Thursday, November 17, 2005

Tongues on Fire

AMERICAblog has a synopsis of 51 occasions when Vice President Cheney misled America about Iraq.

A-blog also has this link to "Iraq on the Record: the Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq," prepared for Congressman Henry Waxman by the House Committee on Government Reform.

The document contains a database of 237 misleading statements on the threat posed by Iraq made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice between March 17, 2002 and January 22, 2004.
The 30-day period with the greatest number of misleading statements was the period before the congressional vote on the Iraq war resolution. Congress voted on the measure on October 10 and October 11, 2002. From September 8 through October 8, 2002, the five officials made 64 misleading statements in 16 public
appearances. A large number of misleading statements were also made during the two months before the war began. Between January 19 and March 19, 2003, the five officials made 48 misleading statements in 26 public appearances.

The document concludes:
Because of the gravity of the subject and the President’s unique access to classified information, members of Congress and the public expect the President and his senior officials to take special care to be balanced and accurate in describing national security threats. It does not appear, however, that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice met this standard in the case of Iraq. To the contrary, these five officials repeatedly made misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq. In 125 separate appearances, they made 11 misleading statements about the urgency of Iraq’s threat, 81 misleading statements about Iraq’s nuclear activities, 84 misleading statements about Iraq’s chemical and biological capabilities, and 61 misleading statements about Iraq’s relationship with al Qaeda.

Have you read about this report in the mainstream media yet?

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:09 AM

    Not a word about the report. This morning NPR reported Cheney's indignant speech about second guessing and lies - without any comment about how he's the biggest liar of them all. Nothing like a surge of rage to wake one up.

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  2. The MSM seems to be handing them a bullhorn.

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  3. Anonymous12:19 PM

    and the newspapers wonder why their readership is dropping?

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  4. And they keep running pieces about "blog ethics."

    Rovewellian!

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