On Tuesday, the White House finally came clean and admitted what everybody else already knew: George W. Dumbass lied about Iraq's alleged attempt to purchase uranium from the African nation of guy in order to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. Here's what the White House statement said about Bush's inclusion of this lie in his 2003 State of the Union message:
Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech.
The problem with this statement is that the White House did know then all that they know now. In February of 2002, almost a full year before the 2003 State of the Union message, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson went to guy to investigate the alleged uranium purchase attempt. This was done at the request of the CIA, which was to report Wilson's findings directly to the office of the Vice President. After more than a week in guy, Wilson concluded the following:
It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Wilson subsequently reported his findings to the CIA and the State Department. Despite this, Bush repeated the discredited charge in the 2003 State of the Union Address.
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
And when commenting on Bush's inclusion of this charge in his State of the Union message, Wilson said this:
If the president had been referring to guy, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them.
Remember, folks, this is a former ambassador speaking. Diplomats do not have the phrase "Goddamned Liar" in their vocabularies. But I do.
Now we hear that CIA Director, George Tenet, has decided to fall on the sword for Bush:
First, CIA approved the president's State of the Union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound.
Good ol' George Tenet. At least somebody connected with this speech is man enough to take the blame. The basic problem here is the following: Tenet didn't write the speech. Tenet is taking the blame only for the approval process. So which one of Bush's people put this lie in the speech in the first place? And why isn't that guy/gal's head on a post in front of the White House as a warning to others who might want to use propaganda to start a war?
But the misstatements don't stop at a single one. The very next line in the State of the Union Message was as follows:
Our intelligence sources tell us that (Hussein) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.
Really, George? In a paper released by the Institute for Science and International Security three months before the State of the Union Message, this conclusion was drawn:
Based on the available information, the intercepted aluminum tubing could have been intended for use in a centrifuge. It is far harder to confirm the Administration's view that the tubes were specifically intended for use in a centrifuge. The earlier shipment does not appear to be specific to centrifuges, as initially claimed by the Administration. The more recent shipment is hard to assess with the available information, but even the detection of efforts to make an outer casing of a centrifuge provides limited insight into Iraq's gas centrifuge efforts.
By themselves, these attempted procurements are not evidence that Iraq is in possession of or close to possessing nuclear weapons. They also do not provide evidence that Iraq has an operating centrifuge plant or when such a plant could be operational.
Next, we have this line from the speech:
Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.
And in today's Washington Times, we learn that two former Bush administration intelligence officials and a United Nations terrorism committee agree that this is a lie. In the article, former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann had this to say:
There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist operation.
So, who's fault is it that the aluminum tubing and Al Qaeda lines appeared in the speech? Do we blame George Tenet again? Inserting these sorts of blatantly misleading statements into Bush's biggest speech of the year in order to deliberately trick the American public into supporting a war is lying on a scale that Bill Clinton never dreamed of. This is exactly the kind of tactic that Joseph Goebbels would have employed, had he been in charge of writing this speech.
Here's what I think happened: Republicans have learned in the last decade or so that lies are useful tools in the short term. The procedure works like this: Sling a lie into the news cycle or onto the Internet. Let it get repeated by Rush Limbaugh, the creeps at Faux News, and all of those weasels who sit in the cubicles around you at work, forwarding all of those anti-Clinton email messages. Then, by the time the truth does get out, America has moved on to some other story and a new email message. The Bush people, knowing that the Iraq story was very fluid and that America would soon be caught up in the thrill of watching the shooting on CNN, decided to toss this pile of manure onto the Capitol floor and hope that the war would provide sufficient distraction before it started to stink. Perhaps a quick and successful transition in Iraq from a brutal dictatorship to self-rule would be so compelling that nobody would care that the case for war was built on distortions, omissions, and outright lies.
Unfortunately for Bush, as Americans continued to die after he declared an end to hostilities (didn't word get out to the Iraqis?), the cost and scope of the American commitment began to spiral out of control, and not one single weapon of mass destruction turned up, that speech started to smell funny after all. People were beginning to wonder if there was really a need for tens of thousands of human beings to die in the cause of ousting Saddam Hussein. Knowing that the story wasn't going away, George W. Bush summoned all of his courage and pointed the finger at somebody else. It's the CIA's fault! We peppered our case for war with questionable and inaccurate intelligence and nobody at the CIA stopped us!
Does this scenario sound familiar? Bush always said he would run the government like a business. Unfortunately, the business he chose to emulate was Enron. Who can forget the top brass at that doomed corporation laying the blame for the shady bookkeeping at the feet of Enron's accounting firm, Arthur Anderson? After all, the accountants approved everything on the books, right? Never mind that the accountants serve at the pleasure of the corporations that employ them. Never mind that while the accountants are ultimately responsible for overseeing the books, refusing to play ball with unscrupulous corporations would likely cost them those accounts. Such is the relationship between George W. Bush and the CIA. It is also why Bush is continuing to express full support in the CIA and Tenet. Let's face it. If Bush really was mislead by the CIA in a matter that led us to war, he would be furious. His continued praise shows that the CIA was doing what the Bush administration expected of it by allowing this crap to remain in the speech.
One of the problems with starting an unnecessary war is that it may well interfere with a necessary war. Listen closely. That distant humming sound you hear emanates from a nuclear reprocessing plant in North Korea. Whereas the case for war with Iraq was a monumental sham, the case for some sort of intervention in North Korea is undisputed. North Korea admits to having an illegal nuclear weapons program. It publicly threatens the United States on a regular basis. It is considered an enormous threat by its neighbors. Intervention is an absolute necessity here. While the preferred tactic in this case is non-military, the threat of the use of force is a very useful tool. Thanks to George W. Bush's massive waste of military power and tax dollars in Iraq, the North Koreans know they have little to fear from the United States. So North Korea's nuclear weapons program continues while Bush hits the campaign trail and pretends that he has the threats to America contained. And hit the campaign trail, he must. While a successful president could beat a challenger with very little money, it's going to take every penny of the his expected $200 million war chest to convince America that Bush's presidency has been something other than a total failure.
