Two Years of Lies?
The Center for Public Integrity concludes in a recent study that the Bush administration deliberately lied about Iraq, in order to get public support for war. 
The Center for Public Integrity worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism on a study on how the Bush administration talked about Iraq between the attacks on the WTC and the war on Iraq. The conclusion: “President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from” that country.
You can read the study at the website of the CPI: here’s a direct link to the study called “Iraq: The War Card - Orchestrated Deception On The Path To War.”
The two organizations argue that “an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.”
President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).
Now, one could argue that they weren’t lying, they simply didn’t know better. They were mistaken. The CPI says not so: “The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis.”
Here’s a list with “Key False Statements.” Read it and weep.
Some blogger’s opinions:
Down With Tyranny: “Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment off the table. She should be a defendant in the same treason trial that Bush and Cheney and their cronies face.”
Radamisto: “Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.”
Corrente: “All in all, this data shows the almost complete collapse of Constitutional government (as if we didn’t know). A lawless and amoral executive was able to lie the country into a war with impunity. There were no checks and no balances.”
More:
Ed Morrissey: ‘However, the Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as “independent”. It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004.’
Gateway Pundit: “The fact that these groups are funded by George Soros was omitted from today’s report- a fine example of media corruption.”
Jules Crittenden: “What the heck is a firedoglake, anyway? Sounds fierce, but wet.”
It’s indeed important to point out that, once again, Soros seems to be involved in one way or another. You can accuse this man of a lot of things, but not that he’s lazy or unwilling to spend his money on any ’study’ that discredits George W. Bush.
And… Oops what’s this?
This is just too typical, isn’t it?
A quick glance at the page where they list what are supposed to be the ‘key lies’ and it looks like it’s all rehashed stuff, which sheds little light on ‘what they knew and when they knew it,’ particularly since most of it boils down to a question of what the CIA was telling the administration and whether it was a case of connecting dots in the most cautious way or connecting them in a deliberately false manner.
And then there’s the matter of who put this report together, and Captain Ed sheds light on that.
Yawn. Even at first glance, this is just more of the same old b.s. The very first example the study gives describes two different intelligence agencies coming to two different conclusions. The President went with one of them. That’s not "lying."
Then they don’t bother to read carefully what the President said. For example, the President said:
"They’re both risks, they’re both dangerous. The difference, of course, is that Al Qaeda likes to hijack governments. Saddam Hussein is a dictator of a government. Al Qaeda hides, Saddam doesn’t, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that Al Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam’s madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world."
Notice key words there, danger and becomes. Both words look to the future, to the risks of what might happen if we take no action. Additionally, as the White House has previously pointed out, that quotation is very often taken out of context.
The study also appears to entirely omit the similar flat statements about Iraq and its possession of weapons of mass destruction made repeatedly by the Clinton Administration.
So just at first glance, this looks, sadly, to be nothing more than one more hit job done by somebody looking to twist the President’s statements in ways which confirm their own biases, rather than an objective, neutral look at the facts.
It looks like the Center for Public Integrity is the deliberate liar in this matter. Plus they can’t even keep their website up. Lying with integrity? Where does it stop? When do Democrat’s stop using legitimate sounding fake organizations to further their agenda? If you have to lie, is what you are saying important?
The usual load of old codswallop from George Soros & Co’s well funded organization. Northing substantive in the complaint, all of which has been thoroughly dissected before. Note that NPR and the other usual suspects in the credulous MSM are treating this as if it were A) something new; B) factually accurate; C) neglect to mention the connection to Soros and his well known funding for Democratic Party activities. So much for the claims of investigative journalism.
Whether or not George Sores funds work at the Center for Public Integrity is not justifiable grounds to dismiss the mirage of false statements repeatedly made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other senior administrations members about the Iraq situation and subsequent war. Clearly, there was a long string of blatant lies, repetitiously splashed upon the media, a media that’s deeply in bed with the perpetrators of these lies, to deceive Americans and other peoples around the world into believing war with Iraq was necessary. Lack of integrity is lack of integrity, whether pointed out by CPI or funded by Sores, or pointed out and funded by anyone else for that matter. The deliberate lies and the perpetrators are clearly pointed out in the CPI report. Let’s wake up and take this matter more seriously, before this band of hooligans take more deceptive actions to secretively strip us of our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, rob our national economy to fund the war, and before they send more of our citizenry into a war totally based on lies, and before they perpetuate any more of their deceptive actions that are leading to serious distrust in the world at large for the USA. Enough is enough!
TC: No one here is strictly dismissing this report just on the basis of who funded it. It’s actually a bit like reading a study on global warming funded by an oil company; initial reaction is that it’s unlikely to have a neutral scientific agenda, so you read it with some skepticism to see if by chance it actually was a well done study which didn’t seek to validate a preconceived conclusion. Most such studies don’t bear that out, and same with this one.
Because no, the "deliberate lies and the perpetrators" are not pointed out in this CPI study. A lot of information which was later known to be false is pointed out, but no evidence whatsoever that the people saying those things had to have known that the information was false at the time that they said it. If their basic premise and understanding of the threat level was wrong, of course they would have made a lot of statements that we now know to have been wrong. That’s not news, we’ve known it for some time.
I was inside the defense/intel machine at the time. The White House orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, willfully bent the facts to suit their agenda and inflicted a massive snow job on the American people. Believe me, they are not that stupid as to have actually been misled by bogus intel.
The Bush administration came to office in 2001 loaded with principles from the first Gulf war - Cheney, Powell, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld - they were set on taking Saddam out well before 9/11. Think about it.
It would be nice for someone to make a list of statements by Saddam Hussein about Iraq’s WMD or WMD Programs or ties to Al Quaeda over the same time period. I wonder who has the better percentage of truthful statements?( note: I’ve always thought that Saddam Husssein to be a bad guy. Really bad. Ultra mega bad. Even when Don Rumsfeld thought different.)
Bush, Cheney and many others knew what they were doing, they had a well planned out agenda, long before 911 and before the purported lies for war with Iraq. (http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html) And, there’s a lot more to it than oil…
Yes, Saddam Hussein was a corrupt and dangerous leader of the Iraqi people, a very malicious dictator. Such is well known. However, the Hussein dilemma was conveniently exploited to further the Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz agenda and make their argument for war more palatable, but not more true…
We were then, and still are now, being deceived by the Bush/Cheney/Wolowitz hooligans. . . a pattern of behavior that obnoxiously lacks truth and integrity.
How long before Americans stand up for truth and integrity and demand a stop to what’s happening, to the deceptive and secretive pealing away of our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms, a plundering of our national economy for the gain of a few, and the widespread killing of innocent people?! America’s reputation for truth and integrity is being openly and significantly sullied before the world.
Laurel J… even if true, so what? I thought we looked stupid and impotent for many years occasionally shooting off some missiles at Saddam when he violated the No-Fly zones in a particularly egregious manner. He consistently refused to live up to the requirements he accepted as part of the cease fire at the end of the Gulf War. Besides which, I believe that attempting to assassinate a former president of the United States constitutes an Act of War, for which we should have retaliated at the time.
sashal… which statements of Saddams are you interested in? The directives he gave to some subordinates to develop WMD? The statements he gave to other subordinates claiming that he DID have WMD already? His orders to his subordinates to destroy or hide records and to delay and otherwise hinder the UN weapons inspectors? Maybe his orders to his son to torture athletes who lost at international sporting events? Or his orders to "depopulate" the Marsh Arabs in an effort to destroy an entire culture?
As for your habitual snark about Rumsfeld and Saddam, the fact that our officials found it in the U.S. interests to support Saddam in his war against Iran (which had recently committed blatant acts of war against us by taking our embassy officials hostage) does not mean Rumsfeld ever considered Saddam a "nice guy." Don’t you advocate talking with Iran and Ahmadinejad? Does that mean you think that he and the mullahs are good guys? Don’t you advocate talking with Syria? Do you think they’re good guys?
Please. . . Take the courage to stand up America to what’s happening to our country and to us, and the very poor example we are setting for others in the world who want and deserve freedom! Take pause for a moment from the petty activities of our daily lives to look deeper into what’s really going on, to the damage that’s really being done. Go beyond the political party lines, and the persons in office at the moment, and discover what is happening, who is really behind it all and what is being done to destroy our freedom and us. We are being taken captive more than we realize, and more than we’ll be able to counter, unless we wake up and start standing up to what’s going on. The damage that’s been and is being done to our American way of freedom, the way of freedom set up by our Founding Fathers, is horrendous and must be stopped.
TC, considering that your version of ‘looking deeper’ appears to be based on conspiracy mongering websites (whatreallyhappened.com also says that Ron Brown and Vince Foster were assassinated, for example), I’d say that you’re the one who needs to wake up.
Maybe he forgot to set his alarm clock. As a consequence, we are all rudely forced to play a part in his nightmares. I, for one, won’t put up with it anymore.
WAKE UP, TC!
Darn. I don’t think it worked.
yes,Pat. Talking is better then war.
But I do not advocate helping them, including the weapons(that’s where my comparison to Don stops)
It’s NOT “two organizations,” except on paper. The Fund for Independence in Journalism is the fund-raising arm of the Center. It exists for the SOLE purpose of providing funding and legal support for the CPI, which, despite their tax-avoidance-based claims, is a dedicated “progressive” partisan group.
“What should have been known…” ROFLMAO. The intel arms of every government in the world were wrong, but hey, they shoulda known better!
As Pat said, this is re-hash, timed to stir up the leftie base for the election season.
This is really strange, by the way. I see that there are ongoing technical difficulties, so maybe that explains it. I see this article nowhere on the website - I got here by clicking on a comment in Recent Comments. If not for that, I wouldn’t know this post exists. I think I have a conspiracy theory of my own now. Am I being deliberately mislead?? Do the publishers of this web have a interest in keeping me ignorant of certain posts? Maybe I see only psuedo-posts, and the real posts are resevered for those who are in some way, out to get me…
Oh man. Now I have to question reality as I have known it.
C Stanley, It was discovered, and covered up, that Ron Brown had a hole in the top of his head, a very mysterious hole to be the result of a plane accident, http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38421. Vince Foster’s death was very suspicious, http://www.internet-grocer.net/vfoster.htm. Ron Brown and Vince Foster had dirt on the Clintons, dirt they didn’t want out. There is a clear pattern of deception in all of this, and only the participants in these fiascoes and the ostridges are selectively blind to it.
Let’s rise above the conspiracy mongering discrediting and devaluing and discover the truth. We’re not going to discover the truth from mainstream liberal media, because they’re too busy with their agenda of publishing a plague of deception, a covering of the facts and truth.
Tap: No need to contact the editors of ‘whatreallyhappened’. This thread links from a story up in the featured story section at the top of the home page (it’s actually the main featured story.)
I do find that sometimes those stories are hard to track after newer stories are posted (they’re not in the archived section, I don’t think?) But this one remains at the top of the page for the time being.
Ahhhh, I feel so much better now. Thanks, C
PatHMV - the point is that the Iraq invasion was/is a war of aggression. For at least 10 years prior to 9/11, sights were set on the Middle East where upwards of 65% of the world’s oil and gas reserves are located. Russia, China, the EU and the US/UK alliance compete for control of those resources. It’s been going on for over a 100 years. People in the Middle East are caught in the crossfire.
I believe in a strong defense and I also believe in democracy and free trade as a means to a more peaceful world. But when those buzz words are used as a cover for aggressive military action, let’s be honest, for starting wars that "bomb them back to the stone age" and kill thousands of innocent people, people who have little to begin with, we foment more unrest, resistance and terrorism.
Time to change the paradigm and do everything we can to move to a cooperative international model lest America find herself the target of a worldwide campaign to stop our aggressive power play. The rest of the world (95% of the people on the planet) could tank us economically in the blink of an eye if they got together.
The world is shrinking. This is not the Cold War era anymore.
I hope there is still time for the US to be real leaders in this new world - but it’s not going to happen at the point of a gun.
The whole "but it’s a partisan group" meme is BS. Can progressives discount all statements or papers from AEI, Hudson, Mackinaw Center and et. al. because of their bias and funding. The names of Scaife and Coors are just as gulity of funding their pet projects. What about their agendas? The big question is why now and why not in 2004.
This is an ongoing debate, that is as current today as it was when first addressed.
We need to identify the players in this deadly game and help them on to other pursuits in their lives, and not vote them back into public office.
America is under siege from within, and the enemy needs to be rooted out…before we can resume being an influence for good amongst our own and the world at large.
I appreciate your remarks LaurelJ…
"Progressives" do exactly that all the time. Also anything reported on FoxNews or stated by a conservative or anyone who has been labeled a "neocon".
Rudi, don’t pretend that "progressives" don’t embrace the ad hom fallacy. It is so common that it is routine.
Jason - I’m just pointing out that both sides of the aisle do this. What is interesting is that the Liebrul watchdogs list the following as the Rights version of Soros.
From Wiki:
If one Googles the above names and looks at Left wings take on them then one might call CATO far right or neocon. Yet how many question the likes CATO and Heritage Foundation because of funding from Castle Rock. I don’t remember hearing calls from the Left that Ted Galen Carpenter policy papers are propaganda because of funding from Coors. I read CATO a little bit and Reason alot, but blanket assertions based on funding prove nothing. The Soros meme is old, almost as old as the Scaife meme. Any mention of Soros and a rightwing virus spreads. It is happening today when the Captain mentions Soros on his blog.
The AP story that originally prompted this touted CPI and FIJ as "independent" and "non-partisan." The fact that they are neither independent nor non-partisan, and that the two organizations are essentially the same single organization save on legal papers, are relevant data when considering the veracity of the "study" for content.
If the American Enterprise Institute came out with something similar regarding a Democratic administration, that too would bear mentioning in any wire reporting, as would any purportedly unbiased media organization such as Associated Press completely failing to mention the nature and leanings of same when there is no secret at all about it.
The big question is why now and why not in 2004.
It’s complete wing chatter re-hash of things that were beaten to death in the last election. This was everywhere from every leftie mouth in the nation in 2004, including all of Soros’ personal pocket 527’s such as MoveOn.org. It’s being re-hased for the reason I already stated–to rile up the leftie base for the primaries and election season. DUH.
They are in different locations, but do share some board members. I won’t argue about partisanship(not much), but how are they the same organization?
Are the websites listed under the same address or owner?
Rudi, for CPI, I think you meant to link here, not back to the TFIJ board.
Of the 11 members of the FIJ board, 7 (a majority) are also on the CPI board. Of the 15 members of the CPI board, 7 are on the FIJ board.
They were both founded by Charles Lewis. Lewis was president of CPI until he left in 2004 to become president of FIJ.
But just to remove any doubt, you might check FIJ’s "why we exist" page, where you’ll find this:
" We believe that it is time to protect, defend and foster independent, high quality investigative journalism. The Fund for Independence in Journalism, a 509 (a)(3) nonprofit, tax exempt charity, was created to do just that - by providing an endowment for support, public education and legal defense of the largest nonprofit, investigative reporting organization in the world, the Center for Public Integrity."
See? By their own word, not independent. The FIJ is the fund-raising arm of the CPI. That’s there only mission, to support the CPI.
Aw, c’mon, Pat! Now you’re just confusing him with facts.
I think a fairly good rule of thumb is that when you see a group with a name like "Center for Public Integrity", whatever comes after the preposition is not going to be even close to accurate.