FIVE YEARS LATER: The Lies Become Clear

As we enter the sixth year of this war, let us remember what got us into the war: lies. Republican lies. Democrats fell for the lies too often and for too long. But the lies were engineered by the Republicans to cynically sell a war that has helped nobody but mercenaries and war profiteers.

The Iraq Blunder is one of the biggest blunders ever in American History...and yet the George Bush/John McCain/Joe Lieberman axis of blunders STILL thinks we should be occupying Iraq for eternity.

But the one, single question that no Republican has ever been able to answer is just why did we ever invade in the first place. Why did we invade, what are our goals, what is our exit strategy? No answer from Bush. No answer from McCain. No answer from Lieberman.

No answer because there IS no answer. Every single excuse they ever gave us for invading Iraq proved to be a lie. I was one of those who, at the time they were making their case to the world for invasion, was dead certain they were lying. My knowledge of history and politics, everything I knew about the Middle East and Islam told me their excuses were lies. Those of us who saw through their lies were proven right. This morning I was reminded of this, on the eve of the 5th year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq Blunder, that I was right.

I get daily email updates from many sources. One of them is an Israeli news service. Although they come with a clear bias, I find their information useful. In today's update they report what I knew five years ago: that there NEVER was a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda and the Bush Administration LIED to the world to invade. To quote the email from Guysen International News:

USA: from the analysis of 600,000 documents a Pentagon report establishes that no link existed between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. The rebuttal of the premise of the American attack in Iraq has embarrassed the American administration, which withdrew the report from circulation. The Iraqi dictator nevertheless supported and financed terrorist groups including the families of many Palestinian terrorists who carried out suicide bombings. (Guysen.International.News)

The same thing is being reported by Truthout.org (another one of my daily news sources).

The PENTAGON admits Bush lied...and Bush/McCain/Lieberman suppressed the report. Lies, a blundered invasion and a coverup. THAT is what Bush and McCain are all about. The link to suicide bombings in Palestine/Israel mentioned by the Isralei news source is quite likely...as is the link between our "ally" Saudi Arabia and suicide bombings in Palestine/Israel. Are we invading Saudi Arabia?

But the Pentagon report this Israeli news source is reporting on is by no means the only source of analysis that shows us that the Bush/McCain/Lieberman axis of blunders lied to us. As I reported recently, according to a study done by the Center for Public Integrity, the Bush adminsitration, including Bush himself, Colin Powell, Cheney and many of Bush's top advisors, made over 930 demonstrably false statements in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. It is worth repeating that report side by side with the Israeli report on the Pentagon analysis as we are coming up on the 5th anniversary of the Big Bush Blunder.

From the survey:

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.

Here is the graph: (click to enlarge)



And here are a few highlights from the report:

* On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "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." In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "

* In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq, Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction — an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House hadn't requested it.

* In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure." In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet) found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more, an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's relationship with Al Qaeda is unclear."

* On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.

* On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address, Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase agreement "probably is a hoax."

* On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples, and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."

The conclusion is clear. They lied, blatantly and deliberately, to get us into a war that was NOT in our best interest, was NOT justified and which has turned into the greatest foreign policy and military blunder since the Vietnam war. And Osama bin Laden is STILL free. And John McCain supports Bush's Big Blunder. You hear far more from McCain about continuing the Iraq Quagmire for 100 more years, but very, very little about getting Osama bin Laden and stopping al-Qaeda. Remember: al-Qaeda attacked us. Iraq did not.