Yes, he's a liar. Why won't anyone say so?

The Center for Public Integrity--Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest--has assembled data from two years' worth of statements by key administrative figures beginning with 9/11/2001. They now have a database confirming "false statements."

By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows 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.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

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.

Big duh! say I. Many of us felt they were lying to us (yes, I will use the L-word) back at the time, because they were just not marshaling hard evidence or making a convincing case.

And, in case anyone wonders, I was in favor of dealing militarily with Al Qaeda, bin Laden, and the Taliban in Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Pity we didn't pursue that course without being derailed by the Iraq fiasco.

Read it here.

I am glad to see that the New York Times, USA Today, and The Associated Press all took note. Do you think there is a glimmer of hope that the American People will finally recognize that they were systematically lied to?

By the way, impeachment was not put into the Constitution as a process to be invoked only when one thought one had the votes. If an investigation into the lawlessness and malfeasance of these people were actually undertaken, I suspect the revelations would lead to more votes. Just sayin'.
--the BB