Posted by
Andrews on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 3:48:58 PM
I keep seeing the left touting the "fact" that Bush lied 259 times before the Iraq War. Now, as this number was generated by
two extremely biased press organizations, I am immediately skeptical. Not to mention the fact that some of the "unbiased experts" upon which they base this proof
are a bit compromised themselves. However, just to show I am fair, I decided to look up these 259 lies and see what the quality of the reporting was.
And immediately discovered I could not. Well, not easily.
It is an interesting phenomenon,
but not an unfamiliar one. We see repeated news stories on the "groundbreaking research" that "proves" Bush told 259 lies, and his administration told a total of 935. However, besides news reports and leftist pundits, and a few isolationists on the right, crowing about such reports, I cannot find even a single example of these "lies", much less the entire report. It appears again, we have a news story which is so compelling for certain people, that they don't need a primary source.
Well, I am not one of them. Less than convinced by the say-so of "professional journalist" (the same guys who gave us "false but accurate" and the "US defeat" of Tet), I began to dig a bit deeper.
The
Center for Public Integrity's website did a bit better, presenting on their front page at least a summary of the "lies", and
a few examples. However, I must say I was less than impressed. The first three bullet points all base their claim of a "lie" on the opinion of George Tenet. In fact, they are not so much lies, as stating that we are certain when Tenet was not as certain. I suppose if one really wants to rack up the numbers, they can call that a lie, but I think the difference between 75% and 100% does not constitute a lie, nor did I know that George Tenet had been installed as the standard of truth when I wasn't looking.
The next "lie" rests upon the fact that Bob Woodward believes that Saddam went around burying hydrogen manufacturing trailers in the desert. Really. Read it for yourself:
On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush
declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found
biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in State of Denial,
days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to examine the two
mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field report that the labs
were not for biological weapons. The team's final report, completed the
following month, concluded that the labs had probably been used to
manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
Actually, it is worse than that. Bush said we found laboratories, he did not say those trailers were it. Unless the reporters in question claim to have access to all secret information, do they know that no laboratories were found? They better if they are going to call it a "lie".
The next "lie" argues that the Niger agreement was a hoax, which everyone knows. But that does not mean that there was no other evidence that Saddam wanted uranium form Niger. What else was he shopping for there? Was he buying mint tea like
Joe Wilson? And speaking of Wilson, before he became a darling of the left, recall that the CIA said his report helped to convince them
Saddam WAS trying to buy uranium, even before the false document was an issue. So, again, a supposed "lie" is nothing of the kind.
The final "lie" is not actually an administration lie, but a claim that Powell's UN testimony was based on lie by two informants. As far as I can tell, they have no evidence Powell knew this, or anyone did. Actually, even more than that, they can't really prove that was the only source for Powell's statements. So they simply assume Powell based his statements on false testimony and that he knew it. Not exactly a smoking gun, is it?
I was going to follow up this analysis with an effort to find the primary source, but having seen what they consider their best examples, I have to say this is a pretty weak effort. Screaming peaceniks have done better. There are so many assumptions, distortions and taking of sides that it is laughable. Just as when Libby's memory did not agree with Tim Russert's it was called "perjury", a disagreement with Tenet (hardly an impartial witness) is played up into a "lie". Similarly, the existence of a forged document is taken as proof that nothing untoward was involved in Saddam's mission to Niger.
It is all just the same propaganda we have seen time and time again, this time given faux scientific veracity, by adding numbers and forming the biased reporters into a "center". Sorry, but adding numbers and titles does not make biased reporting any more accurate.
ADDENDUM
For those who think I am gullible for believing that there were WMDs in Iraq, please read my earlier take on this subject
here.
POSTSCRIPT
Please note, I am not fan of Hitchens, but his take on Wilson is absolutely correct. So, giving credit where it is due, I have to cite Hitchens, not once but twice on this topic.