Because Their Lips Are Moving Special: At least 935 official lies to justify the war

The Center for Public Integrity, a non-partisan non-profit that produces responsible investigative journalism, released The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path To War that concluded that:

"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."

And

"...the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq"

As a part of preparing the study the Center produced, and has made available on their web site, a 380,000 word database of the statements made by top Bush administration officials that enabled comparisons between what they said and what they actually knew according to official documents and statements.

Via Mark Morford, photo from Political-News.org

Comments

[alex]

I really enjoy reading your blog, it always has great insight. But I am very frustrated with the media’s lack of questions to the presidential candidates about global warming. Now that it is down to just a few candidates I would think that this would be a bigger issue. Live Earth just picked up this topic and put out an article ( http://www.liveearth.org/news.php ) asking why the presidential candidates are not being solicited for their stance on the issue of the climate change. I just saw an article describing each candidate’s stance on global warming and climate change on earthlab.com http://www.earthlab.com/articles/PresidentialCandidates.aspx . So obviously they care about it. Is it the Medias fault for not asking the right questions or is it the candidates’ fault for not highlighting the right platforms? Does anyone know of other websites or articles that touch on this subject and candidates’ views? This is the biggest problem of the century and for generations to come…you would think the next president of the United States would be more vocal about it.

[Mark]

I agree, the media has been failing pretty miserably at exploring any substance during the campaigns. The races are explored as competitions between the top two candidates, and the issues are often tripe like whether they are mad at each other. Environment California has a petition; there are probably other efforts around too.

[Kristina]

I think we have to be very careful of what the government is saying and what information they are using. Thanks for the post! Also if you are interested, I'm going to this event to have my voice heard: town hall to be March 8th in Kansas City is looking for volunteers. This is one of only five cities in the US that will have a chance to make their voice heard on a very important topic. The National Institutes of Health and other healthcare agencies are considering establishing a biobank with information about the DNA of lots of different people around the US. This biobank could provide researchers with valuable information on the cause of diseases, but there could also be real privacy concerns about very personal information. This hasn’t been funded yet and no decisions have been made -- first, we want to know what everyone thinks about the idea: Is a biobank good? Bad? Dangerous? Are there safeguards? What safeguards are important? Are you okay with researchers having your DNA? This town hall is free and open to the public, but everyone is encouraged to register early. Make your voice count, register online at www.dnapolicy.org and click on the link for Kansas City. Bring a friend or two and make sure their voices count too. If you would like to volunteer to help us promote the town hall, please contact Erin Wiley at erin@pfidc.org or 202-374-0840. Cheers, Kristina