Friday, January 25, 2008



Lying their way to war

We all know now that the Bush Administration lied its way to war in 2003, repeating endlessly the twin allegations that "Saddam was in bed with Osama" and "Saddam had WMD", neither of which had any basis in reality. Now, five years on, the Center for Public Integrity has documented the lies that led to war and compiled them into a database which both lists what was said publicly, and compares it with what was being said in private. Their major finding?

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, 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.
They even have a handy graph showing the lies by month:

(Click for a larger version).

A decade ago, the US tried to impeach its President for lying about a blowjob. Bush lied his way into a war which has so far killed hundreds of thousands. He shouldn't just be impeached - he should be tried for crimes against peace and imprisoned for the rest of his life.