There was no mistake, no inadvertence, no miscue, no stumbling about it. Bush and his cronies lied. And thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died because of those lies. It is truly shameful and incredible that George W. Bush still occupies the White House and is still threatening to kill more soldiers based on more lies (regarding Iran), but there he still sits.
What do we call someone who intentionally causes one death? A murderer.
Here’s Arianna Huffington’s summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 200-page “Phase II” report on how the Bush administration used — and abused — pre-war intelligence in the run-up to the war in Iraq:
A statement released by committee chairman Jay Rockefeller makes it clear that the administration “on numerous occasions, misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq…in making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.”
The report doesn’t use the word, but we all know what it’s called when someone presents something as fact that’s directly contradicted by the evidence. A lie. Not a mistake. A lie.
The conclusions of the Report are not surprising, but we have an extremely low bar for Congress these days, so it was with relief that we can now see these clear and direct conclusions in writing by a Senate sub-committee.
Here are some of the conclusions of committee chairman Jay Rockefeller’s statement regarding the Report (with Huffington’s emphasis):
Here's what looks like another lie that got us into Iraq: "A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein." http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12308.h…
"What do we call someone who intentionally causes one death? A murderer."
Oy vey. The pro-life crowd would certainly have a field day with that. Watch your wording, Erich!
Great post, though. 🙂