Shrub Says That WMDs Were Found

Whaa? I guess he figured if it wasn’t on Fox or CNN, the word would never get out to the U.S.?
Reason to Deceive
WMD Lies Could Be the New Watergate
By Cynthia Cotts for the Village Voice.

Bush is so comfortable bending the truth to defend this war that he recently denied the consensus that no WMD have been found. On Polish TV last month, he said, “We’ve found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories. . . . And we’ll find more weapons as times goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.”
…In retrospect, the Bush administration’s most publicized war stories have all been the products of smoke and mirrors. Contrary to the initial hype, the Hussein “decapitation strike” turned up no bodies and no bunkers. Chemical Ali walked out alive. Jessica Lynch was never shot, stabbed, or tortured by Iraqis. And despite all the hot tips Ahmad Chalabi spoon-fed to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, the WMD search teams have not found a single silver bullet or smoking gun. The war on Iraq is a Byzantine puzzle that begins and ends with a lie. The media have an obligation to expose it.


Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0325/cotts.php
by Cynthia Cotts Reason to Deceive WMD Lies Could Be the New Watergate June 18 – 24, 2003
If media companies want to boost ratings and credibility at the same time, they should follow the lead of New York Times columnists Paul Krugman and Nicholas D. Kristof and make weapons of mass destruction the top story of the summer. Not only have President Bush and his administration exaggerated the evidence that Iraq had WMD, but now that news of their lies has leaked out, the pro-war camp is spinning like mad. The odds of exposing a major cover-up are looking very good indeed.
Consider the momentum this story has picked up from the Times Op-Ed page in recent weeks. On May 30, Kristof reported that according to “a torrent” of sources, WMD intelligence was “deliberately warped . . . to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize [the war in Iraq].” On June 3, Krugman noted that “misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration,” and on June 10, he demanded accountability, blasting the Bush team’s m.o. as one of “cherry picking, of choosing and exaggerating intelligence that suited [their] preconceptions.”
At press time, the Bush team and Tony Blair stand widely accused of intentionally publicizing bogus evidence to justify the war. Not only did Bush rely on forged documents when he made the claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from Niger, but, as Kristof reported on May 6 and June 13, everyone in the intelligence community knew this was a lie, including the office of Dick Cheney. With some Democrats demanding public WMD hearings, the Bush team is running scared, scheduling closed hearings and scheming to make CIA director George Tenet the fall guy.
What did the president know, and when did he know it? The refrain dates back to Watergate days, when Richard Nixon had to resign because of his lies. Just think, with gavel-to-gavel coverage, WMD hearings could be an enlightening spectacle, filling the cable channels with Watergate nostalgia while reminding the world that in America, political leaders have an obligation to tell the truth. Even lying about sex, as conservatives liked to remind us during the Clinton era, is an impeachable offense.
Now that a Republican is accused of lying to launch an endless military occupation, hawks are rushing to reassert the legitimacy of U.S. aggression. But the “bouquet of new justifications,” as Maureen Dowd calls their arguments, have wilted quickly. What’s the rush to find WMD? asks the Bush camp. We found other neat stuff, like torture chambers. Saddam Hussein had these weapons before, but he hid them really well

One thought on “Shrub Says That WMDs Were Found

  1. Tom Poe

    Now, then. If there was a way to get the clip of the Polish proclamation by King George, the one about finding the wmd, that would be NIFTY!!
    I bet you’d get millions of hits to see that clip. Any chance someone can reach out and find it?
    Tom

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