Lies

In the comments, in reference to You Do Not Own Their Courage, it was stated:

We never claimed to own it...but too many on the other side doubted it existed, and those of us who said it did have difficulty not saying, "I told you so."

But Bush never said we should invade Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. We never heard great speeches on freedom, democracy and giving the people in Iraq the chance to vote. What we were told was Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, that we knew he was working on nuclear weapons, that he was giving these weapons to the terrorists, that if we didn't strike immediately we might see a mushroom cloud on American soil. Heck, and before that we were told the vote to authorize war was a vote to get weapon inspectors back in Iraq so we might be able to avoid war.

If this war was all about freeing some people on the other side of the world from a dictator and giving those people a chance to vote, great. Then why Iraq? Why not, say, the continent of Africa? Or one of dozens of other dictatorships around the world. Hell, why not Cuba? That would be popular in Florida. Don't tell us you "told us so", you said no such thing. This is rewriting history. In case any one forgets, real history shows there were no weapons of mass destruction and no Al Qaeda links.

I'd be interested to see the evidence of "lying", aside from statements proved wrong later. Lying involves an intent to deceive and a knowledge that the statement is not true. If I change my mind and become an evolutionist, was I lying when I said evolution isn't true? Or was I just making the best call based upon the info I had?

There's actually a fun little site where you can search a database for conservative lies. (I'm sure there's one for liberal lies out there somewhere, but I didn't look for one.) Select the person and the topic and out pops a bunch of lies and the conflicting truth, almost always with links to the transcripts and news stories.

I'll post a few quotes at the end, but really, the details hardly matter. We all know we can cherry pick quotes from politicians, compare those quotes to some news source and make them look like liars. I bet most of us realize virtually all of them lie from time to time, or at least stretch the truth as they see convenient. I'm an extremely honest person, but sometimes I'll read something I wrote and notice it implies something I really didn't mean to imply. So while these quotes are good examples of lying, they really don't tell the big picture and why I think "lie" is the correct word to use about the lead-up to war.

Even the staunchest hawk must realize the Bush administration was in full sales mode before the war. They went to great lengths and great depths to justify the upcoming war to congress and the American people while at the same time claiming that war wasn't inevitable and could still be avoided. Every shred of evidence, no matter how unsupported, no matter how many in the intelligence community thought it meaningless, was waved in front of us as proof of the need for war. Now, you may think such a full court press was necessary and justified, but please don't call it honest, and you may think those that spun all this information were doing it with the best of intentions, but please don't think they were looking for a fair debate of all the available data. They spun absolutely everything to sell this unpopular war -- and it was unpopular until the day we fired the first shot and everyone rallied around the troops -- and honesty was not their biggest concern. When it suit them, they lied.

And the gutless Democrats rolled over. And the so called "liberal media" ate it up. This was before Air America and before I knew about blogs. Back then I could only find two voices in all of TV Land, two talking heads that actually questioned the president: Jon Stewart and Wesley Clark. Everyone else, everyone just played along unquestioningly.

Anyway, here are some quotes of what I would call lies. Perhaps some people have a loser definition of honesty than I have, but I call them lies:

Topic:  Weapons of Mass Destruction

Speaker:  Rice, Condoleezza - National Security Advisor

Date:  9/10/2002

Quote/Claim:
“We do know that [Saddam] is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon.” [Source: Telegraph]

Fact:
“We have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.” - Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, 10/2/03

Reference  Reference  

Topic:  Weapons of Mass Destruction

Speaker:  Rice, Condoleezza - National Security Advisor

Date:  9/8/2002

Quote/Claim:
"[The tubes] are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." [Source: CNN]

Fact:
"Ms. Rice's staff had been told [in 2001] that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously doubted that the tubes were for nuclear weapons…The experts, at the Energy Department, believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets." - New York Times, 10/3/04

Reference  Reference  

Topic:  Weapons of Mass Destruction

Speaker:  Bush, George - President

Date:  10/7/2002

Quote/Claim:
"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical and biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States." [Source: White House Web site]

Fact:
According to The Washington Post, Robert Boyd, the U.S. Air Force's senior intelligence analyst, has concluded that evidence uncovered in Iraq confirms the Air Force's prewar assessment that Iraq had been developing unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) to fly reconnaissance missions, not to deliver WMDs. - Washington Post, 9/27/03

Reference  Reference  Reference

Topic:  Iraq - Pre-Invasion

Speaker:  Bush, George - President

Date:  10/22/2003

Quote/Claim:
"I made it clear that a [diplomatic] process had gone on way before I made the decision to use military force.” [Source: White House Web site]

Fact:
According to Bush’s State Department Director of Policy and Planning Richard Haas, the decision to go to war had been made by July of 2002 – 8 months before the invasion.  When asked whether there was a particular moment when he realized war in Iraq was definite, Haas said, “The moment was the first week of July (2002), when I had a meeting with Condi…She said, essentially, that that decision's been made, don't waste your breath.” - New Yorker, 3/31/03

Time reported in May (2002) that in late March of 2002 Vice President Dick Cheney told Senators “The question was no longer if the U.S. would attack Iraq...The only question was when." - Time, 5/6/02
Reference  Reference  

Topic:  Iraq - Pre-Invasion

Speaker:  Rice, Condoleezza - National Security Advisor

Date:  4/18/2004

Quote/Claim:
"Resources were not taken from Afghanistan" [Source: CBS Face the Nation transcript]

Fact:
"In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures.
The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan. When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered." - USA Today, 3/28/04

Reference  Reference  

Topic:  Iraq - Al Qaeda Links

Speaker:  Rice, Condoleezza - National Security Advisor

Date:  9/7/2003

Quote/Claim:
"And there was an Ansar al-Islam, which appears also to try to be operating in Iraq. So yes, the al Qaeda link was there." [Source: Fox News Sunday transcript]

Fact:
Ansar al-Islam was based in the Kurdish area of Iraq beyond Saddam Hussein's control. - Waxman Report

Reference   Reference  

That previous one is among my 'favorite' ever. Ansar al-Islam was in a the northern no-fly zone, quasi under U.S. control. Much of the link to Al Qaeda was due to Abu Musab Zarqawi. Bush had the opportunity to take out Zarqawi, but choose not to do so. In a very real way, there is a stronger case to be made for an American/Al Qaeda relationship than any with Iraq. (Not really, of course, but it gives you an idea of how sketchy the information was, yet it was promoted as solid fact.)

Topic:  Iraq - Al Qaeda Links

Speaker:  Cheney, Dick - Vice President

Date:  10/9/2003

Quote/Claim:
"[Hussein] also had an established relationship to al Qaeda, providing training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases and making conventional bombs." [Source: Boston Globe]

Fact:
"The chairman of the monitoring group appointed by the United Nations Security Council to track Al Qaeda told reporters that his team had found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein.” - NY Times, 6/27/03

"Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Saddam's links with al-Qaida, and several key parts of the administration's case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful. Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Saddam's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league." - Knight-Ridder, 3/02/04

Reference  

And for good measure, something slightly more recent...

Topic:  Iraq - Al Qaeda Links

Speaker:  Cheney, Dick - Vice President

Date:  10/5/2004

Quote/Claim:
"The senator's got his fact wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11." [Source: Debate transcript]

Fact:
"I think it's not surprising that people make that connection [between Saddam and 9/11]." - Vice President Cheney, 9/14/03

"[It's] been pretty well confirmed, that he [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack." - Vice President Cheney, 12/9/01

"Now [in Iraq] we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11." Vice President Cheney, 9/14/03
Reference  Reference  Reference