One Utah

Weapons of mass destruction capable of killing millions… Iraq is allied with al Qaeda and a training ground for terrorists… The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud… September the 11th… Mobile biological weapons facilities… Unmanned aerial vehicles… Aluminum tubes… Chemical weapons… Uranium from Niger…

A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism is billed as “the first comprehensive analysis of pre-war rhetoric” leading up to the invasion of Iraq. The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War documents that President Bush and his top officials issued 935 false statements about the threat from Saddam Hussein’s regime in the two years following 9/11. Bush led the way with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al Qaeda.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows 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.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and 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.

Talking Points Memo has more.

Here’s another good database: Prepared at the direction of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Iraq on the Record is a searchable collection of 237 specific misleading statements made by Bush Administration officials about the threat posed by Iraq.

UPDATE: You may recall that the Senate Intelligence Committee promised several years ago to investigate how the Bush administration lied to get support for the illegal invasion of Iraq. A spokesperson for committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller now says a hearing will be held “within the next few months.”

This entry was posted Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 9:05 am and is filed under Disaster, George W. Bush, Iraq, National Politics, Proof Bush Lied, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.