’)Crooks and Liars has the lowdown on the two nonprofit groups that discovered 935 false statements in a two year period. John Amato, who does a great job chronicling the lies the crooks keep telling us went into the C&L archives to show exactly the kind of deception we’ve been getting from the most crooked administration in our lifetime. Cheney is caught red-handed lying about something he had said on Meet the Press.
Today, the AP presents further proof of the despicable behavior of BushCo, showing what the Center for Public Integrity along with the Fund for Independence in Journalism discovered.
The study concluded that the statements “were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.” The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.“It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida,” according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. “In short, 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 on March 19, 2003.”
And who are the biggest liars of them all?
Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.
