Iraq On The Record

The Bush Administration's Public Statements On Iraq - A Report

from JoeUser Forums
"On February 5, 2004, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet categorically
stated that the U.S. intelligence community “never said there was an ‘imminent’
threat.”7 Yet this was not the impression conveyed by President Bush, Vice
President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Powell, and National Security
Advisor Rice in their public statements on Iraq. In 10 different appearances, these
five officials made 11 statements claiming that Iraq posed an urgent threat."

Executive Summary:

On March 19, 2003, U.S. forces began military operations in Iraq. Addressing the
nation about the purpose of the war on the day the bombing began, President
Bush stated: “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not
live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of
mass murder.”

One year later, many doubts have been raised regarding the Administration’s
assertions about the threat posed by Iraq. Prior to the war in Iraq, the President
and his advisors repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction that jeopardized the security of the United States.

The failure todiscover these weapons after the war has led to questions about whether thePresident and his advisors were candid in describing Iraq’s threat.

This report, which was prepared at the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, is a
comprehensive examination of the statements made by the five Administration
officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public
opinion on Iraq: President George Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

It finds that the five officials made
misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in 125 public appearances. The report and an accompanying database identify 237 specific misleading statements by the five officials.

Methodology
The Special Investigations Division compiled a database of statements about Iraq
made by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary
Powell, and National Security Advisor Rice. All of the statements in the database
were drawn from speeches, press conferences and briefings, interviews, written
statements, and testimony by the five officials.

This Iraq on the Record database contains statements made by the five officials
that were misleading at the time they were made. The database does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made.

I couldn't make up a chart like this:

Read the PDF:
Link
politics
65 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
As was pointed out elsewhere, in the 2003 state of the union address Bush explicitly said that Iraq was NOT an imminent threat and that we needed to act BEFORE it became one.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top

Baloney:

President Bush made 55 misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq in
27 separate public statements or appearances.
Of the 55 misleading statements by President Bush, 4 claimed that Iraq posed an urgent threat; 14 exaggerated Iraq’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons; 18
overstated Iraq’s chemical or biological weapons capacity; and 19 misrepresented
Iraq’s links to al Qaeda.

On October 7, 2002, just days before the October 10 and October 11, 2002,
congressional votes on the Iraq war resolution, President Bush gave an address in
Cincinnati, Ohio, about the threat posed by Iraq. In this speech, President Bush
made 11 misleading statements about Iraq, the highest number of misleading
statements in any single appearance by any of the five officials. In this single
appearance, President Bush made misleading statements about Iraq’s nuclear
capabilities, Iraq’s efforts to procure aluminum tubes, Iraq’s chemical and
biological capabilities, and Iraq’s connection to al Qaeda.

Some of the misleading statements made by President Bush included the
following:
• “On its present course, the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . .It has developed weapons of mass death.”
• “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
• “The liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda.”
• “We found the weapons of mass destruction. . . . [F]or those who say we
haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons,
they’re wrong, we found them.”
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently soughtsignificant quantities of uranium from Africa.”


Wouldn't this be an accurate representation of the views of intelligence officials at the time the statement was made?
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
Wow. Now we have a chart on "misleading" statements.  What's next? A chart on bad hair days? Misleading statements are subjective. Making a chart and pretending that makes it scientific, while amusing, is not really compelling.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
Wouldn't this be an accurate representation of the views of intelligence officials at the time the statement was made?


Maybe, maybe not, I'm not disputing everything he says. You may find a coherent quote or two in Bush's ramblings, like a blind squirrel finding an acorn. But I think you missed the part that said : The database does not include statements that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made. It's pretty hard to argue with a database full of documented lies and deceptions based on solid methodology. The evidence is overwhelming and I for one would not want to be the guy arguing that Bush was honest with the American people and the countries he asked to support the invasion. And as the report 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."

Not inaccurate statements, let's be clear. These are examples where they knew one thing and said another, or where military intelligence had raised significant doubt over some of their claims. For example:

"Ms. Rice made significantly more statements that were false — 8 — than any of
the other four officials. Many of these statements came in June and July 2003
when questions were being raised about why President Bush asserted in his State
of the Union address that Iraq was seeking to import uranium from Africa. Ms.
Rice repeatedly stated during this period that no one in the White House was
informed of the doubts about this uranium claim. For example, she stated:
• “We did not know at the time — no one knew at the time, in our circles —
maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our
circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a
forgery.”
• “[H]ad there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence
in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in, that the director of
Central Intelligence did not want it in, it would have been gone.”

These statements were simply false. As explained above, the CIA had repeatedly
communicated its objections to White House officials, including Ms. Rice"

It's a great report and I suggest you read it.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
So are all Canadians this obsessed with American politics? Or is whoever is in charge of things in Canada that dull?
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
Comments like that are self-evidently spiteful and immature, even with a smiley face at the end, and drag the debate to a lower level I'd rather not stoop to.

I stick to facts, and recently posted an article on emotions and thoughts in order to broaden my blogging horizons. Strangely, that article, this article, and others I've posted no longer appear in the Recent Articles and Recent Posts on the front page, even though I've checked 'Display this article in the Forums as well'. And the replies to my articles no longer appear in 'Recent Forum Posts'. All of this greatly reduceds the hits on my articles, as my blogging statistics reveal.

This is the type of editing Karmagirl mentioned she'd be doing to inappropriate articles. No one has suggested I post inappropriate articles, though; mine tend to be short, boring, and full of facts and charts. But frankly, they do tend to conflict with the stated positions of the editors and proprietor of this site.

Maybe it's just a software bug. Or maybe you are 'editing' posts that factually contradict your posts. Or maybe I'm just paranoid. I don't know or care, I'll just continue blogging and let others care about it. Information wants to be free; any supression of truth is inefficient and ultimately doomed to failure.

Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top
“The liberation of Iraq . . . removed an ally of al Qaeda.”


I bet there was something important where those 3 dots are.
Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top

Well David, there's nothing "factual" about your table. You might as well put up a table of how many "Happy Thoughts" Bush had in a given day.  Subjective terms like "Misleading" are meaningless.  I mean heck, one could go throughyour blog or my blog and come up with tons of things that they believe are misleading.

It's just coarse America bashing.

Reply #10 from JoeUser Forums Top
Yeah. Either that, or Bush lied. I'll go with 'lied'. The report was prepared by Americans for Americans, by the way. UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM — MINORITY STAFF SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION. I guess they are Un-American too. Your time would be better spent arguing issues you weren't so demonstrably wrong about. The methodology is clear and if you read the damn thing you'll see it leaves little wiggle room for subjectivity. I've posted several examples of lies, claims that were contrary to existing intelligence, and made up claims in another one of my articles; I suggest you read it. I think there is a homeless woman who needs attacking in another thread, why are you wasting your time here? I guess Canadian opinion isn't so boring and irrelevent after all...

From the report:
Methodology:
"The database contains statements that were misleading based on what was known
to the Administration at the time the statements were made. In compiling the
database, the Special Investigations Division did not assess whether
“subjectively” the officials believed a specific statement to be misleading.
Instead, the investigators used an “objective” standard. For purposes of the database, a statement is considered “misleading” if it conflicted with what intelligence officials knew at the time or involved the selective use of intelligence or the failure to include essential qualifiers or caveats.The database does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight.
If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was
made, the statement is excluded from the database even if it now appears
erroneous."