Kevin G wrote - The last couple weeks have shown that there’s no basis for the accusations that Bush lied about WMD. He used the best information available and went with it. Is it his fault that the information appears to have been off the mark?
Ok Kevin - here are some links for you to discover (they come from the Center for American Progress...hate the message, not the messenger). These go to the root of the argument that Bush lied, deceived, and manipulated the information and intelligence he had to make his case for war. It must suck to be so beholden to a political party that you can look the other way on this.
Dan
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President Bush "edged closer Thursday to admitting that some of his prewar allegations about Saddam Hussein may have been mistaken," though he once again failed to take any responsibility for misleading the country into war. He "lashed out at critics" and said, "Knowing what I knew then, and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq." The President implied what the White House was told before the war about WMD and what has been found since is substantially different – when the facts show that this is not the case. A chronological comparison of what the President said and what the White House knew demonstrates he was overstating the WMD threat of Iraq.
CHEMICAL WEAPONS: On a November 2002 campaign swing, the President was so focused on playing up the "threat" of Iraq that he repeatedly claimed Iraq "has chemical weapons," (Bush on 11/1/02: "he's got chemical weapons"; Bush on 11/3/02: "he has got chemical weapons", etc.) But the President was making this definitive claim two months AFTER the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that there was "no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons." The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions."
NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PART I: President Bush told the nation in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address that "Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." He said this almost three months AFTER the White House received an intelligence report that clearly indicated Department of Energy experts concluded the tubes were not intended to produce uranium enrichment centrifuges.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PART II: President Bush also told the nation in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." When this assertion was later proved to be false, the Adminstration claimed that it was innocently passing on information received from the British. But the White House was specifically warned BEFORE his speech not to use this information – and ignored the warnings. As the WP reported, "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa."
BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, PART I: On 10/7/02 – just three days before Congress was set to vote on the Iraq war resolution – President Bush said "Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas." On February 6th, 2003 – one day after Secretary of State Colin Powell's U.N. speech – the President expanded this claim saying, "Iraq has developed spray devices that could be used on unmanned aerial vehicles. A UAV launched from a vessel off the American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland." Secretary of State Colin Powell showed a video to the U.N. Security Council depicting a plane spraying biological weapons. They made these assertions months AFTER the U.S. Air Force specifically warned them that their claims were false. As the WP reported, "The government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons" in an October 2002 intelligence report given to the White House.
BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS, PART II: President Bush told the nation in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address, "From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs." But according to Knight-Ridder, "the charge that Iraq had mobile biological-warfare research laboratories came solely from [one] defector" and "intelligence officials warned in May 2002 that some of the information might be unreliable or fabricated." Specifically, "the Defense Intelligence Agency, which debriefed the [key] defector, flagged the information he provided as questionable in 2002."
