Lies and the Lying Liars.

The evidence is documented, finally! Well, it is not that we didn’t know that the Bush Administration lied about Iraq and our need to invade the country. So, now we know that many who where not paying attention were led to believe, falsely, that we should have invaded Iraq to protect the U.S. of A. and like sheeple they fell for it.

January 23, 2008

Web Site Assembles U.S. Prewar Claims

By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.

WASHINGTON — Students of how the Bush administration led the nation into the Iraq war can now go online to browse a comprehensive database of top officials’ statements before the invasion, connecting the dots between hundreds of claims, mostly discredited since then, linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or warning that he possessed forbidden weapons.

The Center for Public Integrity, a research group that focuses on ethics in government and public policy, designed the new Web site to allow simple searches for specific phrases, such as “mushroom cloud” or “yellowcake uranium,” in transcripts and documents totaling some 380,000 words, including remarks by President Bush and most of his top advisers in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Warnings about the need to confront Iraq, by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and two White House press secretaries, among others, can be combed line by line, and reviewed alongside detailed critiques published after the fact by official panels, historians, journalists and independent experts.

There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”

The database is online at www.publicintegrity.org.

Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the research center say their work has documented “at least 935 false statements” on hundreds of occasions, particularly that Iraq had unconventional weapons, links to Al Qaeda, or both.

The database shows how even after the invasion, when a consensus emerged that the prewar intelligence assessments were flawed, administration officials occasionally suggested that the weapons might still be found.

The officials have defended many of their prewar statements as having been based on the intelligence that was available at the time — although there is now evidence that some statements contradicted even the sketchy intelligence of the time.

President Bush said in 2005 that “much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong” but that “it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”

That’s his story and he is sticking to it no matter how many people have to die. Oh, and lest we forget, it was all about bringing democracy to Iraq by gun point because that always works out so well.

So, I am beginning to believe that we don’t need voter I.D.’s (I am against that), nor do we need a poll tax, but what we may need is a civics test which determines who is allowed to vote.

JMHO!