Bush the Misleader

He's still misleading. Speaking at the United Nations on September 23, George W. Bush defended his invasion of Iraq by noting that Saddam Hussein's regime had "cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction" and that Iraq had "used those weapons." Slippery statements. Bush pushed the country to war by claiming that Saddam had unconventional weapons and could hand them at any moment to Al Qaeda, with whom he was "dealing." Now Bush offers a more generalized description of the threat Saddam posed to the United States. As for his "use" of WMDs, that horrendous act occurred in the 1980s, and it never prevented Reagan and Bush I from cozying up to him. Bush also claimed he invaded Iraq "to defend...the credibility of the United Nations," falsely suggesting that the UN at that time did not plan to deal with Iraq's violation of its resolutions. And Bush praised Iraq's new leaders for "showing the openness and tolerance that democracy requires"--without mentioning that the Iraqi Governing Council (handpicked by the United States) was in the process of banning Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya from council news conferences and government ministries on the grounds that the two satellite networks had engaged in "irresponsible activities."

Stuck in Iraq, Bush and his crew are holding tight to the untruths that greased their way to war and are concocting new ones--even as they contradict one another. Appearing on Meet the Press, Vice President Cheney was asked about any connection between Saddam and the 9/11 attacks. "Of course," he replied, "we've had the story...[that] the Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official." Czech President Vaclav Havel notified Washington a year ago that there was no evidence to confirm that. Days later, Bush undermined his Veep, telling reporters, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th." But Bush insisted Cheney was right to state that Saddam had been involved with Al Qaeda, and he pointed to the presence in Iraq (at some point) of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, calling him "an Al Qaeda operative," despite the fact that US intelligence analysts have said Zarqawi operates outside Al Qaeda control.

At a recent luncheon Donald Rumsfeld said that before the war UN inspectors had "concluded that the inspection process really wasn't working because of lack of cooperation on the part of Saddam Hussein's regime." Not at all. The inspectors had issued mixed progress reports but wanted to continue the process. On Nightline, Condoleezza Rice said that before the war "we were talking about large stockpiles of unaccounted-for [unconventional] weapons. Large stockpiles cited by the United Nations." But the UN had not cited stockpiles. Its inspectors had maintained that they had destroyed much of Iraq's WMDs but had found discrepancies in the accounting of weapons and WMD material. The inspectors did not conclude that this meant there were large weapons stockpiles.

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