Read the stories that TV news networks forget to report!
Bush Administration’s Lies About Iraq: Compendium of the relentless lies by the Bush/PNAC administration related to the invasion of Iraq, as sold to America by the corporate media.
"Criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government" Senator Robert Taft 1941
The Most Heinous Crime of the New Millennium - "We have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." - Colin Powell on February 6, speaking to the UN Security Council, demanding their support for the invasion of Iraq
What is war? - (A must see. Turn speakers on first if you have them.)
Warnings on WMD 'Fabricator' Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says - In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare. - Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph. - A few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."
Mr. PRESIDENT WE DO NOT BELIEVE YOU - The reality is that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George Bush, the father, took parts in the destruction of Iraq; they are responsible and that history will condemn them for destroying the cradle of civilization.
White House knew there were no WMD CIA - The CIA had evidence Iraq possessed no weapons of mass destruction six months before the 2003 US-led invasion but was ignored by a White House intent on ousting Saddam Hussein, a former senior CIA official said, according to CBS. - "The (White House) group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested." - "We said: 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said: 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change'," added Drumheller, whose CIA operation was assigned the task of debriefing the Iraqi official. - "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," the former CIA agent told CBS.
General Appeals for More Troops Were Denied - Adding to criticism of the Bush administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq, a retired senior general who commanded an infantry division in the conflict said Monday that requests by commanders for more soldiers were repeatedly turned down. - "Many of us routinely asked for more troops," retired Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste said, contradicting statements by President Bush and his senior aides that the administration had given the military all the resources it had asked for. - TVNL Comment: “Adding to the criticism?” How about “exposing the relentless lies of the Bush administration; most notably those of George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld!
Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects - The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found. - TVNL COMMENT: The lies never stop and nobody is being held accountable!
WHAT DID APRIL SAY? - The Iraqis did not know at that time that the CIA and Kuwait (in collaboration) had already instituted measures to further undermine the Iraqi economy. - After listening, Glaspie then assured Saddam that the U.S. was on Iraq’s side and that the U.S. was in sync with the desires of Iraq to rebuild. She explained: - I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border dispute with Kuwait.
Assumptive and Malicious Disinformation - That Saddam was a ruthless ruler is hardly debatable. - He was just as dictatorial as all his neighbors and many others, but perhaps more ruthless in suppressing active opposition. However, he was also a true revolutionary and achieved much that is positive for Iraq, and provided support to revolutionary movements in the Arab world and Africa. He reclaimed his country's resources, embarked on serious development, and became an obstacle to imperial designs on the region. This is the basic reason why he was singled out for demonization by imperialism as well as the oil booty that lay in wait there. And he could not be bought.
No WMDs; They Report it in the UK - The UK may demand an inquiry; what about the US, after all we started all of this. But the Laci Peterson case is today’s orange alert distraction in the US.
What's the real story of Lynch's rescue? - In the fog of a media frenzy, facts hard to discern from fiction- TVNL comments: Whatever the facts are the truth is that the Bush administration used this event for PR proposes
The myth of Private Jessica - IT WAS one of America’s greatest tales of modern war heroism. - An episode that had looked set to be turned into a Hollywood drama was in part nothing but "Hollywood crap", according to one witness.
Private Lynch 'not shot and stabbed' - A US army report into the capture of American soldier Jessica Lynch is expected to reveal the private was not shot or stabbed by Iraqis.- The Correspondent programme said the US military knew there were no Iraqi forces guarding the hospital, and quoted a local doctor saying that the troops used blank rounds to "make a show" of the operation. - Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital, said: "It was like a Hollywood film. They cried: 'Go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. - "They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."
Private Jessica returns and she's still a heroine to the folks at home - Her M16 rifle jammed, a US Army report concluded, and she may never have opened fire. The severe injuries she sustained were the result of her Humvee crashing. - Even her rescue by US Special Forces appeared to have been over-hyped - Iraqi forces had already left the hospital where she was being kept.
507th weapon records gone - The U.S. Army on Tuesday revealed that all records and documents about the weapons that jammed during the March 23 ambush that led to the death of nine Fort Bliss soldiers were destroyed in the Iraqi attack and that there is no way to trace the weapons' histories. - The Army, responding to an El Paso Times request under the Freedom of Information Act, said any official information about the weapons used by Fort Bliss' 507th Maintenance Company was lost on a supply truck taken into combat. - An official report on the ambush near Nasiriyah said that several weapons, including M-16s, M249 Squad Automatic Weapons and a .50-caliber machine gun, jammed or failed to operate properly during the firefight. - TVNL Comment: This is the company that Jessica Lynch belonged to.
Jessica Lynch Criticizes U.S. Accounts of Her Ordeal - In her first public statements since her rescue in Iraq, Jessica Lynch criticized the military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue and re-casting her ordeal as a patriotic fable. - Asked by the ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer if the military's portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Ms. Lynch said: "Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong," according to a partial transcript of the interview to be broadcast on Tuesday. - Asked how she felt about the reports of her heroism, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer, "It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story. So I would have been the only one able to say, yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't."
Doctors Dismiss Lynch Bio's Rape Claims - Iraqi doctors who treated former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch dismissed on Friday claims made in her biography that she was raped by her Iraqi captors. - Although Lynch said she has no memory of the sexual assault, medical records cited in "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" indicate that she was raped by her Iraqi captors, according to U.S. media who said they had advance copies. - "When she was brought there she was fighting for her life," said Dr. al-Saeidi at his private clinic. "She was in shock because of the severity of her injury." - He said Lynch was fully clothed with her field jacket buttoned up. "Her clothes were not torn, buttons had not come off, her pants were zipped up," al-Saeidi said. - Al-Saeidi said he found no signs of rape during an examination although he acknowledged he was not looking for signs of sexual assault.
Jessica Lynch's Hero - Lynch was unconscious and appeared to be dead. All four others inside were killed. - TVNL Comment: Lynch did not act as a hero; she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She is lucky to be alive. Very simply Jessica Lynch was a victim of war who was lucky to survive here ordeal.
Tape confirms Iraqis tried to save U.S. POWs - Recording shows doctors working valiantly on Lynch, others - The tape, which was never aired in Iraq but has been obtained by NBC News, provides a new look at the treatment the Iraqis gave Lynch and other members of the Army's 507th Maintenance Co. after they were ambushed March 23. Lynch and four other soldiers were rescued by U.S. special forces on April 1, but 11 of their colleagues died during and after the ambush in Nasiriyeh. - TVNL Comment: They were “rescued” from the people who saved their lives?
Iraq: A necessary war? - Not according to U.N. monitors—or to U.S. intelligence, which has watched the situation even more carefully. TVNL asks: Does a bear, you know what, in the woods?
Robert Fisk: So what was the war for? - ‘Thank you, Mr Bush and Mr Blair, for making our world safer by ridding us of the one tyrant - Saddam Hussein - who never had any connection with 11 September 2001, or with the Riyadh bombings or with the bombings in Casablanca’
Right! It was all wrong - Winston Churchill's famous words a new twist. "Rarely," said Rumsfeld, "had so many been so wrong about so much." And if one shifts the focus of his remarks, he was absolutely right! The whole rationale for the war put forwarded by Rumsfeld, President Bush, Colin Powell and all their cohorts was wrong.
Yo, Ayatollahs! - The delicious part is that the review was suggested by Donald Rumsfeld, a main culprit in twisting the intelligence to justify a strike on Baghdad. It's like O. J. vowing to find the real killer.
At Saddam's Bombed Palace - The Air Force dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on the site because intelligence said there was a bunker complex hidden beneath the buildings. But Madere has yet to find it.
Wolfowitz reveals Iraq PR plan - Wolfowitz says that stressing Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons as the main argument for going to war with Iraq was the only one that all arms of the bureaucracy could agree on.
EXPOSED: BUSH AND BLAIR'S WAR OF LIES - Former Labour MP Tony Benn said: "I believe the Prime Minister lied to us and lied to us." MP Jeremy Corbyn said the war was "based on deception". - TVNL comment: No kidding! (Wwe wanted to use another word!)
DUBYA'S PHONY WAR - Bush has ensured his place in the history books - as the first man to wage a war and then dream up the excuse for it once the fighting's over.
Waggy Dog Stories - An administration hypes the threat posed by a foreign power. It talks of links to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism; it warns about a nuclear weapons program. The news media play along, and the country is swept up in war fever. The war drives everything else — including scandals involving administration officials — from the public's consciousness.
Save Our Spooks - "The American people were manipulated," bluntly declares one person from the Defense Intelligence Agency who says he was privy to all the intelligence there on Iraq.
Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims - Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons program at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq, the Guardian has learned.
Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed - A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq
Powell was under pressure to use shaky intelligence on Iraq - US Secretary of State Colin Powell was under persistent pressure from the Pentagon and White House to include questionable intelligence in his report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction he delivered at the United Nations last February, a US weekly reported.
USA lied about Iraq's weapons - A US-based Norwegian weapons inspector accuses the USA and Secretary of State Colin Powell with providing the United Nations Security Council with incorrect and misleading information about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), newspaper Dagbladet reports.
Actor Sean Penn Bashes Bush, Iraq War in Newspaper - “Our flag has been waving, it seems, in servicing a regime change significantly benefiting U.S. corporations," said Penn, questioning whether rebuilding the nation would benefit the "people of either Iraq or the United States."
Powell Defends Information He Used to Justify Iraq War - TVNL Comments: Powell has lost all credibility. He sold out months ago. He was arguably the only respectable member of the Bush administration until he sat there and knowingly spewed lies to the UN security council. He tried to discredit the UN and Hans Blix for the purpose of selling his boss’s war. Let me say that again; he sold WAR! WAR! WAR! Do people understand the ramifications of war? We are not talking about a video game, we are talking about dead people and lives forever ruined. He is, as Mr. Belafonte said, the house slave. For those of you who remember Dan Akroyd’s Saturday Night Live characters; Powell is the Irwin Maimway of the Bush Administration; selling his Johnny Flame On game to the world. Powell is has turned out to be the surprise disappointment of the new millennium
Public was misled, claim ex-CIA men - A GROUP of former US intelligence officials has written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war.
Wolfowitz Confesses the Lies - The US Administration has probably arrived at an opinion that it's time to open up the secret of the Iraqi war reasons
Bush: 'We Found' Banned Weapons - TVNL comments: Is this embarrassing or what? I was embarrassed for the nation when he was selected President; but this is ridiculous! OK, so American’s are fairly stupid; the polls show that, but how stupid does he think the rest of the world is?
The lies that led us into war - Glen Rangwala shows how the UK and the US manipulated UN reports - and conjured an anthrax dump from thin air
Truth and consequences - New questions about U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass terror - ‘Vice President Cheney's office played a major role in the secret debates and pressed for the toughest critique of Saddam's regime, administration officials say.’ - ‘ The first draft of Powell's speech was written by Cheney's staff and the National Security Council.’ - "It was over the top and ran the gamut from al Qaeda to human rights to weapons of mass destruction," says a senior official. "They were unsubstantiated assertions”. - TVNL translates” “unsubstantiated assertions” = LIES!
Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits - Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.
Iraq's arms: Hill raises new doubts - The Defence Minister, Robert Hill, has conceded that flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons capability may have influenced Australia's decision to join the war against Iraq and has backed a thorough and open review of the information.
Weapons of Mass Disappearance - The war in Iraq was based largely on intelligence about banned arms that still haven't been found. Was America's spy craft wrong — or manipulated?
Bush special office 'justified war' - The office of special plans was created by the deputy secretary of defence, Paul Wolfowitz, late last year in what was seen as an effort to justify the war.
Standard Operating Procedure - Suggestions that the public was manipulated into supporting an Iraq war gain credibility from the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts.
Credibility Gap, Anyone? - TVNL asks: While people question if there is a credibility gap, TVNL questions is there or has there ever been any credibility at all?
'Dumb' bombs used to topple Saddam - A third of the bombs dropped on Iraq were old-style "dumb weapons" - despite suggestions from the Pentagon that 90 per cent of munitions used would be precision-guided.
Lingering doubts about US intelligence on Iraq: reports
U.S. Won't Probe Secret Iraqi Documents - "We have the most sensitive documents here," said Marouf al-Chalabi, director-general of al-Fatah. "We were sure the Americans would target us but they haven't even dropped by."
How Their Big Lie Came to Be - Bush and his band of hawks seem to believe the ends justify the means. Thus, the terror of 9/11 and the boogeyman of Iraq's supposed WMD stash became the key to pushing an ambitious plan to redraw the map of the Middle East.
Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil - Oil was the main reason for military action against Iraq, a leading White House hawk has claimed, confirming the worst fears of those opposed to the US-led war.
There must be weapons of mass destruction in here somewhere - HELEN THOMAS - Bush apparently based his war decisions on the intelligence advice of his close coterie of conservative aides who had been itching to invade Iraq since they came into office.
Republican leader berates calls for WMD investigation as political ploy - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said the calls for congressional hearings were being made by "detractors who want to undermine the successful war." - TVNL comment: Spending years investigating and impeaching President Clinton over a personal domestic issue not related to the presidency was OK with Republicans. This shows how insane these people are! Unreal. This is why the rest of the world, made up of people who are more educated than Americans, laugh at us and now hate us.
September intelligence didn't find Iraq WMD - The time frame is notable because it coincided with Bush administration efforts to mount a public case for the urgency of disarming Iraq, by force if necessary. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others argued that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, biological and other weapons and was hiding them.
Pentagon in 2002 Found `No Reliable' Iraq Arms Data (Update3) - A U.S. Defense Department report in September 2002 found ``no reliable information'' proving that Iraq had chemical weapons, even as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was saying the country had amassed stockpiles of the banned arms.
Admit your lies: Former UN inspector tells Bush, Blair - The United States and Britain should admit they lied when claiming that the ousted Baghdad regime had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), Scott Ritter, a former UN senior weapons inspector in Iraq, said in an interview published in Geneva
Bush Rides Into Credibility Gulch - Did the secret services on both sides of the pond hype, “sex up” or spin intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to please their hawkish masters and justify a war? Did Teams Blair and Bush cook the books? - CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer says Congress has three choices: It can avoid the job altogether, hold circus hearings or do the job right. TVNL asks: Will CBS talk about this on TV?
Intelligence Historian Says CIA 'Buckled' on Iraq - The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements. - "What is clear from intelligence reporting is that until about 1998 the CIA was fairly comfortable with its assessments on Iraq," John Prados wrote in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. - "But from that time on the agency gradually buckled under the weight of pressure to adopt alarmist views," he said. "After mid-2001, the rush to judgment on Iraq became a stampede."
Ex-Official: Evidence Distorted for WarThe Bush administration distorted intelligence and presented conjecture as evidence to justify a U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a retired intelligence official who served during the months before the war. - "What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say," said Greg Thielmann, who retired last September. "The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field."
Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs' - Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs - Instead The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987. - TVNL asks: What about a Blow to Bush? Why just Blair?
Kristol: Bush Made Misstatements on Iraq WMDs - In comments sure to be seized upon by Bush administration critics at home and abroad, one of the leading proponents of the war in Iraq said Sunday that President Bush may have misstated the case that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. attacked. - TVNL asks: What the hell is does “misstated” mean? Can’t anyone just say the word “lie?”
Bush Adamant Iraq Had Banned Weapons 'Program' - "Iraq had a weapons program," Bush told reporters after a meeting with his Cabinet at the White House. "Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out they did have a weapons program." - But he stopped short of repeating previous vows that the weapons themselves would be found. - TVNL comment: He keeps lying and nobody says a thing. Today I watched a reporter ask him if the US credibility was at steak if no weapons were found Part of Bush’s response was a comment about how the world is safer now that we did this. The reported should have asked “How exactly is the world safer”; but he did not. Everyone is terrified to ask this administration anything.
Who's Accountable? - Yet dishonest salesmanship has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's approach to domestic policy. And it has become increasingly clear that the selling of the war with Iraq was no different.
Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: - Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense? - By JOHN W. DEAN - President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.
