Bush Administration Lied 935 Times About Iraq Before
Invasion: Study
For years, the Bush administration has faced charges that it bent
the truth or flat-out misled the public about Iraq's alleged
stockpile of weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the 2003
invasion of the country. Now, a study by two nonprofit journalism
organizations claims that President Bush and top officials in his
administration issued nearly 1,000 false statements about the
security threat posed by Iraq in the wake of 9/11.
The results of the study were posted Tuesday on the Web site for
the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity, which worked on the
project with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. "On at least
532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews,
testimony and the like), Bush and these three key officials [Vice
President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice
and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld], along with former
Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, and former White House press secretaries Ari
Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain
them), links to al Qaeda or both. This concerted effort was the
underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war," reads the
report.
Entitled "False Pretenses," the report claims that the statements
were "part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized
public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under
decidedly false pretenses." According to The Associated Press,
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he could not comment on
the study because he had not seen it.
Of the 935 false statements made by the administration, according
to the study, Bush was reported to have led all White House
officials with 259 false statements, which included 231 about
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al
Qaeda. Second on the list was Powell with 244 false statements
about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and
al-Qaeda.
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of
mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al Qaeda," wrote
authors Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for
Independence in Journalism. "In short, the Bush administration led
the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it
methodically propagated and that culminated in military action
against Iraq on March 19, 2003."
Relying on what it described as a "massive database" of information
that fed the results of the project, the authors said their
research was based on juxtaposing what President Bush and the top
officials in his administration said in public against what was
known, "or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis." The
searchable database includes public statements drawn from both
primary sources like official transcripts and secondary sources
like the reporting of major news organizations over the two years
beginning on September 11, 2001. It also used information from more
than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and
interviews.
An example given in the report is a portion of an address given at
the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars on August
26, 2002, during which Cheney said, "Simply stated, there is no
doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends,
against our allies and against us." According to the report, former
CIA Director George Tenet later said Cheney's assertions went well
beyond his agency's assessments at the time, and another CIA
official, referring to the speech, told a prominent journalist,
"Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
The study came under immediate fire from some conservative
bloggers, who painted it as "leftist propaganda" and pointed out
that it came from an organization funded by billionaire George
Soros, who has given millions to a number of liberal think tanks
and advocacy organizations. Steve Carpinelli, a spokesman for the
Center, denied the charges and said the organization does not
advocate any agenda, endorse any legislation or engage in any of
the actions of an advocacy group. "What we've included here is all
factual information that we were able to quantify and put into a
form that people can search using a database," said Carpinelli, who
added that Soros contributed general funds to the organization in
2004, but that those funds were not used for the report and that
they were not nearly the "millions" quoted by detractors.
As for criticism that the report does not have any new information
but rather rehashes already-reported facts, Carpinelli said, "The
difference is that while there have been many intelligence reports
that came out that contradicted a lot of statements from
administration officials, there's been nothing that could show you
how it was a coordinated effort." The report is accompanied by a
bar graph that Carpinelli said shows how the false statements
reached their peak in the months prior to the March 2003 launch of
the Iraq war and how they tapered off soon after.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1580119/20080123/index.jhtml
35 Lies (and Counting): Study Documents Bush Admins False
Statements Preceding Iraq War
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/24/935_lies_and_counting_study_counts