detail") who replaced David Kay inserted info into the report that seems designed solely to give Bush and Blair "wiggle room," such as suggestions that Saddam COULD have got a WMD program going if he WOULD have been able to get around sanctions. And he SHOULD have been able to hook some WMD experts up with Iraq insurgents if not stopped...But Coulda, woulda, shoulda are not valid reasons to invade a country, trash their infrastructure, and leave over 20,000 soldiers and 50,000 civilians dead or wounded. And, as to Saddam's efforts to get around UN sanctions - there's evidence that some US companies were trying to HELP him.

Exclusive Peek at the D.C. Headquarters of the Team that Predicted Saddam Planned to Make WMDs Some time in Future (humor)
06-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

We tried to get an exclusive interview with the members of the WMD team who predicted that Saddam was planning to, some time or the other, if sanctions didn't work and he could get all the materials together, redo his WMD program. No one would speak to us but we obtained this picture of their D.C Headquarters.

Paul Bremer Admits US NEVER Had Enough Troops in Iraq
05-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Al Jazeera: "The former top US occupation administrator in Iraq has admitted the US has never had enough ground troops in the country to establish firm control there. His statement directly contradicted assertions by [Bush and company] that the US military has what it needs. 'We never had enough troops on the ground,' Ambassador Paul Bremer told a conference of insurance professionals in White Sulphur Springs, W.VA. He said the lack of adequate patrolling after the fall of Baghdad and other parts of the country to US troops had resulted in what he called 'horrid' looting. 'We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," he said. The remarks drew a stark contrast with repeated upbeat statements by Bush, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top administration officials, who have insisted the US has enough forces in Iraq.' "

How Bush LIED About Iraqi Weapons Programs - with the Crucial Help of the NY Times
03-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

After an in-depth investigation, the NY Times debunks the aluminum tube lie. "Far from 'group think,' American nuclear and intelligence experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A 'holy war' is how one Congressional investigator described it. But if the opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions." Of course, the NY Times ITSELF was the main culprit in this Big Lie, with its front-page article by Judith Miller/Michael Gordon on 9-8-02 that was specifically cited by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice as the "proof." At the time, we debunked this Big Lie citing the Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2002/wo/0909rothstein.html).

The Reality of Iraqi Resistance the White House and Its Media Minions Will Not Let You See
02-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Guardian: "This is a propaganda war in which the hundreds of Iraqis killed every week by US bombardment fail to make the headlines, while the horrifying images provided by a Jordanian kidnapper and killer of British and US contractors is portrayed as the true face of Iraqi resistance. Thus the real human suffering, and the reality of the widespread resistance to occupation, is hidden from view, while bombing what US generals call Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's 'supporters' hideouts' is portrayed as a necessity. And so Falluja, a besieged city of 300,000 people, is under daily aerial attack, and parts of Sadr City, the poorest neighbourhood of Baghdad, are being reduced to rubble. The occupation forces have admitted that the attacks on them by the resistance rose last month to 2,700. And how many of these 2,700 attacks a month were claimed by Zarqawi? Six. Six headline-grabbing, TV-dominating, stomach-churning moments."

The Ugly Truth about Not-So-Precise Bombs
02-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Peter Spang Goodrich of Providence U. writes, "Military public affairs officers claim that 50% of their 'smart' bombs fall within 25 feet of the target. Under test conditions [which rarely occur in real life], this is a true statement.' But this prediction 'fails to consider the effects of fragmentation and blast. Once the bomb hits, it explodes sending shrapnel and blast for an additional given radius. Fragmentation is effective against troops, vehicles, aircraft and other soft targets. The fragmentation effects generated from the detonation of a high-explosive bomb have greater effective range than blast, usually up to approximately 3,000 feet regardless of bomb size. Military briefers show slides and videos always with direct hits. They even show 'before and after' slides with the 'before' slide depicting arrows to a target which is invariably hit precisely in the 'after' slide. Briefers never show misses, not even near misses."

'Free and Democratic Iraq: Allawi's Speech Written by Bush Campaign Spin Doctors
01-Oct-04
Iraq War Lies

Dem Senator Diane Feinstein was outraged when she read in the Washington Post that spin doctors from the Bush campaign had written most if not all of Iraqi PM Ilyan Allawi's recent speech to Congress. Feinstein pointed out in a letter to Bush that the newspaper made Allawi's optimistic assertions on progress in Iraq must now be suspect: "To learn that this was not an independent view, but one that was massaged by your campaign operatives, jaundices the speech and reduces the credibility of his remarks." The White House, as ever, denies everything. But the evidence is glaring, with many of Allawi's echoing Bushspeak, right down to using identical terms oft-repeated by the White House..And, more damning, the White House admitted that Allawi had been coached and aided by "the U.S. government, its allies and friends of the administration."

John Kerry Speaks Out on The Tragedy of Iraq and the Lies that Hide the Ugly Truth
20-Sep-04
Iraq War Lies

"In March, insurgents attacked our forces 700 times. In August, they attacked 2,700 times - a 400 percent increase. Falluja...Ramadi... Samarra ... even parts of Baghdad - are now 'no go zones'... breeding grounds for terrorists who are free to plot and launch attacks against our soldiers. Basic living conditions are also deteriorating. Residents of Baghdad are suffering electricity blackouts lasting up to 14 hours a day. Raw sewage fills the streets, rising above the hubcaps of our Humvees. Children wade through garbage on their way to school. Unemployment is over 50 percent. Insurgents are able to find plenty of people willing to take $150 for tossing grenades at passing U.S. convoys. This is the truth. The truth that the Commander in Chief owes to our troops and the American people."

WMD Investigation by Once-Confident Expert Reveals 'Less than Little' Evidence
19-Sep-04
Iraq War Lies

"In the tense months before war in Iraq, Charles Duelfer was confident. 'Of course [Saddam] is developing his weapons of mass destruction.' Now the results of a Duelfer-led investigation are telling a very different tale... After 16 months of trying, what [Duelfer's] teams have found is less than little. In fact, the only unconventional weapon turned up in Iraq wasn't turned up by the Americans at all, but by the other side, Iraq's shadowy resistance. In May, in an incident causing no serious injuries, insurgent fighters in Baghdad rigged an old artillery shell as a roadside bomb, apparently unaware it was loaded with sarin nerve agent. Otherwise, two or three stray shells have been discovered with traces of degraded agent - far short of the 100-500 tons of usable chemical weapons that Colin Powell warned of on Feb. 5, 2003."

John Kerry Tells America the TRUTH: Things in Iraq Are Going from Bad to Worse
14-Sep-04
Iraq War Lies

"Today, we heard more of the same distortions from the President about the situation in Iraq. George W. Bush keeps saying that things are getting better even when we all know that's just not true. The fact is, no matter what he says, all of us can see for ourselves what's happening in Iraq - we can see it on the front pages and on the nightly news. But why would we expect George Bush to level with us about Iraq? He never has. So I'll be straight with you: things are getting worse. More than a thousand Americans have been killed. Instability is rising. Violence is spreading. Extremism is growing. There are now havens for terrorists that weren't there before. And the Pentagon has even admitted that entire regions of Iraq are now controlled by insurgents and terrorists. The situation is serious and we need a president who will set a new direction and be straight with the American people."

43 Former Diplomats and Defense Chiefs Condemn Australian Government for Colluding with Bush in Lie-Based Iraq War
08-Aug-04
Iraq War Lies

BBC: "Several Australian former diplomats and defence chiefs have accused the government of misleading Australia over the reasons for going to war in Iraq. In an open letter, the 43 signatories said the decision was based on false assumptions and deception. They also said Australia's involvement in the war had raised its profile as a potential target of terrorism. The letter's signatories include former heads of the Australian Defence Force, former departmental heads and senior figures in the intelligence and diplomatic communities. They demand an end to the Australian government's "rubber-stamping" of US policies and called for a more balanced approach. "We are concerned that Australia was committed to join the invasion of Iraq on the basis of false assumptions and deception of the American government," the letter said. "

The Real Reasons Bush Went to War Remain Unchallenged: Oil and Oil Reserve Dollars
28-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

John Chapman writes: "There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yet the government has kept silent on these factors, instead treating us to the intriguing distractions of the Hutton and Butler reports [and no comparable report at all from the US]. Maybe [some] will go along with Blair's post-war contention: 'There is no way whatsoever, if oil were the issue, that it would not have been infinitely easier to cut a deal with Saddam.' But the truth is: 'Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with WMD as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate. Should we now look at Bush and Blair as brilliant strategists whose actions will improve the security of our oil supplies, or as international conmen? Should we support them if they sweep into Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, or should there be a regime change in the UK and US instead?"

The Blair-Bush WMD Witch Hunt Continues - Despite Growing Public Doubts
21-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Derrick Z. Jackson writes that a recent NY Times poll shows "that 20% of Americans believed that Bush was "mostly lying" in his statements about the war in Iraq and 59% said he was "hiding something." Only 18% [his ever-shrinking far-right religious "base"] said [told]the "entire truth." In Britain, a poll this week found that 55%t of voters believedd that Tony Blair lied over Iraq...Even though official inquiries do not indict [Bush and Blair], the people have begun to, on their own. Perhaps that is because Bush and Blair continue to exaggerate Saddam's threat." Han Blix said that during the WMD weapons inspection process, it became clear Bush and Blair "were not exercising sufficient critical judgement...It was a little like the witch hunts of past centuries. You know, they were so convinced that there were witches that if they saw something like a black cat, they would say, `Well, this is it.' "

Bush Planned Iraq Invasion Long Before Intelligence 'Failures'
19-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

John Prados writes, "There are those who would date the intention to get Saddam to the late 1990s, to the neocons' letter campaign and the Iraq Liberation Support Act passed in 1998, and we have the word of former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill that President Bush was thinking along these lines from his first days in office. There is independent evidence that the bulk of Bush's get-acquainted session with the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually involved a discussion of Iraq options.... [Bush] had his NSC considering an Iraq 'liberation' strategy by the summer of 2001 and the NSC Deputies Committee met on that subject five times before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bush signed an order directing the U.S. military to begin planning against Iraq on Sept. 17, 2001... On November 21, Bush was asking Rumsfeld to tell him what the options were on Iraq. General R. Tommy Franks of CENTCOM presented his initial invasion concept to Rumsfeld on December 4."

Bush Never Wanted the Truth About Iraq's WMD's
18-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Scott Ritter writes, "This 'groupthink' approach can be traced to early 1995, when MI-6, working with the CIA's London station, put forward Iyad Allawi, now Iraq's prime minister, but then the head of an expatriate opposition movement known as the Iraqi National Alliance, as a viable vehicle for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Throughout 1995 and into the early summer of 1996, the CIA and MI-6 worked with Allawi's alliance to cobble together a coup d'etat from within Saddam's inner circle. Saddam's security services uncovered the plot and liquidated those involved. At the same time the coup attempt was being planned, United Nations weapons inspectors were making remarkable progress in accounting for Iraq's weapons programs.... In August 1995, Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan, and told the U.N., CIA and MI-6 that all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed in the summer of 1991 under his direct orders. "

Joseph Wilson Challenges Senate Intelligence Committee Lies
16-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Joseph Wilson has been under attack from all sides lately, including the Senate Intelligence Committee. But Wilson continues to insist on the truth, and he's fighting back point by point. You go, Joe!

Senate Intelligence Committee: Just as Big a Failure as the Process it was SUPPOSED to Investigate
14-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Julian Borger writes: "The Senate investigation, chaired and authored by Republicans, [concluded] there was 'no evidence' the catastrophic distortion of pre-war intelligence 'was the result of political pressure'. It is a remarkable conclusion that can only have been based on a politically selective reading of the available evidence. The Republicans pointed to interviews with CIA analysts who denied having changed their reports under political pressure. Such denials are unsurprising. To admit deliberately distorting intelligence analysis under oath would be much more damaging career-wise than merely admitting having got it wrong. The committee, however, seized the CIA denials with relish, and put off its examination of the White House role until' after the election. 'The report was intended to learn from the pre-war mistakes of the US intelligence agencies. All it has done is to repeat them. The first time was definitely a tragedy. This time has all the elements of farce."

UK's Report Only Proves Blair and Bush and a Core of Corrupt CIA/M16 People Colluded to Start War
14-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Independent: "Tony Blair today welcomed the Butler report saying it showed the Government and intelligence services acted in 'good faith'. [Blair said] the report showed errors were made in drawing up the Sept 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons. But 'No-one lied. No-one made up the intelligence. No-one inserted things into the dossier against the advice of the intelligence services. Everyone genuinely tried to do their best in good faith for the country in circumstances of acute difficulty.' " What an 'amazing coincidence' -- two back to back reports finding that the intelligence used by the two men who started a war was bad - and yet they were both 'innocent victims'? Do Blair and Bush think they are fooling anyone?

Proof of Bush's Iraq War Lies - Listen to The Complete Audio File
14-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Information Clearing House has performed an invaluable service by collecting all the Bushevik lies about Iraq in a single audio file. Listen to it a few times until the point sinks in - BUSH LIED AND THOUSANDS DIED. Bill Clinton was impeached for one little sound bite lie - how many sound bites will it take to remove the Busheviks - and send them all to jail for their war crimes?

Pentagon's Douglas Feith Was Key Promoter of Iraq-Al Qaeda Lies
12-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Pentagon #3 Douglas Feith "created an unofficial 'Iraqi intelligence cell' in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, according to the Senate intelligence committee... According to dramatic testimony contained in the annexe, Mr Feith's cell undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq's alleged al Qaeda links within the highest levels of the Bush administration. The cell appears to have been set up by Mr Feith as an adjunct to the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation established in the wake of 9/11 with the authority of Paul Wolfowitz. Its focus quickly became the al Qaeda-Saddam link. On occasion, without informing the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, the group gave counter-briefings in the White House. Sen Jay Rockefeller, the senior Democrat on the committee, said that Mr Feith's cell may even have undertaken 'unlawful' intelligence-gathering initiatives."

Bush Keeps Lying About Iraq
12-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Speaking in Oak Ridge TN, Bush declared: "In 2002, the United Nations Security Council yet again demanded a full accounting of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. As he had for over a decade, Saddam Hussein refused to comply. In fact, according to former weapons inspector David Kay, Iraq's weapons programs were elaborately shielded by security and deception operations that continued even beyond the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom. So I had a choice to make: Either take the word of a madman, or defend America. Given that choice, I will defend America every time." In fact, Saddam complied with EVERY demand from UN inspectors, including unannounced inspections at Presidential palaces and the destruction of Al Samoud missiles. Once again, Bush is resorting to a BIG LIE. Impeach Bush Now!

Cheney Tries to Rewrite Iraq War Vote Story, Leaving out Key Facts
12-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

As is quite obvious now, Cheney, Bush, and Blair worked with George Tenet to cook up a convincing "intelligence report" that would compel Congress to vote to go to war against Iraq. Based on this bogus bill of goods, John Kerry, like most Congressfolk, voted to grant Bush the OPTION to declare war if all else failed. Kerry says now that the war is wrong because the reasons have been exposed as bogus and because Bush, after hoodwinking Congress into granting the war option, bypassed all advice and allies wishes and rushed headlong into a disastrous invasion. Now Cheney is rewriting the story, claiming that Kerry and Bush were "looking at the same information" thus Kerry has no right to criticize the decision now. One big fact Cheney is leaving out: Unlike Kerry, he and Bush KNEW the information was bogus.

Senate 'Report' White-Washes 'Bad Intelligence' Story for the White House; Former CIA Director Tenet Set Up as Patsy as Media Ignore Real Culprits
10-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Mike Hersh writes: Katherine Pfleger Shrader of the Associated Press reports on the Senate Committee Report: "War Rationale Based on CIA Error." What error did the CIA make? "In the unanimously approved report, senators concluded that the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts; engaged in 'groupthink' ... and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements." Did the CIA help Bush lie to Americans and the world in order to scare us and other nations into attacking Iraq? Of course not. The Office of Special Planning did that. Consider the other key verdict: "Following release of the 511-page review Friday, the panel's top Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, said three-quarters of senators would not have voted to authorize the invasion if they had known how weak the intelligence was." Blaming the CIA misses the point. Bush rushed to war without cause. Bush/Cheney must not get four more years.

Kerry's Statement on the Senate Intelligence Committee Report
10-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

"Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence. The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else. It's disturbing that the White House continues to lay blame for intelligence failures solely at the steps of the intelligence community, yet takes no responsibility for its own failings. They tell us that reforms need to be made in the intelligence community yet they have done little to make any real changes. The Bush administration's intelligence budget request for next year contains less than one third of the additional counter- terrorism funding that our intelligence agencies say they need to fight and win the war on terror. The Administration has gravely neglected the intelligence reforms vital to national security -- ignoring even the recommendations of the President's own internal review led by General Scowcroft. Americans deserve answers, not politics."

Repugs on Intelligence Committee Prove their Real Allegiance is to Bush, not to the American People
10-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

This week, the Repugs on the Senate Intelligence Committee showed their real bottom line: protecting Bush, even if it means falsely smearing the entire CIA, lying to the American people, and covering up treasonous crimes. Guess they figure maybe come Nov. if Bush wins, he'll do his usual bit of doling out favors to the "faithful." Nothing like selling America out to promote your career. Not only are they claiming there was no pressure on the CIA to produce "evidence" for war (despite statements by top CIA vets to the contrary), they are also insisting that any investigation of Bush be put off until AFTER the election. The rightwingers are so quick to cry "unpatriotic!' or "traitor!'" - well, here's a clear case, exhibited by "their own."

PsyOps-R-US: Army Stage-Managed Fall of Hussein Statue
06-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

LA Times: "The Army's internal study of the war in Iraq criticizes some efforts by its own psychological operations units, but one spur-of-the-moment effort last year produced the most memorable image of the invasion... It was a Marine colonel -- not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images -- who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking. After the colonel -- who was not named in the report -- selected the statue as a 'target of opportunity,' the psychological team used loudspeakers to encourage Iraqi civilians to assist, according to an account by a unit member... Ultimately, a Marine recovery vehicle toppled the statue with a chain, but the effort appeared to be Iraqi-inspired because the psychological team had managed to pack the vehicle with cheering Iraqi children."

Chalabi's 'List': Judith Miller Was Hardly Alone
02-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Douglas McCollam writes: "Qanbar apologized for being late, then ordered a beer and promptly got on his cell phone to Baghdad for an extended conversation in Arabic. I could only pick out a few words, including 'Chalabi,' 'Aras,' and 'Bremer.' The last name was followed by a rough laugh, as if a joke had been told on the other end of the line -- and not a nice one. That impression was confirmed when Qanbar got off the phone and began an extended rant about the failings of Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, who Qanbar maintained was working with the CIA and State Department to crush the INC at the behest of Arab potentates fearing its political rise. With some difficulty, I managed to steer Qanbar's attention to the memo he had sent to Congress, and to a list it contained of 108 news stories that, the INC said, included 'product' supplied by its Information Collection Program. 'Yes, this memo has become quite famous,' he said with a wry smile."

Boston Phoenix IDs 'Anonymous' CIA Officer
02-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

Editor and Publisher: "The active U.S. intelligence officer known only as 'Anonymous,' who has gained world renown this month as author of an upcoming book called 'Imperial Hubris,' is actually named Michael Scheuer, according to an article in the Boston Phoenix today by Jason Vest... 'A Phoenix investigation has discovered that Anonymous does not, in fact, want to be anonymous at all -- and that his anonymity is neither enforced nor voluntarily assumed out of fear for his safety, but rather compelled by an arcane set of classified regulations that are arguably being abused in an attempt to spare the CIA possible political inconvenience. In the Phoenix's view, continued deference by the press to a bogus and unwanted standard of secrecy essentially amounts to colluding with the CIA in muzzling a civil servant -- a standard made more ridiculous by the ubiquity of Anonymous's name in both intelligence and journalistic circles.' "

CIA Felt Pressure to Alter Iraq Data, Author Says
02-Jul-04
Iraq War Lies

LA Times: "In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA analysts were ordered repeatedly to redo intelligence assessments concluded that Al Qaeda had no operational ties to Iraq, according to a veteran CIA counter-terrorism official who has written a book that is sharply critical of the decision to go to war with Iraq. Agency analysts never altered their conclusions, but saw the pressure to revisit their work as a clear indication that Bush administration officials were seeking a different answer regarding Iraq and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the CIA officer said in an interview with The Times... The officer is the author of a forthcoming book titled, 'Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror,' published by Brassey's Inc. of Dulles, Va. He is listed as 'Anonymous' on the book, which describes him as a 'senior U.S. intelligence official with nearly two decades of experience in national security issues.' "

Truth About Iraq Finally Has Its Pants On
23-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Robert Scheer writes the Busheviks "are reduced to playing cheap semantic tricks to justify one of history's great bait-and-switch operations, arguing that they never said explicitly that Iraq was collaborating with Al Qaeda to harm the U.S. The administration was perfectly happy when more than four out of five Americans polled, as we went to war, said that they believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. We are now to believe that the dozens of prominent references by President Bush and his top officials to 'linkages' between Al Qaeda and Iraq were all taken out of context by a confused public... Yeah, right. The reality is that Bush and company have turned the language of lying into a fine art, always leaving themselves a shred of deniability in case the truth catches up... [Now] the truth has its pants on now and maybe can finally enlighten the 40% of Americans who still believe that Iraq played a role in the attacks. "

Bush Has Zarqawi's Blood On His Hands for Rejecting 3 Plans to Kill Him
23-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Fred Kaplan writes, "As far back as June 2002, U.S. intelligence reported that Zarqawi had set up a weapons lab at Kirma in northern Iraq that was capable of producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drew up an attack plan involving cruise missiles and smart bombs. The White House turned it down. In October 2002, intelligence reported that Zarqawi was preparing to use his bio-weapons in Europe. The Pentagon drew up another attack plan. The White House again demurred. In January 2003, police in London arrested terrorist suspects connected to the camp. The Pentagon devised another attack plan. Again, the White House killed the plan, not Zarqawi... In the two years since the Pentagon's first attack plan, Zarqawi has been linked not just to Berg's execution but, according to NBC, 700 other killings in Iraq. If Bush had carried out that attack back in June 2002, the killings might not have happened."

Fedayeen-Al Qaeda Link is Bogus Too
22-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Newsday reports, "The CIA concluded 'a long time ago' that an al Qaeda associate who met with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Malaysia was not an officer in Saddam Hussein's army, as alleged Sunday by a Republican member of the 9/11 commission. Commissioner John Lehman, who was Navy secretary under Ronald Reagan, said 'new ... documents' indicated that 'at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen,' an elite army unit, 'was a very prominent member of al Qaeda.' Lehman's remarks on NBC's 'Meet the Press' lent support to the Bush administration's insistence that there were strong ties between Hussein and al Qaeda. The administration official said the CIA and U.S. Army obtained the lists of members of the Fedayeen shortly after the invasion of Iraq last year. Some, he said, had names 'similar to' Ahmad Hikmat Shakir. But, he said, the CIA had concluded 'a long time ago' that none were the al Qaeda associate."

Powell Gave U.N. 'Ambiguous' Data On Iraqi Weapons, NSA Chief Says
22-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Baltimore Sun: "The director of the National Security Agency acknowledges in a new book that audiotapes that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell aired before the UN last year to justify the need to confront Iraq offered 'ambiguous' evidence that Baghdad was hiding banned weapons. On the tapes, one of the men talks of a 'modified vehicle' from the al Kindi Co., which Powell said was known to be involved in banned weapons activity. Another relays an order to 'clean out all the areas' and to 'destroy the message.' A third tells an officer to delete the phrase 'nerve agents' if it comes up in wireless instructions." Not only is this info ambiguous - put in another context, it could also have been used as "proof" that Iraq was cleaning up old sites, complying with UN demands and guilty only of trying to hide the evidence after the fact. In any case - it's hardly conclusive enough to go to war over.

Putin Helped Dupe Bush into Attacking Iraq - and Has the Nerve to Admit It Now!
19-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

With friends like Putin, Bush hardly needs the several hundred million enemies he has. After luring the clueless, easily flattered Bush into believing that he was his "soul pal," Putin fed Bush's grandiose ambitions to "conquer" Iraq by passing him "intelligence" that Saddam was planning attacks in the US. [there has never been anything before or since to support this claim, from any source but Putin). Bush fell for it and the rest, as they say, is history. Bush got left holding the "bag" of disaster that is Iraq, while Putin now controls most of the major oil interests in Central Asia, and continues to scoop up more while Bush flounders in his quagmire. Why is Putin admitting passing on this info now? Maybe to KEEP Bush stuck by "validating" his Saddam fantasies.

Kean & Hamilton Want Cheney to Produce Evidence of a 'Collaborative Relationship' Between Iraq and Al Qaeda
19-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

"The leaders of the 911 commission called on Cheney on Friday to turn over any intelligence reports that would support the White House's insistence that there was a close relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda... Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said that, in particular, they wanted any information available to back Mr. Cheney's suggestion that one of the hijackers might have met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent, a meeting that the panel's staff believes did not take place. Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either. 'We just don't know,' Mr. Cheney said... [A White House advisor said], 'If you discount the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, then you discount the proposition that it's part of the war on terror. If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it - some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?'" YUP!

NY Times is Tired of Cheney's Bush*t and Demands the Truth
19-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

NY Times opines, "We were surprised by the depth and ferocity of the administration's capacity for denial. Bush and Cheney have not only brushed aside the panel's findings and questioned its expertise, but they are also trying to rewrite history. Mr. Bush said the 9/11 panel had actually confirmed his contention that there were 'ties' between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He said his administration had never connected Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Both statements are wrong... Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets to share them... The vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy."

On Iraq-Al Qaeda Ties: It's Time for BushCheney to Put Up or SHUT Up
18-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

David Corn writes, "Given Cheney's prewar record of accuracy--he claimed Hussein had amassed WMDs to use against the United States, that Hussein had revived his nuclear weapons program--his statements on the contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq (and what came of them) cannot be accepted at face value. If the administration has evidence that Iraq did assist al Qaeda, it should produce it and resolve the question--especially because Bush, before the war, used this particular allegation to drum up support for the invasion of Iraq. He said, 'Iraq has sent bombmaking and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.' He did not say that this had happened eight years earlier. But the administration owes it to the public to clear up this issue."

How Putin Set Bush Up for Disaster to Further His Own Central Asian Schemes
18-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Putin is an old KGB man and as wiley as they come. He has gained big time by Bush's Iraq debacle, first politically, by loudly opposing the invasion, then materially, when he moved into the area and started doing oil deals left and right while Bush was trapped in the Iraq quagmire. Eric Margolis says that, in effect. Bush's war handed Putin the biggest victory of his (Putin's) career- and all at Bush's expense. How did he arrange it? It has now been revealed that Putin slipped Bush "tips" on how Saddam was getting ready to attack the US after 9/11. And like the hapless guppy that he is, Bush - primed by Putin's "soul mate" routine - took the bait, hook, line and sinker.

Two Delusional Religious Wackos Continue to Hold the World Hostage to their Lies
18-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

It has become obvious that Tony Blair and George Bush are following the same pattern so many dangerous religious fanatics, including Osama Bin Laden, follow to further their own ends: trying to confuse faith with adherence to hate-generating lies. There's a big difference - unless, of course, you happen to have a Messianic complex and believe that anything that you say is true becomes true just because you said it. Just as OBL keeps his followers fueled with lies about their "enemies," so Blair and Bush are trying to keep their followers fueled with hate by clinging to the Iraq-Al Queda connection. With each day that passes the similarity between B & B and the religious terrorists that they have used to further their personal ambitions is becoming more striking.

Iraq-Al Qaeda Link: NY Times Wants to Know if Bush is Lying or Just Delusional?
17-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

NY Times opines, "It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11. Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different... The staff report issued by the 9/11 panel says that Sudan's government, which sheltered Osama bin Laden in the early 1990's, tried to hook him up with Mr. Hussein, but that nothing came of it... Mr. Bush is right when he says he cannot be blamed for everything that happened on or before Sept. 11, 2001. But he is responsible for the administration's actions since then. That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaeda claim to Americans. There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world."

How Many Lies Did Cheney Tell Russert About Iraq-Al Qaeda Ties?
17-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

The 911 Commission concluded there were no ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda before 9/11. But on Meet the Press on 9/14/03, Cheney told Russert: "there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s, that it involved training, for example, on BW and CW, that al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained on the systems that are involved. The Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organization... The Iraqi government and the Iraqi intelligent service has a relationship with al-Qaeda that developed throughout the decade of the '90s. That was clearly official policy." Hey Tim - get Cheney on your show, run the videotape, and demand the truth!

The MIS-Info Link: Zarqawi Is NOT the Missing Link between Saddam and Osama
16-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Progress Report writes, "Just two days after the Bush administration resurrected the already-debunked claim that Al-Qaeda and Saddam were working together, the independent 9/11 Commission said it found 'no credible evidence' to substantiate the charge. Two days ago, Vice President Cheney had the nerve to claim that Hussein 'had long-established ties with al Qaeda.' And yesterday, Bush defended Cheney's assertion, using the example of terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi as 'the best evidence of connection.' Don't believe the hype. Administration officials repeatedly have acknowledged there is no evidence al Qaeda was linked to Saddam. As Knight-Ridder reported in March, 'senior U.S. officials now say there was there never was any evidence that Saddam's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league.'" As always, CAP links to every fact.

Bush and Cheney Keep Lying About Ties between Saddam and al Qaeda
16-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Dan Froomkin writes that Bush on Tuesday "pointed to Abu Musab Zarqawi as the 'best evidence' of a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. In so doing, he came to the defense of Cheney, who on Monday asserted that Saddam Hussein had 'long-established ties' with al Qaeda. But he also risked putting himself at odds with the Sept. 11 commission and the intelligence community. Even though Zarqawi is actively terrorizing Iraq today, and does appear to have a relationship with al Qaeda, his association with Hussein has never been established. Communications between Zarqawi and al Qaeda that Bush alluded to yesterday took place several months after Hussein was removed from power. And a new report released this morning by the Sept. 11 commission declares that there is 'no credible evidence' that Hussein's government collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, including the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackings." No more lies - Impeach Bush and Cheney Now!

911 Commission Report Says Iraq Rebuffed Al Qaeda
16-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

NY Times: "The staff also said in a companion report that it had found 'no credible evidence' that Iraq and Al Qaeda terrorists cooperated in the attacks, a conclusion likely to fuel the debate over President Bush's decision to go to war to topple Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the commission staff said, Iraq apparently rejected Osama bin Laden's requests to provide space for training camps and help Al Qaeda acquire weapons."

Down Goes Tenet
03-Jun-04
Iraq War Lies

Will Pitt writes: "The news over the last week or so has been grim for the White House. Ahmad Chalabi... has been accused of passing high-level intelligence secrets to Iran... Late Wednesday night, a wire report appeared stating that George W. Bush was seeking legal advice on how to protect himself from the looming investigation into who in the White House outed the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame... When the President needs a lawyer, it is usually a sign that there is blood in the water... Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran analyst for the CIA and unabashed critic of both Bush and Tenet, had this to say when reached by phone on Thursday afternoon: 'It is pretty clear this resignation came for two reasons. The first is the failed policy in Iraq. The cry for accountability and resignations has reached a din here in Washington D.C. Things have gone from bad to worse, the White House was looking for a sacrificial lamb, and Tenet being the good soldier he is, took the fall.' "

Memo is Proof that Sanchez Oversaw Horrific Conditions at Abu Ghraib and Lied to Congress
22-May-04
Iraq War Lies

Guardian: "Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, head of coalition forces in Iraq, issued an order last October giving military intelligence control over almost every aspect of prison conditions at Abu Ghraib with the explicit aim of manipulating the detainees' 'emotions and weaknesses', it was reported yesterday. The October 12 memorandum, reported in the Washington Post, is a potential 'smoking gun' linking prisoner abuse to the US high command. According to the leaked memorandum, Sanchez had explicitly given military intelligence interrogators control over the 'lighting, heating ... food, clothing and shelter' of the detainees being questioned. At a hearing this week of the Senate armed services committee...he insisted the order referred only to the defence of the jail."

Three Reuters Reporters Subjected to Abu Ghraib-style Sexual Humiliation by US Soldiers
18-May-04
Iraq War Lies

BBC: "Fresh allegations have emerged in Iraq regarding the alleged mistreatment of Iraqi detainees by US troops. The Reuters news agency says three of its local staff were subjected to sexually degrading treatment after being detained in January. [The Reporters] said they were forced to make demeaning gestures as soldiers laughed, taunted them and took photographs. Among other things, they were allegedly deprived of sleep, had bags placed over their heads, were kicked and hit and forced to remain in stress positions for long periods. 'When I saw the Abu Ghraib photographs, I wept,' Mr Ureibi said on Tuesday. 'I saw they had suffered like we had.' He said soldiers told him they wanted to have sex with him, and he was afraid he would be raped."

Bush Continues to Spout Iraq Lies, and the Media Continues to Disseminate Them
15-May-04
Iraq War Lies

If this were a real news report - as opposed to free propaganda for Bush, the story would include not just Bush's revival of lies about Saddam Hussein's ties to Al Queda, but also clear statements of the evidence presented against these ties (nearly all intelligence reports from all over the world). Yet this Reuter's report, which was for a while at the top of the Reuter's main page, does not do this. Instead it clearly presents Bush's lie that Al Qaeda linked terrorists were in and out of Baghdad before the war...yet fails to present one strong, evidence-backed statement to counter this. This is EXACTLY the sort of reporting that helped push the US into the war and that has contributed to the climate of fear and hate that in turn has given rise to horrific abuses against Iraqis.

Americans Still Don't Get It! 51% Believe Iraq Has WMDs, 46% Believe Al Qaeda Supported by Hussein!
24-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

"A new Harris Poll finds that public perceptions of the facts that led up to the invasion of Iraq remain almost unchanged in spite of a barrage of media reports that might have changed them... A 51% to 38% majority continues to believe that 'Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction,' virtually unchanged since February. A 49% to 36% plurality of all adults continues to believe that 'clear evidence that Iraq was supporting Al Qaeda has been found.' These numbers have scarcely changed since June 2003... A case of cognitive dissonance? The remarkable stability of these numbers suggest that people have made up their minds on many of the key issues relating to weapons of mass destruction and links to Al Qaeda, and that it would take something very big to change them. It seems that people believe media reports which fit with their opinions and reject those which do not." As Marshall McLuhan said, "Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity."

Lesley Stahl Regrets Iraq WMD Stories
24-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

"'I look on those two stories as mistakes, journalistic mistakes,' Stahl told a crowd of about 1,000 gathered in the Princess Anne High School auditorium. 'I made them, and I regret it' ... Stahl described a trip to Iraq in October 2001 , where she interviewed Iraqi officials, military leaders and scientists. They told her that Saddam had no ties to Osama bin Laden, that their secular Muslim country was just as much his enemy as the United States. Stahl said she believed that. They also told her that the country had gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction... Stahl didn't buy the Iraqis' claims. Her instincts, she said, told her they were lying. 'I didn't believe anything the Iraqis were telling me about weapons of mass destruction,' Stahl said. 'Nobody believed their denials.'" Hey Lesley, we knew there were no WMDs. But then again, we listened to people like former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, not Ahmed Chalabi and his team of con artists. So much for your 'instincts'!

To Prove Iraq-Al Qaeda 'Link', Pentagon Considered Extending 'Enemy Combatant' Label
24-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write: "In the run-up to the war on Iraq, a top Pentagon official pushed a highly unorthodox plan to deploy one of the U.S. government's most controversial legal tactics--the designation of suspected terrorists as 'enemy combatants'-- in hopes of finding new evidence of alleged connections between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda, Newsweek has learned. The proposal, pressed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, called for President George W. Bush to declare Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, as an enemy combatant in the war on terror... Wolfowitz contended that U.S. military interrogators--unencumbered by the presence of Yousef's defense lawyer--might be able to get the inmate to confess what he and the lawyer have steadfastly denied: that he was actually an Iraqi intelligence agent dispatched by Saddam to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 as revenge for the first Persian Gulf War."

Rummy Caught Scrubbing Proof that Bush Decided to Invade Iraq in January
20-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

PentaPost reports, "The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that Bush had decided to invade Iraq. At issue was a passage in Woodward's 'Plan of Attack,' an account published this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could 'take that to the bank' that the invasion would happen. The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would unfold. The book reports that the meeting with Bandar was held on Jan. 11, 2003, in Vice President Cheney's West Wing office. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended."

Bush Didn't Believe US Would be Greeted as a Liberator, But He Still Thought He Was Bringing 'Freedom'
18-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

"Are there post-war plans? 'There were innumerable briefings to the president about currency about oil. And on the real issue of security and possible violence, they did not see it coming,' says Woodward. Did the administration really believe that they were going to get flowers and kisses? 'Some of the exiles told them that,' says Woodward. 'I think the president was skeptical of that. I think people like Cheney believed it more.' [Despite no WMD, Bush] has no doubts at all about going to war. 'The president still believes with some conviction, that this was absolutely the right thing, that he has the duty to free people, to liberate people. And this was his moment,' says Woodward. But who gave President Bush the duty to free people around the world? 'That's a really good question. The Constitution doesn't say that's part of the commander in chief's duties,' says Woodward. 'That's his stated purpose. It is far reaching, and ambitious, and I think will cause many people to tremble.'"

Bush Told Saudi Prince Bandar He Would Overthrow Saddam 2 Days BEFORE He Told Secretary of State Colin Powell!
18-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

"Two days before the president told Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador. 'Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, 'Top secret. No foreign.' No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,' says Woodward. 'They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar... Cheney says the following: 'Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.'' After Bandar left, Cheney said, 'I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it.' But this wasn't enough for Prince Bandar, who wanted confirmation from the president. 'Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and [he] says, 'Their message is my message,'' says Woodward. Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close."

Impeachment Alert! Dictator Bush Secretly Stole $700 Million to Prepare for Invasion of Iraq
18-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

On 60 Minutes "Woodward says immediately after [Bush ordered a new Iraq War plan on 11/21/01], Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam - and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check. 'Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible,' says Woodward. 'Gets to a point where in the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. 'Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this.'" This is a HIGH CRIME - Impeach Bush NOW!

Bush Lies Anew About Iraq War Plans
18-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Bob Woodward's new book claims Bush ordered Rummy to draw up a new war plan for Iraq in 11/01, right in the midst of the Afghanistan war. Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the Afghan war, "uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict." But when asked about that 11/01 order, Bush first changed the subject to 9/01, then skipped ahead 1 full year. "I didn't really start focusing on Iraq until later on, particularly about the time I started going to the United Nations," which was on 9/12/02. Bush is lying - he and his neocon Vulcans planned to invade Iraq from Day 1 of their administration. Impeach Bush Now! (Listen to Bush's lie at http://www.npr.org/rundowns/rundown.php?prgDate=16-Apr-2004&prgId=2)

Suffering from the Strain of Constant Lying? Gen. Kimmitt Almost Passes Out at Press Conference
18-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

AP: "There was no immediate explanation for the apparent fainting spell suffered by Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy head of operations in Iraq, who delivers daily briefings to Baghdad-based journalists alongside the top U.S. coalition spokesman Dan Senor. As he listened to the question, Kimmitt's eyes rolled upward and he began leaning forward into the podium. The podium's small black microphone struck him on the right side of the mouth. After a few seconds leaning against the microphone, he slumped backward but remained standing." If we had to stand up in front of the US public day after day and tell them that everything was going just fine in Iraq, we'd probably get a little woozy, too.

Woodward Book on Bush: A Stupid Bedtime Story or Frightening Messianic Delusions?
16-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Bush "enunciated an activist role for the US based on it being 'the beacon for freedom in the world.' 'I believe we have a duty to free people,' Bush told Woodward. 'I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.' Bush described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq on March, 19, 2003, and the powerful role his religious belief played throughout that time. 'I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will... I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible.' Bush told Woodward 'I am prepared to risk my presidency to do what I think is right. I was going to act. And if it could cost the presidency, I fully realized that. But I felt so strongly that it was the right thing to do that I was prepared to do so.'" Was it about freedom or OIL? Cheney's Energy Task Force papers hold the truth...

Woodward Says Tenet Misled Bush about Iraq
16-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

According to Bob Woodward, Bush "had initially found [Iraq WMD evidence] less than convincing when presented to him by CIA deputy director John McLaughlin on December 21, 2002... 'Nice try,' Bush said when he was finished. 'It's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from.' He then turned to Tenet, McLaughlin's boss and said, 'I've been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we've got?' 'It's a slam dunk case,' Tenet replied, throwing his arms in the air. Bush pressed him again. 'George, how confident are you.' 'Don't worry, it's a slam dunk case,' Tenet repeated. Tenet later told associates he realized he should have said the evidence on weapons was not ironclad, according to Woodward. After the CIA director made a rare public speech in February defending the CIA's handling of intelligence about Iraq, Bush called him to say he had done 'a great job.'" Why didn't Bush FIRE Tenet for lying? Because Bush wanted WAR.

Bush's Top General Richard Myers Out of Touch with Reality
16-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Last week, even the experts at the Brookings Institute concurred that the current situation in Iraq is an unmitigated "disaster." The troops and their families are nearing the end of their tolerance. Over 600 civilians, mostly women, children and elderly were injured or killed in recent conflict. Four US civilians were brutally murdered and mutilated. Kidnappings are epidemic. Yet as the bodies of civilian victims piled up at bombed out hospitals, Bush's top general, Richard Myers, continued to spout the same outrageous line as a year ago: "In the history of warfare there has never been a more humane campaign than the one waged by coalition forces, started on March 19th of last year and through today." It is not surprising that Myers goal is to be "Supreme Commander" of a Flash Gordon-style space force. He already lives in fantasyland. For more on Myers see "Players" section of http://democrats.com/view.cfm?id=7706

Bush Pawns Spoke, Destruction Raged
11-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Dan Carpenter writes, "In her prepared testimony before the 9/11 commission, Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that of course Iraq was of concern to Bush in the wake of the terrorist attacks. After all, Iraq had tried to assassinate a former U.S. president and had shot at our airplanes in the post-Gulf War no-fly zones. If those trespasses (all of which were clean misses) sound like dire threats to our national security, then I guess Condi is your kind of adviser. To me, they're resonant of some of Colin Powell's 'evidence' presented in his now-laughable j'accuse before the United Nations a year ago last February. We know Saddam Hussein has weapons facilities, Powell proclaimed between blurry bogus visual aids, because we've bombed them... All [Condi] could do under our new circumstances was, [like Powell], stand up like a good soldier with an empty rifle and make a case for a mighty, menacing Iraq that cannot convince any but the most die-hard neocon-Likudite partisan."

Iraq is Not a War for Democracy, But a Failed Example of 'Gunboat Diplomacy'
07-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Gennady Chuffrin writes: "A year after the seemingly victorious war, the Americans are again bombing Baghdad and conducting intimidation operations in Falluja. This means that the war has not ended and... is now being waged not against Saddam but against the Iraqi people... The simple truth is that Saddam was doomed because he prevented Washington from gaining control of [Iraq's oil]. The US Iraqi war is a classical example of the imperialist foreign policy of the late 19th and early 20th century. It was then called gunboat diplomacy. Today gunboats have been replaced with tanks, aircraft and missiles, but this has not changed the essence, which is to grasp control of countries with rich mineral resources, dominate them, and create military bases and deploy troops in the occupied territories."

Iraq Power Transfer: Bush Blows Smoke in Preparation for the Mirrors
06-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Bush has a clearly-established pattern: when he is getting ready to ax funding for something, he shows up at the facility beforehand and tells everyone what a great job they are doing. Before stabbing someone in the back (Trent Lott, for example), he publicly states how strongly he supports them. Now, while promoting an inflammatory policy in Iraq designed to prevent a transfer of power, he is publicly announcing his commitment to making the June 30 deadline. And look how he twists the truth! "The closer we come to the deadline, the more likely it is [that] people will challenge our will...In other words, it provides a convenient excuse to attack." The current crisis was fomented by the Bush administration's horrendous mishandling of Iraq, which has bred rage and a new crop of terrorists.

Bush's Lie Factory
05-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Mother Jones reports: "Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence and led the nation to war. Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. 'It wasn't intelligence -- it was propaganda," she says.' By turning bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war."

Bush Started to Suck Blair into His Iraq Scheme Just 9 Days After 9/11
05-Apr-04
Iraq War Lies

Houston Chronicle: "Bush made clear at a dinner with Tony Blair 9 days after the Sept. 11 attacks that he wanted to confront Iraq, the former British ambassador to the US" told Vanity Fair. "The president raised Iraq at a White House meeting on Sept. 20, 2001," says Meyer," 'Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq,' Meyer, who attended the dinner, said. 'On the one hand, Blair came with a very strong message -- don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban.'' "Bush said, `I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq."" This story has hit an international nerve, big time. It has made headlines around the world, from India to Las Vegas. We wonder how long Blair will remain PM after this bombshell!

Watch the 'White House Sonata'
31-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

"'White House Sonata' is a Flash video chronicling Bush's sales pitch for the war in Iraq that literally convicts him of his lies and exaggerations in his own voice. The video contains audio files from his speeches (obtained from the official White House Website) mixed with the Beethoven classic Moonlight Sonata and outlines a trumped-up and causality laden path to the war in Iraq. The video highlights GWB terms like 'mushroom cloud,' 'massive stockpile of biological weapons ... capable of killing millions,' as well as Bush's famous 'Bring 'em on' response as it leads the listener to the realization that nothing Mr. Bush has told our nation regarding reasons for the war was tempered with the truth. The Grande Finale of the presentation is when the President is caught off guard by a reporters question about the war in Iraq, and stutters an unrehearsed, embarrassing and unrelated answer."

Jack Straw Says Bush Failure To Go After Al Qaida when Warned Led to 9/11
20-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

The Scotsman: "The September 11 terror attacks could have been stopped if the world had listened to the warnings and waged war on al Qaida sooner, [UK] Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today. Mr Straw said the evidence that Osama bin Laden's terror network was ramping up its campaign in the years preceding the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, was 'very, very clear.' The lack of international action... 'emboldened' al Qaida in the run-up to 9/11 he said. 'Had we done that, we might have avoided September 11 and everything that has followed." Note how Straw, a Tony Blair protector, tries to diffuse blame to the "international" community, when in fact international intelligence sources warned Bush, who did nothing. Straw also says "despite starting too late, fighting and defeating terrorism was now the only option." In short, Straw is saying, OK Bush caused the attack - Get over it! Wasn't that the same response the Bushies had after they stole the 2000 election?

Bush and Blair Defiant Now, but 'History will Damn Them'
20-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

Richard Overy writes, "The most familiar argument in favour of the war, repeated mantra-like in all circles, is that a much-hated dictator has been overthrown. This week's opinion poll purports to show how grateful the Iraqis now are for their liberation. No one would wish Saddam Hussein back. The problem is that the reason for going to war was quite different. If unseating tyrants was the priority, Saddam should have been unseated long ago. War in 2003 was about protecting British and American interests, not liberating Iraq, a posture of self-interest rather than magnanimity. This was the same motive for declaring war on Hitler in 1939. It was not dictators that the west could not stomach, but the threat to their interests and way of life (again)."

Bush Plot to Plant WMDs Exposed
17-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

According to a stunning report posted by a retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Defense Department (DoD), the Bush administration's assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) plan to "plant" WMDs inside the country. Nelda Rogers, the Pentagon whistleblower, claims the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by "friendly fire", the Environmentalists Against War report.

Data Base on Bush Administration Lies Established by Rep. Waxman
17-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

"The Iraq on the Record Report, prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq: President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq."

Exiles' Deceptions Printed Before War
16-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

"The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia... Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden. In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department. Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a preemptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors' reliability."

Pentagon Pays Chalabi Group for Dubious Data
13-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

"The Pentagon is paying $340,000 a month to the Iraqi political organization led by Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the interim Iraqi government who has close ties to the Bush administration, for 'intelligence collection' about Iraq, according to Defense Department officials. The classified program, run by the Defense Intelligence Agency since summer 2002, continues a long-standing partnership between the Pentagon and the organization, the Iraqi National Congress, even as the group jockeys for power in a future government. Internal government reviews have found that much of the information generated by the program before the U.S. invasion last year was useless, misleading or even fabricated. Under the unusual arrangement, the CIA is required to get permission from the Pentagon before interviewing informants from the Iraqi National Congress, according to government officials." Chalabi and his INC helped provide Bush with the bill of goods that he used to con us into the War.

Rumsfeld/Feith's OSP Group Skirted the CIA; Tenet Claims Ignorance
13-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

"So Dougie Feith's intelligence team is back in the news. In a letter released by the Senate Armed Service Committee, it turns out that the Policy Counter Terror Evaluation Group, the rump intelligence unit that was the basis for Feith's Office of Special Plans, held formal briefings for the NSC and Vice President Cheney's staff. Feith, you'll recall, is the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy who built the OSP and its intelligence unit into the 'lie factory' that produced bogus intelligence on Iraq. Asked if these highly unusual briefings were, well, unusual, CIA Director George Tenet told the committee: 'I don't know. I've never been in the situation.' 'The situation' that Tenet is in now is also unusual. He's pretty much admitted that he spends a large part of his time going around the administration telling Cheney, President Bush and others to stop exaggerating." Tenet claimed he just learned of this -- hey Tenet, we've known about the OSP-NSC backchannel for months!

The New Pentagon Papers
11-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

Karen Kwiatkowski writes: "From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it. I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies. I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president."

Tenet Corrected Cheney AND Bush on Iraq Intelligence Lies
09-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

"George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that he had privately intervened on several occasions to correct what he regarded as public misstatements on intelligence by Vice President Dick Cheney and others, and that he would do so again. 'When I believed that someone was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it,' he said. Mr. Tenet identified three instances in which he had already corrected public statements by President Bush or Mr. Cheney or would do so, but he left the impression that there had been more... The other two instances in which Mr. Tenet said he had acted to correct administration statements involved the State of the Union address in January 2002, when he objected after the fact to Mr. Bush's inclusion of disputed intelligence about Iraq's seeking to obtain uranium from Africa, and a Jan. 22 radio interview in which Mr. Cheney portrayed trailers found in Iraq as being for biological weapons."

Scientist Says US Bullied UN Inspectors into Hiding Fact that Iraq was Free of WMDs
09-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

Daily Star: "A leading Iraqi nuclear scientist accused UN inspectors Monday of succumbing to US pressure by keeping their findings silent that Iraq was free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) before the US-led invasion last year. Jaafar was the head of the nuclear program in Iraq under Saddam Hussein "It was clear that reports of the UN (inspectors) to the Security Council should have been clear and brave," Jaafar said, "I believe the UN should also investigate the facts that were known before the war and look into the reasons why (inspectors) did not declare them to the Security Council," said Jaafar, who was jailed by Saddam Hussein in 1979, and took charge of the uranium enrichment program following his release after nearly two years of imprisonment."

Blair's Ex-Chief of Defense Staff Blows Lid Off Question of Iraq War Legality
08-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

Guardian: "In an extraordinary interview which will reignite the controversy over the run-up to the conflict, the former Chief of Defence Staff has revealed how Britain went to the brink of a constitutional crisis after he demanded 'unequivocal... legal top cover' before agreeing to allow British troops to fight. His demand for a formal assurance that a war would be legal came on 10 March 2003, even as British forces massed on the Iraq border, and the advice finally giving the all-clear came on 15 March, only five days before fighting began." This demand led to a hasty cobbling together of evidence of legality (called "advice" in the UK) by Blair and cohorts. "Last night, a senior Whitehall insider told The Observer that Ministers were reluctant to disclose the Attorney-General's advice, fearing that this would lead to 'a stream of lawsuits against the Government'."

David Kay Says Bush Should Admit WMD 'Mistake'
03-Mar-04
Iraq War Lies

The Guardian reports: "David Kay, the man who led the CIA's postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has called on the Bush administration to 'come clean with the American people' and admit it was wrong about the existence of the weapons. In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Kay said the administration's reluctance to make that admission was delaying essential reforms of US intelligence agencies, and further undermining its credibility at home and abroad... Mr Kay, who was formerly a UN weapons inspector, called for the president to go further. 'It's about confronting and coming clean with the American people. He should say we were mistaken and I am determined to find out why,' he said." We say that Bush should stop using the CIA's analyst division as his scapegoat. He should come clean and admit that he lied, Cheney lied, Powell lied, Rice lied, Rumsfeld lied -- and they used Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans to cook the CIA's intelligence to their liking.

BLAIR BOMB EXPLODES! UK Army Chiefs Say they KNEW Iraq War Was Illegal and Initially Refused to Participate
29-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

The UK Guardian reports: "Britain's Army chiefs refused to go to war in Iraq amid fears over its legality just days before the British and American bombing campaign was launched. The explosive new details about military doubts over the legality of the invasion are detailed in unpublished legal documents in the case of Katharine Gun, the intelligence officer dramatically freed last week after Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General, dropped charges against her of breaking the Official Secrets Act. The disclosure came as it also emerged that Goldsmith was forced hastily to redraft his legal advice to Tony Blair to give an 'unequivocal' assurance to the armed forces that the conflict would not be illegal." When will US military chiefs find THEIR consciences and voices and come forward with the truth?

According to Moonie Times Writer, Bush Signed Order to Plan for Iraq War in 2002
25-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

"George Bush set the US on the path to war in Iraq with a formal order signed in February 2002, more than a year before the invasion, according to a book published yesterday. The revelation casts doubt on the public insistence by US and British officials throughout 2002 that no decision had been taken to go to war, pending negotiations at the United Nations. Rumsfeld's War is by Rowan Scarborough, the Pentagon correspondent for the conservative Washington Times newspaper [owned by Reverend Moon], which is known for its contacts in the defence department's civilian leadership... 'On February 16 2002, Bush signed a secret national security council directive establishing the goals and objectives for going to war with Iraq, according to classified documents I obtained,' Mr Scarborough wrote, in an account of the 'global war on terrorism' as seen from the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary." Paul O'Neill said the plan was in the works right after the inauguration.

Chalabi and Garner Make Stunning Admissions about Iraq
24-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Jim Lobe writes: "Chalabi said he was willing to take full responsibility for the INC's role in providing misleading intelligence and defectors to... Bush, Congress and the U.S. public to persuade them that Hussein posed a serious threat to the United States that had to be dealt with urgently... The Telegraph reported that Chalabi merely shrugged off accusations his group had deliberately misled the administration. 'We are heroes in error', he said. 'As far as we're concerned, we've been entirely successful', he told the newspaper. '...The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We're ready to fall on our swords if he wants'... Meanwhile, Garner said," Look back on the Philippines around the turn of the 20th century: they were a coaling station for the navy, and that allowed us to keep a great presence in the Pacific. That's what Iraq is for the next few decades: our coaling station that gives us great presence in the Middle East', Garner added."

Bush Still Paying Millions to Chalabi's Band of Liars
24-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Jonathan Landay, Strobel and Walcott -- write: "The Department of Defense is continuing to pay millions of dollars for information from the former Iraqi opposition group that produced some of the exaggerated and fabricated intelligence Bush used to argue his case for war. The Pentagon has set aside between $3 million and $4 million this year for the Information Collection Program of the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, led by Ahmed Chalabi. The continuing support for the INC comes amid seven separate investigations into pre-war intelligence that Iraq was hiding illicit weapons and had links to al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. The State Department and the CIA, which soured on Chalabi in the 1990s, viewed the INC's information as highly unreliable because it was coming from a source with a strong self-interest in convincing the United States to topple Saddam." Chalabi, who has benefited handsomely from the Iraq war, is still wanted in Jordan for defrauding the government of millions.

Bush is Caught Like a Fly in the Web of His Own Deception
21-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern writes: "That the National Intelligence Estimate became the centerpiece of an incredibly cynical campaign playing on the trauma of 9/11 to deceive our elected representatives into forfeiting to the president their constitutional prerogative to declare war. One is left wondering: How did they think they could get away with it? The answer is embarrassingly simple. Don't you remember? It was to be a cakewalk. The vice president and others assured us that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators. They would be met with cut flowers, not roadside bombs. The 'evil dictator' would be gone. And then who would care if it were eventually discovered that the case for war was manufactured out of whole cloth? Now, bogged down in the sands of Iraq with over 500 troops already killed, the White House is without a clue as to what to do next." How about RESIGNING?

Tenet and Rice Lied: CIA Admits It Didn't Give Weapons Data to the UN
21-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

"The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons. The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush administration officials. Both George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said the [US] had briefed United Nations inspectors on all of the sites identified as 'high value and moderate value' in the weapons hunt The contradiction is significant because Congressional opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the United Nations inspectors should be given more time to complete their search before the United States and its allies began the invasion" Get a load of the hilarious quote by the "anonymous intelligence official"!

Al-Zarqawi Memo Suggests NO Pre-War Links between Al Qaeda and Saddam
16-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

"His boastful screed lends credence to the notion that terrorist attacks now are coordinated in Iraq and that al-Zarqawi, since the U.S. invasion, has helped carry out such attacks and sees Iraq as fertile ground for terrorist growth. There is nothing in the memo, however, that confirms or bolsters some key prewar White House claims: that al-Zarqawi was operating in the north as a leader of an Al Qaeda affiliate known as Ansar al-Islam, that he had set up a camp to produce deadly poisons and that, with Hussein's blessing and cooperation, he had moved people, money and supplies in and out of Iraq for months. If al-Zarqawi were involved in prewar activities in Iraq, it would be a curious omission in a memo by a terrorist... '[The letter] tells us nothing about prior connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq,' Daniel Benjamin said. 'What it does tell us is, now, we have a big terrorist problem in Iraq.' "

The Times Owes Readers an Explanation for Judith Miller's Faulty WMD Reporting
16-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Jack Shafer writes: "Michael Massing flushes New York Times reporter Judith Miller out of her spider hole this week with 'Now They Tell Us,' a 7,000-word analysis in the New York Review of Books about the press corps' failure to see through the Bush administration's weapons of mass destruction hype... Massing levels special scorn at Miller, whose WMD journalism published before the Iraq war, as he footnotes, elicited critical reviews in the Nation, Editor & Publisher Online, AJR, and CJR, and by me in Slate. Responding to Massing's criticism that she channeled the administration's spotty WMD case, Miller blames U.S. intelligence for the discrepancies between what she reported about Iraqi WMD before the war and the latest findings of the weapons hunters. 'The fact that the United States so far hasn't found WMD in Iraq is deeply disturbing,' she tells Massing. 'It raises real questions about how good our intelligence was. To beat up on the messenger is to miss the point.'"

David Kay Urges Investigation of How Bush Misused Iraq Intel
11-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

David Kay, former head of the hunt for Iraq's alleged WMD, says it's not enough to look for lapses in intelligence gathering. The newly formed commission should also examine the pronouncements by George W. Bush and White House staff, to determine whether they exaggerated the intelligence findings. Bush, of course, has declared all White House activities off-limits to the commission. But, as they say about the provisions of their Patriot Act, they shouldn't object to being investigated if they have nothing to hide.

Thousands Have Died, Yet Blair Now Says the 45 Minute Claim was Just a Big Mix-up
11-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Blair can now join the ranks of the truly slimy crooks like Ken Lay who slither off the hook for their crimes against humanity by claiming either ignorance or loss of memory. In an extraordinarily obvious continuing collusion between Downing St. and the White House, Tony Blair and Rumsfeld made statements within a one-week period claiming 1. Loss of memory (Rummy) and 2. Ignorance (Blair) re: the 45-minute claim. Yet this claim was the MOST IMPORTANT PRETEXT FOR WAR. Without it, Congress may not have granted Bush emergency war powers and Parliament most certainly would not have voted to support the war (as many have since said). But the 45-minute claim was almost definitely cooked up by Downing St. AND the White House - the smoking gun Blair and Bush are desperate to bury.

The 45-Minute WMD Claim that Rummy Says He 'Can't Remember'
11-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Why did Rummy deny at a 2/10 press conference that he was aware of Blair's much-touted 45-minute WMD claim? Could it be because this claim is CENTRAL to the Bush-Blair Iraq war collusion and the hottest smoking gun of all? After all, without this claim, we doubt Congress would have voted to authorize "emergency war powers" to Bush (who, of course, promptly abused that power). And to be convincing, the claim had to come from Blair, not Bush. Now, with the heat on, Rummy's doing what corporate criminals do best when cornered: claim loss of memory (remember Jeffrey Skillings and Ken Lay?). This BBC report points out that the 45-minute claim wasn't just a whisper - it made BANNER HEADLINES around the world. But Rummy can't recall...

Fool Me Twice (Shame on Me!)
10-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

From TV News Lies: "I really have to hand it to you guys -- you won the first round with flying colors! It took a major tragedy to set you up, but, boy did you ever pull it off! Timing is everything, I suppose, and you PNAC folk were right on cue. You jumped in at the right moment and rang all the alarm bells. There was no time to lose, you told us. We were in terrible danger, you told us. We were on the verge of being nuked, anthraxed, and smallpoxed, you told us. We were in imminent danger, you told us. You were good. You were damn convincing. And a lot of very nervous people all over the country really believed that we had to go to war! Hey, it worked. You were fooling a helluva lot of people. It made sense to keep at it, and you did."

The PNAC and the Office of Special Plans: Just the Latest Incarnations of 'Team B'
09-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Chris Floyd writes: "Anyone with a passing acquaintance of recent history knows exactly how, and why, the intelligence data concerning Iraq's nonexistent WMD came to be used as a justification for military aggression. Indeed, this history is so open, so transparent and so widely available -- in news reports, unclassified government documents, think-tank publications, etc. -- that a cynic might suspect that these government-appointed 'investigations' are actually designed to obscure the already evident truth. It began in 1976, when CIA Director George Bush established a new intelligence analysis unit called 'Team B.' Championed by top White House officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush unit was packed with hardcore ideologues -- including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle -- bent on 'proving' a predetermined conclusion: that regular CIA assessments of the Soviet Union were 'too soft'... At every turn, the B-Teamers cooked and distorted intelligence data to fit their agenda."

The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
06-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Norman Solomon writes: "An author who soared in that bullish market was Kenneth Pollack, the former CIA analyst whose 2002 book 'The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq' was a media-driven smash. A frequent presence on national television, Pollack eagerly promoted a book and a war at the same time. He called for a 'massive invasion' of Iraq. Now, in the current issue of the Atlantic magazine, Pollack has a long essay with a somewhat regretful tone. 'What we have learned about Iraq's WMD programs since the fall of Baghdad leads me to conclude that the case for war with Iraq was considerably weaker than I believed,' he writes. 'I had been convinced that Iraq was only years away from having a nuclear weapon -- probably only four or five years. That estimate was clearly off, possibly by quite a bit.' But most journalists and pundits touted such estimates as reasonable because the media pros were predisposed to believe the pronouncements from administration officials."

Bush Bullied CIA In Order To Dupe Us
06-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Sean Bookman writes: "The latest line from Secretary of State Colin Powell and others is that the Iraq war was such a just cause that we would have invaded even if we had known beforehand that no weapons of mass destruction existed. To some, that might sound like a feeble effort to downplay a massive intelligence failure. I think it's more than that. I think it's the truth. In effect, the Bush administration is now admitting that WMD were never the reason for the war. They chose to invade Iraq not to protect us from anthrax or nuclear attack, but because they hoped that an invasion would inspire new respect for U.S. power and would allow us to use Iraq as a base from which to transform the entire Arab world." But this was a war of aggression waged by an administration that was NOT elected by the American People. They have no right to be in office, let alone deciding what is 'in our best interest.' And none of this justifies their lying to us.

Weapons-Gate is Bigger than 'Breast-Gate'
06-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Bill Berkowitz writes: "Settle down now, for just a minute. Yes, that was Janet Jackson's right breast Justin Timberlake revealed to billions around the world. Yes, FCC Chairman Michael Powell is apoplectic and promises a 'thorough and swift' investigation, the Family Research Council is beside itself and is demanding big-time penalties be leveled against CBS, and the network and MTV, who put the whole thing together, swear they were blindsided. Timberlake claims to be astonished by the intricate mechanics of Jackson's leather gladiator outfit and Jackson has apologized. Sounds like 'breast-gate' is crying out for a 'Sixty Minutes' investigation. While Mike Wallace takes on the case of the exposed breast, the rest of 'Sixty Minutes' crack investigative team might turn its collective eye toward 'Weapons-Gate,' a scandal much bigger than 'breast-gate.'"

Dem Candidates Slam Bush over CIA Never Claiming 'Imminent Threat' from Iraq
05-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

"The Democratic presidential candidates assailed the Bush administration Thursday after CIA Director George Tenet revealed that government analysts never claimed before the war that Iraq was an imminent threat. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the front-runner for his party's nomination, said Tenet's comments show Bush misled when he said Saddam Hussein's regime posed a grave danger to the world. 'Today, we found out that George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the rest of the administration weren't passing on sound facts on Iraq to the American people,' Kerry said in a statement. 'They were playing politics with our national security.' Kerry has joined other Democratic critics in demanding an independent commission to investigate why some intelligence about Iraqi weapons development turned out to be wrong. But he expressed skepticism that a commission comprised of officials appointed by Bush would be impartial." You go Dems!

The Office of Special Plans: Rummy's 'Cherry Pickers' that Tenet Won't Mention
05-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Eric Boehlert of Global Security.org wrote last summer about Donald Rumsfeld's secret "intelligence unit", created solely to insure sufficient evidence against Saddam would be produced to justify war. "With direct access to Rumsfeld's office and the White House, the influential group helped lay out, both to administration officials and to the press, an array of chilling, almost too good to be true examples of why Saddam posed an immediate threat to America. 'The concern is they were in the cherry-picking business -- cherry-picking half-truths and rumors and only highlighting pieces of information that bolstered the administration's case for war,' says U.S. Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif... 'When the CIA wouldn't cooperate, Dick Cheney reportedly made three separate trips to the agency, during which he urged analysts to dig up 'better' info on Saddam's alleged nukes.'" No outside influence here, eh George Tenet?

George Tenet is Lying When He Says CIA Report was Not Subject to 'Outside' Influences
05-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

When the CIA failed to turn up solid evidence of a Saddam WMD program in the run-up to war, Rumsfeld organized a special unit to "review" the CIA info. On what grounds? Because notorious flimflam artist Ahmed Chalabi - a fraud wanted by the Jordanian government for stealing $70 million - claimed HE knew more than the CIA. The same Chalabi that the UK's MI6 described at the time as a "highly discredited source" based on past Chalabi "intelligence." At that time, George Tenet was so furious at having his report "reviewed" that he called up his pals at MI6 and complained loudly. Yet now he says the CIA report was not tampered with, unaltered, and was formulated under no pressure from outside. Should Tenet be added to the growing list of "highly discredited" sources?

A Scandal Greater Than Watergate
03-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

Eric Margolis writes: "'We were all wrong,' White House chief weapons hunter and longtime war booster David Kay admitted last week. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as the U.S. and Britain had long alleged. Iraq's nuclear weapons, death rays, vans of death, drones of death, mobile germ labs, poison gas factories, hidden weapons depots, long-range missiles, links to al-Qaida - all were bogus. The only thing real is Iraq's oil. If Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (WMD), as it long insisted, we must draw one of two conclusions. Either President George Bush, and secretaries Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld, lied about the global threat they claimed Iraq posed, and deceived Congress and the American people. Or, they were grossly misinformed by their intelligence experts and must be judged fools of the first order."

BushFeld's Lies Were No Accident - They Were Manufactured in the 'Lie Factory'
02-Feb-04
Iraq War Lies

"Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by [Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest for] Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews-some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity-exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion."

Where's the Apology from Bush - and His Resignation?
31-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Paul Krugman writes, "Bush promised to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. Instead, he got rid of accountability. Surely even supporters of the Iraq war must be dismayed by the administration's reaction to David Kay's recent statements. Iraq, he now admits, didn't have W.M.D., or even active programs to produce such weapons. Those much-ridiculed U.N. inspectors were right. (But Hans Blix appears to have gone down the memory hole. On Tuesday Mr. Bush declared that the war was justified - under U.N. Resolution 1441, no less - because Saddam 'did not let us in.') So where are the apologies? Where are the resignations? Where is the investigation of this intelligence debacle? All we have is bluster from Dick Cheney, evasive W.M.D.-related-program-activity language from Mr. Bush - and a determined effort to prevent an independent inquiry... What has gone wrong with our country that allows this president to get away with such things?"

Now Even Bush Admits WMD Doubts
31-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Guardian: "Bush finally conceded last night that there may be a problem over Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction when he said he wanted to know why there were discrepancies between pre-war intelligence and the negligible material investigators had found on the ground. He said he 'wanted to know the facts' about any intelligence failures but he refused to endorse calls for an independent investigation. Bush's comments are likely to add pressure on Tony Blair to comment on why Iraq's banned weapons have not been found. In the run-up to the war he said Saddam Hussein's WMD posed a 'real and present danger to this country'. The White House has said it is too soon to rule out finding weapons but it has also stopped predicting it will be vindicated." Instead, Rove & Co. are now trawling for fall guys.

Flashback: 'Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits'
30-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

On June 5, 2003, PentaPost reporters Walter Pincus and Dana Priest wrote: "Cheney and his most senior aide [Scooter Libby] made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials... They felt a continual drumbeat, not only from Cheney and Libby, but also from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Feith, and less so from CIA Director George J. Tenet, to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that going into Iraq was urgent." Did Cheney "berate" the analysts, threaten their careers, or merely glare at them? Either way, Cheney intimidated the analysts into telling LIES.

Did Cheney 'Berate' CIA Analysts - Or Just Pull Out their Fingernails?
30-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Immediately after Howard Dean said Dick Cheney "berated" mid-level CIA analysts "because he didn't like their intelligence reports," Busheviks went on the attack. "It's absolutely not true," Andrea Mitchell [Mrs. Alan Greenspan] told radio host Don Imus. "The vice president went over to the CIA on a couple of Saturdays, you know, more than once ... but he did not, by anybody's account, berate the analysts." Mitchell noted that former CIA analysts Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, who were not present during the Cheney meetings, have said mid-level employees may have felt "pressured" by Cheney's presence. But she quickly added, "For outsiders to say that anonymous people felt pressured is a far cry from ... Howard Dean saying in the debate that they, quote, berated the analysts."

The Imminent Threat That Wasn't
29-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Now that David Kay has shown Iraq had no weapons, the Bush Administration is claiming it never said Iraq was an imminent threat. The Center for American Progress has made a long and detailed accounting of the myriad times in which liar Bush and his cohorts did claim an imminent threat. Now if only the media will remember.

No Self-Rule for Kurds, Bush Tells Turkey
29-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

For months, Bush and his media minions have hammered away about how horribly Saddam treated the Kurds - the gassing, the slaughter, etc. And, for months, key Kurdish leaders were led to believe that in exchange for fighting for the US, they would gain self-rule. Well, it was a trap and a lie. Instead, Bush is more interested in pleasing the Turks, who contributed little to the war. "Bush gave Turkey assurances Wednesday that the United States does not support an expansion of autonomy for Kurds in neighboring Iraq." reports the Chicago Sun-Times. The Turks, of course, are the same folks who have been responsible for more cumulative brutality against the Kurds than Saddam! How typically Bush.

Kay Says No WMDs in Iraq; Blames Intelligence Community, Not Cheney-Rumsfeld-NeoCons
29-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

"Mr Kay, who resigned last week, told a Senate committee in Washington that failures had become apparent in US intelligence-gathering capability. He denied that US intelligence had been distorted by government pressure in the run-up to last year's US-led war... In his evidence to the Senate armed services committee, Mr Kay repeated his assertion that there were no illegal weapons stockpiles in Iraq. 'I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarised chemical weapons there,' he said... He said that the failure to find such stockpiles exposed weaknesses in American intelligence-gathering." Kay is trying to make the intelligence community the fall guy, but we know that despite warnings by the CIA about the dubious, even bogus, info -- Cheney and Rumsfeld still used and further cooked the intelligence.

Iraqi Exile Admits Its WMD 'Intelligence' Was a Crock of S**t
28-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

An Iraqi exile group in London which claims to have supplied Britain with a key piece of intelligence on Iraqi weapons has admitted that the information might have been false... The claim that Saddam Hussein was able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of the order being given was a headline-grabbing assertion in a British government dossier â?¦ Nick Theros the Washington representative of Iyad Allawi, who headed the Iraqi National Accord in exile and is now a member of the Iraqi governing council â?¦ said the information now seemed to be baseless, a 'crock of s**t.' 'Clearly we have not found WMD,'" he said. Why did Bush start a war based on a "crock of s**t"? Impeach Bush Now!

For Bush*t, It All Depends on the Meaning of 'Imminent'
28-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

"The White House today denied it ever warned that Saddam Hussein posed an 'imminent' threat to the United States. It is already smarting from the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. 'I think some in the media have chosen to use the word 'imminent'. Those were not words we used. We used 'grave and gathering' threat,' spokesman Scott McClellan said. But if US President George W. Bush never called Saddam's Iraq an 'imminent threat' in so many words, he said it was 'urgent'... On January 26, 2003, CNN television asked White House communications director Dan Bartlett 'is he (Saddam) an imminent threat to US interests, either in that part of the world or to Americans right here at home?' 'Well, of course he is,' Bartlett replied." Bush keeps lying and soldiers keep dying - Impeach Bush Now!

The First Lie About Iraq: Congress Did NOT Vote for It
27-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

John Bonifaz: "The first lie about the Iraq war was not that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Qaeda. The first lie told to the American people is that Congress voted for this war. In the midst of the rushed congressional debate in October 2002, Sen. Robert C. Byrd warned that the resolution under consideration was unconstitutional. 'We are handing this over to the President of the United States,' Byrd said. 'When we do that, we can put up a sign on the top of this Capitol, and we can say: 'Gone home. Gone fishing. Out of business.'' Byrd added: 'I never thought I would see the day in these 44 years I have been in this body... when we would cede this kind of power to any president.' The Iraq war is in direct violation of the Constitution. The president and the members of Congress who voted for that October resolution should be held accountable for sending this nation into an illegal war. It is time to hold up the Constitution to the faces of those who dare to defy it."

Ashcroft's Casus Voodoo: Threat of 'Evil Chemistry and Evil Biology' Justified War
27-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

AP reports: "Even if weapons of mass destruction are never found in Iraq, the U.S.-led war was justified because it eliminated the threat that Saddam Hussein might again resort to 'evil chemistry and evil biology,' John Ashcroft said Monday. Saddam's willingness to use such weapons was sufficient cause to overthrow his regime, Ashcroft told reporters, alluding to the use of chemical and biological arms against Iraqi Kurds in 1988 and during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. 'Weapons of mass destruction including evil chemistry and evil biology are all matters of great concern, not only to the United States but also to the world community. They were the subject of U.N. resolutions,' Ashcroft said." Hey John, Reagan, Bush and Rumsfeld helped provide Saddam with that 'evil chemistry and evil biology!' And now you serve under not only the son of Bush Sr., but you also work beside Rumsfeld! You must be totally insane if you can't see this profound moral dilemma.

Still More Bush*t on Al Qaeda-Iraq Ties
27-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Can YOU find the Bush*t in this story? "Bush on Monday hailed the capture of an al Qaeda leader in Iraq, as the White House moved to defend U.S. intelligence capabilities after several government officials said Saddam Hussein may not have had weapons of mass destruction. 'Just last week we made further progress in making America more secure when a fellow named Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq,' Bush said, drawing attention to an arrest the administration announced last week. 'Hassan Ghul reported directly to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was the mastermind of the September 11th attacks .... He was captured in Iraq, where he was helping al Qaeda to put pressure on our troops.'" If you missed it, here is the Bush*t: WAS GHUL IN IRAQ BEFORE WE INVADED? Not one journalist even bothered to ask the question. Several months from now, an article will include a footnote that Ghul entered Iraq AFTER the U.S. invasion - when Bush turned Iraq into a MAGNET for terrorists.

Action Alert: Cheney's Iraq Deceptions Leave NPR Speechless
26-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

From FAIR: "Dick Cheney rarely submits to one-on-one interviews, so the chance to question him directly presents a valuable opportunity for journalists. Unfortunately, National Public Radio's Juan Williams failed to challenge Cheney's questionable claims about Iraq on the January 22 broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition. In response to a question about the administration possibly backing away from its pre-war claims about Iraq's weapons, for example, Cheney reiterated the long-discredited claim that military trailers found in Iraq were Saddam Hussein's so-called mobile bio-weapons labs... ACTION: Please contact NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin and ask him if he thinks NPR should have challenged Cheney's dubious claims about Iraq. You might also encourage Morning Edition to evaluate the accuracy of Cheney's statements in an upcoming broadcast. (Write ombudsman@npr.org, morning@npr.org)"

Cheney's Latest Distortions
26-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

From the Center for American Progress: "In January 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney did a round of media interviews with NPR and others in which he reinforced his claims of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. To back these claims up, he cited documents already discredited as 'inaccurate' by the Bush Administration.

"CHENEY CLAIM: 'There's overwhelming evidence there was a connection between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government. I am very confident that there was an established relationship there.' - Vice President Cheney, 1/22/04

'FACT: According to documents, 'Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle U.S. troops. The document provides another piece of evidence challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda terrorists.' [NY Times, 1/15/04]"

CIA Told Bush Last Week that Iraq is on Brink of Civil War - So Why Did He Lie to America on January 20?
22-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

You heard Bush's lies about Iraq this week. Now here's the truth: "CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country might be on a path to civil war, current and former U.S. officials said Wednesday, starkly contradicting the upbeat assessment President Bush gave in his State of the Union address. The CIA officers' bleak assessment was delivered verbally to Washington this week, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. These dire scenarios were discussed at meetings this week by Bush, his top national security aides and the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, a senior administration official said. Another senior official said the concerns over a possible civil war were not confined to the CIA, but are broadly held within the government, including by regional experts at the State Department and National Security Council." So reports the State.

UK Whistleblower Gets US Celebrity Support
18-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

UK's "Katharine Gun, an unassuming 29-year-old translator, is set to become a transatlantic cause celebre as the focus of a star-studded solidarity drive that brings together Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn and senior figures from the US media and civil rights movement, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Gun appears in court tomorrow accused of breaching the Official Secrets Act by allegedly leaking details of a secret US 'dirty tricks' operation to spy on UN Security Council members in the run-up to war in Iraq last year. If found guilty, she faces two years in prison. She is an unlikely heroine and those who have met her say she would have been happy to remain in the shadows, had she not seen evidence in black and white that her Government was being asked to co-operate in an illegal operation. The leak has been described as 'more timely and potentially more important than The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg."

Laughable! Weasel Bush Blames Clinton for 'Regime Change' Policy!
14-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

AP: "Bush is declining to criticize former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill [he has Karl Rove's team of 'anonymous White House Officials' to do that for him], who claims in a new book that the White House planned to topple Saddam Hussein before Nine-Eleven. Bush says he inherited a policy of 'regime change' in Iraq from the Clinton administration and adopted it as his own. He says the administration was working out its policy when Nine-Eleven hit." Oh yes, when all else fails, blame Clinton. Hey, CIA operative Robert Baer said that Clinton wouldn't go along with his plan to covertly remove Hussein. When the NeoCon PNAC petitioned Clinton in 1998 with their plans to invade Iraq, Clinton told them to take a hike. But as soon as Bush seized office, he appointed many of these PNAC members to his administration -- such as Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. PNAC members were advising Bush while on the campaign trail. Bush is a damned liar and a weasel! Impeach Bush Now!

O'Neill: 'Never Saw Evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction'
14-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Time reports: "O'Neill, who sat on the National Security Council, says the focus was on Saddam from the early days of the Administration. He offers the most skeptical view of the case for war ever put forward by a top Administration official... 'There were allegations and assertions by people. But I've been around a hell of a long time, and I know the difference between evidence and assertions and illusions or allusions and conclusions that one could draw from a set of assumptions. To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else. And I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterize as real evidence.' A top Administration official says of the wmd intelligence: 'That information was on a need- to-know basis. He wouldn't have been in a position to see it.'" Hey, O'Neill sat on the National Security Council! If O'Neill didn't see the "evidence", how come no one else, who was in "a position to see it", has produced it???

Bush Lied about a Hussein-Al Qaeda Link: Hussein Warned Iraqis to Beware Arab Fighters
13-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

James Risen reports: "Saddam Hussein warned his Iraqi supporters to be wary of joining forces with foreign Arab fighters entering Iraq to battle American troops, according to a document found with the former Iraqi leader when he was captured, Bush administration officials said Tuesday. The document appears to be a directive, written after he lost power, from Mr. Hussein to leaders of the Iraqi resistance, counseling caution against getting too close to Islamic jihadists and other foreign Arabs coming into occupied Iraq, according to American officials. It provides a second piece of evidence challenging the Bush administration contention of close cooperation between Mr. Hussein's government and terrorists from Al Qaeda. C.I.A. interrogators have already elicited from the top Qaeda officials in custody that, before the American-led invasion, Osama bin Laden had rejected entreaties from some of his lieutenants to work jointly with Mr. Hussein."

Faced with Truth of His Iraq Invasion Plans, Bush Invents a NEW Lie
13-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

"Asked about O'Neill's contention that the first National Security Council meeting of the Bush administration in January 2001 discussed ousting Saddam, Scott McClellan didn't deny that account." Instead, he invented a whole NEW lie: "Bush 'exhausted all possible means to resolve the situation in Iraq peacefully' before launching the invasion in March, McClellan said. Saddam defied a 'final opportunity to comply' with U.N. demands to disarm, prompting Bush to take action 'in the aftermath of Sept. 11th (because) it's important to confront threats before it's too late.'" Memo to DC press corps: Saddam complied with EVERY demand placed on him by the UN inspectors. He let them visit every presidential palace, turned over every document he could find by their deadline, and destroyed the only violation they found - short range missiles that flew too far. Impeach Bush Now!

Paul O'Neill's Stunning Revelations on 60 Minutes
11-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

"From the very first instance, it was about Iraq," said O'Neill. "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President saying 'Go find me a way to do this." One of the documents shown on 60 Minutes was a scheme on a secret document for dividing Iraq's oil up among several top US oil companies. O'Neill said he was surprised nobody at National Security Council meetings ever asked: "Why Saddam?" or "Why now?" "For me," he added, "the notion of pre-emption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is really a huge leap." O'Neill revealed Bush to be a pathetically weak man unable to ask an intelligent question or make a single independent decision.

NY Times Wants an Investigation of Iraq War Lies - We Want Impeachment!
11-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

After 18 months of Bushit, the NY Times opines, "Three new reports cast further doubt on the administration's reckless rush to invade Iraq. Taken together, they paint a picture far different from the one presented to Americans early last year. They depict a world in which Saddam Hussein, though undeniably eager to make Iraq a threatening world power, was far from any serious steps to do that. The reports strengthen our conviction that whatever threat Iraq posed did not require an immediate invasion without international support. And they underline the importance of finding out how far the Bush administration's obsession with the Iraqi dictator warped the American intelligence reports that did so much to convince Congress and the public that the attack was justified." The Times wants an investigation, but Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee are determined to protect Bush. It's time for Democrats in Congress to introduce Articles of Impeachment (ImpeachCentral.com).

Bush Planned Invasion of Iraq from Day 1 - and it was All About Oil
10-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Bush "began laying plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 - not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Sec. Paul O'Neill says... on 60 Minutes, Sunday, Jan. 11 at 7 p.m. ET/PT. In the first three months of 2001, the administration was looking at military options for removing Saddam Hussein from power and planning for the aftermath of Saddam's downfall - including post-war contingencies like peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals and the future of Iraq's oil. 'There are memos,' Suskind tells Stahl, 'One of them marked 'secret' says 'Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq.'' A Pentagon document, says Suskind, titled 'Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,' outlines areas of oil exploration. 'It talks about contractors around the world from...30, 40 countries and which ones have what intentions on oil in Iraq,' Suskind says." Impeach Bush Now!

Carnegie Endowment Report Demolishes Iraq War Lies
08-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

These are the key findings, as written by Jessica T. Mathews, George Perkovich, and Joseph Cirincione. "Iraq WMD Was Not An Immediate Threat: Iraq's nuclear program had been suspended for many years; Iraq focused on preserving a latent, dual-use chemical and probably biological weapons capability, not weapons production. Iraqi nerve agents had lost most of their lethality as early as 1991. Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, and UN inspections and sanctions effectively destroyed Iraq's large-scale chemical weapon production capabilities. Intelligence Failed and Was Misrepresented: Intelligence community overestimated the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq. Intelligence community appears to have been unduly influenced by policymakers' views. Officials misrepresented threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missiles programs over and above intelligence findings."

Carnegie Group Says Bush Made Wrong Claims on WMD
07-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Julian Borger writes: "The Bush administration will today be accused of 'systematically misrepresenting' the threat posed by 'Iraq's weapons of mass destruction' in a comprehensive report on post-war findings. The report, by four experts on weapons proliferation at the respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is likely to reignite calls for a commission to look into the government's pre-war intelligence claims. According to the report, the absence of any imminent threat from Saddam Hussein's chemical or nuclear programmes was 'knowable' before the war. There was greater uncertainty over biological weapons but no evidence strong enough to justify war."

It's Time for Bush & Co. To Admit their Lies
07-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

Charlie Clark writes, "Colin Powell should be required to return to the UN to retract the dramatic slide-show presentation he made there last February, as almost none of his scary details has been borne out. Condoleezza Rice should admit she used hyberbole when she said the U.S. couldn't wait for the weapons inspectors to finish because 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud over New York City.' Dick Cheney should have the integrity to agree he unfairly maligned Mohamed ElBaradei when Cheney said on 'Meet the Press' last March that 'We think Mr. El Baradei is wrong' and that Saddam has 'reconstituted nuclear weapons.' Donald Rumsfeld should also be assigned to eat his words for having said that 'We know where [the WMDs] are. They're in the area around Baghdad and Tikrit.' Last but not least, Bush himself should have the maturity to admit he exaggerated when he called Saddam Hussein a 'growing' and 'gathering threat.'"

Who Forged the Niger Uranium Papers?
04-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

The Toronto Star's ombudsman, Don Sellar, may be the only newspaper ombudsman who is doing his job - asking why his newspaper lied to its readers about Niger supplying uranium to Iraq. " two big questions remain unanswered: Who forged the papers, and why? Theories abound. The most intriguing came from veteran journalist Seymour M. Hersh, in the Oct. 27 New Yorker. But he didn't name an informant who told him a few disgruntled ex-CIA spooks had drafted the fake papers to get back at Cheney. Was Hersh right? Journalism is supposed to be a search for truth. Yet there are few signs the story is being pursued with vigour. An ombud's wish for 2004." And ours too.

Britain's MI6 Planted Propaganda Stories in the Media to Sell Iraq War
01-Jan-04
Iraq War Lies

The Sunday Times of London reports: "The government yesterday confirmed that MI6 had organised Operation Mass Appeal, a campaign to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's [non-existent] weapons of mass destruction. The revelation will create embarrassing questions for Tony Blair in the run-up to the publication of the report by Lord Hutton into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert. A senior official admitted that MI6 had been at the heart of a campaign launched in the late 1990s to spread information about Saddam's development of nerve agents and other weapons, but denied that it had planted misinformation... The admission followed claims by Scott Ritter, who led 14 inspection missions in Iraq, that MI6 had recruited him in 1997 to help with the propaganda effort. He described meetings where the senior officer and at least two other MI6 staff had discussed ways to manipulate intelligence material."

Latest Terror Alert Belies Bush Rhetoric that Iraq War Made Us 'Safer'
26-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

Doug Basham writes: "And so what happens today? A member of this administration comes right out and ADMITS the administration lied... and that the Iraq war has NOT made us safer from terror. Oh yeah. Perhaps you caught the admission? It came from Homeland Security's own Tom Ridge. Mind you, he didn't use those exact words. No, instead he raised the moronic, color coded, terror warning alert, using words like 'threat indicators are perhaps greater now than at any point since Sept. 11'... and 'extremists abroad are anticipating attacks that will rival or exceed the scope of those of Sept. 11'. To those of us who have and continue to pay attention, there is no difference. A rose by any other name? Obviously, the invasion of Iraq has not made us safer from terrorism, therefore, Bush lied and our soldiers died. Period."

Scowcroft Concludes Bush is Stupid but Not Evil
24-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

How else can this mumbo-jumbo be summarized? "After reviewing [how the Niger lie was included in the SOTU] for several MONTHS [!!!], the Residen'ts Foreign Intelligence Board -- chaired by [BushDaddy] national security adviser Brent Scowcroft -- has determined that there was 'no deliberate effort to fabricate' a story, the source said. Instead, the source said, the board believes the White House was so anxious 'to grab onto something affirmative' about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable." As Bush would say, What's The Difference? Impeach Bush Now!

Saddam-Atta Memo is a Fraud
22-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

Newsweek reports,"A widely publicized Iraqi document that purports to show that 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta visited Baghdad in the summer of 2001 is probably a fabrication that is contradicted by U.S. law-enforcement records showing Atta was staying at cheap motels and apartments in the US when the trip would have taken place... 'Terrorist Behind September 11 Strike Was Trained By Saddam,' ran the headline on the story written by Con Coughlin, a Telegraph correspondent and the author of the book 'Saddam: The Secret Life.' Coughlin's account was picked up by newspapers around the world and was cited the next day by NY Times [propagandist] William Safire. But U.S. officials and a leading Iraqi document expert tell NEWSWEEK that the document is most likely a forgery - part of a thriving new trade in dubious Iraqi documents." Even Ahmed Chalabi's group called the memo "clearly nonsense", and Coughlin said he had "no way of verifying it."

Bush Told Senators Iraq Could Deliver WMD's to East Coast of USA
17-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

"U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said Monday the Bush administration last year told him and other senators that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction, but they had the means to deliver them to East Coast cities. Nelson said about 75 senators got that news during a classified briefing before last October's congressional vote authorizing the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nelson voted in favor of using military force. Nelson said he couldn't reveal who in the administration gave the briefing. The White House directed questions about the matter to the Department of Defense. Defense officials had no comment on Nelson's claim. Nelson said the senators were told Iraq had both biological and chemical weapons, notably anthrax, and it could deliver them to cities along the Eastern seaboard via unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones. 'They have not found anything that resembles an UAV that has that capability,' Nelson said." Yet another Bush Lie!

Rep. Waxman Launches Initiative Encouraging Iraqi Intel Whistleblowers to Come Forward
14-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

"Calling all spooks and spies. If you want to help Congress get to the bottom of the scandal over Iraq intelligence, now's your chance. Later this week, a key member of Congress will issue an all-points call for intelligence analysts to blow the whistle on Resident Bush, Vice Resident Cheney and others in the Bush administration who may have distorted, exaggerated, manipulated or lied about intelligence on Iraq in the run up to war. By creating a 'tip line' on his official Web site, Democratic congressman from California Henry Waxman is encouraging current and former U.S. national security officials to come forward and disclose how the administration played with intelligence on Iraq... A ranking member on the House Committee on Government Reform, Rep. Waxman is making it possible for officials to go on the record or remain anonymous... Waxman's effort, which is sure to be controversial, is a sign that the simmering scandal about U.S. intelligence on Iraq won't go away during 2004."

Bush Scrubs Iraqi Civilian Deaths to Avoid Accountability for Murder
13-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

Derrick Z. Jackson writes, "A senior White House official was asked in a briefing this week if Bush will ever directly address the Iraqi people about the deaths of Iraqi civilians in the US occupation. Instead of addressing Bush's responsibility, the official delivered a spiraling rendition of denial... Between 5,708 and 7,356 civilians died during the invasion and an additional 2,049 to 2,209 have died in the occupation... The attempts by the White House to deny the blood on its own hands continued this week with the announcement by the Iraqi Health Ministry that it will no longer count civilian casualties... With a shutdown of Iraqi civilians counting Iraqi civilians, the denial would be complete. The senior White House official said, 'Let's remember who's killing Iraqi citizens.' The evidence is appallingly clear that the White House is really saying 'Let's forget.'"

Iraqi Agent Denies He Met 9/11 Hijacker in Prague
13-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

NY Times: "A former Iraqi intelligence officer who was said to have met with the suspected leader of the Sept. 11 attacks has told American interrogators the meeting never happened, according to United States officials familiar with classified intelligence reports on the matter. Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, the former intelligence officer, was taken into custody by the United States in July. Under questioning he has said that he did not meet with Mohamed Atta in Prague, according to the officials, who have reviewed classified debriefing reports based on the interrogations. American officials caution that Mr. Ani may have been lying to American interrogators, but the only other person reported to have attended the meeting was Mr. Atta, who died in the crash of his hijacked plane into the WTC. Reports that an Iraqi spy had met with Mr. Atta in Prague first circulated soon after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon, but they have been in dispute ever since."

Tony Blair Finally Manages to Produce Mysterious 'Source' of 45-Minute WMD Claim!
09-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

Man, you can tell that Tony Blair has learned his new strategies at the feet of BushRove. After SIX MONTHS or so of having the outrageous 45-minute claim questioned, Blair has found an "Iraqi officer" who says he made the claim and it is absolutely 100% accurate, and that the WMDs REALLY ARE there, honest they are! Just really, really, really well hidden. To make this latest ploy look more convincing, the "source" went through a newspaper, whilst Blair "refused to discuss the case." A classic Bush tactic: leak your bill of goods through the paper then deny you knew anything about it, just in case it falls flat on its face.

Newsweek: Memo 'Suggests' Cheney Received 'Raw Intelligence' from Discredited Sources -- And Lied About It
09-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

"A memo written...for the controversial Iraqi National Congress raises new questions about the role [VP] Dick Cheney's office played in the run-up to the war in Iraq... Cheney staffers...pushed INC info--including defectors' claims about WMD and terror ties--to bolster the case that Saddam's government posed a direct threat to America. But the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have strongly questioned the reliability of defectors supplied by the INC. For months, Cheney's office has denied that the veep bypassed US intelligence agencies to get intel reports from the INC. But a June 2002 memo written by [an] INC lobbyist...to a US Senate committee lists John Hannah, a senior national-security aide on Cheney's staff, as one of two 'US governmental recipients' for reports generated by an intelligence program being run by the INC... The memo not only describes Cheney aide Hannah as a 'principal point of contact' for the program, it...provides his direct White House telephone number."

Father of US Soldier Travels to the Front Lines to Learn the Truth the Bush Media Withholds
08-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

"Michael Lopercio, a 51-year-old restaurateur from Tempe, Arizona, decided that he was not happy with the quality of the news he was receiving about the war into which his son had been drawn. He also realised that if the conflict dragged on, so would the amount of time that his boy would have to remain in Iraq, where hundreds of young Americans have already died. So he packed his bags and set off to Baghdad to find out for himself what was happening, and to see if there was anything he could do about it. 'We haven't been getting the full story in the US,' he said. 'The media is covering events - shootings and bombings - but not the issues. They are not covering what is really happening to Iraqi people and to the Iraqi infrastructure and how this affects our chances of success here.'"

Karl Rove's New Propaganda Line Advocates War Crimes by US Soldiers
01-Dec-03
Iraq War Lies

Robert Fisk writes: "And while the Pentagon is now planning to have 100,000 GIs in Iraq until 2006, the journalistic heavyweights are stoking the fires of patriotism with a new and even more chilling propaganda line... Claiming that Saddam's torturers are attacking U.S. troops -- some of his intelligence men are working for the occupying army, but that's another matter -- columnist [and Karl Rove mouthpiece] David Brooks writes that '...What will happen to the national mood when the news programs start broadcasting images of the brutal measures our own troops will have to adopt? Inevitably there will be atrocities that will cause many good-hearted people to defect from the cause ... somehow ... the Bush administration is going to have to remind us again and again that Iraq is the Battle of Midway in the war on terror ...' What is one to make of this vile nonsense? Why is The New York Times providing space for the advocacy of war crimes by U.S. soldiers?"

Mystery Surrounds Death of State Dept. Official
25-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

Wayne Madsen writes: "In a case eerily reminiscent of the death of British Ministry of Defense bio-weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly, an official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John J. Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7. Police indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department. Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20 foot window well, 8 floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters near the 23rd and D Street location. Kokal's death was briefly mentioned in a FOX News website story on November 8 but has been virtually overlooked by the major media... Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived in Arlington, Virginia."

Feith Memo Fails to Prove Hussein-Al Qaida 'Connection'
22-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write: "A leaked Defense Department memo [from Douglas Feith's office] claiming new evidence of an 'operational relationship' between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein's former regime is mostly based on unverified claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago--and were largely discounted at the time by the U.S. intelligence community, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials... Within the U.S. intelligence establishment, the predominant view--then as now--is that the Feith-Carney case was murky at best. Culling through intelligence files, the Feith team indeed found multiple 'reports' of alleged meetings between Iraqi officials and Al Qaeda operatives dating back to the early 1990s when Osama first set up shop in Sudan. But many of these reports were old, uncorroborated and came from sources of unknown if not dubious credibility, U.S. intelligence officials say."

Read Sam Gardiner's Report on 50 Iraq Stories Faked by the Bush Propagandists
15-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

"After his wife was exposed as a CIA agent, embattled former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson 'leaked' an explosive document to the US media. The report by Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner (Ret) identifies 50 'stories of strategic influence' that were allegedly manufactured by the White House to 'market' the war on Iraq. The-Edge has obtained a copy of the 56-page Gardiner Report. We hope that the publication of this overview of Gardiner's findings will help to break through the 'Paper Curtain' and prompt extensive media coverage, public debate and a congressional investigation." Read the four-part series, 'Around the Bend: America's Ministry of Propaganda. At the bottom of part one is a link to Gardiner's Report in pdf.

Brave Guardsman Speaks Out Against Bush's WMD Lies
13-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

"An Illinois National Guardsman at home on leave blasted the President today on a Rockford area radio show, saying the President lied about his reasons for American military going to Iraq. Sergeant Jessica Macek... has been serving in Iraq for six-months with the National Guard's 333rd MP Company, and while home on leave, during an interview... said she believes that President Bush lied about the reasons for going to war. 'I believe it is in the forefront in the minds of many soldiers that we were lied to about the reasons for going to war,' Macek told the radio audience. The bulk of Macek's criticism comes over what she said was a lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction. 'We have been there for six months now, and we have not found any weapons,' said Macek. 'If there were weapons it seems we should have found them by now.'" Macek may face disciplinary action for speaking out against Bush's gross acts of bad faith -- for which he should be removed as Commander-in-Chief.

Former Intelligence Official Decries Bush Lies about Saddam/911 Connection
13-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

From a Democracy Now interview: "AMY GOODMAN: Peter Molon, your thoughts about the polls that say that most Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9-11. PETER MOLAN: I am -- they take my breath away. They stun me. Even this administration, although it speaks out of both sides of its mouth, the -- just, what, several weeks ago, the President admitted publicly that there was no connection between 9-11 and Saddam Hussein, although he did then turn around the next -- the very next day and suggest that there was. So, there are conflicting stories coming out of the administration, but still, even the administration admits that there was no such connection, and yet more than half of us believe that there is. I can only suggest that Chris Hedges' new book, 'War Gives Us Meaning,' speaks to the kind of psychological advantages that war gives to us. And that we are able to overcome all information to the contrary, all rational thought, in order to follow a war -- a lust for war."

'Uncovered' Documentary Nails Bush's Iraq Lies with Powerful Witnesses
09-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

"An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambaste the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq. In their view, the very foundations of intelligence-gathering have been damaged in ways that could take years, even decades, to repair. ["Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War" by Robert Greenwald] features one powerful condemnation after another, from... a former director of the CIA, two former assistant secretaries of defence, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and even the man who served as Bush's Secretary of the Army... The interviewees reveal how the pre-war intelligence record on Iraq showed virtually the opposite of the picture the administration painted to Congress, to US voters and to the world. They also reconstruct the way senior White House officials - notably Dick Cheney - leaned on the CIA to find evidence that would fit a preordained set of conclusions."

ABC News Expose: Busheviks Rejected Peace Deal from Saddam
05-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

"A possible negotiated peace deal was laid out in a heavily guarded compound in Baghdad in the days before the war, ABCNEWS has been told, but [Richard Perle] says he was ordered not to pursue the deal. [Imad Hage], a prominent Lebanese-American businessman said he secretly met with Iraqi intelligence officials just days after Colin Powell laid out the U.S. case for war at the UN in February... Hage says he met with Saddam Hussein's chief of intelligence, Gen. Tahir Habbush, [who] laid out terms of a negotiated peace during a four-hour session... Habbush repeated public denials by the regime that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but offered to allow several thousand U.S. agents or scientists free rein in the country to carry out inspections... [He] also offered U.N.-supervised free elections, oil concessions to U.S. companies and was prepared to turn over a top al Qaeda terrorist, Abdul Rahman Yasin." Perle says the CIA rejected the offer. WHY??? Impeach Bush Now!

BushSpeak Alert: RepubliNazis Deny Saying Iraq was an 'Imminent Threat'
05-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

Josh Marshall writes, "In recent months, Democrats have criticized Bush for claiming that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed an imminent threat to the US... But now Republicans say it's a bum rap. A chorus of conservative columnists and talk-show hosts claims that nobody in the administration ever said any such thing. 'No member of the administration,' conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan recently wrote, 'used the term 'imminent threat' to describe Saddam Hussein's Iraq. No one [Wesley] Clark is repeating a lie that has been thoroughly exposed on the Internet and elsewhere, a lie that even The NY Times has stopped repeating.' Could this possibly be true? Could all our memories be so faulty? In a word, no... Here's how Cheney described the threat in August 2002: 'What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness.' A month later, Bush called Iraq an 'urgent threat to America.'"

White House Says They'll Hand Over Iraq Intel Documents
03-Nov-03
Iraq War Lies

"The White House reversed itself and promised the Senate Intelligence Committee access to all materials requested for its inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq, the committee chairman said Sunday. A White House spokesman remained noncommittal, promising 'a spirit of cooperation' but no specifics. Spokesman Trent Duffy reiterated administration doubts about the committee's jurisdiction over the White House. The CIA and the State Department already turned over large quantities of documents ahead of the committee's deadline last Friday and more material is coming, said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan. The committee's top Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said he wants 'to see the documentation before...I'm satisfied. I want to know that we really have it in hand.'... Rockefeller had just finished saying, 'We have to have those documents. We're going to get those documents, one way or another,' when Roberts was asked if he concurred."

Senators Want CIA Documents on Iraq - NOW
30-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"In a sharply worded letter, the top two senators with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence called on CIA Director George J. Tenet to supply long-sought materials and schedule interviews by noon Friday and to be ready to appear before the panel 'at a time determined by the committee.' The letter to Tenet showed that although the committee's chairman, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), and vice chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), may disagree on whether their investigation of prewar intelligence will examine its use by Bush policymakers, they are together in pressing for the CIA and other intelligence community agencies to produce information they have been seeking since July... Roberts and Rockefeller... also took offense at another part of Tenet's Friday letter that said there was 'additional material' still to be supplied to the panel. 'The committee has been patient,' the senators wrote yesterday, 'but we need immediate access to this information.'"

Gen. Franks Gave Bush Iraq Invasion Plan in 2001
29-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"The former commander of Operation Iraqi Freedom said yesterday he presented a plan to invade Iraq to Bush just a few months after the 9/11 attacks. In a speech to a business group in Washington, retired Army Gen. Tommy Franks said that when he gave Bush a status report on the war in Afghanistan on Dec. 28, 2001, he also presented the commander-in-thief with a plan for launching combat operations against Saddam Hussein. Franks said he told Bush he didn't like the plan and that he was ordered to put together another one, which he showed to the resident in January 2002. Nevertheless, Franks insisted the decision to invade wasn't made until March 17, two days before the war began." Hey Tommy, the NeoCon Project for a New American Century, with members like Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, drew up plans for the Iraq invasion back in 1998! Franks is either supremely naive or a lying GOP hack - can we have door #3 please?

Bizarro Spin of the Month! Bush Says Progress in Iraq Spurs Violent Attacks
27-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"Resident Bush on Monday blamed rising violence in Iraq on U.S. progress being made there, saying coalition successes are making insurgents more desperate. Bush spoke only hours after bombings in postwar Baghdad killed dozens of people and after conferring at the White House with the top U.S. general and civilian official in Iraq. 'The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity that's available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become,' Bush told reporters.'"

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) Forces Debate on Bush's Iraq Lies
25-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

For the record: "Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) addressed the Bush administration's Iraq policy... through a parliamentary device intended to protect the integrity of the Congressional Record. Noting that many of the claims the President conveyed to Congress in its rush to war are now known to have been wrong, McDermott offered a privileged resolution to correct the Congressional Record for January 28, 2003, the date of President Bush's State of the Union speech, to reflect the inaccuracy of four specific stated claims made by the President to Congress."

Were Niger Documents Created by Angry Ex-CIA Agents?
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"Another explanation was provided by a former senior CIA officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, 'Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.' He...[said] that a small group of disgruntled retired CIA clandestine operators had banded together last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves. 'The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney,' the former officer said...'They thought that, with this crowd, it was the only way to go-to nail these guys who were not practicing good tradecraft and vetting intelligence,' my source said... The thinking, he said, was that the documents would be endorsed by Iraq hawks at the top of the Bush Administration... They would then look foolish when intelligence officials pointed out that they were obvious fakes. But the tactic backfired, he said, when the papers won widespread acceptance within the Administration. 'It got out of control.'"

Cheney Pushed $97 Million Hand-Out to Ensure More Bunk Intelligence from Chalabi
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"In the spring of 2002, the former White House official told me, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz began urging the Resident to release more than ninety million dollars in federal funds to Chalabi. The 1998 Iraq Liberation Act had authorized ninety-seven million dollars for the Iraqi opposition, but most of the funds had not been expended. The State Department opposed releasing the rest of the money, arguing that Chalabi had failed to account properly for the funds he had already received. 'The Vice-Resident came into a meeting furious that we hadn't given the money to Chalabi,' the former official recalled. Cheney said, 'Here we are, denying him money, when they'-the Iraqi National Congress-'are providing us with unique intelligence on Iraqi W.M.D.s.'" [Part VII of Hersh]

Chalabi's 'Garbage' Reports Were Funneled Straight to Bush, Then to the Press
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"Chalabi's defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-Resident's office, and then on to the Resident, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals. When INR analysts did get a look at the reports, they were troubled by what they found. 'They'd pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided,' Greg Thielmann told me. 'There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi's sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the Resident.' A routine settled in: the Pentagon's defector reports, classified 'secret,' would be funneled to newspapers, but subsequent C.I.A. and INR analyses of the reports - invariably scathing but also classified - would remain secret." [Part VI of Hersh]

Sen. Jay Rockefeller Demands Truth about Iraq Intelligence Lies
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is preparing a blistering report on prewar intelligence on Iraq that is critical of CIA Director George J. Tenet and other intelligence officials for overstating the weapons and terrorism case against Saddam Hussein... [But] the committee is deeply divided over investigating how the Bush administration [MIS]used intelligence in its public [LIES] about Iraq... Rockefeller is under considerable pressure from the Senate Democratic leadership not to allow Roberts to focus only on intelligence bureaucrats while avoiding questions about whether Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others [LIED]... 'We're going to get this one way or the other,' Rockefeller said. 'If the majority declines to put the executive branch at risk, then they are going to have a very difficult minority to deal with.' He said he has the five votes necessary, under Rule 6 of the committee's rules of procedure, to launch an inquiry into the administration's use

Powell Received Report in December '01 Debunking Iraqi Nuke Plots
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

A State Department review, "presented to Powell in December 2001, echoed the earlier I.A.E.A. findings. According to Thielmann, 'It basically said that there is no persuasive evidence that the Iraqi nuclear program is being reconstituted.' The defectors, however, had an audience prepared to believe the worst. Rumsfeld had long complained about the limits of American intelligence. In the late 1990s, for example, he had chaired a commission on ballistic-missile programs that criticized the unwillingness of intelligence analysts 'to make estimates that extended beyond the hard evidence they had in hand.' After he became Sec. of Defense, a separate intelligence unit was set up in the Pentagon's policy office, under the control of William Luti, a senior aide to Feith. This office, which circumvented the usual procedures of vetting and transparency, stovepiped many of its findings to the highest-ranking officials." [Part IV of Hersh]

Analyst Who Questioned Bushevik's Iraq Fantasies Told He Was 'Planning for Failure'
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"There was also a change in procedure at the Pentagon under Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith. In the early summer of 2001, an official assigned to a Pentagon planning office undertook a routine evaluation of the assumption, adopted by Wolfowitz and Feith, that the Iraqi National Congress could play a major role in a coup d'etat to oust Hussein. They also assumed that Chalabi, after the coup, would be welcomed by Iraqis as a hero... The official said, 'It was a 'what could go wrong' study. What if it turns out that Ahmad Chalabi is not so popular? What's Plan B if you discover that Chalabi and his boys don't have it in them to accomplish the overthrow?' The people in the policy offices didn't seem to care. When the official asked about the analysis, he was told by a colleague that the new Pentagon leadership wanted to focus not on what could go wrong but on what would go right. He was told that the study's exploration of options amounted to planning for failure." [Part III of Hersh]

Bolton Barred Intel Official from Meetings for Not Providing Desired Info
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

"A few months after George Bush took office, Greg Thielmann, an expert on disarmament with the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR, was assigned to be the daily intelligence liaison to John Bolton... But, Thielmann told me, 'Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear.' Thielmann soon found himself shut out of Bolton's early-morning staff meetings. 'I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, 'The Under-Secretary doesn't need you to attend this meeting anymore.'' When Thielmann protested that he was there to provide intelligence input, the aide said, 'The Under-Secretary wants to keep this in the family.'... The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was 'to prevent raw intelligence from getting to people who would be misled.'... [Instead, Bolton] 'surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get C.I.A. information directly,' Thielmann said." [Part II from Hersh]

Former NSC Analyst: Bush Regime Has Dismantled 50 Year Old Process for Vetting Intel
23-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

Part I of Seymour Hersh's latest: "Kenneth Pollack, a former NSC expert on Iraq, whose book 'The Threatening Storm' generally supported the use of force, told me that what the Bush people did was 'dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership... They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information... They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn't have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.' The Administration eventually got its way, a former CIA official said. 'The analysts at the CIA were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet for not protecting them. I've never seen a government like this.'"

Frontline Interview with Greg Thielmann, Who Was Featured in the 60 Minutes II Expose' of WMD Lies
17-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

Q: "The administration has said, 'This is just 16 words. OK. We perhaps should not have included this in the president's speech. This was an oversight. There was a mistake made, but there is a solid case to be made that Saddam Hussein was engaged in a nuclear weapons program.'" A: "Yes, they do make that claim." Q: "Why shouldn't we believe them?" A: "The way I look at it, first of all, they chose to essentially declassify a top-secret sensitive report. They did... on the Niger matter and on the aluminum tubes matter that they contended were being procured by Iraq for the nuclear weapons program. In fact, they make a bigger case of the aluminum tubes... The reason that I raise these two issues as being very significant is that the administration apparently thought it was important enough that they would declassify very sensitive information and make an argument to the American people. So it cannot really be trivialized as only 16 words."

Bush's Good News Offensive
16-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

Bill Berkowitz writes: "By Tuesday, ABC News.com was reporting that the resident had tired of the 'filter' of news reports coming from Iraq and he was attempting to 'go around the press... through television outlets that do not routinely cover the White House.' 'There's a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth,' he told Hearst-Argyle Television. 'I'm mindful of the filter through which some news travels, and sometimes you just have to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the people.' It has also been reported that first lady Laura Bush may be enlisted for the new offensive. What's next? Might the resident pop up as an umpire during the World Series or a referee on Monday Night Football? Will he don an apron and cook up one of his specialty dishes with Emeril? Turn up hawking the 12-inch Resident George W. Bush Elite Force Aviator doll complete with naval aviator flight uniform on the Home Shopping Network?"

Lies about Iraq Rise to Level of the Absurd
16-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

Jay Bookman writes: "Lies beget more lies; a policy built on deception will always require further deception to sustain itself. Case in point: The campaign by leading members of the Bush administration to rebuild faltering support for their invasion of Iraq. To hear them tell it, everything that has happened since last March has just proved how right they've been all along."

Tricky Dick Cheney Links Iraq to 9-11 AGAIN
10-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

The Daily Enron: "George W. Bush has his own action figure, so isn't it time for Dick Cheney to have one as well? Doctors' orders would prohibit too much action from the Cheney doll, so maybe it could just talk when you pull its string instead. While most toys of this variety usually feature several wacky sayings, the Cheney doll would have to be sold at a discount: Lately the vice president has only been capable of parrot-like repetition of one message. The vice president was at it again this morning, delivering a speech that once again highlights the supposed link between Iraq and the events of September 11 that even Resident Bush has recently repudiated: 'Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror. Our mission in Iraq is a great undertaking and part of a larger mission that the United States accepted now more than two years ago. Sept. 11, 2001, changed everything for this country.'"

CIA Enraged by Cynical White House End-Run Around Its Sources
05-Oct-03
Iraq War Lies

Eric Margolis writes, "The Wilson affair has exploded at a time when the extent that America's professional intelligence cadre was circumvented, or bullied and intimidated into silence by the Bush administration has become a major public issue. Such politically motivated pressure on the nation's intelligence establishment by men with little American flags on their lapels is totally unacceptable and gravely endangers U.S. national security. Real patriots do not start wars to win elections while diverting attention from financial scandals. CIA chief Tenet ought to come out and denounce those who led the U.S. into an unnecessary war that has become a bloody and unimaginably expensive mess. But CIA officers are trained to remain silent and obey the chain of command. So it's up to Congress to demand a full investigation of the corruption of national security, and of the extremist ideologists who misled America into a war that should never have been waged."

Pentagon Says Intel from the Chalabi Gang Was Bogus
29-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

NY Times: "An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that most of the information provided by Iraqi defectors who were made available by the Iraqi National Congress was of little or no value, according to federal officials briefed on the arrangement. In addition, several Iraqi defectors introduced to American intelligence agents by the exile organization and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program, the officials said... Several federal officials said the arrangement had wasted more than $1 million in taxpayers' money and had prompted them to question the credibility of Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. Both have enjoyed powerful backing from civilian officials at the Pentagon and are playing a significant role in the provisional government in Baghdad."

House Intelligence Committee Concludes Iraq 'Intelligence' was Bushit
28-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

House intelligence committee (HIC) co-chairs Porter Goss (R-FL) and Jane Harman (D-CA) "have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, 'circumstantial' and 'fragmentary' information with 'too many uncertainties' to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda... 'The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist,' the two committee members said in a letter Thursday to CIA Director George J. Tenet." Well DUH! Here at Democrats.com, we have been saying this for over a YEAR. Why didn't HIC figure this out BEFORE they gave Bush a blank check for war? We demand the firing of EVERYONE who lied about Iraq!

Britain's Spy Chief Explains How He 'Sexed Up' WMD Dossier
24-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

UK "Spy chief John Scarlett admitted he sanctioned a last minute change to the Iraq weapons dossier because of an email from... Tony Blair's chief of staff Jonathan Powell [who] complained about a crucial part of the dossier on Saddam Hussein's plans to use chemical and biological weapons. His email resulted in a significant gear change over the alleged threat... Mr Scarlett also came under fire over the claim that Iraq's weapons could be used within 45 minutes. The dossier was altered from 'intelligence indicates' to 'intelligence shows' they could be deployed in that time. Mr Scarlett insisted it was backed by intelligence. Asked what weapons he was talking about, he said: 'Battlefield munitions' - not WMDs. But he admitted he never explained that detailed point to Tony Blair and the PM never asked. Mr Caldecott said that flew in the face of what people believed was the case for war - that Iraq's long range missiles could attack British bases in Cyprus and Iraq's neighbours."

Australian Journalist Claims Proof of WMD Lies
24-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

Paul Mulvey writes: "Australian investigative journalist John Pilger says he has evidence the war against Iraq was based on a lie that could cost George W. Bush and Tony Blair their jobs and bring Prime Minister John Howard down with them. A television report by Pilger aired on British screens overnight said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat... Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, 'He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours.' Two months later, Rice reportedly said, 'We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.' Powell boasted this was because America's policy of containment and its sanctions had effectively disarmed Saddam."

In Front of the UN and the World, Bush Flip-Flops on Saddam's 'Ties to Terror'
23-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

If you thought Bush finally acknowledged reality when he said on 9-17-03 that "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," you were wrong. In front of the UN - and the entire world - Bush declared, "The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction." Hello??? Saddam built WMD in the 1980's with the help of Donald Rumsfeld, when Saddam was allied with Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush in their desperate effort to keep Iran from conquering Iraq (well we suspect that the Bush Crime Family made money off the arms sales; along with their Iran-Contra scheme -- bucks over principles for BushDaddy). So is W. calling Reagan and Bush Sr. terrorists??? Moreover, Saddam STOPPED building WMD's after the US pushed him out of Kuwait in Gulf War I in 1991 - long before Al Qaeda even came into existence. Bush is off his "meds" and descending back into madness - invoke the 25th Amendment! (www.madgeorge.us)

Remind Christopher Dickey about Newsweek's 'Kissing Iraqi' Cover
20-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

Christopher Dickey penned the Newsweek article that blames the 'pride' of the American public for believing Bush's WMD lies. And he blames that same 'pride' for now refusing to admit the reality of the Iraq quagmire. E-mail Dickey at shadowland@newsweek.com -- and tell him that he should be ashamed of himself for letting the US Media off the hook! And send him the below link showing the Newsweek cover of the 'Kissing Iraqi.' So Dickey really expects us to believe that propaganda like this Newsweek cover didn't mislead Americans? It was all 'American Pride' that made Americans believe that Iraqis would 'throw rose petals' to their 'liberators'? Dickey is either a slavish apologist for the Media -- or he is as out of touch with reality as he claims Americans are.

Letting the Media off the Hook for Lying about Iraq -- Public Misperception is Due to 'American Pride'
20-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

The US Media has been a willing accomplice in the BushRove lies that Iraq had WMDs -- as well as the lie that Saddam was behind 9/11. Now it looks like the Media is running for cover, since it is THEIR credibility on the line. This Newsweek article argues that it is stubborn 'American Pride' that supported the invasion. And it is that same 'American Pride' that now won't admit the reality of the quagmire in Iraq (never mind the 'Kissing Iraqi' on the cover of Newsweek). While 'pride' may be a factor -- it lets the US Media off the hook. "The problem is not really that the public was misinformed by the press before the war, or somehow denied the truth afterward." WRONG! The public WAS -- AND IS -- MISINFORMED by the HEADLINES, SOUNDBITES, RIGHTWING-DOMINATED RADIO, and the main offender, TV NEWS. They make up the Mighty Wurlitzer that shapes the perceptions of most Americans. That's why Democrats.com is here -- to dig out the truth that gets buried in the back pages.

Former High-Ranking CIA Official: Cheney's 'Willingness to Use Speculation and Conjecture as Facts is Appalling'
17-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

"Vice Resident Cheney, anxious to defend the White House foreign policy amid ongoing violence in Iraq, stunned intelligence analysts and even members of his own administration this week by failing to dismiss a widely discredited claim: that Saddam Hussein might have played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks.... [T]he comments surprised some in the intelligence community who are already simmering over the way the administration utilized intelligence reports to strengthen the case for the war last winter. Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism specialist, said that Cheney's 'willingness to use speculation and conjecture as facts in public presentations is appalling. It's astounding.' In particular, current intelligence officials reiterated yesterday that a reported Prague visit in April 2001 between Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi agent had been discounted by the CIA, which sent former agency Director James R. Woolsey to investigate the claim."

White House's Cynical Iraq Ploy: 'Misspeak' First, 'Correct' It Later
16-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

Robert Scheer writes: "It's hard to believe that it was just a slip of the tongue rather than a calculated lie when Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sullied the memory of those who died on 9/11 by exploiting their deaths for propaganda purposes. The brainwashing of Americans, two-thirds of whom believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks, is too effective a political ploy for the Bush regime to suddenly let the truth get in the way... The pattern is clear: Say what you want people to believe for the front page and on TV, then whisper a halfhearted correction or apology that slips under the radar. It is really quite ingenious in its cynical effectiveness, and Wolfowitz's latest performance is a classic example -- even his correction needs correcting. The Zarqawi connection has been a red herring since Colin Powell emphasized it in his prewar presentation to the United Nations Security Council, telling the world how Zarqawi was running a chemical weapons lab."

Dems Give Up Fight to Investigate Bush's LIES about Prewar Intel
13-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

"Democrats in Congress have abandoned their efforts to investigate the White House's use of questionable intelligence information about Iraq's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, saying the issue has been 'eclipsed' by Resident Bush's request for $87 billion from Congress to continue funding the war. David Helfert, a spokesman for Congressman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, who criticized the White House for relying too heavily on murky intelligence to get support for the war, said Friday that Congressional Democrats would no longer pursue hearings on the intelligence matter. 'We're past that,' Helfert said, referring to the intelligence issue. 'Those questions were eclipsed by the supplemental request by Resident Bush for $87 billion' to fund the Iraq war. 'It would be a good characterization to say that the intelligence questions on Iraq and how the Resident came to believe that it had weapons of mass destruction are no longer an issue.'"

Weapon of Mass Deception: David Kay's September Surprise
12-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

Bill Berkowitz writes: "When the resident needed someone to hawk his 'Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are an imminent threat to homeland security' thesis to the American people, David Kay was the man. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Kay was a ubiquitous presence on the cable news networks, backing the resident's assertions. He testified before Congressional committees and had op-ed pieces published in several mainstream dailies. Although his pre-war predictions about the existence of WMD now appear less reliable than the clairvoyance of Johnny Carson's Karnac the Magnificent, the Bush Administration is counting on Kay, now the head of the WMD search team in Iraq, to bring home the bacon."

Bush Continues His Big Lie about Iraq and Terrorism
10-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

Robert Scheer writes, "Once again, Bush is using the Big Lie technique, continuing to slyly conflate those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks with Saddam Hussein and Iraq, although there is no evidence of such a relationship. It is an insult to those who died on that day of infamy to exploit them to defend a failed policy of preemptive war designed by a bunch of think tank neoconservatives as part of a cockamamie plan to remake the Middle East. Perhaps the most galling aspect of Bush's consistently defensive speech, however, was his naked attempt to turn what has become a security disaster for U.S. troops, UN workers and the Iraqi people into a positive situation. He makes it appear as almost a good thing that terrorism is on the rise in Iraq because we've got our enemies where we want them. In claiming that 'Iraq is now the central front' in the 'war on terror,' Bush is heralding a self-fulfilling prophecy: He claimed Iraq was a hotbed of terrorism, and he turned it into one."

Blair and Bush are Colluding to Engineer New Bogus Explanation for War
06-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

"Britain and the US have combined to come up with entirely new explanations of why they went to war in Iraq as inspectors on the ground prepare to report that there are no weapons of mass destruction there," reports the Independent. "The 'current and serious' threat of Iraq's WMD was the reason Tony Blair gave for going to war, but last week the PM delivered a justification which did not mention the weapons at all. On the same day John Bolton, US Under-Secretary of State for arms control, said that whether Saddam Hussein's regime actually possessed WMD 'isn't really the issue'. [WMD] Inspectors, headed by David Kay, a close associate of Bush, are likely to say the only evidence it has found is that the Iraqi government had retained a group of scientists who had the expertise to restart the weapons programme at any time." What's next? Psychic readings of Saddam as "proof"?

Blockbuster: Bush Signed Iraq War Plan on 8-29-02
03-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

In the months leading up to the Iraq W-ar, Bush insisted he had NOT decided to conquer Iraq. Rather, he insisted W-ar could be avoided if Saddam "disarmed." But according to a secret report from the Pentagon, on Aug. 29, 2002, Mr. Bush "approves Iraq goals, objectives and strategy." " That was eight months before the first bomb was dropped and six months before he asked the U.N. Security Council for a war mandate that he never received." Three months earlier (late May), the Pentagon began a series of war exercises called "Prominent Hammer" to judge whether the force could win in Iraq and still maintain a deterrent in other theaters, such as South Korea. This confirms the explosive expose by Time - ignored by the rest of the media - that Bush told Senators in March 2002 "F*ck Saddam. We're taking him out." Thus, Bush LIED to America and the world throughout the buildup - Impeach Bush Now!

Blair Must Answer for His Lies - Why Not Bush?
03-Sep-03
Iraq War Lies

Robert Scheer writes, "Bush is such a master at deceiving the American public that even now he is not threatened with the prospect of impeachment or any serious congressional investigation into the possibility that he led this nation into war with lies. But lie he did, at the very least in the crucial matter of pushing secret evidence that even a resident of his limited experience had to know was so flimsy as to not be evidence at all. U.S. intelligence officials now say the administration was lied to by Iraqi emigres. That excuse for the U.S. intelligence failure in Iraq would be laughable were the circumstances not so appalling. It means Bush ignored all the cautions of career diplomats and intelligence experts in every branch of the U.S. government over the unsubstantiated word of Iraqi renegades... The British public, raised on a higher standard of official honesty, is properly shocked [and] Prime Minister Tony Blair is in deep trouble."

Ridiculous Rove Propaganda Story of the Week: It Was Hussein's Fault that Bush Lied about WMDS!
29-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Bob Drogin (is he the LA Times' answer to Judith Miller?) writes: "Although senior CIA officials insist that defectors were only partly responsible for the intelligence that triggered the decision to invade Iraq in March, other [unidentified] intelligence officials now fear that key portions of the prewar information may have been flawed. The issue raises fresh doubts as to whether illicit weapons will be found in Iraq. As evidence, [anonymous] officials say [unidentified] former Iraqi operatives have confirmed since the war that Hussein's regime [!] sent 'double agents' disguised as defectors to the West to plant fabricated intelligence. In other cases, Baghdad [!] apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips about weapons production and storage sites." This story is just flat-out ludicrous. Check out the tortured logic behind the scenario of Saddam 'bluffing' the US and trying to mastermind world opinion.

Meet with Members of Congress to Demand Investigation of Bush's Iraq Lies
26-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"You can help pressure Congress to investigate the Bush administration's lies, and to be sure that any investigation is open, timely, and broad in scope. In late August, while members of Congress are in their home districts, United for Peace and Justice is teaming up with Education for Peace in Iraq Center to coordinate a national grassroots advocacy/pressure day to win an independent investigation. Organize local delegations on or near August 27 to meet with Congressional Representatives and Senators. Use the meeting to demand an independent investigation into how and why the Bush Administration misled the public with claims that Iraq was a threat to the U.S. and its neighbors. Push Congress to end U.S. military and economic control over Iraq and bring the troops home now. Form a local anti-war delegation and schedule a meeting with your Members of Congress. To become a CONGRESSIONAL ACTION DAY coordinator for your area, simply click the link below and follow the instructions."

Bush LIED About Iraqi Drones
25-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"Huddled over a fleet of abandoned Iraqi drones, U.S. weapons experts in Baghdad came to one conclusion: Despite the Bush administration's public assertions, these unmanned aerial vehicles weren't designed to dispense biological or chemical weapons.... In building its case for war, senior Bush administration officials had said Iraq's drones were intended to deliver unconventional weapons. Sec. Colin Powell even raised the alarming prospect that the pilotless aircraft could sneak into the United States to carry out poisonous attacks on American cities.... But the Air Force, which controls most of the American military's UAV fleet, didn't agree with that assessment from the beginning. And analysts at the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said the Air Force view was widely accepted within their ranks as well. Instead, these analysts believed the drones posed no threat to Iraq's neighbors or the U.S., officials in Washington and scientists involved in the weapons hunt in Iraq told AP."

Former Intelligence Officer Says Aussie Goverment 'Lied Every Time' about Iraq
23-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Bush's two devoted sycophants, Tony Blair and Australia's John Howard, have learned well at their snakish idol's feet. Howard's government is using classic GOP/CIA tactics to try to smear ex-intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie for speaking out loud and clear about the Iraq war coverup. Wilkie, who refuses to back down, is being called "an hysterical malcontent" and "mentally unstable" by the Howard propaganda brigade. In Canberra this week, Wilkie said the government "skewed, misrepresented, used selectively, and fabricated the Iraq story. "The Government lied when the Prime Minister's office told the media I was mentally unstable. The Government lied when it associated Iraq with the Bali bombing and the Government lied every time that it associated Iraq with the war on terror." Go Andrew, Go!

Australia LIED about Iraq Threat
22-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

MSNBC reports, "The Australian government lied about the threat of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify its involvement in the U.S.-led war, an official inquiry into intelligence on Iraq was told on Friday. A former senior intelligence analyst, Andrew Wilkie, who resigned in March in protest over Australia's case for war, said Prime Minister John Howard, a close U.S. ally, created a mythical Iraq by dropping ambiguous references in intelligence reports. 'The government lied every time it skewed, misrepresented, used selectively and fabricated the Iraq story...The exaggeration was so great it was pure dishonesty.' ... 'Key intelligence assessment qualifications like 'probably', 'could' and 'uncorroborated evidence suggests' were frequently dropped. Much more useful words like massive and mammoth were included,' he added."

The Bush Administration Owes the Public a Complete Accounting about Its Use of Intelligence on Iraq
20-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Rep. Henry Waxman writes: "Controversy is growing over President Bush's use of forged evidence in his State of the Union address. Indeed, the issue is fast becoming a whodunit. Who inserted the fabricated claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from an African country into the statements of the President and other Administration officials? Currently, the White House is saying a speechwriter, not the butler, did it. But even a quick look at the record reveals that's just another fiction. With potentially grave national security implications at stake, it's essential we find out what really happened. To rebuild the trust that has been lost, we need open congressional hearings and an independent commission to investigate... The most recent revelation is this: National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's top deputy, Stephen Hadley, received written warnings about the Niger hoax from the CIA last October, but supposedly forgot that he had ever read them."

Second BBC Reporter Says Kelly Told Her Campbell 'Sexed Up' Dossier
13-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

The UK Guardian reports: "Susan Watts, the science editor of BBC's Newsnight, was told by David Kelly that Alastair Campbell was responsible for 'sexing up' the Iraq intelligence dossier but dismissed the comment as a 'gossipy aside'. Watts, who had known Dr Kelly for more than a year, told the Hutton inquiry that she did not include the remark in her report about the Iraq dossier because she considered it 'glib' and 'speculative'. Her admission provides corroboration that Dr Kelly had pointed the finger at Alastair Campbell for inserting into the September dossier the key claim that Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes... 'My shorthand notes show that Dr Kelly said to me that it was 'a mistake to put in, Alastair Campbell seeing something in there, single source, but not corroborated, sounded good',' Watts said."

EVERY Claim by Powell was a LIE, According to AP
10-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"For 80 minutes in a hushed U.N. Security Council chamber in New York, [Colin Powell] unleashed an avalanche of allegations: The Iraqis were hiding chemical and biological weapons, were secretly working to make more banned arms, were reviving their nuclear bomb project... It was the most comprehensive presentation of the U.S. case for war. Powell marshaled what were described as intercepted Iraqi conversations, reconnaissance photos of Iraqi sites, accounts of defectors, and other intelligence sources. The defectors and other sources went unidentified. The audiotapes were uncorroborated, as were the photo interpretations... Still, Powell's sober speech was galvanizing, swinging opinion toward war. 'Compelling,' 'powerful,' 'irrefutable' were adjectives used by both pundits and opposition Democratic politicians. Editor & Publisher magazine found prowar sentiment among editorial writers doubled overnight, to three-quarters of large U.S. newspapers." But it was ALL lies, as AP documents.

Blair's Last Figleaf on Niger Uranium Hoax is Exposed as a Forgery
10-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"Britain has remained undaunted by proof that documents purporting to show an Iraqi uranium deal with the West African state of Niger turned out to be fakes. While the US admits it should never have made allegations based on the documents, Britain insists it has 'independent intelligence' about Iraq's quest for uranium, pointing out that an Iraqi delegation visited Niger in 1999. One Foreign Office official said: 'Niger has two main exports - uranium and chickens. The Iraqi delegation did not go to Niger for chickens.' But the man who made the trip, Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's former ambassador to the Vatican, told The Independent on Sunday: 'My only mission was to meet the President of Niger and invite him to visit Iraq. The invitation and the situation in Iraq resulting from the genocidal UN sanctions were all we talked about. I had no other instructions, and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium.'"

Tenet LIED - and Continues to LIE - About Iraqi Nukes
10-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

The NEWS editors at the Pentagon Post - but not the EDITORIAL PAGE editors believe Bush LIED to America about Iraqi nukes. A MAJOR 5355-word investigative report reveals that ALL of the evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program was bushit - and the Busheviks knew it. The lies were manufactured by the "White House Iraq Group," created by Chief of Staff Andy Card. Its members were: Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, Condi Rice, Stephen J. Hadley, and I. Lewis Libby. But even though the White House manufactured the lies, CIA's George Tenet continues to "take responsibility" - which really means diverting all investigations AWAY from those who are TRULY responsible - George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Impeach Bush Now!

Dissenting DIA Analysts Say Iraq's 'Mobile WMD Labs' Were for Hydrogen Balloons
09-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

NY Times reports, "Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons. The classified findings by a majority of the engineering experts differ from the view put forward in a white paper made public on May 28 by the C.I.A. and the DIA, which said that the trailers were for making biological weapons... Officials at the C.I.A. and the Defense Department said today that the two intelligence agencies still stood by the May 28 finding, which Bush has cited as evidence that Iraq had a biological weapons program. The engineering teams' findings, which officials from the Defense Department and other agencies would discuss only on the condition of anonymity, add a new layer to disputes within the intelligence community about the trailers found by allied forces in Iraq in April and May." ANOTHER Bush Lie Exposed!

Bush Team Kept Airing Lies about Iraq and Niger Uranium
09-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Walter Pincus writes: "The White House has acknowledged that it was a mistake to have included the uranium allegation in the State of the Union address. But an examination of how it originated, how it was repeated in January and by whom suggests that the administration was determined to keep the idea before the public as it built its case for war, even though the claim had been excised from a presidential speech the previous October through the direct intervention of CIA Director George J. Tenet... The CIA arranged to have a similar allegation deleted from a speech that John D. Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was to give Dec. 20 before the U.N. Security Council... Yet in the days before and after the resident's State of the Union address, the allegation was repeated by ... Condoleezza Rice, ... Colin L. Powell, ...Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz and in at least two documents sent out by the White House."

Why Bush Wants to Murder Saddam, Not Put Him on Trial
07-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"If put on public trial, Saddam would have a field day revealing the embarrassing alliance between his brutal regime and Washington: The CIA's role in bringing the Ba'ath Party to power in a 1958 coup, opening the way for Saddam to take control; U.S., Israeli, and Iranian destabilization of Iraq during the 1970s by fueling Kurdish rebellion; Washington's egging on the aggressive shah of Iran in the Shatt al-Arab waterway dispute, a primary cause of the Iran-Iraq War; The U.S. secretly urging Iraq to invade Iran in 1980 to overthrow that nation's revolutionary Islamic government; Covert supply of Saddam's war machine by the U.S. and Britain during the eight-year Iran-Iraq conflict, plus biological warfare programs and germ feeder stocks, poison gas manufacturing plants and raw materials; Billions in aid, routed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Italy's Banco del Lavoro and the shadowy BCCI. Heavy artillery, munitions, spare parts, trucks, field hospitals and electronics."

Yet Another Soldier's Death Goes Unreported
07-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Anyone watching the talking heads on network TV has been treated each night this past week to the "great" news of a "respite" from casualties. This is a LIE. There has been no respite from casualties, just a respite from the casualties the media is FORCED to report (i.e., those resulting from firefights or violent attacks). But as NBC, CBS, et al. announced on August 6 that the 6th marked a 5-day casualty free period, they did so KNOWING that a soldier from the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) was killed when he fell from the roof of a fixed site at approximately 7:30 p.m. Aug. 5 in Mosul. Just how many other deaths are being "overlooked" in order to claim "casualty-free respites"?

Cheney Lied Before the War, and He's STILL Lying
06-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"As the White House fends off questions about whether the administration misused prewar intelligence, lawmakers and analysts are increasingly scrutinizing the role played by Cheney. Some are asking if Cheney, one of the most powerful figures in the administration and perhaps the most influential vice president in history, went too far in making the case for war. Cheney has drawn attention for several reasons, among them his prewar visits to CIA analysts, which some say pressured those analysts to exaggerate the Iraqi threat; his involvement in the claim that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Niger; and his strong prewar statements, some of which are now in question, on Iraq's weapons programs. Critics say Cheney's role may have helped mask significant disputes within the U.S. intelligence community. Those disputes have been raised anew given the failure to find chemical or biological weapons in Iraq or evidence of a reconstituted nuclear weapons program."

Wilson Accuses Bush of 'Intimidation' over Iraq WMD Lies
06-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a key figure in the Iraq -Niger uranium controversy, accused the Bush administration on Monday of using intimidation tactics to stifle criticism about its handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq... Wilson, on a panel of speakers at the National Press Club, said there had been several attempts to discredit him, but mainly through an article by Chicago columnist Robert Novak... [Wilson] said if Novak's column was true, then the Bush administration had breached national security by revealing the name [of his wife]. '... Wilson said. 'The reason was to intimidate others from coming forward.' ... Wilson said that analysts seeing stories about him and his wife and about Kelly would question whether to talk to lawmakers who might hold investigations on the Iraq war... 'So that's what it was designed to do, it was clearly designed to intimidate,' Wilson said." Impeach Bush Now!

Niger President Flatly Denies Selling Uranium to Saddam; After all, Bush's Evidence was Forged!
05-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

"Niger's president flatly rejected claims that his country had sold uranium to Iraq, as alleged by the United States and Britain as part of their justification for attacking Iraq. [Meanwhile a] British newspaper reported that the United States was telling the impoverished west African desert state to keep quiet on the issue. President Tandja, in a speech Sunday [said], "... It emerges beyond question that our country did not sell uranium to Iraq," he said. Even "the most competent authority in the matter, the IAEA, asked to look into the charge publicly cleared Niger of all suspicion before the United Nations Security Council"... A British newspaper meanwhile reported Sunday that the United States had warned Niger to keep out of the row over uranium. Quoting senior Niger government officials, The Sunday Telegraph said Herman Cohen, a former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, called on President Tandja in the capital Niamey last week to relay the message from Washington."

More on Bush's Lies about an Iraq-Al Qaeda 'Connection'
05-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Steve Chapman writes, "But the [Iraq WMD] controversy has had one clear benefit to the resident: distracting the American people from an even bigger fraud. Iraq was billed as Act II of the war on terrorism, and still is... [But] three months after victory was declared, the proof of a meaningful Iraq-Al Qaeda link is even more elusive than before. And, with the furor over WMD providing cover, the administration has quietly slunk away from its prewar charges. When Dick Cheney came out of hiding the other day to make a speech defending the invasion, he ... was reduced to saying Hussein 'cultivated ties to terrorist groups,' about as weaselly a formulation as you could devise... By now, U.S. troops have had plenty of time to examine Iraqi government files and interview captured officials to get incriminating evidence. But there has been complete silence on the subject. Given the administration's penchant for puffing up the tiniest clues, we can safely assume nothing has been found."

What is Bush's 'Personal' Responsibility for Iraq?
05-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Marc Ash writes, "Does 'personal responsibility' mean that Mr. Bush is personally responsible for the slaughter of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians? Or is Mr. Bush personally responsible for the deaths of 285 U.S. American and British soldiers? Both?... Is personal responsibility a public relations slogan, or are there ramifications for those who are personally responsible? What is the downside for Mr. Bush if he is really held responsible? 285 men and women of the US. and British armed forces have given their lives so far for this wanton military profiteering. You can bet that they were personally responsible. The Iraqi people are personally responsible; their suffering is unimaginable. Does any of this really matter as long as a Republican-controlled Congress refuses to take any action to challenge Mr. Bush, no matter what the charge is? Is Mr. Bush today effectively beyond the reach of U.S. law?"

Bush LIED About Iraq Ties to Al Qaeda
04-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Boston Globe reports, "Shortly after his now-discredited report that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium in Africa, President Bush asserted in his State of the Union address that 'evidence from intelligence sources, secret conversations, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaeda.'' The link between Hussein and Al Qaeda was a component of Bush's larger assertion that Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States -- that 'secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists.' But a review of the White House's statements and interviews with current and former intelligence officials indicate that the assertion was extrapolated from nuggets of intelligence, some tantalizing but unproven, some subsequently disproved, and some considered suspect even at the time the administration was making its case for war." ANOTHER lie - Impeach Bush Now!

Did Condi Give the Game Away? Her Yellowcakegate Alibi Doesn't Add Up
04-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Timothy Noah writes: "Tenet knew that his complaint was not a command and that somebody at the White House still needed convincing. But who would have the standing to tell the CIA director to go jump in the lake? Surely not Fall Guy No. 2, the National Security Council's nonproliferation expert, Robert Joseph. Surely not Fall Guy No. 3, the NSC's deputy, Steve Hadley. And surely not even Fall Person No. 4, Condi Rice, who'd have to be insane to lie, on national television, about dissing Tenet. (Tenet, she surely knows, is superb at exacting revenge.) Chatterbox therefore posits the existence of a Fall Guy No. 5, Vice President Dick Cheney. The one person in the White House who has no patience for addressing the Yellowcakegate mystery at all and who questions the patriotism of anybody who does."

Official from Rumsfeld's OSP is Stripped of Clearance
03-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Newsday reports: "A Pentagon official associated with a controversial Pentagon unit run by foreign policy hawks has been stripped of his security clearance after the FBI linked him to a Lebanese-American businessman under federal weapons investigation... The official, F. Michael Maloof, came to the attention of the FBI and the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (BICE) shortly after a .45-caliber handgun was seized from the businessman, Imad el Hage, at Washington's Dulles International Airport in January. It was the handgun that led the FBI to Maloof, the sources said...Maloof, 60, is a veteran Pentagon aide who had been working in the Office of Special Plans [OSP], a controversial unit run by neoconservatives who critics say manipulated intelligence to press for war against Iraq and who prepared administration plans for running Iraq after the war... el Hage is known to be an ardent anti-Syrian and backer of the hard-line Lebanese Christian faction led by Michel Aoun."

Images of Forged Niger Documents
03-Aug-03
Iraq War Lies

Cryptome.org has scans of the forged Niger Uranium documents. Also, click the link to "niger-docs2.htm" at the top of the linked page to view more forged documents.

Bush's Big Betrayal
31-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Michael Hammerschlag writes: "The CIA may have done some shifty things, overthrowing foreign leaders in the past, but by and large, they are an honorable bunch. Cheney & Co. first tried to bully the CIA into perverting their intelligence to portray Iraq as a clear and present threat. When that didn't work, they created their own shadow 'intelligence' outfit. Peopled by right-wing zealots, they pooled every wild rumor that claimed Iraq was an imminent danger... In the CIA's eyes, Bush has taken their intelligence product, adulterated it with trash, sold it like a tacky car salesman, then used it to fraudulently launch an unnecessary war. Then, he pins it on the CIA. Over at Langley, there is the distinct hiss of steam escaping, rage at our unelected President's second and massive betrayal. Our fault? Make no mistake, Bush will pay for his cowardice. The CIA has many ways to hurt him; imperial lies carefully filed and indexed."

What Did Rice Know about CIA's Iraq Doubts?
31-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Henry Waxman writes to Condoleezza Rice, "Dear Dr. Rice: On June 10, I wrote to you to seek answers to basic questions regarding the Bush Administration's repeated claims that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. I asked why you claimed on national television that no White House officials, 'knew that there were doubts and suspicions' about these claims when both the CIA and the State Department's intelligence bureau had raised significant concerns with White House officials prior to [Bush's] State of the Union address. I also wanted to know who in the Administration had expressed doubts about this information, who had been briefed on those concerns, and what role... Cheney or his office played in this matter. To date, I have received no response to these inquiries. Therefore, I am writing to renew my request that you answer these questions and provide the information requested."

Bush Takes Responsibility for Iraq Claims
31-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

WashPost reports: "Bush took personal responsibility today for including flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein in his State of the Union address after letting others take the blame for three weeks... 'I take personal responsibility for everything I say, of course,' Bush said. He then shifted to the broader and more comfortable terrain to which he had confined his answer the previous time he was asked. 'I also take responsibility for making decisions on war and peace,' he said. 'I analyzed a thorough body of intelligence, good, solid, sound intelligence that led me to come to the conclusion that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power.'" William Rivers Pitt adds: "This is an interesting turn of affairs, given the fact that CIA Director George Tenet very publicly accepted blame for Bush's use of the forged Niger evidence in his State of the Union Address. The gap between these two explanations leaves many questions to be answered."

Hadley Repeated Yellowcake-gate Lies Long After CIA Discredited Them
28-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Buzzflash writes, "Stephen Hadley, Bush's Deputy National Security Adviser, became the second major scapegoat to fall on his sword for his boss. (Although no one ever gets fired for failing or lying in the Bush administration. They only get fired for telling the truth.) But Hadley's apparent excuse for forgetting to take the infamous '16 word' Niger uranium claim out of the State of the Union -- that he was extremely busy -- is a bit dubious, based on some research done by a BuzzFlash reader. You see, in a February 16, 2003, Chicago Tribune commentary by Hadley, he asserts the discredited Niger Uranium claim, yet again. Not only that, the op-ed is featured on a U.S. State Department consulate website."

Ex-CIA Agent Calls Cheney Iraq Speech the 'Longest Statement of Disinformation' Ever
28-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Justifying the Iraq war to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Dick Cheney "repeatedly cited an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that warned Saddam Hussein was seeking to develop nuclear weapons... Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman responded on Democracy Now! by describing Cheney's speech as the 'longest statement of disinformation that I think the American government has distributed to the American people.' Goodman went on to say, 'For Dick Cheney to recite those charges we all know now not to be true adds to the terrible politicization of intelligence that's created a scandal in the intelligence community unlike anything I ever saw in my 24 years in the C.I.A. that includes the period of Vietnam, the period of the intelligence failure on the Soviet Union, and the incredibly contentious disputes over arms control.' Cheney did not discuss his role in the Iraq-Niger uranium scandal."

Russert Tears Wolfowitz to Shreds on the Iraq War Lies
27-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Morrie Friendly writes, "Tim [Russert] immediately confronted Paul 'Wolfie' Wolfowitz with the uptick in violence against Americans in Iraq after the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein (five dead in 24 hours). Wolfie assiduously avoided discussion of the increasing death toll, instead trying to put the focus on the overthrow of the tyrannical Saddam Hussein. We noticed a strange, gleeful glint in Tim's eye. He'd picked up on the vehemence of Wolfie's 'We were g-ddamn justified in overthrowing that evil tyrant' spin, a bullet point Wolfie had deployed awfully early in the interview -- and we could tell we were in for some real fun. We were not disappointed. Tim thereupon smacked Wolfie around over that ill-conceived 'mission accomplished' banner that had been prominently pinned across the aircraft carrier from which 'Top Bum' Bush Jr. had declared an end to 'major combat operations' against Saddam's inept armed forces." Read it all - the lies are finally coming home to roost.

Cheney Lies in AEI Speech
27-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Timothy Noah writes: "Cheney gave a speech... at the American Enterprise Institute decrying critics of the Iraq war. 'How,' Cheney asked indignantly, 'could any responsible leader have ignored the Iraqi threat?' This is an odd question to raise when there's growing doubt that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein posed any immediate threat to the United States... Why did Cheney give the AEI speech? Chatterbox suspects Mary Matalin ... advised him that the best defense was a good offense. By portraying curiosity about Yellowcakegate as unpatriotic, Cheney probably hoped to shake the inquiry off his tail... The White House clearly hoped that Hadley's generous mea culpa closed the book on Yellowcakegate... But Hadley's account leaves a dangling thread. Can you spot it? Tenet's Oct. 6 memo elaborating on why it was dumb, in the Cincinnati speech, to make reference to Saddam's purported yellowcake safari, came, Hadley says, after Hadley had already agreed to take the reference out."

BushBlair Butts are Both in a Sling with 'Sexed Up' Claim that Saddam Could Launch Bio/Chem Weapons in 45 Minutes
25-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say. The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by.... Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week.... [I]n a 'Global Message' issued Sept. 26 and still on the White House Web site, the White House claimed, without attribution, that Iraq 'could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given.' The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide [last] Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation... The White House embraced the claim, from a British dossier.... at the same time it began to promote the dossier's disputed claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa."

US Intelligence Told Bush Iraq Was Not Tied to Any US Terrorist Attacks
25-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Last fall, while Resident Bush was citing the 9/11 terrorist attacks as cause to invade Iraq, "US intelligence services unanimously agreed...that 'no specific intelligence information' tied Iraq to US terrorist attacks, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Their findings were presented to the pResident Oct. 2 in a still-secret report on Iraq. The summary....of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate was declassified Friday. [Right-wing] WorldNetDaily obtained a copy from the National Security Council. (The report is different from the unclassified 25-page white paper the CIA made public on its website last October.) Page 4 of the report states: '...[W]e have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against US territory'. WND notes that this "would appear to undercut a popular theory among Iraq hawks [including the Defense Department's Paul Wolfowitz] that Baghdad conspired with al-Qaida to try to blow up the Twin Towers."

Bush Told 6 Iraq Lies in 1 SOTU
24-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." "U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents." "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." "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 Qaida." "Our intelligence sources tell us that he (Saddam) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." 6 lies in one SOTU - Impeach Bush Now!

CIA Sent Two MORE Warnings to the White House about Niger Hoax, Proving Condi LIED
23-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

PentaPost reports, "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about [the Niger Uranium Hoax, saying it] relied on weak evidence, was not particularly significant and assumed Iraq was pursuing an acquisition that was arguably not possible and of questionable value because Iraq had its own supplies... The disclosures punctured claims made by Rice and others in the past two weeks. Rice and other officials had asserted that nobody in the White House knew of CIA objections, and that the CIA supported the Africa accusation generally, making only technical objections about location and quantity. On Friday, a White House official [Karl Rove?] mischaracterized the CIA's objections, saying repeatedly that Tenet opposed the inclusion in Bush's Oct. 7 speech 'because it was single source, not because it was flawed." Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) called for further investigation.

Stephen Hadley Pretends to Fall on his Sword, But Dems Won't Buy It
23-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

CNN reports, "The admission by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley marked the first time the White House had taken any blame in the matter. An administration official told CNN that Hadley offered his resignation, but Bush didn't accept it... Democrats seized on Tuesday's admission, with Howard Dean calling on Hadley and any other administration officials involved in the flap to step down. 'I call on those who misled the resident to resign immediately. It is unacceptable for anyone who misled the resident on an issue as significant as a rationale for war to continue to retain a post in government,' Dean said... Sen. Jay Rockefeller, (D-WV), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said, 'This investigation is not over simply because some, two people, have said they were responsible.'" Later on, Bill Clinton called Larry King to say, "Everybody makes mistakes" - hey Bill, these weren't "mistakes" - they were LIES, and our soldiers continue to DIE.

Bush Tries Dirty Tricks to Force Richard Durbin (D-IL) Off the Intelligence Committee
23-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) "accused the White House on Tuesday of trying to have him removed from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee in retaliation for remarks critical of the administration over Iraq. Durbin charged that the White House had floated a bogus story that he had disclosed classified information regarding Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction. 'The White House allegations ... were, in fact, false, and inaccurate,' Durbin said on the Senate floor. 'Sadly, what we have here is a continuing pattern by this White House,' Durbin said. 'If any member of this Senate ... questions this White House policy ... be prepared for the worst.' ... The flap stems from Durbin charging last Thursday that CIA Director George Tenet told the intelligence committee that a White House official had insisted on including a disputed allegation about Saddam Hussein 's push for nuclear weapons in Bush's State of the Union speech last January. "

Whistleblower Wilson Says White House Targeted His Family with Smear Campaign
23-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"[Joseph] Wilson says his family is the subject of a smear campaign. Wilson tells NBC News the White House deliberately leaked his wife's identity as a covert CIA operative, damaging her future career and compromising past missions after he criticized the administration on 'Meet the Press' and in the New York Times... [Wilson said], 'It's a shot across the bow to those who might step forward, those unnamed analysts who said they were pressured by the White House for example would think twice about having their own families names being dragged through this particular mud.' The White House strongly denies the charge. In fact, Wilson was only one of three experts who warned the administration... As previously reported on NBC News, then-Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Fitzpatrick reported it was false in February 2002. So did four-star Marine Gen. Carlton Fulford two months later. So the warnings came to the White House more than a year before the State of the Union."

BBC 'Taped Kelly's WMD Concerns'
22-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

BBC News reports: "The BBC has a tape of scientist Dr David Kelly expressing concern about the way Iraq weapons intelligence was presented, it has emerged. The science editor of Newsnight, Susan Watts, recorded her conversation with Dr Kelly, according to the BBC's media correspondent Torin Douglas. The BBC is expected to submit the tape as part of its evidence to the judicial inquiry led by Lord Hutton into Dr Kelly's death... The Guardian says the tape's existence explains the corporation's determination to stick by its story, under the onslaught of criticism from government figures. Other newspapers on Wednesday continue to question who was responsible for Dr Kelly's name becoming public. Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday 'emphatically' denied he had authorised Dr Kelly's identity to be made public. That has made several commentators look again at Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon, who had previously insisted the MoD made great efforts to protect the anonymity of Dr Kelly."

A New Fall Guy -- National Security Deputy Stephen Hadley Cries Mea Culpa!
22-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa... The officials made the disclosure hours after they were alerted by the CIA to the existence of a memo sent to Bush's deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, on Oct. 6... Hadley, who also received a phone call from CIA Director George J. Tenet before the p-resident's Oct. 7 speech asking that the Africa allegation be removed, took the blame for allowing the charge to be revived in the State of the Union address. 'I should have recalled... that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue,' he said... 'it is now clear to me that I failed.' Hadley said Rice was not made aware of the doubts [Yeah, sure, right...] but 'feels personal responsibility as well.' 'The high standards that the president [sic] set with his speeches were not met,' Hadley said."

Antiwar Activists Refuse to 'Get Over' the War of Lies
22-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

PentaPost reports, "The letters are pouring in like a water main break -- fast and, yes, furious. From Alabama: 'We want to know the truth!' From Arizona: 'If there's nothing to hide, what's the harm in a bipartisan inquiry?' ... About 400,000 people from every state have contacted members of Congress in the past three weeks as part of a MoveOn.org petition that asks Congress to investigate the controversial claims that led to the war on Iraq, with more than 50,000 people signing on to the liberal activist Web site in the past five days alone. 'It seems more and more people who supported the war are signing on,' said Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org's campaigns director. 'They're angry. People who in the past couple of weeks before the war decided to support it are swinging back.' ... Not since hundreds of thousands of people across the country marched in antiwar rallies in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion has the rationale for the preemptive war come under such fire."

Bush Administration in Out-of-Control Tail Spin
22-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"Despite the best attempts by George W. Bush to pass the buck directly to the top intelligence official in the country, his credibility continues to melt in the hot Washington sun," reports the Toronto Sun. "Bush and his top advisers have tried every gambit in their playbook to put to rest the controversy over the false allegation the president made in his January State of the Union address as he built his case for an invasion of Iraq." Like a battery of loose cannon, the administration is firing wildly away in all directions with spin, blame, historic re-writes, and outright lies. But by last week, Bush's approval rating had dropped to pre-9/11 levels. Those numbers are melting away daily, as fast as April snow!

Is the Senate Investigation into Bush's Lies for Real - or a Phony Show Starring Pat Roberts?
22-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"The Senate Intelligence Committee indicated Wednesday that it will widen its investigation into Bush's disputed charges last January about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium in Africa, going beyond the CIA's responsibility in the examination of the White House's role in the controversy." says the Reuters report. "Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said it was possible the committee would call White House officials to testify. 'We'll let the chips fall where they may,' Roberts said." Tough talk - but is it for real? With Roberts still trying to sell the idea that George Tenet and the CIA were the big screw ups and that it was all just the result of "mistakes" up "through the chain" -- it sure seems more like Roberts is merely putting the wagons in a tighter circle around the White House.

Ten TOUGH Questions For Cheney about His Iraq Lies
22-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are members of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, and they have written a devastating letter to Dick Cheney, exposing his crucial role in Yellowcake-gate and the rest of the Iraq Lies. "Your own role in the dissemination of that disinformation has not been explained by you or the White House. Yet, you reportedly paid direct personal visits to CIA's Iraq analysts; your request for investigation of the Niger uranium claim resulted in an investigation by a former U.S. ambassador, and you made several high-profile public assertions about Iraq's alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. We hope that you will take the opportunity to provide responses to the following ten questions." Call/write the media and demand coverage for Cheney's 10 questions!

Powell Didn't Cite the Niger Document in his UN Speech, But He Mentioned Nukes 22 Times
22-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

TVNewsLies writes, "The press repeatedly stated that Powell had refused to use the Niger document in his presentation to the U.N. because of what Condoleeza Rice described as long-standing concerns about its credibility. The obvious conclusion was that Powell had too much integrity to present information to the UN that he knew to be bogus... But, that's not exactly what happened. Not by a long shot. On February 6th, 2003, one week after the SOTU, Colin Powell made his dramatic presentation to the UN... After insisting on the existence of huge stockpiles of horrific chemical and biological weapons, Powell turned his attention to Iraq's nuclear weapon capability. Part seven of the presentation was entitled Nuclear Weapons! Here, Powell made no attempt to minimize the nuclear capability alluded to by George Bush in his ominous warning about the uranium purchase in Niger. In fact, in this segment Colin Powell used the word 'nuclear' TWENTY TWO times!"

Will Blair Bring Bush Down with Him?
21-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

John Nichols writes, "Bush Administration aides who had hoped Blair's appearance before Congress would silence at least some of the questioning about Bush's use of dubious British intelligence to make a 'case' for war with Iraq, suddenly found themselves lashed to a British leader whose credibility was sinking by the hour. Because the Bush Administration relied so heavily on dossiers developed by Blair's spin doctors -- even after their dubious claims were challenged by American intelligence agencies -- Blair's crisis could well become Bush's crisis. After all, Bush's poll numbers have been dropping in recent days as media and Congressional attention has focused on his use of discredited information about Iraq's supposed efforts to obtain uranium in Africa... [Bush] is under fire, at least in part, because of his decision to build his case for war with Iraq on British intelligence data that US intelligence agencies had rejected as unsound."

Republicans Try to Kill Democratic TV Ads That Show Bush Lied -- While Polls Show the Public No Longer Trusts Him
21-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"Democrats are launching a [TV] ad that accuses pResident Bush of misleading Americans on the nuclear threat from Iraq. Republicans urged broadcasters not to carry the ad, set to be aired initially Monday in Madison, Wis., then elsewhere; they called it 'deliberately false and misleading...' The video shows Bush [delivering his State of the Union address] saying, 'Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa...' [It continues] 'But now we find out it wasn't true. A year earlier, that claim was proven false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it. But he told us anyway...' ...public trust in the resident has been eroding... [A CNN-Time poll released Sunday] found that 47% view Bush as a leader they can trust, while 51% said they have doubts and reservations."

The Crime and the Cover-Up
21-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

In another powerful article, Will Pitt writes, "This is a crime without peer in the annals of American history. The cover-up currently underway must not be allowed to succeed. When the American government gets hijacked by extremists like the men staffing the Office of Special Plans, when intelligence data stating flatly that Iraq presents no threat to America is disregarded or exaggerated because the truth does not fit ideological desires, when Congress is lied to, when the American people are lied to, when innocent civilians at the sharp end of these lies are left to rot in the dust and the bomb craters on purpose, when American soldiers are shot down in the street because of these lies, no kind of cover-up can be allowed to succeed. The time has indeed come for a reckoning. Let it begin, and let it begin soon."

DNC Truth Ad on Yellowcake-Gate Has GOP Screaming for Censorship
21-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"Democrats said Sunday they will launch a new television ad in Wisconsin accusing Bush of misleading Americans on the threat from Iraq. Republicans warned broadcasters not to air the ad, scheduled to start Monday, calling it 'deliberately false and misleading.' The Democratic National Committee has been raising money through an e-mail campaign that started July 10 to help pay for an ad that sharply questions President Bush's veracity on Iraq's weapons. The ad says: 'In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush told us of an imminent threat. ... America took him at his word.' The video shows Bush saying, 'Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' The ad continues: 'But now we find out it wasn't true. 'A year earlier, that claim was proven false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it. 'But he told us anyway.'" Confronted with the truth, Bush is trying to hide behind the British - LOL!

Rove Tries to Bury Yellowcake-Gate Scandal behind Paul Bremer
20-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Anyone who was expecting the Sunday talk shows to probe into Yellowcake-gate (or the rest of Bush's Iraq lies) got a reminder of the awesome propaganda power of Karl Rove. There was no sign of Condi, Rummy, Cheney, Wolfowitz, or any of the rest of the Iraq Liars. Instead, Rove sent Iraq Viceroy Paul Bremer to appear on ALL of the talk shows, to divert attention to Iraq. Still, there was one juicy moment on Meet the Press when Tim Russert asked how the GOP would have treated Bill Clinton if he had made the uranium claim Bush did during the SOTU speech. Biden's reply: "They would have ripped his skin off!"

Hubris, Thy Name is Bush
20-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Maureen Dowd writes, "What we are witnessing is how ugly it can get when control freaks start losing control. Beset by problems, the Bush team responds by attacking those who point out the problems. These linear, Manichaean managers are flailing in an ever-more-chaotic environment... After 9/11, this administration had everything going for it. Republicans ruled Congress. Bush had enormously high approval ratings. Yet it overreached while trying to justify the reasons for going to war. Even when conservatives have all the marbles, they still act as if they're under siege. Now that they are under siege, it is no time for them to act as if they're losing their marbles." Hey MoDo, they can't help it - the BushRove GOP Greed Heads want more, and More, and MORE - no matter how much they have. And now they've got more trouble than they ever imagined.

Bush's Stonewalling Will Bring On Probe - Is That What Bush Meant When He Said 'Bring 'em On'?
20-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Tom Oliphant writes, "Bush has lost - or more accurately, discarded - the first line of defense vis-a-vis Congress for misbehaving chief executives. By opting for a political, as opposed to evidentiary [defense, Bush has given up the chance to forestall a relatively formal investigation of his administration's actions. Less than a month ago, Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) was a willing stonewaller. Last week,] Roberts did more than switch. In pledging to let the facts lead his probe, the Kansan was opening the door to inquiry into a wide range of statements about Iraq's alleged possession of unconventional weaponry made by Bush, Cheney, and Rice, statements that make it clear that the infamous 16 words in Bush's State of the Union address were but the tip of a hyperbolic iceberg." Hey Karl Rove -- when you've lost Pat Roberts and Tom Oliphant, the jig is up. Resign now, and avoid impeachment!

16 Words - And What Do You Get?
19-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"'Another Damn Lie and We're Deeper in Debt'... I apologize to Tennessee Ernie Ford. But I've had that song going through my head for the last few days. Of course the words have changed - obviously. Okay, so now we're supposed to buy another Bush lie because it was only "sixteen words." And words have become the defense of Bush and his fellow liars. Now, please, let's try to keep a straight face through all of this, okay? First, let's try to follow the spin." So writes W. David Jenkins III.

Senate Republicans Block International Cooperation on Iraq and Independent Investigation of Bush's Lies
19-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

PentaPost reports that on 7-16-03, "Senate Republicans held the line against Democratic efforts to challenge Bush over Iraq, rejecting initiatives to internationalize postwar operations and to create a commission to probe how intelligence was used -- or misused -- to justify going to war. The GOP-controlled Senate also defeated two Democratic proposals to force the administration to spell out the anticipated costs of continuing military operations in Iraq... The move to involve the United Nations and NATO in efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq was defeated, 52 to 43, after a heated debate during which Republicans accused the Democrats of trying to dictate to Bush how to carry out his role as commander in chief... The proposal for an independent, bipartisan commission to look into Iraq-related intelligence was offered by Sen. Jon S. Corzine (D-N.J.) and was rejected, 51 to 45."

Senator Carl Levin Blasts Bush's Iraq Lies
19-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) gave an important speech to the Senate on Tuesday. He declared "The uranium issue is not just about sixteen words. It is about the conscious decisions that were made, apparently by the NSC and concurred in by the CIA, to create a false impression. And it is not an isolated example. There is troubling evidence of other dubious statements and exaggerations by the Intelligence Community and Administration officials." Levin exposes all of the major lies, including aluminum tubes, Iraq-al Qaeda connection, Nuclear reconstitution, certainty that Iraq possesses chemical and biological weapons, Mobile biological warfare labs, and White House Web Site Photos. Impeach Bush Now!

Rove Says 'The President is Not a Fact Checker'
19-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Here is Karl Rove's ultimate defense of Bush on Yellowcake-gate: "The President is Not a Fact Checker." Say what??? If Karl Rove ran into the Oval Office and said, "Mr. Resident, Martians have attacked us!" would Bush simply say "nuke them"? Or would he pause for a second and say, "Karl, could you show me some FACTS to support that claim"? Apparently, Karl thinks Americans are so utterly stupid that we don't mind have a Resident who believes everything his minions tell him, without bothering to "fact check". Wake up, America - your "resident" is a brain-dead robot under the control of Karl Rove!

Why Did ANYONE in the Bush Administration Believe the Niger Uranium Hoax?
19-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

As part of his full-court damage control operation, Karl Rove declassified the "top-secret" National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, that was produced in October 2002 at the demand of Congressional Democrats over the vehement objections of Bush and the Republicans. Rove thinks the report helps Bush because it includes the Niger hoax - but the question remains, why did ANYONE in the Bush administration believe it? Anyone with Google could prove it was a hoax, because the official who "signed" it had been out of office for 14 years!

Bush Reviewed his SOTU 'Line-by-Line and Word-by-Word' - or So They Say
18-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Look at these photos on the official White House of Bush going over his speech in exhaustive detail. We even see Bush's hands (unless it's an actor wearing "W" cufflinks!) underlining and circling the speech, over the caption: "Working at his desk in the Oval Office, Bush reviews the State of the Union address line-by-line and word-by-word." So how did the Yellowcake lie - and all of the other Iraq WMD lies - get into Bush's SOTU? Was Bush's brain connected to his hands, or were his hands being remotely operated by puppetmaster Karl Rove? We report, you decide.

Karl Rove Tries to 'Reframe' the Iraq Lies Issue to the 'Big Picture' - Yeah, EVERYTHING Bush Says is a Lie!
18-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Here is a rare glimpse of Karl Rove's propaganda operation in full damage-control mode: "People have been challenging the president's credibility for partisan political purposes," [Karl Rove] said. "There's nothing that gets this White House more in battle mode than that. We have no idea how long it will last." The White House yesterday sent Republicans on Capitol Hill a sheet of talking points titled "Why Saddam Hussein Was a Grave and Gathering Danger" and reprising evidence about the former Iraqi president's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. "We are only beginning to uncover the truth about the Iraqi regime," the sheet says. Cheney told House Republicans on Wednesday that Mary Matalin, who has been a Republican National Committee consultant since leaving his staff in January, is helping shape communications strategy. Cheney made the remark as he urged a more energetic defense of the president. Cheney's office is likely to be a focus of congressional inquiries.

NBC Names NSC's Rob Joseph as Source of Yellowcake-gate
18-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"NBC has previously reported that Robert Joseph, an official with the National Security Council, and the CIA's weapons proliferation director, Alan Foley, argued back and forth about whether the reference should have been in the speech. Sources have told the network that, after Foley objected to the first draft of the passage, Joseph came up with the suggestion of attributing it to the British, asking Foley if that would make it technically correct. Because British intelligence officials had made the information public, Foley had to acknowledge that the passage was factually accurate, even though the CIA did not think the assertion was true. Last week, CIA director George Tenet ... took responsibility for its inclusion, without explaining how it came to be used. The CIA's inspector general and the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are investigating whether Foley should have consulted higher-ups and whether Joseph exerted undue influence, among other issues."

Now Tony, About Saddam's Uranium...
18-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Greg Palast writes, "The story was, as the English say, 'bollocks,' but George Bush gamely insisted that, 'I strongly BELIEVE [Saddam] was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program.' Blair visibly squirmed through Bush's twisting and ducking around the simple question of why Bush slithered this African hot-dirt fable into the SoTU. Faced with having to unmuddle Bush's inchoate response, Blair hiked up his eyebrows then fetched up this stunner: 'People don't generally know... in the 1980s that Iraq purchased 270 tons of uranium from Niger.' Indeed, people don't know that, Tony, because your government and the US government did it's damned best to cover it up. In the 1980s, Saddam was OUR butcher in Baghdad, a buddy of Ronald Reagan and Bush Senior. During my investigations for BBC television, I discovered during the Reagan-Bush years, Saudi Arabians gave Saddam, with a wink and nod from the US and UK, $7 billion to build a nuclear weapon so he could incinerate his enemy, Iran."

Did NSC Member Robert Joseph Insist on the '16 Words'?
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"The CIA sometimes succeeded in getting the information removed from such statements but acquiesced to an edited line in the State of the Union address that attributed the claim to British intelligence, it said. [Sen. Dick] Durbin said that during the closed-door hearing, Tenet told the lawmakers that a White House official insisted the State of the Union address include the assertion about Saddam's nuclear intentions. Durbin said that person's identity could not be revealed because of the confidentiality of the proceedings, but sources, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said that Tenet 'reluctantly' identified the official as National Security Council member Robert Joseph. One source said that the revelation led to a series of questions about Joseph's role." Wolfowitz allegedly inserted the '16 words' -- but on whose orders did Joseph (if it was him) insist on the '16 words'? Wolfowitz? Condi? Cheney? Rove? Bush?

GOP Senate Rejects Commission to Probe Bush's Iraq Lies
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"The Republican-led Senate rejected 51-45 an amendment to set up a commission to probe whether the administration manipulated information to build momentum for the invasion. Sen. Jon Corzine, a New Jersey Democrat who pushed for the commission, said the issue goes beyond questions about a discredited claim Bush cited that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. 'It's about whether there was a full and fair presentation to the American people' on Iraq's alleged illegal weapons and links to al Qaeda... But Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, accused Democrats of trying to 'start the campaign of 2004' and called it 'an attempt to smear the president [sic] of the United States.'" When Republicans went after Clinton over a blue dress -- it was all about the "rule of law." But an independent investigation into the Bush Team's lies to the American People, Congress and the UN to mount a War that kills thousands -- is a partisan "attempt to smear." This is the most despicable hypocrisy.

Follow the Keyboard: Tenet Names White House Official, McClellan Goes Ballistic
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"Sen. Dick Durbin, who was present for a 4 1/2-hour appearance by [CIA Director George] Tenet behind closed doors with Intelligence Committee members Wednesday, said Tenet named the official. But the Illinois Democrat said that person's identity could not be revealed because of the confidentiality of the proceedings. White House spokesman Scott McClellan [went berserk]. 'That characterization is nonsense. It's not surprising, coming from someone who was in a rather small minority in Congress who did not support the action we took,' McClellan told reporters. Durbin... said that Tenet 'certainly told us who the person was who was insistent on putting this language in which the CIA knew to be incredible, this language about the uranium shipment from Africa'... Countered McClellan: 'The whole idea that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was not real was something that was never under debate previously. This is an attempt to continue to rewrite history.'" Yes - by YOU!!!

Follow the Keyboard - Wolfowitz Put the 16 Words in the SOTU
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Online Journal's Jason Leopold writes, "A Pentagon committee led by Paul Wolfowitz... advised George W. Bush to include a reference in his January SOTU about Iraq trying to purchase 500 tons of uranium from Niger to bolster the case for war in Iraq, despite the fact that the CIA warned Wolfowitz's committee that the information was unreliable, according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate's intelligence committee. The senators and the CIA official said they could be forced out of government and brought up on criminal charges for leaking the information to this reporter and as a result requested anonymity... At issue is a secret committee set up in 2001 by Donald Rumsfeld called the Office of Special Plans, which was headed by Wolfowitz, Abrum Shulsky and Douglas Feith, to probe allegations of links between Iraq and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and whether the country was stockpiling a cache of weapons of mass destruction."

Tenet Tells Senate He Never Saw the 16 Words - Senators are 'Stunned'
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

PentaPost reports, "CIA Director George J. Tenet told the Senate intelligence committee yesterday that his staff did not bring to his attention a questionable statement about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa before Bush delivered his State of the Union address. But Tenet told the senators during a nearly five-hour session behind closed doors that he takes responsibility for the now-famous 16-word sentence in the speech because an agency official had approved it after negotiations with the White House, according to congressional and administration sources who attended the session. 'Members were stunned,' one Democratic senator in the meeting said, 'because he said he basically wasn't aware of the sentence until recently.'" Tenet is a red herring here - who in the WHITE HOUSE wrote the 16 words? Follow the keyboard!

The State Dept. Had the Niger Docs Back in October -- Did They Check Out the Signatures?
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Newsweek reports: "The FBI... is conducting a wide-ranging investigation into the forged [Niger] documents... the CIA never arranged to obtain the forged documents until February 2003 -- nearly four months after they had been delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome and been passed along to the State Department.... The U.S. Embassy quickly passed the documents along to the CIA station chief in Rome -- as well as the State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research. But the station chief didn't send them along to CIA headquarters..., apparently believing they were being sent instead through State Department channels... 'Within two hours [the IAEA] figured out they were forgeries,' said one IAEA source familiar with the material. The source explained that all the IAEA analysts really had to do was conduct a Google search." Prior to Feb. 2003, the CIA allegedly had a verbatim text of the docs -- wouldn't that have had the name of the former Niger foreign minister listed as a signatory?

Tenet's Statement Ultimately Points Finger Back at the White House
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Julian Borger writes: "So all in all, last Friday was not a great day for Tenet, who has had a lot of bad days in the past two years. Rice at least did him the courtesy of calling him a few hours in advance to let him know what was coming, long enough for him to prepare his mea culpa. That document is worth deconstructing. The opening paragraph does exactly what Tenet was asked by the White House. It confirmed that the CIA approved the State of the Union address, and that he, Tenet, was responsible for the process. Most importantly, the 16 words citing a British intelligence report that Saddam was trying to buy uranium in Africa 'should never have been included in the text written for the president'. However, Tenet then goes further, much further, explaining 'For perspective, a little history is in order'. And, he might have added, some settling of accounts."

Cheney Under Pressure To Quit over False War Evidence
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

The UK Independent reports: "Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war. He was accused of using his office to insist that a false claim about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa to restart its nuclear programme be included in George Bush's State of the Union address - overriding the concerns of the CIA director, George Tenet. Mr Cheney was also accused of knowingly misleading Congress when the administration sought its authorisation for the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein. The allegations against Mr Cheney have come most vocally from a group of senior former intelligence officials [VIPS] who believe that information from the intelligence community was selectively used to support a war fought for political reasons."

Rumsfeld's and Cheney's Office of Special Plans -- The New 'Team B'
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"Senior members of the administration created a shadow agency of Pentagon analysts staffed mainly by ideological amateurs to compete with the CIA and its military counterpart, the Defence Intelligence Agency. The agency, known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was set up by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to second-guess CIA information and operated under the patronage of hardline conservatives in the top rungs of the administration, the Pentagon and at the White House, including Vice-President Dick Cheney. The ideologically driven network functioned like a shadow government, much of it off the official payroll and beyond congressional oversight. But it proved powerful enough to prevail in a struggle with the state department and the CIA by establishing a justification for war." The OSP follows the 'Team B' model that Rumsfeld set up in the 70's (commissioned by then CIA-Director Bush Sr.), to distort the intelligence on the Soviet Threat -- for inflated Defense spending.

Interview with CIA Veteran Ray McGovern
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"You see, to focus on the State of the Union address -- heinous as it is to have the president say something that's not truthful, that's sort of a sideshow. As a matter of fact, I would describe that as a red herring. That pales in significance to what really happened with this information from the forgery, and that is, that it was used in September and early October as the main justification for Congress voting to give the president authority to wage an unprovoked war... During the summer, we all know that the president decided to make war on Iraq. [Chief of Staff] Andy Card said they were going to market something new, but they couldn't do that in July and August -- you don't do that in the summer -- so in September we're going to start doing that. And sure enough, Vice President Cheney issued a major declaration on the 26th of August... the precursor of what was to come, and he exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein in a most, most significant manner."

CIA Didn't Get Forged Documents until after Bush's SoTU -- But Wouldn't Someone Have Already Spotted the Bogus Signature?
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

AP reports: "When the Bush administration issued its prewar claims that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, the CIA had not yet obtained the documents that served as a key foundation for the allegation and later turned out to be forged, U.S. officials say. The CIA didn't receive the documents until February 2003, nearly a year after the agency first began investigating the alleged Iraq-Africa connection and a short time after it assented to language in Bush's State of the Union address that alleged such a connection... Without the source documents, the CIA could investigate only their substance, which it had learned from a foreign government around the beginning of 2002." But even without the documents, couldn't the CIA have asked their source who signed the docs? Once they had the names, couldn't the CIA have determined that one of the signatories was a Niger foreign minister, who hadn't been in office for 14 years? If they found this out, wouldn't the White House have been alerted?

Dead Giveaways that Should Have Exposed the Niger Docs as Forgeries -- Before They Were Passed on to the CIA
17-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"March 14, 2003-- CNN: David Ensor of CNN cites 'knowledgeable sources' who say one of the forged documents, a letter discussing the uranium deal with Iraq, contains the faked signature of Tandja Mamadou, the president of Niger... 'Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger for 14 years'... Besides the faked Mamadou signature, the giveaway in the July 2000 letter was a reference to the Niger constitution of 1965, which was superceded by a new constitution in 1999... Stephen Grey of the Sunday Times of London reports that... [a] letter dated 10 October, 2000, and purportedly signed by Niger's foreign minister, Allele Elhadj Habibou... But a check by UN officials revealed Habibou had been deposed a full decade earlier. Worse still, the October letter had a date stamp showing it had been received in September 2000-- in other words, before it was sent."

Nicholas Kristoff: '16 Words, and Counting'
16-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"What troubles me is not that single episode, but the broader pattern of dishonesty and delusion that helped get us into the Iraq mess -- and that created the false expectations undermining our occupation today. Some in the administration are trying to make George Tenet the scapegoat for the affair. But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice Resident Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney's resignation. Condi Rice says she first learned of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's fact-finding trip to Niger during a TV interview, presumably when George Stephanopoulos asked her on 'This Week' on June 8 about a column by me describing the trip. (Condi, you're breaking my heart -- you didn't read that column itself? How about if I fax you copies of everything I write, so you don't miss any, and you fax me everything you write?)"

To Punish Joseph Wilson for Exposing Yellowcake-Gate, Busheviks Criminally Expose His Wife as a CIA Agent
16-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

David Corn writes, "Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security--and break the law--in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others? ... Two weeks ago, [former Ambassador Joseph] Wilson went public, writing in The New York Times and telling The Washington Post about the trip he took to Niger in February 2002--at the request of the CIA--to check out allegations that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium... Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer... Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison." We demand prosecution!

Faked Nuke Evidence: Bush Blames Blair...Who Blames the French
16-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"France today denied that it had supplied Britain with the intelligence behind London's assertion that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had attempted to import uranium from Africa. The Financial Times today reported that two foreign governments it said were 'thought to be France and Italy' had supplied Britain with information which added to now discredited domestic intelligence documents. 'Contrary to the insinuations that have appeared in the British press, France is not the origin of intelligence published in the British report dated September 24, 2002 and relating to Iraq's nuclear programme,' the foreign ministry said in a statement."

Italian Press Accuses Berlusconi Government of Providing Bush and Blair with Forged Uranium Documents
16-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

CNN reports: "Italian intelligence services did not give the United States and Britain documents indicating that Iraq sought uranium in Africa to make nuclear weapons, the government said Sunday, denying media reports that it had a role in passing on the disputed claims. The denial came after Italy's leading Corriere della Sera newspaper said Sunday that Italy's SISMI military intelligence agency had handed America and Britain documents indicating Saddam Hussein's regime wanted to buy uranium from Niger. This claim -- used to bolster the case for war -- has since been widely questioned. "

Blood in the Water: Watergate II
16-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

In an important and detailed article, Michael Ruppert writes, "The writing appears to be on the wall for a beleaguered and disarrayed presidency, as key administration officials including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice either wittingly or unwittingly line up like chess pieces to take the fall for a doomed King... Statements by both Bush and departing press spokesman Ari Fleischer that the matter is now closed will likely go down as wishful and quite possibly delusional thinking. Famous last words. Recalled is the line from Watergate's John Dean, 'There is a cancer growing on the Presidency.' This is the kind of cancer that eats official after official until there is nothing left between it and the King... The noose that will ultimately hang George W. Bush is a meticulous and carefully crafted official record compiled by California Congressman Henry Waxman (D) that has been in place since last March of this year."

Yellowcake-gate: The Lie that Refuses to Die
16-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Arianna writes, "As the Niger controversy - Yellowcake-gate - is turning into a political firestorm, the question should be: What didn't the president know -- and why didn't he know it? And why does he know less and less every day? After all, it's becoming clearer by the day that just about everyone else involved knew that the president was using a bogus charge to alarm the nation about Saddam's nuclear threat. Whatever the opposite of 'top secret' is, this was it... The bottom line is: This canard had been thoroughly discredited many, many times over, but the administration fanatics so badly wanted it to be true they just refused to let it die the death it deserved. The yellowcake lie was like one of those slasher movie psychos that refuse to stay buried no matter how many times you smash a hatchet into their skull. It had more sequels than 'Friday the 13th' and 'Halloween' combined. "

Bush is Certifiably Insane - Invoke the 25th Amendment!
15-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Sit down for this one, folks. On 7-14-03, Bush answered PentaPost reporter Dana Milbank's question about the Niger Uranium Hoax as follows: "The fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power..." First, if Saddam "absolutely" had a WMD program in 2002 - as opposed to 1991 - then why has the US military been unable to find a SHRED of evidence after combing Iraq and interrogating its officials? But more importantly, how can Bush say Saddam "wouldn't let [UN inspectors] in" when EVERYONE in the world knows this is not true? This is no longer a question of spinning or lying - Bush has crossed the line into INSANITY. As "West Wing" fans know, the 25th Amendment allows a President to temporarily resign for medical or psychological reasons. Bush is INSANE - invoke the 25th!

Former Intelligence Agents Demand Bush Fire Cheney
15-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

In a memo to W, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity write, "There is just too much evidence that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of Vice President Cheney's office, and that Wilson's findings were duly reported not only to that office but to others as well. Equally important, it was Cheney who launched (in a major speech on August 26, 2002) the concerted campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Saddam Hussein was about to get his hands on nuclear weapons-a campaign that mushroomed, literally, in early October with you and your senior advisers raising the specter of a 'mushroom cloud' being the first 'smoking gun' we might observe... We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation." Better yet, send him to Guantanamo without a lawyer...

Intelligence Unglued
14-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity write in an open memo to Bush: "The glue that holds the Intelligence Community together is melting under the hot lights of an awakened press. If you do not act quickly, your intelligence capability will fall apart--with grave consequences for the nation.... CIA Director George Tenet's extracted, unapologetic apology on July 11 was classic--I confess; she did it. It is now dawning on our until-now somnolent press that your national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, shepherds the foreign affairs sections of your state-of-the-union address and that she, not Tenet, is responsible for the forged information getting into the speech... Recommendation #1 We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney 'not guilty.' His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility... We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney's immediate resignation."

Photos Show Bush Rewriting, Revising SoTU Speech
14-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

MWO writes: "For the last few days, the administration has attempted to blame everyone except George W. Bush for the deceptive contents of that speech, and to portray the speech reviewing process as so messy and arbitrary that no one can remember who wrote or revised what, much less which members of the administration saw the speech. Luckily, we remembered how impressed we were when viewing the pix of an engaged and hands-on George W. Bush at the taxpayer-funded official White House site, as he participated closely in the SOTU speechwriting process in January... So we can now dispense of the scenario the White House and right-wing pundits have attempted to sell these last few days - that Bush saw his speech for the first time when it was handed to him as he walked to the podium January 27. Instead, we see that he painstakingly studied the speech for days, and made changes to it."

The Dubious Suicide of George Tenet
14-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

William Rivers Pitt writes: "There are two more layers on this onion to be peeled. The first concerns Secretary of State Powell. One week after the Niger evidence was used by Bush in the State of the Union address, Powell presented to the United Nations the administration's case for war. The Niger evidence was notably absent from Powell's presentation. According to CBS News, Powell said, 'I didn't use the uranium at that point because I didn't think that was sufficiently strong as evidence to present before the world.' What a difference a week makes... The second layer to be peeled deals with the administration's newest excuse for using the forged Niger evidence to justify a war. They are claiming now that they used it because the British government told them it was solid. Yet there was the story published by the Washington Post on July 11 with the headline, 'CIA Asked Britain to Drop Iraq Claim.'"

Vanden Heuvel Crushes Armey in Debate over Presidential Lies
14-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel writes, "In my debate with Dick Armey on Hardball last Thursday night, the former House majority leader and current MSNBC consultant was obsessed with presidential lies and impeachment--that is, President Bill Clinton's lies and impeachment. But, as I pointed out, Clinton may have lied in office but no one died--and Congress impeached him. Meanwhile, Bush and his Administration have lied, many have died and the majority of Congress treats it as business-as-usual. I wonder if the families of the 212 soldiers killed thus far in Iraq are as offended by Armey's statements as I am. I know that scores of Nation readers and cable viewers are--many e-mailed me after watching the segment, expressing disgust with Armey's refusal to hold Bush accountable for deceiving the public. (Scroll to the bottom of http://www.msnbc.com/news/937585.asp to read the BLISTERING exchange between Vanden Heuvel and Armey).

In Sept., CIA Warned Brits Not to Use Niger Uranium Story; Early Drafts of Bush's SoTU Did Not Mention Britain -- Something Wrong Here!
13-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

"The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later, senior Bush administration officials said... The early drafts of the speech did not include Britain as the source of the information, according to administration officials. A senior official denied that Britain was inserted in the final draft because the CIA and others in the U.S. intelligence community were concerned that the charge could not be supported." But the CIA doubted the Brits to begin with -- why would they want them cited? Who changed the final draft? Condi? Rove? The NSC? "The British addition was made only 'because they were the first to say it publicly in their September paper,' the official said." Just because they were the first? But if the CIA didn't have corroborating evidence -- why was the Niger story used?

Tenet Got Niger Uranium Story Removed from Bush's October Speech -- So Why Did Bush Use It in the State of the Union Address?
13-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Walter Pincus and Mike Allen write: "CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials... The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech. It is unclear why Tenet failed to intervene in January to prevent the questionable intelligence from appearing in the p-resident's address to Congress when Tenet had intervened three months earlier in a much less symbolic speech."

'Read Tenet's Mea Culpa Closely... It Points Right Back at Condi Rice's NSC'
12-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Josh Marshall writes: "If Tenet and the CIA are guilty of not pushing hard enough to keep bogus or 'highly dubious' information out of the State of the Union speech, who was pushing on the other side? Read Tenet's 'mea culpa' (self-criticism session?) closely and you'll see it points right back at Condi Rice's NSC. As noted in yesterday's post, we have a pretty clear idea what the interplay was between the CIA and the White House. The CIA expressed reservations about the Niger-uranium claims. The White House pressed to keep it in. Officials at the NSC, by several accounts, suggested getting around the CIA's reservations by using public statements by the British government as a figleaf -- even though the CIA believed the British assessment was incorrect. Whose hands are dirtier? The folks who caved in to pressure and signed off on that figleaf? Or the folks who pressed for it?"

The New White House Slogan: 'Case Closed. Just Move On.'
12-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

David Lindorff writes: "So Bush considers the issue of his lying to the American people about Iraq's possessing or trying to possess nuclear weapons to be 'closed.' Now that... George Tenet has admitted he 'should have' noticed this whopper and complained about its inclusion in Bush's speech explaining his reason for attacking Iraq, the p-resident says we can just stop bugging him about it. So what if Iraq is now a huge mess requiring the indefinite stationing of 145,000-150,000 or more soldiers for years to come at a cost of $4 billion a month. So what if over 200 GIs and thousands of Iraqis, including women and children, have died? So what if one or two U.S. soldiers are being killed and more wounded every day there? Our p-resident has 'moved on'... I... suggest that we all ought to adopt his stalwart approach to life's little annoyances. Think about it. If you cheated on your spouse and now she or he is nagging you about it, tell her or him to stop complaining. You've 'moved on.'"

Howard Dean Demands Bush Stop Stonewalling
10-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

Howard Dean demanded the resignation of administration officials who failed to tell the Bush that the Niger story was false. Those "who misled the president know who they were and they should resign immediately." "The only other possibility, which is unthinkable," is that Bush knew himself that this was a false fact and he put it in the State of the Union anyhow. "I hope for the sake of this country that did not happen." Asked whether Cheney should resign if he knew, Dean said, "Anybody who misled Bush should leave office, whoever that may be." Pressed on whether Bush should resign, Dean said, "I think before we cross to that we better find out what the facts are." Echoing Watergate and a disgraced Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, Dean said, "The time for stonewalling is over."

DNC Solicits Money to Run Ad Demanding Investigation
10-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

The DNC is soliciting donations to run this ad: "In his State of the Union address, George W. Bush told us of an imminent threat ... America took him at his word," the video says, showing Bush delivering the speech as it aired on Fox News. "But now we find out it wasn't true." The ad continues, "a year earlier, that claim was proven false. The CIA knew it. The State Department knew it. The White House knew it." Not only does the e-mail solicit money so the party can buy television time to air the ad, it urges Democrats to push for an independent, bipartisan investigation of Bush's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "It's time to tell the truth," the ad says.

Republicans Stonewall on Weaponsgate Probe
07-Jul-03
Iraq War Lies

From Reuters: "The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee clashed on Sunday over whether to open another probe into alleged White House manipulation of intelligence to make the case for war against Iraq. Michigan Sen. Carl Levin told NBC's "Meet the Press" that new accusations by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson over claims Iraq bought uranium from Niger added fuel to an investigation he was opening with his own staff. But the committee chairman, Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner, said he favored letting the Senate Intelligence Committee finish its probe before deciding whether his panel should dig further."

Call for an Open Investigation into Pre-War Claims!
28-Jun-03
Iraq War Lies

RushLimbaughOnline.com (the Limbaugh parody site) writes: "The Bush administration expended a huge amount of effort to gain the support of the American people to wage war in Iraq. We were told Saddam supports Al-Qaeda, Saddam has specific quantities of chemical and biologic weapons, Saddam tried to acquire nuclear material..... It was said to the American people that Saddam represents an urgent threat. It appears we were manipulated, as there has been no evidence to support these claims. The public is owed an explanation, not a whitewash. It is the duty of congress to act on our behalf and get answers. This is clearly a case where the public should get an explanation, not another closed door approach such as that being taken by Sen. Roberts. We deserve an open investigation. That will only happen if congress hears you. Tell congress that you want an open investigation and answers. It is their duty to democracy and you. Use this simple form to send a message."

Another Rove-Inflated Report Deflated: Rumsfeld Now Admits Saddam Not Killed in Convoy Attack
25-Jun-03
Iraq War Lies

AP reports: "There is no evidence that senior Iraqi leaders were among those killed in a U.S. attack on a convoy last week near the Syrian border, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday. Initial news reports about the attack said Saddam Hussein or his sons, Odai and Qusai, were thought by U.S. intelligence to have been in the convoy, which was destroyed by U.S. air and ground forces, including an AC-130 gunship, helicopters and special operations troops." Hey, the story we heard for a week was Saddam might have been killed in this attack. This went on for a week. How many people now believe Saddam was in fact killed?

America is in Denial about Bush's Iraq Lies
24-Jun-03
Iraq War Lies

Paul Krugman writes, "There is no longer any serious doubt that [Bush] deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial... Even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications. After all, suppose that a politician - or a journalist - admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability - and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect. Yet if we can't find people willing to take the risk - to face the truth and act on it - what will happen to our democracy?"

Even MoDo Can See that Congress is Examining the Wrong End of the Horse
22-Jun-03
Iraq War Lies

Maureen Dowd writes, "On Friday, senators on the intelligence committee cut a deal that lets 'a thorough review' -i.e. a Republican whitewash -go forward into whether the spy community ginned up prewar intelligence. The Democrats, already Fausted by their prewar fear of being pantywaists, naturally caved on open hearings. Open, closed, who cares? Congress is looking in the wrong place. They're scrutinizing those who gathered the intelligence, rather than those who pushed to distort it... The hawks started with Saddam's demise and worked backwards. As the New Republic reports in its 'Deception and Democracy' cover article: 'In the summer of 2002, Vice President Cheney made several visits to the C.I.A.'s Langley headquarters, which were understood within the agency as an attempt to pressure the low-level specialists interpreting the raw intelligence. 'That would freak people out,' said one former C.I.A. official.'... It's scary, all right. Dick Cheney's hot breath on your raw files."

Republicans Try to Protect Bush from Weaponsgate Lies
22-Jun-03
Iraq War Lies

CBSNews.com editor Dick Meyer writes, "The Republican [Intelligence Committee chair], Rep. Porter Goss, a former CIA agent, said, 'I'm not going into what the customer did with the intelligence.' In other words, his committee will investigate whether the CIA slanted intelligence in order to please their customers. It will look to see if the spooks did a lousy of finding out was going on in Iraq in the first place. But the committee will not conduct a post-mortem on the actual policies and decision of the Bush White House... [That's] not good enough. It's only looking at part of the picture. Initially, Senate Republicans recognized that a wider and deeper inquest was necessary. The Senate Armed Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, it was announced, would hold joint hearings to examine the intelligence and the policy, the war and the prewar. But they weaseled out of it... It's going to take a big bang to wake Congress up." Let's start banging, folks!

'Smoking Gun' Letter Linking Iraq to Al Qaeda is Just More Bushit
27-Apr-03
Iraq War Lies

UK Observer writes of the letter linking Iraq to Al Qaeda: "The find coincides with the capture of former Mukhabarat head of operations Farouk Hijazi near the Syrian border on Friday. Washington has said Hijazi was Iraq's key link man with al-Qaeda, and that he travelled to meet him at Kandahar in Afghanistan. Remarkable though it is, the find is unlikely to be the 'smoking gun' the US and Britain are looking for. Representatives from the Mukhabarat are known to have travelled to Kandahar in the late Nineties to build links with al-Qaeda. Most analysts believe, however, that the ideological differences between the Iraqis and the terrorists were insurmountable. The talks are thought to have ended disastrously for the Iraqis, as bin Laden rejected any kind of alliance, preferring to pursue his own policy of global jihad, or holy war."

A Staged Rescue? So Who Really Did Save Private Lynch?
19-Apr-03
Iraq War Lies

The doctor who treated Pfc. Lynch in the Iraqi hospital tells a very different story than the legend of military heroism making the rounds about her "rescue" by U.S. troops. There were no Iraqi troops in the hospital, only medical staff and patients who were handcuffed and terrorized by the troops who were searching for departed members of the Saddam regime when they found Pfc. Lynch. Far from making her a prisoner, the staff had tried to return her to the Americans, an attempt that failed when the ambulance was fired upon before it could get close enough for the driver to explain his mission. The doctor sees two faces to America: "One is freedom and democracy, and giving kids sweets. The other is killing and hating my people. So I am very confused."

 


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