Bush Lied: Making the Case - Putting it All Together

http://bellaciao.org/en/IMG/jpg/bushliar.jpg

by steviemo

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/14/172215/695

Evidence Warrants an Investigation into Whether the Bush Administration's Justification for the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq was Fraudulent

Compiled from my memory and a variety of linked sources...

Introduction

Nothing new here, you've seen it before, but I have yet to see it all laid out together in one place. I hope this finds its way to MSM as a single package. I owe this to Ms. Sheehan.

The purpose of this document is to compile a list of facts and events which when considered together establish a basis for further investigation into whether the President of the United States, George W. Bush, and his administration intentionally lied or otherwise misled the United States Congress and the American people with regard to Iraq's alleged possession and development of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and links to Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terror network as justification for an invasion and occupation of that country.

Facts and Events

1. In 1998, Current and Former Bush Administration Officials Urged President Clinton to "Act Decisively" to Remove Saddam Hussein from Power through Military and Other Means.

In a letter dated January 26, 1998, President Clinton was urged to turn his administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. The letter said doing so would involve a willingness to undertake military action. The letter was signed by Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Richard Pearle, Paul Wolfowitz and other close advisers to President Bush.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm



2. Before he was President, in 1999, George W. Bush Talked Privately about his Desire to Attack Iraq.

Author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz was working as a ghost-writer for a planned auto-biography for George W. Bush. In the process of interviews for the book, Bush is quoted as saying, "One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief...My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it...If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."

http://www.globalnewsmatrix.com/modu...ticle&sid=1320



3. US Military had Plans to Eliminate Abu Musab Zarqawi Prior to the War but they were Rejected by the White House

The US military had several opportunities to kill Abu Musab Zarqawi and eliminate his terrorist operations in the Kurdish controlled northern "no fly" zone before the war officially started. President Bush rejected the plan. Zarqawi and his terrorist training camps in northern Iraq were later used as justification for a military invasion of Iraq.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4431601/
http://online.wsj.com/public/article...s_free_feature



4. President Bush: "Fuck Saddam. We're Taking Him Out".

From Time Magazine - Posted Sunday, May. 05, 2002

His war on Iraq may be delayed, but Bush still vows to remove Saddam. Here's a look at White House plans...

Two months ago, a group of Republican and Democratic Senators went to the White House to meet with Condoleezza Rice, the President's National Security Adviser. Bush was not scheduled to attend but poked his head in anyway -- and soon turned the discussion to Iraq. The President has strong feelings about Saddam Hussein ... and did not try to hide them. He showed little interest in debating what to do about Saddam. Instead, he became notably animated, according to one person in the room, used a vulgar epithet to refer to Saddam and concluded with four words that left no one in doubt about Bush's intentions: "We're taking him out."

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101.../strategy.html



5. President Bush Cited Forged Documents in State of the Union Speech

In his 2003 State of the Union speech to Congress, citing documents known to be forged, president Bush claimed "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".



6. White House Sources Leak the Identity of a CIA Agent

After former Ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly challenged the president's claim about Iraq seeking yellow-cake uranium from Niger, the identity of his wife, Valerie Wilson, as an undercover operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, was leaked to journalists Robert Novak, Matthew Cooper and others by at least two Bush Administration officials, putting her career and possibly her safety, and that of her contacts, at risk.



7. Former Treasury Secratary Paul O'Neill: "Bush Sought `Way' To Invade Iraq"

Ron Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty" quotes former Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on his impression of the president's very first National Security Meeting after taking office...

"From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime...Day one, these things were laid and sealed... It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying `Go find me a way to do this'"

Also from the CBS 60 Minutes report about Suskind's book...

Based on his interviews with O'Neill and several other officials at the meetings, Suskind writes that the planning envisioned peacekeeping troops, war crimes tribunals, and even divvying up Iraq's oil wealth. He obtained one Pentagon document, dated March 5, 2001, and entitled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts," which includes a map of potential areas for exploration. "It talks about contractors around the world from, you know, 30-40 countries. And which ones have what intentions - on oil in Iraq."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/...in592330.shtml



8. President Ordered Anti-Terrorism Advisor to Find Iraq Link to September 11th Terror Attacks

From 60 Minutes Interview with former Anti-Terrorism Advisor, Richard Clarke...

After the president returned to the White House on Sept. 11, he and his top advisers, including Clarke, began holding meetings about how to respond and retaliate. As Clarke writes in his book, he expected the administration to focus its military response on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. He says he was surprised that the talk quickly turned to Iraq.

"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said ... "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it."

"The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this. I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.' He came back at me and said, "Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer."



9. The White House Rejected a Last Minute Back Channel Offer to Avoid a War

As reported in Newsweek and the New York Times, the Bush administration rebuffed a last minute deal from Saddam Hussein to stop the invasion of Iraq. According to the reports, Iraqi representatives offered to give the U.S. rights to Iraqi oil, to hold elections in Iraq, to allow for an intensive search for weapons of mass destruction and to hand over an Iraqi man who was connected to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Iraq also agreed to support the U.S. war on terrorism and back any U.S.-written Middle East peace proposal.

The offer came about through back-channel negotiations between a Lebanese-American businessman Imad Hage, Pentagon advisor Richard Perle and the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. Perle told The New York Times that he met with Mr. Hage but the CIA refused to pursue the negotiations further.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...7/wbush107.xml
http://www.informationclearinghouse....rticle5170.htm



10. British Government Memo says Intelligence was Fixed Around the Policy

In what has become known as the "Downing Street Memo", dated July 23, 2002, Sir Richard Dearlove, head of the British MI-6 spy service, after talks in the US wrote "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy".

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...593637,00.html



11. British Cabinet Briefing Paper Warned Ministers to Create Conditions for War

From the Sunday Times...

A leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier. The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair's inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was "necessary to create the conditions" which would make it legal.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...648758,00.html



12. Vice President Cheney Pressured CIA to Back Up the Administration's Case for War

At a public hearing chaired by Rep. John Conyers, Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst and intelligence briefer for President George H. W. Bush, explained how inspections in Iraq were working, and that Hussein's stocks of missiles were dwindling. "[The inspectors] destroyed them. They cut them all up. There were about ninety of them. So it was working."

McGovern also testified that Vice President Cheney and CIA director George Tenet put undue pressure on intelligence analysts during regular visits to CIA headquarters. He said, "...Cheney [would] come in. He would like a briefing, and right over his shoulder [would be] George Tenet, who everyone knew was cooking things to what he thought the President wanted." CIA analysts, in their briefings to the President and Vice President, were apparently pressured to provide information that backed up their case for war, paying little heed to contradictory info. This is an example of the claim in the Downing Street Memo that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." McGovern argued that this interference with the CIA was "unprecedented."

http://sbindependent.org/node/423


View Comments | 1 comment
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/8/14/172215/695