Bush Lied 260 Times About Iraq War: Report
United States President George Bush and his top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the threat posed by Iraq in the two years following the 9/11 terror attack, according to a study by the Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit journalism organisation.The study counted 935 false statements made by eight top Bush administration officials in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues which, "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq."
Officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaeda or both, according to the study titled "Iraq- The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War".
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaeda," according to Centre founder Charles Lewis.
The false statements included in the analysis were made by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleisher and Scott McClellan, the Center said in a statement.
Bush, with 260 false statements, led the scorecard, followed by Powell with 254.
"These false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, just prior to the Congressional consideration of a war resolution and during the critical weeks in early 2003 when the president delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his memorable presentation to the United Nations Security Council," it said. (Rediff)
Image - Source
Labels: World .
posted by The Malaysian. at 1/24/2008 01:05:00 PM
1 Comments:
iraq had no WMD? “Dave Gaubatz, however, says that you could not be more wrong,” Britain’s Spectator magazine reported.
Saddam’s wmd did exist. He should know, because he found the sites where he is certain they were stored. And the reason you don’t know about this is that the American administration failed to act on his information, ‘lost’ his classified reports and is now doing everything it can to prevent disclosure of the terrible fact that, through its own incompetence, it allowed Saddam’s wmd to end up in the hands of the very terrorist states against whom it is so controversially at war.
Before you dismiss this bold assertion out of hand, consider from where it comes. Dave Gaubatz is a counterterrorism specialist and Arabic linguist, having served as an agent in the U.S. Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations for 12 years and worked on assignments in several Middle Eastern countries. In 2003, he was specially selected for a position in Iraq. His assignment was to track down suspected wmd sites, in addition to pinpointing threats to U.S. forces in the area and hunting down Saddam loyalists. “Mr. Gaubatz is not some marginal figure,” writes the Spectator. “He’s pretty well as near to the horse’s mouth as you can get.”
In 2003, Gaubatz found four sites in southern Iraq that he is convinced contained stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in addition to material for a nuclear program and missiles prohibited by the United Nations. Independently gained and agreeing testimony from numerous Iraqi sources was substantiated by what Gaubatz found on the ground. The four sites were massive, and great care had been taken to conceal them: Three were bunkers built underneath the Euphrates river bed, with reinforced concrete walls 5 feet thick. “There was no doubt, with so much effort having gone into hiding these constructions, that something very important was buried there,” said Gaubatz.
Iraqi informants “explained in detail why wmds were in these areas and asked the U.S. to remove them,” said Gaubatz. “Much of this material had been buried in the concrete bunkers and in the sewage pipe system. There were also missile imprints in the area and signs of chemical activity—gas masks, decontamination kits, atropine needles. The Iraqis and my team had no doubt at all that wmds were hidden there.”
Further supporting the claims, the medical records of Gaubatz and his team revealed that they had been exposed to high levels of radiation at these sites.
When Gaubatz reported his findings to the Iraq Study Group, he was told it lacked the necessary manpower and equipment to break into and examine the underground sites.
Others, however, appearing to place a higher value on what was contained in these bunkers, apparently did not lack the needed manpower and equipment. Gaubatz subsequently found out from Iraqi, cia and British intelligence that the wmd had been excavated by Iraqis and Syrians, with Russia’s help, and transferred to Syria. “The worst-case scenario has now come about,” writes the Spectator. “Saddam’s nuclear, biological and chemical material is in the hands of a rogue terrorist state—and one with close links to Iran.”
Attempts since then by Mr. Gaubatz and several other concerned parties, including two congressmen, for the claims to be investigated have been stonewalled, with the Defense Department and cia refusing to provide information. What’s more, all 60 of Gaubatz’s classified intelligence reports, submitted in 2003, reportedly went missing.
The Spectator states why the issue is such a political hot potato:
The Republicans won’t touch this because it would reveal the incompetence of the Bush administration in failing to neutralize the danger of Iraqi wmd. The Democrats won’t touch it because it would show President Bush was right to invade Iraq in the first place. It is an axis of embarrassment
Intelligence and terrorism expert John Loftus goes further, reports the Spectator: “Saddam’s nuclear research, scientists and equipment, he says, have all been relocated to Syria, where U.S. satellite intelligence confirms that uranium centrifuges are now operating—in a country which is not supposed to have any nuclear program. There is now a nuclear axis, he says, between Iran, Syria and North Korea ….”
Loftus asserts: “With a little technical advice from Beijing, Syria is now enriching the uranium, Iran is making the missiles, North Korea is testing the warheads, and the White House is hiding its head in the sand.”
[W]here is most of the media focusing? It would seem that they are focusing on finding stockpiles of wmd only in Iraq. … That is a dangerously shallow view. And surely many in the media know this.
Are some in the media withholding this Jordanian story so that their political candidate can win the U.S. election? Are they sacrificing the country’s welfare on the altar of politics? …
The media has been screaming about no wmd ever since Saddam Hussein was toppled. Now we find 20 tons and they go shamefully, shamefully quiet! How can we even describe such a disgusting failure to seek the truth (which is supposedly why they exist)? Has most of the media totally lost sight of the bigger issues—the life-and-death issues of nations.
The media do not want to know Gaubatz’s story, with his claims largely remaining unreported. Last year, for example, the New York Times simply wrote off his assertions as coming from a wmd fanatic.
The political correct media with its coterie of lickspittles, lily livered ostriches will spell DOOM for the whole world . That's what they did before WWII, and that's what they do now on the threshold of WWIII.
Post a Comment
<< Home