Bush's Misrepresentations
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has released a report entitled "WMD IN IRAQ Evidence and Implications". This report, among other things, "examines the unclassified record of prewar intelligence, administration statements of Iraq's capabilities to produce nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and long-range missiles, and the evidence found to date in Iraq." (p.5) If you remember, Bush adamantly and steadfastly claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and the capability to deliver them, and used these claims as a pretext for war. I urge you to go to the Carnegie site and read the full report. Briefly, though, based on the unclassified reports and the speeches made by various members of the Bush administration in the months leading up to the attack on Iraq, the conclusion that Bush deliberately misled the American public is inescapable.
Here is an excerpt from the report (p.8):
[quote]
Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq's WMD and ballistic missile programs, beyond the intelligence failures noted above, by:
- Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single WMD threat. The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose, distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war. (p.52)
- Insisting without evidence yet treating as a given truth that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. (p.52)
- Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements. (p.53)
- Misrepresenting inspectors' findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire. (p.53)
[end quote]
If you also remember, during his first election campaign Bush promised to restore honesty and integrity to the White House. If this is honesty and integrity, I'd hate to see what Bush thinks lies and deceit are.