LIES
In January 2003, Bush stood before Congress and delivered his State of the Union Address to the American people. He solemnly broke the news to us how Iraq was in possession of “26,000 liters of Anthrax; 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin; 500 tons of serin, mustard and VX gas; mobile biological weapons labs and stations; and uranium obtained from Niger to build nuclear weapons of mass destruction.” Bush also informed us of the bad news of how the Middle East nation of Iraq had connections to terrorism and Al Qaeda. Over three years later with U.S. soldiers still dying in Iraq, the United States government hung up their boots, quit their search for weapons, and went home deserting the troops. The search for weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorism was over. The results: ZERO!
“Hussein has in fact reinstated nuclear weapons.” Cheney
“We know for a fact there are weapons there.” Fleischer
“There clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq.” Rice
Republicans had lied again. The world knows it now, many of us knew it then, yet Bush still won’t admit it and say he’s sorry. Most of us know now that he lied, but how many lies did he and his administration tell? And what were the reasons behind them? Let’s first look at some of the most notorious ones:
LIE: “The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.”
-President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati
LIE: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
-President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, State of the Union
LIE: “We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
-VP Cheney on March 16, 2003 on Meet the Press
LIE: “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons...And according to the British government, the Iraqi regime could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes.”
-President Bush on September 26, 2002
LIE: “[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade.”
-CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002
LIE: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.”
-President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002
LIE: “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. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] for missions targeting the United States.”
-President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002
LIE: “We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they’re weaponized...”
-President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a radio address
LIE: “Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agents. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets.”
-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council
LIE: “We know where they [Iraq’s WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.”
-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003, in statements to the press
LIE: “Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq, which the UN prohibited.”
-President Bush in Poland, June 1, 2003
These lies could go on for pages but we won’t waste the paper. You get the point. You have…
INTELLIGENCE
“It is somewhat puzzling that you have 100% certainty about WMD’s existence and 0 certainty of where they are.”
- Hans Blix
