Non-Shock of The Week: Report Shows Bush & Crew Lied A Lot to Justify Iraq War

It may not come as a surprise to you, but the Bush Administration (including George W. himself) orchestrated a PR campaign full of lies and untruths to justify going to war in Iraq, according to a new report issued by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

Hadn’t this already been determined? I mean, I knew they were lying from jump (they were talking after all, weren’t they? That whole “Bush Lied” campaign is tired. We know that. And he doesn’t give a fuck, nor do the people who continue to support him. Now what?), and story after story has shown that they knew they were bullshitting from the beginning. But oh well. I guess yet another study will hammer the point home. Here’s what they found:

“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.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.”

Now, I think this probably deserved more attention in the news this week than it got. But really, is it a shocker?

Tags: al quaeda, ari fleischer, bush lied, center for public integrity fund for independent journa, colin powell, condoleezza rice, dick cheney, donald rumsfeld, george w. bush, iraq, paul wolfowitz, saddam hussein, scott mcclellan