henry waxman and the 237 misleading statements about iraq

[zimv20]

link (http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/)


The Iraq on the Record Report, 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 W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

This database identifies 237 specific misleading statements about the threat posed by Iraq made by these five officials in 125 public appearances in the time leading up to and after the commencement of hostilities in Iraq. The search options on the left can be used to find statements by any combination of speaker, subject, keyword, or date.


one-stop shopping for the iraq lies

[Sayhey]

link (http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/)



one-stop shopping for the iraq lies

thanks, zim. wonderful link!

[Desertrat]

A lie is a wilful misrepresentation of the truth. If one is misled by the available information and believes it to be true rather than in error--regardless of why it's in error--then one is not lying.

Waxman is a bottom-feeder ranking down near his cohort, Maxine Waters. He's another who on his best day would have to look up to see whale dung.

'Rat

[numediaman]

A lie is a wilful misrepresentation of the truth. If one is misled by the available information and believes it to be true rather than in error--regardless of why it's in error--then one is not lying.

Waxman is a bottom-feeder ranking down near his cohort, Maxine Waters. He's another who on his best day would have to look up to see whale dung.

'Rat

That was an intelligent retort.

[IJ Reilly]

That was an intelligent retort.

Hey, I like it -- the truth depends on what the definition of "is" is.

[Sayhey]

A lie is a wilful misrepresentation of the truth. If one is misled by the available information and believes it to be true rather than in error--regardless of why it's in error--then one is not lying.

Waxman is a bottom-feeder ranking down near his cohort, Maxine Waters. He's another who on his best day would have to look up to see whale dung.

'Rat

Putting the personal attacks on Waxman and Waters aside, no where do I see in Waxman's report does he use the word "lie." It talks of "misleading statements." I would call them "lies"; Waxman does not. The importance of Waxman's report is not only as a valuable tool to look at the individual statements of government officials on the topic of Iraq, but in putting them all together one gets the picture of an administration on a campaign in which the facts to the contrary were not important.

'Rat, the implication of your statement is that the Bush administration was the unwitting victim of faulty intelligence. While to some degree many people and governments overestimated Saddam's capabilities, no one could mistake the process of how the administration shaped and distorted intelligence as a passive process. The folks in the Bush administration, starting with Dubya himself, had the removal of Saddam on the top of their agenda from well before day one of their time in office. Their use of a separate apparatus in the Pentagon to comb intelligence reports for data, no matter how untrustworthy, that would support their already existing goal is the best example of how active they were in the process.

[DavisBAnimal]

A lie is a wilful misrepresentation of the truth. If one is misled by the available information and believes it to be true rather than in error--regardless of why it's in error--then one is not lying.

Waxman is a bottom-feeder ranking down near his cohort, Maxine Waters. He's another who on his best day would have to look up to see whale dung.

'Rat

Well if they weren't lying, they sure were wrong. I don't know if trust my security in someone's hands who was that "wrong".

Davis

[IJ Reilly]

The former U.N. inspector, on a book tour, says even Hussein may have thought so.

UNITED NATIONS — Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday that until the final days before the war, he and U.S. officials — and perhaps even Saddam Hussein — believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But rather than taking the time to find out for sure, he said, the momentum of war preparations made the Bush administration deaf to evidence that contradicted their conclusions.

"They were wrong. Their conviction was based on faith, and it was wrong," he said. Given a little more time, Blix added, the weapons inspectors might have been able to discredit some of the misinterpreted intelligence.

"We did come to a more accurate picture than the national agencies did," he said. "So that should be a lesson for the future."

Blix, on a 10-day tour to promote his new book a year after the war began, returned to the United Nations on Tuesday to speak and sign hundreds of copies of "Disarming Iraq" for diplomats who spent an hour in line.

It was a quiet hero's welcome for the meticulous, deliberate official who by happenstance helped put the world body at the center of the debate over how to disarm Iraq. Once depicted as the man who held the question of war and peace in his hands, he still maintains that the Security Council — and ultimately, just the United States — had the power to decide the issue.

Although he is convinced that the war was "preplanned, but not predetermined," he wrote that he couldn't escape the feeling that the inspectors' work was meant to merely fill time until the U.S. military was ready. It was not simply a question of whether Iraq had an active weapons program, he wrote. It was more a question of, "We know the answers. Give us the intelligence to support those answers." He never did get that information. Then the clock ran out on March 16 of last year.

"I could not say in the middle of March that there are no weapons of mass destruction," he said Tuesday.

For his cautious and methodical approach to weapons inspections, the 75-year-old Swede was vilified, investigated and treated with contempt by Washington.

In a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney in October 2002, the American made clear that he thought inspections were useless and the U.S. "was ready to discredit inspections in favor of disarmament."

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz ordered an investigation into Blix's background. David Kay, a former inspector with the International Atomic Energy Agency who recently resigned as head of the U.S. weapons search team in Iraq, attacked Blix for failing to uncover clandestine nuclear efforts in Iraq and North Korea while heading the U.N. agency from 1981 to 1997.

A year later, the large caches of weapons of mass destruction the Bush administration alleged were in Iraq still have not been found. In a satisfying coda for the mild-mannered Blix, it was his former employee and critic, Kay, who admitted: "We were all wrong."

The lessons Washington should learn, he said, are to use more critical judgment and less reliance on defectors, and to "get off the spin." The administration's portrayal of its intelligence was meant to create "a far more ominous picture than there was," Blix said.

"Saddam was not a threat to the region, he was not a danger to his neighbors," Blix said. "He was a horror to his own people. The rest was an oversell."

Blix conceded that his own gut feeling at the time, based on Hussein's past intentions and capabilities, was that Iraq did have unconventional weapons. "I thought that there were weapons of mass destruction like everyone else."

The fact that Hussein's Republican Guards were equipped with gas masks and biohazard suits suggests that the Iraqi leader's own scientists had misled him about the military's capabilities.

"It seems that, at any rate, he might not have been all that well-informed, that they might have fooled him a bit about what they were doing, that he was more optimistic about getting new weapons and so forth," Blix said. "I think there's always a risk that in a totalitarian state that people will tell the dictator what they think he wants to hear."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-blix17mar17,1,2144613.story

[Desertrat]

One of my first-ever posts at this forum on the subject of Iraq included my view that the Bushies made a big mistake in harping on WMD in order to justify the war.

Seems logical to me to ask why they did that. The only answer I have is that there was a general belief in D.C. and other world capitals that Saddam did indeed have WMDs. People like Sens. Clinton, Kennedy and Kerry were vocal about it, as was Clinton when he was President. A "willingness to believe", then, to me seems reasonable.

Now, this state of affairs is not unknown to Waxman. He's as much an insider who's privy to intelligence information as any of the others. He was not vocal in opposition prior to the drumbeats for war. This report is merely part of the politics of an election year. I'm fed up with people who suddenly play the changing-spots-leopard game during an election year, ignoring or suddenly reversing previous positions and acting as they'd never thought otherwise. Bottom feeders.

'Rat

[zimv20]

This report is merely part of the politics of an election year. I'm fed up with people who suddenly play the changing-spots-leopard game during an election year, ignoring or suddenly reversing previous positions and acting as they'd never thought otherwise. Bottom feeders.

i feel that's a little cynical. imo, a lot of congressmen who voted for the resolution did so because they believed what the administration was saying. in retrospect, they realize they were intentionally misled. some 237 times in public, how many more times in private?

a great difference between this administration and the previous was what they did w/ the intelligence they had. to say that clinton believed there was WMD doesn't in any way, shape or form excuse the bush administration from manipulating intelligence to its own ends and launching an invasion before the re-admitted inspectors were done.

[jennyjennydz]

Truth does not exist. Avoid throughout categorizations of statements of public officials as lies or misleading.

WAR IS PEACE
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

[mactastic]

I'm fed up with people who suddenly play the changing-spots-leopard game during an election year, ignoring or suddenly reversing previous positions and acting as they'd never thought otherwise. Bottom feeders.

'Rat

You mean like the bottom feeder who told us he was against nation building? Or that he was a uniter not a divider? Or that he supported states rights - until he needed the Supremes to tip things to his favor? Yeah I'm pretty fed up with those kind of hypocrites.

And speaking of bottom feeders, why the ommision of Tom DeLay?

[wwworry]

A lie is a wilful misrepresentation of the truth. If one is misled by the available information and believes it to be true rather than in error--regardless of why it's in error--then one is not lying.

Waxman is a bottom-feeder ranking down near his cohort, Maxine Waters. He's another who on his best day would have to look up to see whale dung.

'Rat

Attack the messenger. Typically republican.

Use Enron-like excuses to get out any responsibility for what you said.

Profit!

Come on 'Rat. I remember what reasons you gave for attacking Iraq but that's not what they said. Are you going to accept lying if it gets you what you want? Would you lie to get what you want?

[Sayhey]

One of my first-ever posts at this forum on the subject of Iraq included my view that the Bushies made a big mistake in harping on WMD in order to justify the war.

Seems logical to me to ask why they did that. The only answer I have is that there was a general belief in D.C. and other world capitals that Saddam did indeed have WMDs. People like Sens. Clinton, Kennedy and Kerry were vocal about it, as was Clinton when he was President. A "willingness to believe", then, to me seems reasonable.

Now, this state of affairs is not unknown to Waxman. He's as much an insider who's privy to intelligence information as any of the others. He was not vocal in opposition prior to the drumbeats for war. This report is merely part of the politics of an election year. I'm fed up with people who suddenly play the changing-spots-leopard game during an election year, ignoring or suddenly reversing previous positions and acting as they'd never thought otherwise. Bottom feeders.

'Rat

I know you have read Karen Kwiatkowski's (http://www.amconmag.com/12_1_03/feature.html) stuff. I've been posting links to articles like Seymour Hersh's (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact) and the Frontline (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/iraq/view/) documentaries for a while. Many folks here have provide lots of information about the "misleading statements" as they have come out. The papers of the Project for a New American Century (http://www.newamericancentury.org/) have been public for close to a decade. Frankly, 'Rat, the only real reason to buy into the administration's argument that it was all a problem of lousy intelligence is if one refuses to look at the evidence.

As to the argument that Bush was just acting on what everyone else thought was the reality, all the others who you name did not organize a war through distortions of their own making. That is a huge difference between the Bush administration and Clinton and everyone in Congress who voted for the resolution.

IJ, another great post. I heard him on the Newshour tonight and I'm going to have to go and buy his book.

[Desertrat]

I don't like anything about Waxman, and don't trust anything he says. If he told me the sun comes up in the east, I'd double check my compasses. Anything emanating from his office or anything he's associated with, I just basically don't believe. Sorry about that--not.

There's a lot going on, or that has gone on, that doesn't please me one bit. However, that's no reason to get all inflamed or run around yowling "Liar, liar, pants on fire." When it comes to "spin" or "misrepresentations" or outright lies, I find great difficulty in distinguishing a Democrat from a Republican.

I've written letters. I've given money to campaigns. I've supported some danged good people in campaigns. I've been in at the grassroots level; 20 years back I was Demo. Pct. Chairman; went to the County Convention and would have gone on to the State Convention but for some family illness. Heck, back in Austintatious I represented my precinct at the Democratic County Convention. I've put in my time; I've made my bones. But I've just spent too much time around too many politicos for the good of my stomach--they talk, and I want to throw up.

So I try to figure out why people do what they do. For some reason, some folks here think that an absence of accusation equates to support. Well, I just don't really think so. It's just that if I dump on somebody, I'd like to be reasonably accurate as to my reasons.

'Nuf

'Rat

[Sayhey]

I don't like anything about Waxman, and don't trust anything he says. If he told me the sun comes up in the east, I'd double check my compasses. Anything emanating from his office or anything he's associated with, I just basically don't believe. Sorry about that--not.

There's a lot going on, or that has gone on, that doesn't please me one bit. However, that's no reason to get all inflamed or run around yowling "Liar, liar, pants on fire." When it comes to "spin" or "misrepresentations" or outright lies, I find great difficulty in distinguishing a Democrat from a Republican.

I've written letters. I've given money to campaigns. I've supported some danged good people in campaigns. I've been in at the grassroots level; 20 years back I was Demo. Pct. Chairman; went to the County Convention and would have gone on to the State Convention but for some family illness. Heck, back in Austintatious I represented my precinct at the Democratic County Convention. I've put in my time; I've made my bones. But I've just spent too much time around too many politicos for the good of my stomach--they talk, and I want to throw up.

So I try to figure out why people do what they do. For some reason, some folks here think that an absence of accusation equates to support. Well, I just don't really think so. It's just that if I dump on somebody, I'd like to be reasonably accurate as to my reasons.

'Nuf

'Rat

Some off the rest of us on this board are not exactly neophytes to the political process either, 'Rat. I've been involved in politics since I was a teenager in the sixties. Glad to hear about your experiences in the local Democratic organization, and maybe you have some particular good reason to dislike Waxman so intensely. However, my point was concerning the issue of Bush's attempt to place blame on faulty intelligence for leading us into war and whether he and his administration actively distorted information to bolster an already existing priority of getting rid of Saddam. If you look into the material, I'd be interested in what you have to say about it.

[IJ Reilly]

Ah, we're all just a bunch of bottom-feeders.

[3rdpath]

waxman's reputation has absolutely nothing to do with the statements made by the bush administration in their rush to war. that's just illogical. had they been compiled by anyone else, they'd read just the same...and be just as disturbing.

and OF COURSE this is politics...there is an election coming up and it would be foolish to not review the current administration's tactics, policies, successes and failures when making a choice in 2004. lies ( or willful misrepresentations...) certainly should be carefully considered.

bush and cheney are gonna have a hard time defending this 237 item grocery list come debate time...

[zimv20]

bush and cheney are gonna have a hard time defending this 237 item grocery list come debate time...
speaking of which, i wonder what plans are being hatched to either get bush out of them or write the rules such that he can't be directly challenged

[Sayhey]

speaking of which, i wonder what plans are being hatched to either get bush out of them or write the rules such that he can't be directly challenged

Did you hear Kerry's challenge to Bush for monthly debates (ala Lincoln-Douglas) leading up to November? Now what do you think the chances of Bush accepting that challenge are? Slim or none?

[zimv20]

Did you hear Kerry's challenge to Bush for monthly debates (ala Lincoln-Douglas) leading up to November? Now what do you think the chances of Bush accepting that challenge are? Slim or none?
ha! will never ever happen.

[3rdpath]

Did you hear Kerry's challenge to Bush for monthly debates (ala Lincoln-Douglas) leading up to November? Now what do you think the chances of Bush accepting that challenge are? Slim or none?

a zero% chance...

bush is gonna duck the debates for sure...he'll do the absolute minimum he can get away with.

he's all hat and no cattle.

[Sayhey]

ha! will never ever happen.

I agree. It looks like Rove's strategy is to pour money into feel good "morning in America" ads will attacking Kerry as soft on terrorism. This encludes any distortion of his voting record they can think of.

[mactastic]

Anything emanating from his office or anything he's associated with, I just basically don't believe.

vs.

When it comes to "spin" or "misrepresentations" or outright lies, I find great difficulty in distinguishing a Democrat from a Republican.


Sounds like you got a contradiction going on here. Which one is it? Is it 'Democrats, particularly Henry Waxman, lie' or is it 'They all lie except for a few.'?

You're a very laid-back kind of guy when it comes to criticizing conservatives. Dangfino, they all do it, etc. etc. But when it comes time to lay the smack down on a liberal you sure don't hold back. Can't you stick to attacking the guys politics and not him personally? Which by the way is a dodge over whether, as has been posted, those items would be any more or less true if compiled by someone else? This isn't about Waxman anyway, and you know it.

[numediaman]

I'm not sure Bush will do as bad in a debate as you may believe. First off, the debate format usually allows candidates to recite a brief pitch. Even if there is time for rebuttal, the time allowed is awfully brief.

Kerry comes off pretty bad in this format. He has a tendency to stretch his answers. That's why most people think that Edwards did better in the debates. Kerry is far more intellectual than Bush. He thinks. Bush doesn't let thought get in the way of his message.

Secondly, Bush will simply say what he is saying now -- we have to stay the course in Iraq, I'm a war President, etc. Kerry will say the President has misled America, etc. Unfortunately, swing voters don't seem that upset that Bush lied. Bush's approval rating is at 51% despite everything (imagine if the economy were in good shape! Americans would let Bush invade Canada). And despite a disasterous foreign policy record where most of our allies have criticized the U.S., a huge majority have said they think Bush is the better candidate to handle foreign affairs.

[IJ Reilly]

Kerry has a severe dependent clause problem in his speaking style. He's got a bad habit of falling back on passive phrases like "with respect to." I'd expect his handlers to work with him on this issue before it comes time for the debates. Bush has a few rhetorical problems of his own, not the least of which is fumbling for words when he ventures outside of prepared responses. This is why he does so few press conferences.

[Neserk]

i feel that's a little cynical. imo, a lot of congressmen who voted for the resolution did so because they believed what the administration was saying.


Something I will *never* understand... I knew he was full of ****. I knew when I read about what he did to the state of TX that he would be a horrible president and could not be trusted. Why were people so willing to believe him?

[zimv20]

Something I will *never* understand... I knew he was full of ****. I knew when I read about what he did to the state of TX that he would be a horrible president and could not be trusted. Why were people so willing to believe him?
i wish i knew. it baffles me each and every day.

[Neserk]

he's all hat and no cattle.

I have to remember that one!