Study: Bush, Other Officials Issued Hundreds of False Statements Before Iraq Invasion

reply to post by 3thEye



Shhh...they are busy bashing.


But to play devil's advocate suppose the history was completely different. That Bush decided to err on the side of caution and Saddam had indeed been pushing to redevelop his WMD program. The spotty intel states that he would have had bio and chemical and maybe nuclear by now.

Yep more bashing no doubt that W was just as much of a wimp as his dad or some such. But despite the natural and wholesome abhoration of war think of this...Iranian President Ahmadinejad is planning a trip to Bagdad at the invitation of the Iraqi government. Something that did not happen under Saddam. Just don't forget who to bash for that being possible too.

This is a test post to see if people are just randomly starring posts . As it seems alot of posts in this thread have stars and yet they dont seem star worthy.
I will make a post of use here +-please dont kill me

Cross linking other thread on same subject . www.abovetopsecret.com... for reference.

[edit on 23-1-2008 by Mindless]

reply to post by Mindless


no offense mindless, but people can star posts for whatever reason they want, much like moderators can applaud anyone they want for any reason. It would be pretty fruitless trying to figure out why they are doing it, because the reasons are going to vary quite widely.

You'd be better served to concentrate on the subject at hand, and try to add something meaningful, just imho. And yeah, at this point I think we have like 3 threads on this same topic, referencing the same studies, all in the same forum. The mods will take care of it eventually.

edit:grammar

[edit on 23-1-2008 by TrueAmerican]

Its only a matter of time before bush bites the end of a bullet-

im sure he's been doing his best to keep these kinda stories from getting out there and to the average clueless american Im sure he has.

When people realize that our economy is struggling because he's pouring all of our money into Iraq unnecessarily, there may be some congressional hearing. Yes our administration is scum but there are a handful of people that want Bush to be tried for his crimes. But if he gets his immunity- I'm almost certain that someone will try to execute him.

I can only sit back and hope it really happens.

Isn't there a thread started on here yesterday or a couple of days ago talking about how Bush is trying to get a bill through that would exempt him and his staff from war crimes?

I guess both dems an' reps all got same info, coming from CIA and/or NSA. And they got the info from shifty characters. What's funny, at least in Rumsfeld, is that he chooses what he wants to believe when it comes to the info delivered by CIA. Back in 80's he didn't believe CIA's intel saying that Soviet's were not accelerating their military capacity and breaking the treaties, instead he claimed contrary. And now with Iraq he chooses to believe every most ridicule "evidence" he is presented. Where is that Rummie of 80's that questioned integrity of CIA's intel



I want to see something like this

[edit on 23-1-2008 by v01i0]

Pathetic. This thread has already been turned into "well lets say this happened..." or "what if...".

"What if?" is not what we are talking about right now. We are discussing the lies that were fed to us and congress. While I think the democrats have been spineless, they were lied to as well.

So posting their quotes is irrelevant because they were led to believe the same thing we were. That Sadam had ties to terrorism and WMD's. Both were false. Both were shot down by intelligence agencies.

They tried the same thing again on us with Iran!!! But they got caught this time. We didn't fall for the same trick twice - though they may still get the agenda pushed through.

Olbermann called Bush and his administration out on their garbage with Iran:

We have either a president who is too dishonest to restrain himself from invoking World War Three about Iran at least six weeks after he had to have known that the analogy would be fantastic, irresponsible hyperbole -- or we have a president too transcendently stupid not to have asked -- at what now appears to have been a series of opportunities to do so -- whether the fairy tales he either created or was fed, were still even remotely plausible.

It is staggering.

March 31st: "Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon..."

June 5th: Iran's "pursuit of nuclear weapons..."

June 19th: "consequences to the Iranian government if they continue to pursue a nuclear weapon..."

July 12th: "the same regime in Iran that is pursuing nuclear weapons..."

August 6th: "this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon..."

Notice a pattern?

Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

Then, sometime between August 6th and August 9th, those terms are suddenly swapped out, so subtly that only in retrospect can we see that somebody has warned the President, not only that he has gone out too far on the limb of terror -- but there may not even be a tree there...

McConnell, or someone, must have briefed him then.

August 9th: "They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program..."

August 28th: "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons..."

October 4th: "you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon..."

October 17th: "until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the **capacity**, the **knowledge**, in order to make a nuclear weapon."

Before August 9th, it's: Trying to develop, build or pursue a nuclear weapon.

After August 9th, it's: Desire, pursuit, want...knowledge technology know-how to enrich uranium.

And we are to believe, Mr.. Bush, that the National Intelligence Estimate this week talks of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program in 2003...

And you talked of the Iranians suspending their nuclear weapons program on October 17th...

And that's just a coincidence?

edited to add:

To those that didn't notice, Raw Story got this info from the AP. Yea... the Associated Press... what a bunch of left wing nutjobs huh?



[edit on 23-1-2008 by Sublime620]

I saw this and went to post it but was beaten to the punch

For those who cry "left wing nutjobs" I saw it on another site, and not raw story, although I also came across it there whilst trying to verify.

To me, this whole saga is symptomatic of the electoral malaise and the fact that people just don't care if it doesn't affect their daily lives - the problem is that it does affect their lives, it's just that sometimes the effects aren't immediately apparent.

This whole war is part of bushenomics and we've seen the problems with that over the last few days.
The article in this thread gives a pretty good account of what I mean - if you read it, be sure to read all of it.

It was never about WMDs or al'qaeda and always about money.

Will the person who replaces bush be any better?
They could hardly be any worse.

Let's be thanfull the net exists and we don't have to rely on the mainstream media to drip feed us propaganda - like they did with the lies in this thread.



Money for bush and the bush-ites

reply to post by budski


Yea... It's on multiple sites because it's derived from the AP. Great job doing research by those guys..."hey lets just say it's a left wing nut job site because we have no real answer or defense! We certainly wouldn't want to actually research and use our brains!"


[edit on 23-1-2008 by Sublime620]

reply to post by Sublime620


I think it pretty much sums up the bush administration, and vicariously, the UK administration.

We had pretty much the same thing going on over here, but we knew that tony blair was a compulsive liar.

I remember an interview he did, where he said he ran away as an adolescent and was getting on a plane to brazil (or somewhere) at newcastle airport - only for some switched on journo to check, and find out that no planes went to the destination he said from the airport he said at the time that he said.

Watch some of blairs speeches when he gets called on policy or iraq or any one of his lies - he basically gets flop sweats, panics and goes all wide eyed - I think he must have read once that people blink more when they lie.

I fail to see how anyone can continue to support bush and his crew, but it seems people do, even on ATS.
Then again that's their call - just don't expect me to be anything but scathing about the "man"

I've been hearing these kinds of comments for several years now. But what I have yet to hear is a single shred of evidence that Bush, or anyone in his administration, knowingly lied. Sure, they made statements that ultimately turned out to be false. But I have yet to see any proof that they knew at the time they made them that they were false. It almost seems like some of you don't know the definition of a "lie", or perhaps do not care to.

The fact is that President Bush, senior administration officials, senior intelligence officials AND foreign governments all believed at the time that Saddam was in possession of WMD's and was actively seeking more. This very same sentiment was supported by the intelligence agencies of nations like Germany, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia and many more whom did not support taking military action. If these nations didn't support the war effort, then why would they knowingly lie about Saddam possessing and/or seeking WMD? That's one question that I have yet to see any of you legitimately answer. But I will answer it for you. The reason that all these nations stated that Saddam had WMD's and/or was seeking WMD's is because they, too, genuinely believed it to be TRUE!

Now, does that make these nations and their intelligence agencies "liars"? Of course not! Nor does it make President Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, or anyone else a liar.

While Saddam publicly denied having WMD's, he did everything behind the scenes to make it appear like he did in fact have them. In fact, there is still some speculation that he did in fact have them. During our lengthy debate over invading Iraq, Saddam had plenty of time to dismantle and smuggle these weapons out of the country to nations like Syria, Lebanon, Russia and even possibly Iran. Furthermore, it has been speculated that Saddam's scientists and military were so afraid of Saddam using WMD's that they got rid of them long ago and just convinced Saddam that they still had them. While I don't necessarily subscribe to that theory, it would be pretty ironic if even Saddam himself believed that he was in possession of WMD's!

You also have to remember that Saddam's regime, like many dictatorships, kept immaculate, Nazi-like records. Despite this, they were never able to provide any evidence supporting their assertions that these weapons were destroyed. Surely they would have recorded such a thing, right? I mean, we're talking about the same people who kept records of political executions and the method of murder used in each case.

As for whatever comments made about Iraq's links to al Qaida, I don't feel that they were necessarily lies, either. The evidence was there. There were reports from foreign intelligence agencies, as well as US intelligence, regarding meetings between al Qaida and Iraqi military and intelligence agencies. There was substantial evidence that al Zarqawi had a terrorist training camp in Northern Iraq during the years leading up to the invasion. It was a justifiable assumption to think that if such a thing was going on in Iraq, that Saddam knew about it and at the very least allowed it to happen.

While these connections may not be the most credible, they were still believable at the time. I will be honest and say that there may not have been enough evidence to make such an assertion. I think they were really fishing for this one. But I say that as someone, who like all of you, was not privy to all of the intelligence at the time- and probably still aren't. While Saddam may not have had major connections to al Qaida, it cannot be denied that he had connections to other major terrorist groups. In addition to allowing certain terrorists to live freely in Iraq, as well as allowing high-level terrorists to seek medical care in Baghdad, Saddam rewarded the families of virtually every Palestinian suicide bomber with $25,000 each.

Now, unlike most people on this site, I'm going to lay all of my chips on the table. I'm going to come clean on my personal political beliefs and agendas so that you can take what I'm saying with a grain of salt (and NOT so that we can start a political debate). For the most part, I'm a conservative. I am, however, liberal when it comes to certain social policies. I do not vote strictly Republican. However, I voted for Bush both times because I felt he was the lesser of two evils and was a far better choice than Gore and Kerry. Despite the fact that I am deeply disappointed in President Bush and feel that he has not lived up to his self-proclaimed conservatism, I still stand by my votes. Also, I was a supporter of the Iraq invasion. And I still support that decision. Despite the fact that at times the war wasn't going well, I still stuck by my decision because it was the right thing to do. Knowing what we knew then, and believing what we honestly believed then, toppling Saddam was the right thing to do. Looking back and having the luxury of hindsight, it may not have been a great decision. A lot of mistakes were made in securing Iraq after the initial military victory. Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of hindsight in real life.

So, there you go. I've given my opinion on the matter and I've told you where I come from. Unlike most of you who have an incredibly unhealthy level of hatred for Bush and actually accuse him of absurd things like being Satanic, I don't hold those kinds of feelings for those I disagree with politically. While I didn't care for President Clinton, I never "hated" him. He was our elected leader and our Commander-in-Chief, and I felt it was my duty as an American to support him and his decisions. Now I'm not talking about blindly accepting everything a President does. But I never let personal opinions or feelings get in the way of my judgement or common sense, especially when it came to the issues. I ask that some of you guys step back and do the same thing. Put your incredibly unhealthy hatred aside for a moment. Don't allow the website used as the original source in this article, which is clearly anti-Bush and left-leaning, to fire you up to the point that you are blind to the facts.

And, if someone here can PROVE to me that President Bush knew for a fact that Saddam didn't have any WMD and that he knowingly lied about it, then please show me this proof. Because I'd really like to know what he expected would happen once we got there and didn't find any WMD.

Originally posted by Ahabstar
But to play devil's advocate suppose the history was completely different. That Bush decided to err on the side of caution and Saddam had indeed been pushing to redevelop his WMD program. The spotty intel states that he would have had bio and chemical and maybe nuclear by now.

That's a pretty blind way of looking at it.

Shal we start gunning random people down on the street, because they may or may not know someone in Al-Qaeda?

Oooh, how about we nuke Mexico, they might not like us.

Those cargo ships coming into US harbors? Sink em... they might be rigged with explosives.



See where that form of logic goes? "Kill them because, we're not sure".

That's pretty illogical man. When it comes to peoples lives, you make DAMN sure you KNOW what is going on. The last thing you do is go in with guns blazing and search for your evidence afterwards.

You should know better.

Hmmm ... well
maybe this is another point of view:

newsbusters.org...

reply to post by Rasputin13


Well, it's like Olbermann put it.

He either lied, or he's stupid. No other way out of it. Intelligence agencies from many countries were screaming at him about 9/11 coming. All intelligence agencies knew Saddam did not have WMD or ties to al Qaeda. The one report that came out about the tubes bought from Africa turned out to be false and the intelligence agencies knew this, and did not hide it.

He's now doing the same thing with Iran. And when new intelligence comes out that says otherwise, he just changes the wording so that it's not a "lie".

If that's okay with you then fine. I can't change that in you. But if you can name one reason that we are in Iraq I'll concede.

I'll give you a hint: WMDs, terrorism, and helping Iraq are all not correct answers.

Originally posted by 3thEye
Hmmm ... well
maybe this is another point of view:

newsbusters.org...

I didn't realize who funded the study has any effect on how many times Bush, his administration, and members of his coalition said "Iraq is trying to get WMD's" or something of that nature.

Who else is going to investigate them? It's almost 5 years later, it's been proven that the administration ignored intelligence, and yet you people still can't face the truth.

Are we supposed to wait for conservatives to investigate?

Look, either say something about the study, or don't say it at all. "Oh, the left wing did it" isn't fooling anyone anymore.

Wait, I think I already know his next response. Is it:

"Why do you hate freedom"?
or
"Quit undermining our troops and supporting the terrorists"?

[edit on 23-1-2008 by Sublime620]

reply to post by Rasputin13


OK, here you go;

It was a little before 6pm on 19 January 2004 in Baghdad and the early evening air outside Saddam Hussein's former Perfume Palace was turning cold. Inside this most ornate of Saddam's former homes replete with crystal chandeliers and indoor swimming pool, Dr Rod Barton was sitting behind his desk waiting for his visitor from London to arrive.

As one of the world's leading experts in biological and chemical warfare, Barton had been hand-picked by the CIA to be the special adviser to the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the body to which George Bush and Tony Blair had given the task of finding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Barton, who worked for the Australian secret intelligence services for more than 20 years, was working on what was shaping up to be a highly controversial 200-page report.

Despite all the publicly stated optimism of the British and US governments that the survey group would find Saddam's WMDs and help justify their decision to invade, the group was preparing to reach quite different and damning conclusions. Not only did Saddam not have any WMDs at the time of the US-led invasion, the report would boldly state, he had not had any programmes to manufacture such weapons after 1991.

In an exclusive interview with The Observer Barton details how senior figures in British intelligence tried to stop the ISG publishing its interim report when they realised what it would say. He also reveals how when this failed, John Scarlett, who was then head of the powerful Joint Intelligence Committee and was subsequently appointed by Blair as the head of MI6, tried to strengthen the ISG report by inserting nine 'nuggets' of information to imply Saddam's WMD programmes were active, despite evidence to the contrary.

Full Story

And let's not forget Dr David Kelly

From the report to the UN by Hans Blik;

14. More than 200 chemical and more than 100 biological samples have been
collected at different sites. Three quarters of these have been screened using
UNMOVIC’s own analytical laboratory capabilities at the Baghdad Ongoing
Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Centre (BOMVIC). The results to date have
been consistent with Iraq’s declarations.

Full report

To me, these articles are about ass damning as it gets without bush/blair coming right out and admitting they lied.




[edit on 23/1/2008 by budski]

Let me quote a few sources about proving that the Bush administration selected the intelligence they wanted to use and ignored the rest of the community:

Source

However, Drumheller, who was a top CIA liaison officer in Europe before the war, insisted Bush had been explicitly warned well before an invasion order was given that the United States may not find the suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested," the former CIA official recalled. "And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'" Drumheller said the White House did not want any additional data from Sabri because, as he pointed out, "the policy was set."

"The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," he argued.

No WMD's Since '91

Iraq had destroyed its illicit weapons stockpiles within months after the Persian Gulf War of 1991, and its capacity to produce such weapons had significantly eroded by the time of the American invasion in 2003, the top American inspector in Iraq said in a report made public yesterday.

...with its last secret factory, a biological weapons facility, eliminated in 1996.

Yet somehow this is gathered from his report:

"There is no doubt that Saddam was a threat to our nation, and there is no doubt that he had WMD capability, and the Duelfer report is very clear on these points," said James Wilkinson, a White House deputy national security adviser.

This is what I'm talking about^^. Turning things around and making it seem right. How was he a threat? There's also quite a large difference between capability and having/doing. The distinction is quite large.

Bush and Chaney Admit No WMD's -

They cite oil-for-food scam as justification for invasion

President Bush and his vice president conceded yesterday in the clearest terms yet that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, trying to shift the Iraq war debate to a new issue – whether the invasion was justified because Hussein was abusing a U.N. oil-for-food program.

Vice President Dick Cheney brushed aside Duelfer's central findings – that Hussein not only had no weapons of mass destruction and had not made any since 1991, but that he had no capability of making any – while Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq.

How can you change the reason for invasion after the fact? What if in America we allowed people to search your house and then choose why they searched after the fact?

Whitehouse knew 6 months before invasion that Iraq had no WMDs

The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the 2003 US-led invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS.

CBS said the CIA's intelligence source was former Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri and that former CIA Director George Tenet delivered the information personally to US President George W Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top White House officials in September 2002. They rebuffed the CIA three days later.

Congress was not made aware of the information presented to Bush

No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

There goes your awesome video on all of the members of Congress who supported it. They weren't given the facts!

Guardian agrees that US knew

Source good enough? Need more?

Forged Italian documents were not what intelligence was based on

Now, this is actually supposed to be good news for the Bush Administration. Most thought the only basis was the proven Italian forgeries, however, it was proven that other/real intelligence existed.

But, more importantly, and the part conservatives and fox news leaves out:

None of the new information suggests Iraq ever nailed down a deal to buy uranium, and the Senate report makes clear that US intelligence analysts have come to doubt whether Iraq was even trying to buy the stuff. In fact, both the White House and the CIA long ago conceded that the 16 words shouldn’t have been part of Bush’s speech.

So even your good news comes without bad news. This stuff really gets on my nerves. How can I prove a negative? Why don't you and your party prove your case and we'll call it even.

[edit on 23-1-2008 by Sublime620]

That is a rather surprising amount to me. Surprising in that it is a low amount. Also surprising that in reading the first page of replies, no one appears to have said anything about the subject of this news story: The Center for Public Integrities report. Iraq: The War Card.

What is a false statement?

"False Statements"

In press briefings, interviews, and other question-and-answer venues, each answer was categorized for purposes of this study as a distinct statement. In speeches or briefings, only when one statement clearly ends was the next statement considered, and then only if a "buffer" of at least 50 words separated the statements.

Direct false statements. False statements by the eight Bush administration officials were counted as "direct"—and included in the total count of false statements—when they specifically linked Iraq to Al Qaeda or referenced Iraq's contemporaneous possession, possible possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons). In addition, any use of the verb "disarm" was categorized as a direct statement because of the literal meaning of the word. (Example: "Saddam Hussein has got a choice, and that is, he can disarm.") These false statements can be found within the passages that are highlighted in yellow in the project database.

Indirect false statements. Statements were classified as "indirect" if they did not specifically link Iraq to Al Qaeda but alleged, for example, that Iraq supported or sponsored terrorism or terrorist organizations, or if they referred to Iraq's former possession of weapons of mass destruction or used such general phrases, for example, as "dangerous weapons." These indirect false statements are not included in the total count of 935.

Iraq: The War Card

So now we actually know exactly what types of statements were counted.

Next, lets look at who said these statements:

database of all public statements on the two topics by President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and White House Press Secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Iraq: The War Card

So it has to have been said by one of these eight people. The next important note is that the database is composed of 380 000 words, and that they were collected from

...the websites of the White House, State Department, and Defense Department as well as from transcripts of interviews and briefings, texts of speeches and testimony, prepared statements, and the like.

Iraq: The War Card

The fact that the website of the study itself used a phrase such as "and the like", which does not specifically define the materials from which this rhetoric was collected, was a red flag for me. The fact that the website itself is confusing and at times slightly mislead raised more flags in my mind. The final stab in the validity of this report came as I searched their "database" of interviews. Looking at their sources of said interviews, I realized that they were not including the whole of the interviews in their data. This means they were specifically picking small parts of data, so as to emphasize a result which they clearly desired before conducting the research. They set out prove something, not to research something.

Regardless of the shoddy research, out of 380 000 words, 935 isn't very much in terms of political rhetoric. If you are interested in the subject (which by way is fascinating), check out William Riker, A US political scientist who analyzed a lot of rhetoric regarding US formation.

My words are up, Peace!

reply to post by WuTang


No. If they left the rest of the interview, it just means less words to search for. It doesn't change anything if they useda Chaney speech the beginning which included, "Saddam is a great threat with his weapons of mass destruction and such" but didn't include the remaining 30 times where he brought up 9/11.

That's what I remember from those speeches. It was kind of like Guiliani now. "Terrorism, Saddam, 9/11, 9/11, terrorists, attack, national security, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11".

reply to post by Sublime620


On the contrary, the size of data pool is a vital part of the report. Continuing with your example (of Rudy and 9/11), it would be very different if he said it 5 times out of 50 words, vs 5 times out of 1000. The frequency of the words is what counts in political rhetoric.

Now, when they are purposely leaving out over 2/3s of the cited interview (the one I looked at), in which Rumsefeld (The interviewee/SP for Rummy) discusses Iraq but does not mention the trigger words involving WMDs, it is clearly an unscientific and incredibly biased approach to the issue. Notice the phrase I bolded in my OP regarding their methods. All public statements. Is 1/3=1? Not where I come from. So really, if I inflated what I have found in my one small example (Ironic, using an unscientific sample ) It would really be 935/1 140 000, which is quite different than 935/380 000.

EDIT: This BTW was not a speech, but rather a Q&A with Rummy on A Fox Sunday News show.

[edit on 23-1-2008 by WuTang]

reply to post by WuTang


Okay... I do see your point. The thing is I'm not interested in the ratio of lies to truthful statements. That doesn't interested me in the least, and it's probably the reason I misread your post.

I was more interested in the whole part about "935 false statements" or "532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction...". I didn't see in the article that they used a ratio either.

I don't believe the point of the study was for the ratio or words/lies. That would be kind of useless anyway, wouldn't it?

If not then I missed quite a few great opportunities to win arguments in the past and need to reanalyze my whole system of thinking.

Mother: "Son, you lied to me about how good you were doing in school"
Son: "Yea but I told you the truth about going to school, about studying for tests, and I haven't done drugs."
Son: "So that means I only lied to you 1/4 of the time."
Mother: "Oh, well in that case, great job!"

*edited to fix a grammatical error

[edit on 23-1-2008 by Sublime620]