Frank Rich: Bush, Cheney Cover-up is Failing

Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel
Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel
By Murray Waas, special to National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2005

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The administration has refused to provide the Sept. 21 President's Daily Brief, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

The September 21, 2001, briefing was prepared at the request of the president, who was eager in the days following the terrorist attacks to learn all that he could about any possible connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Much of the contents of the September 21 PDB were later incorporated, albeit in a slightly different form, into a lengthier CIA analysis examining not only Al Qaeda's contacts with Iraq, but also Iraq's support for international terrorism. Although the CIA found scant evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the agency reported that it had long since established that Iraq had previously supported the notorious Abu Nidal terrorist organization, and had provided tens of millions of dollars and logistical support to Palestinian groups, including payments to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

The highly classified CIA assessment was distributed to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, the president's national security adviser and deputy national security adviser, the secretaries and undersecretaries of State and Defense, and various other senior Bush administration policy makers, according to government records.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee's ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.

Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won't say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.

On November 18, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said he planned to attach an amendment to the fiscal 2006 intelligence authorization bill that would require the Bush administration to give the Senate and House intelligence committees copies of PDBs for a three-year period. After Democrats and Republicans were unable to agree on language for the amendment, Kennedy said he would delay final action on the matter until Congress returns in December.

The conclusions drawn in the lengthier CIA assessment-which has also been denied to the committee-were strikingly similar to those provided to President Bush in the September 21 PDB, according to records and sources. In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"What the President was told on September 21," said one former high-level official, "was consistent with everything he has been told since-that the evidence was just not there."

In arguing their case for war with Iraq, the president and vice president said after the September 11 attacks that Al Qaeda and Iraq had significant ties, and they cited the possibility that Iraq might share chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons with Al Qaeda for a terrorist attack against the United States.

Democrats in Congress, as well as other critics of the Bush administration, charge that Bush and Cheney misrepresented and distorted intelligence information to bolster their case for war with Iraq. The president and vice president have insisted that they unknowingly relied on faulty and erroneous intelligence, provided mostly by the CIA.

The new information on the September 21 PDB and the subsequent CIA analysis bears on the question of what the CIA told the president and how the administration used that information as it made its case for war with Iraq.

The central rationale for going to war against Iraq, of course, was that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons, and that he was pursuing an aggressive program to build nuclear weapons. Despite those claims, no weapons were ever discovered after the war, either by United Nations inspectors or by U.S. military authorities.

Much of the blame for the incorrect information in statements made by the president and other senior administration officials regarding the weapons-of-mass-destruction issue has fallen on the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.

In April 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report that the CIA's prewar assertion that Saddam's regime was "reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" and "has chemical and biological weapons" were "overstated, or were not supported by the underlying intelligence provided to the Committee."

The Bush administration has cited that report and similar findings by a presidential commission as evidence of massive CIA intelligence failures in assessing Iraq's unconventional-weapons capability.

Bush and Cheney have also recently answered their critics by ascribing partisan motivations to them and saying their criticism has the effect of undermining the war effort. In a speech on November 11, the president made his strongest comments to date on the subject: "Baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will." Since then, he has adopted a different tone, and he said on his way home from Asia on November 21, "This is not an issue of who is a patriot or not."

In his own speech to the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, Cheney also changed tone, saying that "disagreement, argument, and debate are the essence of democracy" and the "sign of a healthy political system." He then added: "Any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false."

Although the Senate Intelligence Committee and the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, commonly known as the 9/11 commission, pointed to incorrect CIA assessments on the WMD issue, they both also said that, for the most part, the CIA and other agencies did indeed provide policy makers with accurate information regarding the lack of evidence of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

But a comparison of public statements by the president, the vice president, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld show that in the days just before a congressional vote authorizing war, they professed to have been given information from U.S. intelligence assessments showing evidence of an Iraq-Al Qaeda link.

"You can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror," President Bush said on September 25, 2002.

The next day, Rumsfeld said, "We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities."

The most explosive of allegations came from Cheney, who said that September 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta, the pilot of the first plane to crash into the World Trade Center, had met in Prague, in the Czech Republic, with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, five months before the attacks. On December 9, 2001, Cheney said on NBC's Meet the Press: "t's pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack."

Cheney continued to make the charge, even after he was briefed, according to government records and officials, that both the CIA and the FBI discounted the possibility of such a meeting.

Credit card and phone records appear to demonstrate that Atta was in Virginia Beach, Va., at the time of the alleged meeting, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials. Al-Ani, the Iraqi intelligence official with whom Atta was said to have met in Prague, was later taken into custody by U.S. authorities. He not only denied the report of the meeting with Atta, but said that he was not in Prague at the time of the supposed meeting, according to published reports.

In June 2004, the 9/11 commission concluded: "There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after bin Laden had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States."

Regarding the alleged meeting in Prague, the commission concluded: "We do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

Still, Cheney did not concede the point. "We have never been able to prove that there was a connection to 9/11," Cheney said after the commission announced it could not find significant links between Al Qaeda and Iraq. But the vice president again pointed out the existence of a Czech intelligence service report that Atta and the Iraqi agent had met in Prague. "That's never been proved. But it's never been disproved," Cheney said.

The following month, July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its review of the CIA's prewar intelligence: "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime's possible links to al-Qaeda."

One reason that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld made statements that contradicted what they were told in CIA briefings might have been that they were receiving information from another source that purported to have evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties. The information came from a covert intelligence unit set up shortly after the September 11 attacks by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith.

Feith was a protégé of, and intensely loyal to, Cheney, Rumsfeld, then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and Cheney's then-chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. The secretive unit was set up because Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby did not believe the CIA would be able to get to the bottom of the matter of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. The four men shared a long-standing distrust of the CIA from their earlier positions in government, and felt that the agency had failed massively by not predicting the September 11 attacks.

At first, the Feith-directed unit primarily consisted of two men, former journalist Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, a veteran of neoconservative think tanks. They liked to refer to themselves as the "Iraqi intelligence cell" of the Pentagon. And they took pride in the fact that their office was in an out-of-the-way cipher-locked room, with "charts that rung the room from one end to the other" showing the "interconnections of various terrorist groups" with one another and, most important, with Iraq, Maloof recalled in an interview.

They also had the heady experience of briefing Rumsfeld twice, and Feith more frequently, Maloof said. The vice president's office also showed great interest in their work. On at least three occasions, Maloof said, Samantha Ravich, then-national security adviser for terrorism to Cheney, visited their windowless offices for a briefing.

But neither Maloof nor Wurmser had any experience or formal training in intelligence analysis. Maloof later lost his security clearance, for allegedly failing to disclose a relationship with a woman who is a foreigner, and after allegations that he leaked classified information to the press. Maloof said in the interview that he has done nothing wrong and was simply being punished for his controversial theories. Wurmser has since been named as Cheney's Middle East adviser.

In January 2002, Maloof and Wurmser were succeeded at the intelligence unit by two Naval Reserve officers. Intelligence analysis from the covert unit later served as the basis for many of the erroneous public statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others regarding the alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to former and current government officials. Intense debates still rage among longtime intelligence and foreign policy professionals as to whether those who cited the information believed it, or used it as propaganda. The unit has since been disbanded.

Earlier this month, on November 14, the Pentagon's inspector general announced an investigation into whether Feith and others associated with the covert intelligence unit engaged in "unauthorized, unlawful, or inappropriate intelligence activities." In a statement, Feith said he is "confident" that investigators will conclude that his "office worked properly and in fact improved the intelligence product by asking good questions."

The Senate Intelligence Committee has also been conducting its own probe of the Pentagon unit. But as was first disclosed by The American Prospect in an article by reporter Laura Rozen, that probe had been hampered by a lack of cooperation from Feith and the Pentagon.

Internal Pentagon records show not only that the small Pentagon unit had the ear of the highest officials in the government, but also that Rumsfeld and others considered the unit as a virtual alternative to intelligence analyses provided by the CIA.

On July 22, 2002, as the run-up to war with Iraq was underway, one of the Naval Reserve officers detailed to the unit sent Feith an e-mail saying that he had just heard that then-Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz wanted "the Iraqi intelligence cell … to prepare an intel briefing on Iraq and links to al-Qaida for the SecDef" and that he was not to tell anyone about it.

After that briefing was delivered, Wolfowitz sent Feith and other officials a note saying: "This was an excellent briefing. The Secretary was very impressed. He asked us to think about possible next steps to see if we can illuminate the differences between us and CIA. The goal was not to produce a consensus product, but rather to scrub one another's arguments."

On September 16, 2002, two days before the CIA produced a major assessment of Iraq's ties to terrorism, the Naval Reserve officers conducted a briefing for Libby and Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser to President Bush.

In a memorandum to Wolfowitz, Feith wrote: "The briefing went very well and generated further interest from Mr. Hadley and Mr. Libby." Both men, the memo went on, requested follow-up material, most notably a "chronology of Atta's travels," a reference to the discredited allegation of an Atta-Iraqi meeting in Prague.

In their presentation, the naval reserve briefers excluded the fact that the FBI and CIA had developed evidence that the alleged meeting had never taken place, and that even the Czechs had disavowed it.

The Pentagon unit also routinely second-guessed the CIA's highly classified assessments. Regarding one report titled "Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship," one of the Naval Reserve officers wrote: "The report provides evidence from numerous intelligence sources over the course of a decade on interactions between Iraq and al-Qaida. In this regard, the report is excellent. Then in its interpretation of this information, CIA attempts to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of this reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many instances. Therefore, the CIA report should be read for content only-and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored."

This same antipathy toward the CIA led to the events that are the basis of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity, according to several former and current senior officials.

Ironically, the Plame affair's origins had its roots in Cheney and Libby's interest in reports that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon. After reading a Pentagon report on the matter in early February 2002, Cheney asked the CIA officer who provided him with a national security briefing each morning if he could find out about it.

Without Cheney's knowledge, his query led to the CIA-sanctioned trip to Niger by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, to investigate the allegations. Wilson reported back to the CIA that the allegations were most likely not true.

Despite that conclusion, President Bush, in his State of the Union address in 2003, included the Niger allegation in making the case to go to war with Iraq. In July 2003, after the war had begun, Wilson publicly charged that the Bush administration had "twisted" the intelligence information to make the case to go to war.

Libby and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove told reporters that Wilson's had been sent to Niger on the recommendation of his wife, Plame. In the process, the leaks led to the unmasking of Plame, the appointment of Fitzgerald, the jailing of a New York Times reporter for 85 days, and a federal grand jury indictment of Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly attempting to conceal his role in leaking Plame's name to the press.

The Plame affair was not so much a reflection of any personal animus toward Wilson or Plame, says one former senior administration official who knows most of the principals involved, but rather the direct result of long-standing antipathy toward the CIA by Cheney, Libby, and others involved. They viewed Wilson's outspoken criticism of the Bush administration as an indirect attack by the spy agency.

Those grievances were also perhaps illustrated by comments that Vice President Cheney himself wrote on one of Feith's reports detailing purported evidence of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. In barely legible handwriting, Cheney wrote in the margin of the report:

"This is very good indeed … Encouraging … Not like the crap we are all so used to getting out of CIA."
--------------------------------------------------

-- Murray Waas is a Washington-based writer and frequent contributor to National Journal. Several of his previous stories are also available online.

It's like lifting his kilt to hide his face.

I defy you to give me one specific lie, not a category, not name calling, but one specific statement that Bush or Cheney made that is a lie. You can't, because they didn't.

You mean like when Cheney said in front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention on August 26, 2002, that, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction"?

See? That's a lie. Saying that there was "no doubt" while, at the same time, there was significant doubt constitutes a lie.

Marking so I can come back later and read.

Thanks for posting it.

BBB


Well, to start with a few:

I will be a uniter, not a divider president.

Left hand on the Bible, right hand raised taking the oath to support and protect the Constitution.....

The Congress had the same intelligence that I had re Iraq's WMD.

Is this enough for a start?

BBB

That must mean you are a liar as well old Europe. Are you a liar?

I say this because you are wrong in your statement above. Just as Cheney was when he made his statement. By calling him a liar, you must be one as well.

Rewriting History? You Must be Joking, George!
Rewriting History? You Must be Joking, George!
By W. David Jenkins III
posted November 28, 2005
BushWatch

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began".

- Bush 11/11/05

"It's slime and defend," said one Republican aide on Capitol Hill, describing the White House's effort to raise questions about Mr. Wilson's motivations and its simultaneous effort to shore up support in the Republican ranks. "So far so good," the aide said. "There's nervousness on the part of the party leadership, but no defections in the sense of calling for an independent counsel."

-- New York Times 10/2/03

Well, we can see that not much has changed over the years. Just when we think this administration has tested the audacity meter to the extreme, they surprise everybody and push it even further. I wonder how many others are convinced that these people are so far within that stew of their own making they wouldn't recognize reality if it smacked them over the head like a iron skillet.

What should have been a day to honor and recognize those who have served this country turned into yet another attempt at gross manipulation by the Bush administration of not only the military, but the American people who wanted only to honor their service - starting with the laying of the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

To witness Vice President Marquis de Cheney, the leading administrative advocate for torture placing the wreath at the Tomb was just too much for this particular patriot to bear. Yet, it was only the first slimy slap at the military that would take place this Veterans' Day. And there would be more - much more.

Later that day - and in the days following - Bush would resort to quoting what resembled some tired old forwarded e-mail the Republicans (and their brethren) have been circulating for quite some time. Well, at least since everything went completely wrong in Iraq . I'm sure you've seen it. A long and lengthy list of Democratic quotes regarding the "threat" posed by Saddam Hussein - taken completely out of context and some taken from the days of Operation Desert Fox. Yet that didn't stop our "War President" from not only reusing the military as a political backdrop; it also - one more time - allowed him to make a complete ass of himself. But who cares? It's "slime and defend" time in the Bush camp . . . again.

Pity poor King George. The miserable failure can't even get a decent poll number out of Fox (37% approval) or The Wall Street Journal (35%). To make matters worse, there are members of Bush's own party who are quite perturbed with him when it comes to all matters Iraq and there are more than a few people of power who are about an inch away from using the "L" word in public. But that obviously won't stop the Bush Machine.

The main push by these criminals is to claim that "everyone saw the same intelligence that we did." Bush even likes to point out that he had the same intelligence that Clinton had - without realizing that it makes him sound like he acted on information that was more than five years old. Not to mention the fact that Clinton realized, correctly, that the information did not warrant an invasion of Baghdad years ago. Actually, Bush's daddy also realized invading Baghdad was a bad idea more than a decade ago.

And when considering the task of the Office of Special Plans, we find the claim that everyone had access to the same intelligence as the White House is simply ludicrous. Here was a shadow operation set up by Rumsfeld and Feith and run by ideological amateurs in a clandestine attempt to "tweak" real intelligence reports on Iraq until they mirrored what the White House wanted.

Members of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) were well aware that intelligence coming out of Iraq did not stand up to the claims they were making. There was no evidence of WMD or al Qaeda ties no matter how many times certain members of the White House demanded that the CIA go back and try again. There are reports by intelligence staffers of Cheney and Libby making multiple visits to CIA Headquarters - during the run up to war - and demanding a more aggressive interpretation of the supposed threat posed by Hussein.

How interesting that those who rewrote intelligence are now accusing their critics of rewriting history.

The fact still remains, however, that the reasons we are currently hearing from the administration and their supporters for continuing to "stay the course" in Iraq would've never allowed them to invade that country in the first place. Liberating the Iraqis being the main course with a side order of honoring those who have already fallen is all that's left on the Bush menu and quite frankly, a majority of Americans are finding it harder to swallow. We're being told to put a carton of lumpy, spoiled milk back into the refrigerator because it just might taste better tomorrow.

Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), who has served in the House for over three decades and is senior Democrat and former chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee, has decided we need to buy a new carton of milk. Murtha was the latest player in DeeCeeVille to jam a stick into the hornets nest when he called for a different approach in Iraq being as the current approach is proving to be a dismal failure.

Qualifying Murtha's remarks are not only his extensive military background, but the fact that he has recently been to Iraq - something Denny Hastert or Jean Schmidt and others in their camp who referred to Murtha as a "coward" cannot claim. But that doesn't stop the White House Slime and Defend machine - especially when it comes to military experts who disagree with their policies.

Murtha joins the ranks of Gen. Eric Shinseki, Scott Ritter, former Gen. Janice Karpinski, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Max Cleland, John Kerry, John McCain and other members of the military who have been assaulted by the Bush Camp for daring not to pat the president on the head saying, "good boy." This repulsive behavior by the administration is another part of the history that they are attempting to rewrite.

Face it, folks, as far as these war criminals are concerned, the military - like 9/11 - is little more than a useful prop. Whether they are boots on the ground or a television backdrop in fatigues, the military mean little more to these WHIG people than useful tools allowing them to pursue a misguided philosophy of global dominance. And while the bodies continue to fall or return home maimed beyond recognition, the only defense the administration can muster up in the face of plummeting approval ratings and support of this debacle is to attack the patriotism of their critics and accuse them of rewriting history. Interesting enough perspective on their part, especially when one can plainly see that it is they who need a history lesson.

"He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." That was Colin Powell on Feb. 24, 2001 speaking on the success of American policies regarding Saddam Hussein.

"We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." That remark came from Condoleezza Rice on July 29, 2001 regarding the effects of the sanctions imposed on Iraq .

But we know from former White House officials that Bush and the WHIG were predetermined to take out Hussein even before they entered the White House. And we also know that in the wake of 9/11, the same people were desperate to tie Iraq to the attacks that day. We also know that the same month Rice made the above quote, the New York Times described a conversation between Rice and then Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Richard Haass, who was expressing his misgivings about Bush's push to invade Iraq . Rice told him "Save your breath - the president has already decided what he's going to do on this." Remember, this was before Bush started what Andy Card described as a "marketing approach" to sell the invasion of Iraq .

We also know from the Downing Street Memos that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." These documents are also from the pre-marketing approach time period.

And the list goes on and on. The infamous "sixteen words" in the 2003 State of the Union and the subsequent attempts to slime anyone who pointed out prior to the invasion (and afterwards) that this administration was simply lying. And they knew it. And I've always felt that the sole purpose of the U.N. weapons inspectors sent in prior to the invasion was actually to make sure there were no weapons of mass destruction - kind of like a warped insurance policy. Then they turned around and attacked the findings of those very same weapons inspectors.

This administration has a history of attacking their critics on any level, be it personal or professional. They are capable of unleashing such a coordinated firestorm of vitriol against their enemies in what is usually a successful tactic allowing them to escape accountability one more time. And they are doing now what they have always done when caught with their political pants down - they spin, lie, stone-wall and cover up.

That's what they did with 9/11, Valerie Wilson, the Energy Task Force, ties to Enron, Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, Operation Able Danger, Sibel Edmonds, Campaigns 2000 and 2004, Rendition and Torture, Cindy Sheehan, the Information Awareness Office, Patriot Act abuses, Guckert/Gannon, Katrina, Bunnatine (Bunny) Greenhouse, Halliburton, the Downing Street Memos and, of course, Iraq and the suppression of intelligence that did not fit their criteria.

That's quite a list and I'm certain I've missed a few examples but when you look back on all of these episodes, you have to wonder how it's possible that almost a third of the country can still support this administration? Maybe Dr. Joseph Mengele was right when at Nuremberg he stated, "The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it."

What else would explain how anyone can look upon Cheney in his tuxedo in front of a conservative audience or Bush posing in front of another military backdrop, accusing anyone of rewriting history, knowing what is known, without seeing them as a joke? Think about it.

This administration is in overdrive trying to make people forget that they claimed there were ties between al Qaeda and Hussein (thus "linking" 9/11 to Iraq ) and that Iraq was a threat to America because of WMD. Rumsfeld even went as far as to say on March 30, 2003 , "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

So let's think for a second, kids. Exactly who is trying to rewrite history here?

Deny all you want. The truth is that we were mislead into war. One needs only to look at thet totality of the statements and the orchestration that lead us into war. One needs to be either a blind partisan or a complete idiot to not see this.

That said, every time Bush says that Congress got the same intelligence he did, he is lying.

Cheney was wrong, but he wasn't lying? Why not?

Even if his statement was based on faulty intelligence, you allege that he had absolutely no contradicting intelligence. Only then he would have been wrong, but he would not have been lying.

Right?

There is contradictory evidence to the presence of God, does that mean every person the believes in God is a liar? Like the Pope, is the Pope a liar?

Are you saying that Cheney believed in the existence of WMD, just like the Pope believes in God, and the United States went to war not based on facts but based on a quasi-religious belief in WMD?

Nutty.

If they had worded it a la Cheney, ie "Simply stated, there is no doubt that God exists", then yes, I for one, would call that a lie. Especially if they were specifically using the statement to justify a war.

But if the person who made the statement did not have a devious bone in his/her body, I would then be of the opinion that he/she was a simpleton, or simply deluded.

Whichever way it goes, I wouldn't want that person running my country.

Your failure to read and comprehend doesn't impress me.

At least he can form a better argument than you. Your 'belief in god' counter is trash.

Cycloptichorn

BBB
The biggest problem with George W. Bush that scares me the most is that he has an acute case of Messiah Complex. That makes him dangerous.

BBB

The general definition of a complex is a phenomena, or a psychological wish, which resides within the person and which does not manifest in him consciously, but nevertheless it affects him and through its power he often behaves unaware of the true inner reason. The Messiah complex is the will, intention, compulsion to be a messiah, to be the redeemer and savior of the world.

A Messianic complex is not just the general wish - be it overt or covert - to redeem the world or to improve the conditions of the world, but it includes another component just as important. The messianic wish is not merely a general wish for improved conditions and for changes for the better, but the wish of that private person to become personally the redeemer of the world. [/u]

I don't believe you get to be President without having the drive, dedication and devotion needed to reach that office. many people of inferior quality often refer to that as a Messiah Complex, egotist, or other such terms to accomodate their own sense of inferiority.

....and many people who have a sheep complex have an overriding urge to follow blindly.

Lies aside - the White House took a policy position that was reckless and completely at odds with the conservatism that any government should adopt when considering whether or not to invade another country. Look back at how it all unfolded. Now look at what has happened since the invasion. Regardless of who told what lies - how could anyone support the political decison-making process that delivered the current situation in Iraq?

You know I think for me at least the lies are no longer important, although the question of their existence shouldn't be forgotten, merely put aside to wait for judicial proceedings to begin. What's important is sorting out the current situation in Iraq. First thing, remove this administration. Secondly, get some sort of non-partisan agreement on a plan to resolve the mess. Then go after the liars and the crooks.