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Bush Misled America about the Threat from Iraq

See also this analysis of the fraud by retired federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega.

Why did we invade Iraq? Was it because, as the White House claimed, Saddam Hussein was an immediate and serious threat to America. Or did Bush mislead the public, the Congress and the UN by consistently overstating this threat.

Bush claims he was forced to to invade Iraq as a last resort. But Bush wanted to invade Iraq from the very beginning of his presidency. Many of his team came from the PNAC, a thinktank which urged the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and pointed out the need for a "new Pearl Harbor". “From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Ron Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

This is not a situation where Bush said ten things and one of them was wrong. Basically everything Bush said about the threat from Iraq was false. He had no solid evidence of any threat but still led us into this deadly and costly war. Here are the main lies about the threat from Iraq given by Bush and Cheney:

• Lie #1 - Uranium from Niger - Bush said "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." in his State of the Union Address. The documents supporting that statement were forged.
• Lie #2 - Iraq and 9/11 - Bush led people to believe that Iraq was involved with 9/11 by repeatedly linking them in his speeches. This was so effective that at one point 70% of Americans actually believed Saddam was behind 9/11. Bush has since admitted that this was not true.
• Lie #3 - Congress Knew - Bush has stated that Congress had access to all the same information that the White House had. Thus he should not be blamed for making the mistake of going to war. But Bush was briefed many times about the falsehood of various stories and this information never reached Congress. [ZNet]
• Lie #4 - Aluminum Tubes - Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell said that some aluminum tubes Iraq attempted to buy were intended for use in a uranium centrifuge to create nuclear weapons. These were the only physical evidence he had against Iraq. But it turns out this evidence had been rejected by the Department of Energy and other intelligence agencies long before Bush used them in his speeches. [NYTimes] [MotherJones] [CNN]
• Lie #5 - Iraq and Al Qaeda - Bush still insists that there was a "relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But the 9/11 Commission released a report saying, among other things, that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The nature of the relationship seems to be that Al Qaeda asked for help and Iraq refused. Al Qaeda was opposed to Saddam Hussein because Saddam led a secular government instead of an Islamic government. [ZNet] [CNN] On 9/8/06 a Senate panel reported there was no relationship. [ABC]
• Lie #6 - Weapons of Mass Destruction - Bush insisted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but his "evidence" consisted mostly of forged documents, plagiarized student papers, and vague satellite photos. The United Nations was on the ground in Iraq and could find nothing. After extensive searches Bush was finally forced to admit that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
• Lie #7 - Mobile Weapons Labs - Bush and his team repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed mobile weapons labs capable of producing anthrax. Colin Powell showed diagrams of them at his speech before the UN to justify invading Iraq. These claims originated from Curveball, a discredited Iraqi informer who fed Bush many of the stories related to WMD. On May 29, 2003, two small trailers matching the description were found in Iraq. A team of bio-weapons experts examined the trailers and concluded they were simply designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. But, for over a year, Bush claimed these were part of Iraq's bio-weapons program. The expert's report was suppressed and only recently made public. [WashPost] [ABC]

Bush wanted so much to convince people of the need to invade Iraq that the White House set up a secret team in the Pentagon to create evidence. The Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as "likely," "probably" and "may" as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat. They also used unreliable sources to create reports that ultimately proved to be false. [Mother Jones] [New Yorker] [Wikipedia]

By lying to Congress, Bush violated US Laws related to Fraud and False Statements, Title 18, Chapter 47, Section 1001 and Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Title 18, Chapter 19, Section 371.

Resources

• "Inquiry into the Decision to Invade Iraq" by the Cooperative History Research Commons (Excellent!)
• Chronology of Illegal War on impeachforpeace.org
• "Timeline for Iraq War" on Mother Jones
• Timeline of Iraq Lies by Jodin Morey
• Senate Intelligence Committee Reports from September 8, 2006
  • "Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare to Prewar Assessments" (PDF 6.9 MB)
  • "The Use by the Intelligence COmmunity of Intelligence Provided by the Iraqi National Congress" (PDF 9.3 MB)
  • "Key Judgments" from Rockefeller website
  • CBS News Report
• "IraqOnTheRecord" - database of 237 lies by administration officials about Iraq, compiled by Congressman Henry Waxman. http://democrats.reform.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord
• 'CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES: Misrepresenting the Truth in Order to Sell a War is A “High Crime”' by Elizabeth de la Vega
• "Ex-CIA official: Bush administration misused Iraq intelligence", statements by Paul R. Pillar, CNN, 2/10/06
• "Bush and Iraq: Mass Media, Mass Ignorance" by Jeff Cohen
• List of Lies and News Links from BuzzFlash
• "Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel" 11/23/05, by Murray Waas
• Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States - Title 18, Chapter 19, Section 371
• Fraud and False Statements - Title 18, Chapter 47, Section 1001
• Disarm Saddam Hussein, the White House's own summary of lies about Iraq.
• "U.S. 'Almost All Wrong' on Weapons Report on Iraq Contradicts Bush Administration Claims" By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers, 10/7/04

 

         

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