He sold Americans on the war in Iraq based on lies, misdirection, and oh yes, there was a fake document in there as well.
I see where you folks stand, though. All liberal gotchas are lies, and all conservative gotchas are absolutely true. Also, all conservative flip-flops are actually changing minds based on new information, while liberal flip-flops are glad-handing people-pleasing tactics.
It is a fact that all the reasons the Bush admin has given for invading Iraq are lies. The only one that is not a lie, fighting terrorism, is instead a self-fulfilling prophesy.
- Powell
said in a speech in February 2001 that UN sanctions against Iraq were working in halting its development of WMDs. Most damning statement: "He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction." Less than a year later, the Bush administration did a 180 and suddenly proclaimed that Iraq was chock full o' WMDs.
- Powell also tried to float a document that "proved" Iraq was trying to get uranium from Nigeria. This document was later proved to be false. "Rumsfeld appeared before the (Senate Armed Services) committee a day after the White House acknowledged that President Bush's claim in his State of the Union speech that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was based on forged information."
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030708_wmd.html (Did Corplinx start 7 threads on this forgery, I wonder?)
- Rice said in April 2001 (thanks to Demon): "Saddam does not control the northern part of the country...We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." Again, less than a year later she had completely changed her mind.
- Rumsfeld :"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit" of weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light — through the prism of our experience on 9/11." Hmm. Really?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/05/30/international1153EDT0556.DTL
European critics of the Iraq war expressed shock Friday at published remarks by a senior U.S. official playing down Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the conflict.
In an interview in the next issue of Vanity Fair magazine, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz cited "bureaucratic reasons" for focusing on Saddam Hussein's alleged arsenal and said a "huge" reason for the war was to enable Washington to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia.
"For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on," Wolfowitz was quoted as saying.
He said one reason for going to war against Iraq that was "almost unnoticed but huge" was the need to maintain American forces in Saudi Arabia as long as Saddam was in power.
Those troops were sent to Saudi Arabia to protect the desert kingdom against Saddam, whose forces invaded Kuwait in 1991, but their presence in the country that houses Islam's holiest sites enraged Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama bin Laden.
Within two weeks of the fall of Baghdad, the United States announced it was removing most of its 5,000 troops from Saudi Arabia and would set up its main regional command center in Qatar.
...
"Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government," he said. "It's been a huge recruiting device for al-Qaida. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things."
Wow. Bush and co are friends with the Saudis, and want to stop causing them trouble, so they look at the evidence in a dramatic new light — through the prism of ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ - and start a war for a fake reason.
Should I keep going? These are documented, not just mindlessly repeated talking points like the majority of your comments. I have or can get lots more.
Some "skeptic" you are, Mr. Pot.
