Ten Appalling Lies We Were Told About Iraq -By
Christopher Scheer Written on June 27, 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.
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.
[Editor's note: Last week the official "hunt" was canceled and a
formal declaration that there were no WMDs in Iraq was issued.]
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 needed 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
intelligence 180 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 the United States' 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". 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 O.J.
Simpson, 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.
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