Jimmy Carter never used the word "malaise" in his "malaise speech." Abraham Lincoln never said, "God must have loved the common people, he made so many of them."

And George W. Bush never said that the threat from Iraq was "imminent."

He never said it. Seriously. Not once.

Teams of rhetoric inspectors have been pouring over Bush's comments, utterances, speeches and gesticulations for about as long as we've been looking for WMD in Iraq and, to date, nobody has found a shred of proof that the president - or anybody in his Cabinet - ever once said Iraq or Saddam Hussein posed an "imminent" threat to the United States.

In fact, one of the only good finds on this score actually says the complete opposite. In President Bush's State of the Union Address last January, he said:

"Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late."

This is important because the favorite talking point of Democrats and liberal pundits right now is that the president "lied" when he said that Iraq posed an "imminent threat."

Just the other day Sen. Jay Rockefeller said on Fox News Sunday , "What I keep having to remind myself is that we went to war in Iraq based upon an imminent threat which was being caused by weapons of mass destruction." And New York Times columnist Paul Krugman hyperventilated: "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra."

Ted Kennedy offered the most infamous summary: "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership, that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."

It would make things so much easier to say that all of the war's critics are as intellectually dishonest as Kennedy or Krugman. Unfortunately for the war's defenders, but fortunately for the republic, not everyone is willing to stoop to their level.

Indeed, there are quite a few facts on the side of those who say the administration claimed the threat was imminent. In Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush said, "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." Bush reiterated the claim from British Intelligence that Saddam could launch a chemical missile attack with 45 minutes. Various Cabinet members referred to this or that threat as "immediate" and "gathering." There was a lot of talk about "reconstituted nuclear programs" and even "mushroom clouds."

On inspection, some of these quotes seem damning, others don't. But none of it supports the case that Bush "lied" or perpetrated a "fraud." It might - and almost surely does - help the case that Bush was wrong about the extent of the Iraqi threat (though even that door isn't completely closed yet). But these statements don't prove deception. Nor, in my opinion do they have much to do with dispelling the case for war.

Regardless, to argue persuasively that Bush lied, you'd have to demonstrate that he knew that our own intelligence agencies, numerous U.N. teams and the intelligence services of Britain, Germany, France and other allies were all wrong. And, by the way, President Clinton - who just last July said, "When I left office, there was a substantial amount of biological and chemical material unaccounted for (in Iraq)" - would have to be wrong, too.

The "made up in Texas" stuff is only possible if you're filming an Oliver Stone movie.

Moreover, while the public debate may have left the impression that the threat was more imminent than it turned out to be, the formal deliberations in Congress and the United Nations had nothing to do with imminence.

That debate was about Iraq's ongoing, globally undisputed and flagrant defiance of U.N. resolutions and the need to be pro-active against anything like another 9-11. Read the actual congressional resolution authorizing force . It's mostly about Iraq's defiance of the United Nations.

Indeed, numerous Democrats, including Senators Kennedy and John Kerry, opposed the resolution authorizing the use of force precisely because it wasn't hinged to an imminent threat from Iraq (Kerry ultimately flip-flopped and voted for the resolution anyway). Senator Robert Byrd even offered an amendment requiring that imminence become the standard for war. After a debate, he lost.

In other words, Kennedy & Co. objected to the war before it was launched because Bush wouldn't say the threat was imminent and now they're peeved because Bush "lied" when he said the threat was imminent. That's laugh-factory logic.

This spin probably won't stick. After all, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "You cannot fool all the people all the time."

Oh, wait. Lincoln never said that either.

president Bush and Mr Blair did not use alarmist languahe at all, not once. They did say there was a definite capability and that Saddam had violated UN resolutions repeatedly...

01Los Angeles Independent Media Center

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Original article is at http://la.indymedia.org/news/2003/06/65674.php

Lies the Government Told Us Part 3

by Andrei • Thursday June 19, 2003 04:26 AM



.



RW ONLINE: They Lied And They Knew It

Lies the Government Told Us, Part 3

They Lied And They Knew It

Revolutionary Worker #1204, June 22, 2003, posted at rwor.org

The U.S. and British governments set out last summer to conquer Iraq. All during their war buildup, they said this war would protect the world. The warmakers insisted they knew Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) and ties with notorious terrorists--and so (they said) Iraq had to be invaded, and there had to be a regime change.

Now, two long months after the war, the U.S. government has found zero evidence of any "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. Not a barrel, not a bottle, not a plant, not a shell--nothing. And they have found no evidence of ties to al-Qaida-type terrorists.

This is very disturbing to many people--including many of the people who believed President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, and who ended up supporting the war because they believed Iraq was a danger. Instead what they got was the U.S. using its modern weapons of war--to conquer and dominate a third world country and kill thousands of people.

A whole country now lives under military occupation--with broken power plants, contaminated water and looted museums. And the questions keep mounting:

Where are all the battle-ready chemical and biological weapons that the U.S. and Britain said Iraq had?

Was all the so-called intelligence somehow mistaken? Or did the warmakers simply lie, and claim there was global danger when there was none?

If they lied, if WMD were a fake reason for the invasion, what was the real reason?

If the U.S. government and president lied about something so important, what else are they lying about?

And finally, who can believe them about anything in the future?



******

The "missing WMD" has caused finger-pointing throughout the British and American governments. The infighting causes secrets to leak into view. Various government spy agencies want to prove that they were not lying about WMD.

From their leaks we can see that, long before the war, analysts within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) were secretly reporting that they had no real evidence of Iraqi WMD. So the heads of the U.S. and British governments knew all along there was no evidence, and were lying when they said they had some.

This is what we will explore in Part 3 of our series.

The U.S. government may announce, some day, that they found WMD in Iraq. But even if someone claims to find traces of banned germs or chemicals, it now seems clear that Iraq's military did not have nuclear weapons, scud missiles or any battle-ready WMD. The U.S. government lied to the world when they said they had hard secret evidence of special urgent danger coming from Iraq.

And, if the U.S. government someday announces it has found something in Iraq, after all this time and after all this lying, who will believe them?

What the Government Claimed to the World

Vice President Dick Cheney, launching the U.S. government's public push for war with Iraq, Aug. 26, 2002: "Simply stated, there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Sept. 8, 2002: "Saddam Hussein is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Sept. 19, 2002, said that Iraq has "amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, and mustard gas."

British government report claimed Saddam Hussein "has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within forty-five minutes." (Sept. 2002)

Bush said, Sept. 28, 2002: "The danger to our country is grave and growing. 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."

As Congress was debating war powers, the National Intelligence Council published a briefing document given to Congress. This "National Intelligence Estimate" said (Oct. 4, 2002): "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons... including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX...Most analysts assess Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.''

George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, said Iraq "possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." Asked about the evidence, spokesman Ari Fleischer said: "The president's description of the complete picture resulted from an interagency process in which every statement was vetted and approved by each agency."

George Bush, Jan. 7, 2003: "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent ... upward of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents...materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin."

Secretary of State Colin Powell at UN, Feb. 5, 2003: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent... My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

On March 17, Bush delivered his war ultimatum to Iraq and said: "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, March 18, said any suggestion that Iraq had already destroyed its weapons were "palpably absurd."

On March 30, in the first week of the war, Donald Rumsfeld said: "We know where [the WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." (Interpress Service, June 3, 2003)

The Facts Now Show:

Washington Post, June 7, 2003: "During the weeks last fall before critical votes in Congress and the United Nations on going to war in Iraq, senior administration officials, including President Bush, expressed certainty in public that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, even though U.S. intelligence agencies were reporting they had no direct evidence that such weapons existed."

In September 2002, as the war buildup campaign started, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) produced a report called "Iraq: Key Weapons Facilities--An Operational Support Study."

It said: "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has--or will--establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." (From summary page leaked to Bloomberg News, June 6, 2003.)

When U.S. officials claimed aluminum tubes were proof of Iraq's nuclear program, one Department of Energy expert said: "There is not much support for that theory around here." Another said: "The administration can say what it wants and we are expected to remain silent." (Guardian Oct. 9, 2002)

Vice President Cheney pressured the CIA to agree Iraq had WMD, while Rumsfeld created a special Pentagon unit to invent "links" between Iraq and al-Qaida.

Washington Post, June 6, 2003: "Multiple visits to the CIA by Vice-President Dick Cheney created an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments on Iraq fit with Bush administration policy objectives, intelligence officials said... The visits `sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here,' one agency official said."

NYT June 5, 2003: "Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, acknowledged that he created a small intelligence team inside his office shortly after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, to search for terrorist links with Iraq and other countries that he suggested the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked.... Among the team's most prominent findings were suspected linkages between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a conclusion doubted by the CIA and DIA."

Guardian, June 10, 2003: "The debunking of the Bush administration's pre- war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely."

Captured al-Qaida leaders, like Abu Zubaydah, all said they had no ties to Iraq's government. The Guardian reports: "While the CIA shared its interrogation record of Zubaydah with other intelligence agencies, it did not release its conclusions to the public."

The "National Intelligence Estimate" made public on Oct. 4, 2002, misrepresented the actual CIA conclusion. That "Estimate" said: " Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons." Washington Post now reports (June 7, 2003): "Throughout the run-up to war, according to senior intelligence officials, intelligence agencies had no direct evidence such as photographs or stolen Iraqi documents to support a firm conclusion about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

Retired CIA analysts calling themselves "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity" wrote in an open letter: "The preponderant view, then as now, among nuclear scientists and engineers of the Intelligence Community and the Department of Energy's national laboratories is that Iraq...had no nuclear program worthy of the name."

In Britain, it is reported that MI6 (the British CIA) opposed publishing the "September dossier" which claimed Iraq's military could "deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes." (Guardian, May 30, 2003)

What Others Were Saying at the Time

The evidence that the U.S. government was lying was available but rarely made it into the mainstream U.S. press before the war.

Guardian, Oct. 25: "Donald Rumsfeld, the hawkish American Defense Secretary, has assembled a team of experts to scour intelligence data for links between Iraq and al-Qaida... Officials in the intelligence establishment said the team was part of an effort by Mr. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, to force the facts to fit their version of reality, according to which Saddam Hussein is working closely with terrorists and poses a serious threat to the U.S."

Revolutionary Worker, Nov. 10, 2002: "An aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recalls that within hours after a plane crashed into the Pentagon, Rumsfeld told him to start preparing war with Iraq. No one in the world has seen any evidence that Iraq has links to al-Qaida or was involved in any way in the September 11 events--though that doesn't stop prominent figures in the U.S. government from repeatedly claiming they have some.... there is no evidence that Iraq has any fissionable material at all to make a bomb with.... The White House claims that the U.S. is vulnerable and Iraq is threatening--but it has a very hard time making the case. The facts are clearly the other way around."

Revolutionary Worker, after Powell's speech to the UN, Feb. 16, 2003: "To frighten people in the U.S., Powell has to paint a picture of Iraq threatening the American `homeland.' ...Iraq (unlike General Powell) does not have any means of bombing a country halfway around the world. So to create fear of `threat,' Powell must suggest that Iraq may give biological poisons to al-Qaida operatives to deliver in some U.S. city. The problem is that there is no evidence of such `links'... So Powell must invent evidence for the `missing links.' This speech was a smokescreen--not a `smoking gun'--it was designed to hide the real reasons and motive of this war. Nothing in Powell's disinformation was believable, and even if some of it were true, it would not justify the massive war crime about to pound down on Iraq's people...As the U.S. government ruthlessly prepares to start this war, people need to cut through this smoke, and expose the lies that portray this imperialist conquest as a way to make people safer."

Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, says he knew before the war that the U.S. claims were false (BBC News, May 24): "We went to a great many sites that were given to us by intelligence, and only in three cases did we find anything--and they did not relate to weapons of mass destruction. That shook me a bit, I must say...because we had been told that they would give the best intelligence they had, so I thought: `My God, if this is the best intelligence they had and we find nothing, what about the rest?' "

The Iraqi government itself insisted that it had no weapons of mass destruction. And this, apparently, continues to be claimed after the war by Iraqi scientists and officials who are interrogated by the U.S. invaders.

What the Facts Now Show:

Lieut. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, May 30, 2003: "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered [chemical and biological] weapons... Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwait border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there."

AP, June 9, 2003: "U.S. military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties... The slowdown comes after checks of more than 230 sites."

What the GovernmentsNow Claim

Method #1: Deny the Lies

Prime Minister Blair: "The idea that we authorized or made our intelligence agencies invent some piece of evidence is completely absurd." (Washington Post, May 31, 2003)

CIA Director George Tenet, May 30, 2002: "The integrity of our process was maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong.'' (AP, June 7, 2003)

Colin Powell on Fox news: "More evidence and more proof will come forward as we go down this road."

Dick Gephardt, Democratic candidate for president: "There is long, consistent, clear evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. And I'm still convinced that we are going to find them."

Method #2: Switch Terminology

George Bush, June 9, 2003: "Intelligence throughout the decade shows they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced that with time, we'll find out they did have a weapons program."(AP)

Suddenly Bush is not talking about finding weapons --but something very different "a weapons program ." A "weapons program" merely means that a government could potentially build a weapon--that they have experts, materials, and dual use facilities. There is a world of dishonesty between charging Iraq with having specific weapons and charging Iraq with having the potential to build some weapons (which almost any country with a modern chemical and pharmaceutical industry has).

The change in terminology is appearing elsewhere: On May 28, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that two trailers were discovered in the north of Iraq and declared, "It is very important to recognize that programs that we had said existed do exist; that the kind of equipment that we had said existed."

Method #3: Say it doesn't matter

On May 27, Donald Rumsfeld said that the Iraqi government "may have had time to destroy them" before the war. He said this casually as if the whole issue doesn't matter.

In Britain, Rumsfeld's remarks were a bombshell. Robin Cook, a leader of the House of Commons, said Rumsfeld had blown "an enormous gaping hole through the case for war that was made on both sides of the Atlantic."

In the U.S., Rummy's views were quickly parroted. International Herald Tribune, June 9, 2003: "The latest vogue in Washington is the proposition that it really doesn't matter whether Saddam Hussein maintained an arsenal of unconventional weapons in recent years."

Senator John McCain: "The American people support what the president did, whether we find those weapons or not." (NYT, June 4, 2003)

Senator Pete Domenici: "For those kind of experts to say that has changed the dynamics in the Middle East... seems to me to outweigh all the questions about did we have every bit of evidence that we say we had or not." (NYT, June 4, 2003)

In a Vanity Fair interview, Paul Wolfowitz said it was only "bureaucratic reasons" that led the U.S. government to talk about Iraq's arsenal, and said other reasons for war were important if not often discussed.

Method #4: Claim they already found them

George Bush came up with the slickest move of all--simply claim the WMD were already found.

In the end of May, he said: "You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two.... for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."

When two trailers were found, "experts" were rushed there, and under great pressured declared they were "mobile weapons labs." "Everyone has wanted to find the `smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion," one intelligence expert told the NYT .

The trailers had no signs of biological weaponry. The British Observer reported they were sold by Britain to Iraq's military in 1987 to produce hydrogen gas for weather balloons on artillery ranges. The New York Times (June 7, 2003) documented that Iraqi scientists all identified the trailers as hydrogen producers. A number of experts told the NYT the trailers could not possible produce germ weapons. "It is not built and designed as a standard fermenter," said one. "Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that's true of any tin can." They pointed out that the trailers lacked essential equipment for sterilizing, growing and drying bacteria, without which no weapons materials could have been produced.

In short, the talk of "mobile weapons lab" are just more lies.

The Liar Next Time

John Dean, the Nixon aide who did prison time for covering up Watergate lies, now says: "In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison...To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be `a high crime' under the Constitution's impeachment clause."

New York Times, June 8, 2003: "If such weapons are not found, some historians, politicians and others worry about what might happen if Mr. Bush or a successor tried to rally American or international backing for another war--say, with Iran or North Korea--using disputed evidence to buttress the case... What if, after a long and unsuccessful occupation, with American combat casualties taking a toll on the national psyche, the question `Why are we in Iraq?' becomes the modern equivalent of `Why are we in Vietnam?'

[Parts 1 and 2 of this series are available on rwor.org/resistance.]

*****







Revolutionary Worker, Nov. 10, 2002: "No one in the world has seen any evidence that Iraq has links to al-Qaida or was involved in any way in the September 11 events--though that doesn't stop prominent figures in the U.S. government from repeatedly claiming they have some.... The White House claims that the U.S. is vulnerable and Iraq is threatening--but it has a very hard time making the case. The facts are clearly the other way around."

*****

Revolutionary Worker after Powell's speech to the UN, (Feb. 16, 2003): "...Iraq (unlike General Powell) does not have any means of bombing a country halfway around the world. So to create fear of `threat,' Powell must suggest that Iraq may give biological poisons to al-Qaida operatives to deliver in some U.S. city. The problem is that there is no evidence of such `links'... So Powell must invent evidence for the `missing links.' This speech was a smokescreen--not a `smoking gun'--it was designed to hide the real reasons and motive of this war. Nothing in Powell's disinformation was believable... As the U.S. government ruthlessly prepares to start this war, people need to cut through this smoke, and expose the lies that portray this imperialist conquest as a way to make people safer."

Links to Previous Articles:

Part I

Part II

------------------------------------------------------------------------



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Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq

Christopher Scheer, AlterNet

June 27, 2003

Viewed on June 30, 2003

"The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons."

-- George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati.



There is a small somber box that appears in the New York Times every day. Titled simply "Killed in Iraq," it lists the names and military affiliations of those who most recently died on tour of duty. Wednesday's edition listed just one name: Orenthal J. Smith, age 21, of Allendale, South Carolina.



The young, late O.J. Smith was almost certainly named after the legendary running back, Orenthal J. Simpson, before that dashing American hero was charged for a double-murder. Now his namesake has died in far-off Mesopotamia in a noble mission to, as our president put it on March 19, "disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."



Today, more than three months after Bush's stirring declaration of war and nearly two months since he declared victory, no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons have been found, nor any documentation of their existence, nor any sign they were deployed in the field.



The mainstream press, after an astonishing two years of cowardice, is belatedly drawing attention to the unconscionable level of administrative deception. They seem surprised to find that when it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration isn't prone to the occasional lie of expediency but, in fact, almost never told the truth.



What follows are just the most outrageous and significant of the dozens of outright lies uttered by Bush and his top officials over the past year in what amounts to a systematic campaign to scare the bejeezus out of everybody:



LIE #1: "The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment need for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati.



FACT: This story, leaked to and breathlessly reported by Judith Miller in the New York Times, has turned out to be complete baloney. Department of Energy officials, who monitor nuclear plants, say the tubes could not be used for enriching uranium. One intelligence analyst, who was part of the tubes investigation, angrily told The New Republic: "You had senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice saying the only use of this aluminum really is uranium centrifuges. She said that on television. And that's just a lie."



LIE #2: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." -- President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.



FACT: This whopper was based on a document that the White House already knew to be a forgery thanks to the CIA. Sold to Italian intelligence by some hustler, the document carried the signature of an official who had been out of office for 10 years and referenced a constitution that was no longer in effect. The ex-ambassador who the CIA sent to check out the story is pissed: "They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie," he told the New Republic, anonymously. "They [the White House] were unpersuasive about aluminum tubes and added this to make their case more strongly."



LIE #3: "We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." -- Vice President Cheney on March 16, 2003 on "Meet the Press."



FACT: There was and is absolutely zero basis for this statement. CIA reports up through 2002 showed no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear weapons program.



LIE #4: "[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 and echoed in that evening's speech by President Bush.



FACT: Intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and al-Qaeda in the early '90s, but found no proof of a continuing relationship. In other words, by tweaking language, Tenet and Bush spun the intelligence180 degrees to say exactly the opposite of what it suggested.



LIE #5: "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.



FACT: No evidence of this has ever been leaked or produced. Colin Powell told the U.N. this alleged training took place in a camp in northern Iraq. To his great embarrassment, the area he indicated was later revealed to be outside Iraq's control and patrolled by Allied war planes.



LIE #6: "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.



FACT: Said drones can't fly more than 300 miles, and Iraq is 6,000 miles from the U.S. coastline. Furthermore, Iraq's drone-building program wasn't much more advanced than your average model plane enthusiast. And isn't a "manned aerial vehicle" just a scary way to say "plane"?



LIE #7: "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 and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established." -- President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.



FACT: Despite a massive nationwide search by U.S. and British forces, there are no signs, traces or examples of chemical weapons being deployed in the field, or anywhere else during the war.



LIE #8: "Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent. That is enough to fill 16,000 battlefield rockets." -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Feb. 5 2003, in remarks to the UN Security Council.



FACT: Putting aside the glaring fact that not one drop of this massive stockpile has been found, as previously reported on AlterNet our own intelligence reports show that these stocks -- if they existed -- were well past their use-by date and therefore useless as weapon fodder.



LIE #9: "We know where [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.



FACT: Needless to say, no such weapons were found, not to the east, west, south or north, somewhat or otherwise.



LIE #10: "Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited." -- President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.



FACT: This was reference to the discovery of two modified truck trailers that the CIA claimed were potential mobile biological weapons lab. But British and American experts -- including the State Department's intelligence wing in a report released this week -- have since declared this to be untrue. According to the British, and much to Prime Minister Tony Blair's embarrassment, the trailers are actually exactly what Iraq said they were; facilities to fill weather balloons, sold to them by the British themselves.



So, months after the war, we are once again where we started -- with plenty of rhetoric and absolutely no proof of this "grave danger" for which O.J. Smith died. The Bush administration is now scrambling to place the blame for its lies on faulty intelligence, when in fact the intelligence was fine; it was their abuse of it that was "faulty."



Rather than apologize for leading us to a preemptive war based on impossibly faulty or shamelessly distorted "intelligence" or offering his resignation, our sly madman in the White House is starting to sound more like that other O.J. Like the man who cheerfully played golf while promising to pursue "the real killers," Bush is now vowing to search for "the true extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, no matter how long it takes."



On the terrible day of the 9/11 attacks, five hours after a hijacked plane slammed into the Pentagon, retired Gen. Wesley Clark received a strange call from someone (he didn't name names) representing the White House position: "I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, 'You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein,'" Clark told Meet the Press anchor Tim Russert. "I said, 'But -- I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?' And I never got any evidence.'"



And neither did we.



Christopher Scheer is the managing editor of AlterNet.org. He can be reached at feedback@alternet.org



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How the United States should react if Iraq acquired WMD. "The first line of defense...should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence-if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration."

 

--Condoleeza Rice

US National Security Advisor

January/February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs

2/1/2000

 

We are greatly concerned about any possible linkup between terrorists and regimes that have or seek weapons of mass destruction...In the case of Saddam Hussein, we've got a dictator who is clearly pursuing and already possesses some of these weapons.. A regime that hates America and everything we stand for must never be permitted to threaten America with weapons of mass destruction.

 

--Dick Cheney

Vice President

Detroit, Fund-Raiser

6/20/2002

 

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

 

--Dick Cheney

Vice President

Speech to VFW National Convention

8/26/2002

 

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.

 

--George W. Bush

Speech to UN General Assembly

9/12/2002

 

Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have

 

--George W. Bush

Radio Address

10/5/2002

 

The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.

 

--George W. Bush

Cincinnati, Ohio Speech

10/7/2002

 

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide biological or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or to individual terrorists,...The war on terror will not be won until Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of mass destruction.

 

--Dick Cheney

Vice President

Denver, Address To Air National Guard

12/1/2002

 

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.

 

--Ari Fleischer

Press Secretary

Press Briefing

12/2/2002

 

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

 

--Ari Fleischer

Press Secretary

Press Briefing

1/9/2003

 

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

 

--George W. Bush

State of the Union Address

1/28/2003

 

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

 

--Colin Powell, Secretary of State

Remarks to UN Security Council

2/5/2003

 

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.

 

--George W. Bush

Radio Address

2/8/2003

 

In Iraq, a dictator is building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world -- and we will not allow it.

 

--George W. Bush

Speech to the American Enterprise Institute

2/26/2003

 

If Iraq had disarmed itself, gotten rid of its weapons of mass destruction over the past 12 years, or over the last several months since (UN Resolution) 1441 was enacted, we would not be facing the crisis that we now have before us . . . But the suggestion that we are doing this because we want to go to every country in the Middle East and rearrange all of its pieces is not correct.

 

--Colin Powell

Secretary of State

Interview with Radio France International

2/28/2003

 

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? . . . I think our judgment has to be clearly not.

 

--Colin Powell

Secretary of State

Remarks to UN Security Council

3/7/2003

 

Let's talk about the nuclear proposition for a minute. We know that based on intelligence, that [Saddam] has been very, very good at hiding these kinds of efforts. He's had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.

 

--Dick Cheney

Vice President

Meet The Press

3/16/2003

 

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

 

--George W. Bush

Address to the Nation

3/17/2003

 

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.

 

--Ari Fleischer

Press Secretary

Press Briefing

3/21/2003

 

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.

 

--General Tommy Franks

Commander in Chief Central Command

Press Conference

3/22/2003

 

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.

 

--Victoria Clark

Pentagon Spokeswoman

Press Briefing

3/22/2003

 

I have no doubt we're going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction. Kenneth Adelman, Defense Policy Board member

 

--Washington Post, p. A27

3/23/2003

 

We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

 

--Donald Rumsfeld

Secretary of Defense

ABC Interview

3/30/2003

 

Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find -- and there will be plenty.

 

--Robert Kagan

Neocon scholar

Washington Post op-ed

4/9/2003

 

I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found.

 

--Ari Fleischer

Press Secretary

Press Briefing

4/10/2003

 

But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.

 

--Ari Fleischer

Press Secretary

Press Briefing

4/10/2003

 

Were not going to find anything until we find people who tell us where the things are. And we have that very high on our priority list, to find the people who know. And when we do, then well learn precisely where things were and what was done.

 

--Donald Rumsfeld

Secretary of Defense

Meet the Press

4/13/2003

 

I have absolute confidence that there are weapons of mass destruction inside this country. Whether we will turn out, at the end of the day, to find them in one of the 2,000 or 3,000 sites we already know about or whether contact with one of these officials who we may come in contact with will tell us, ``Oh, well, there's actually another site,'' and we'll find it there, I'm not sure.

 

--General Tommy Franks

Commander in Chief Central Command

Fox New

4/13/2003

 

We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.

 

--George W. Bush

NBC Interview

4/24/2003

 

There are people who in large measure have information that we need . . . so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.

 

--Donald Rumsfeld

Secretary of Defense

Press Briefing

4/25/2003

 

We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.

 

--George W. Bush

Remarks to Reporters

5/3/2003

 

I'm absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We're just getting it just now.

 

--Colin Powell

Secretary of State

Remarks to Reporters

5/4/2003

 

We never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.

 

--Donald Rumsfeld

Secretary of Defense

Fox News Interview

5/4/2003

 

I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.

 

--George W. Bush

Remarks to Reporters

5/6/2003

 

U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.

 

--Condoleeza Rice

US National Security Advisor

Reuters Interview

5/12/2003

 

I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.

 

--Maj. Gen. David Petraeus

Commander 101st Airborne

Press Briefing

5/13/2003

 

We said all along that we will never get to the bottom of the Iraqi WMD program simply by going and searching specific sites, that you'd have to be able to get people who know about the programs to talk to you.

 

--Paul Wolfowitz

Deputy Secretary of Defense

Interview with Australian Broadcasting

5/13/2003

 

Before the war, there's no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.

 

--Gen. Michael Hagee

Commandant of the Marine Corps

Interview with Reporters

5/21/2003

 

Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I'm confident that we're going to find weapons of mass destruction.

 

--Gen. Richard Myers

Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff

NBC Today Show interview

5/26/2003

 

They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.

 

--Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense

Remarks to Council on Foreign Relations

5/27/2003

 

For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.

 

--Paul Wolfowitz

Deputy Secretary of Defense

Vanity Fair interview

5/28/2003

 

But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong, we found them.

 

--George W. Bush

Interview with TVP Poland

5/30/2003

 

You remember when [Secretary of State] Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons ...They're illegal. They're against the United Nations resolutions, and we've so far discovered two...And we'll find more weapons as time goes on And we'll find more weapons as time goes on

 

--George W. Bush

Press Briefing

5/30/2003

 

It was a surprise to me then - it remains a surprise to me now - that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Believe me, it's not for lack of trying. We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. Lt. Gen.

 

--James Conway

1st Marine Expeditionary Force

Press Interview

5/30/2003

 

Do I think we're going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there's a lot of information out there.

 

--Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton

Defense Intelligence Agency

Press Conference

5/30/2003

 

This wasn't material I was making up, it came from the intelligence community

 

--Colin Powell

Secretary of State

--Press Briefing

6/2/2003

 

We know that some of them, especially the biological weapons, were being destroyed," Hastert said, adding that it would "take a little while to find weapons of mass destruction... and we're going to continue to do it.

 

--Dennis Hastert

House Speaker R-IL

--Press Briefing

6/4/2003

 

We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents. This is the man who spent decades hiding tools of mass murder. He knew the inspectors were looking for them. You know better than me he's got a big country in which to hide them. We're on the look. We'll reveal the truth

 

--George W. Bush,

CAMP SAYLIYA, Qatar

6/5/2003

 

No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were, where they were stored

 

--Condoleeza Rice

US National Security Advisor

Meet the Press

6/8/2003

 

What the president has said is because it's been the long-standing view of numerous people, not only in this country, not only in this administration, but around the world, including at the United Nations, who came to those conclusions...And the president is not going to engage in the rewriting of history that others may be trying to engage in.

 

--Ari Fleischer

Press Secretary

6/9/2003

 

Iraq had a weapons program...Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out they did have a weapons program.

 

--George W. Bush

Comment to Reporters

6/9/2003

 

Research by Billmon @ Whiskey Bar

 

Quotes On Democracy In Iraq 

If you have a verifiable quote you would like to add to this list please submit to michaelw@lunaville.org

buit by msw

 

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