President Bush lied about Iraq

Last week it was revealed that in September 2002 two top-level CIA analysts had briefed then-CIA Director Tenet that Saddam had no WMDs. Tenet briefed Bush, who dismissed it as worthless information.

The report also corroborates CIA official Drumheller, who disclosed the same information over a year ago and said, “The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.” The report was not included or even referred to in the October 2002 NIE that was sent to Congress to justify the war.

The claim that Saddam had WMDs was not just a mistake, it was a deliberate lie.

The claim by Bush that we are making progress in Iraq is a perverse twisting of facts and logic. The surge was supposed to give time for the Iraqi government to meet 18 milestones that they themselves established. They only achieved three.

Bush’s new plan that we can reduce our troop levels to 130,000 by next summer only gets us back to where we were before the surge started; back to “Stay the Course.”

The only credible measurement of progress in Iraq comes from the Iraqi people themselves, and ABC and BBC released a new comprehensive study of their analysis of the surge: more than 50 percent of the general population find attacks on US forces acceptable; nearly 70 percent think US forces have made things worse; 53 percent feel it was wrong for the US to invade Iraq; 78 percent oppose the presence of US forces; 71 percent feel the surge has had no effect or made things worse; and 40 percent feel that the US and Bush are responsible for the violence.

Don’t let Bush play for time – the only difference between getting all our troops out in the next six months and getting them out 10 years from now (as some have suggested) will be thousands more US dead and wounded.

Jon Monday