Bush's Speech Only Reminds Us that His Lies Led to the Death of 2,000 GI's.

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President Bush either has all the gall in the world or he is completely out of it. In his Nov. 11 speech, in an ill-conceived attempt to shore up his plummeting poll ratings, he charged that his critics have been distorting the facts and rewriting history about the Iraq war.

Bush, a world champion fact-distorter and history-rewriter himself, first justified his war in Iraq with numerous lies. He and his advisors' misstatements included the following: "Imminent threat." "Produced thousands of tons of chemical agents." "Fear a Mushroom cloud." "We found the weapons of mass destruction." "Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Africa." "Iraq terrorist ties." When these lies didn't pan out, Bush switched his reason for war to "the world is a better place without Saddam Hussein".

Concerning the non-existent WMD's, he blamed faulty intelligence, but it was intelligence he purposely initiated himself. He installed the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to cherry-pick and embellish findings supportive of war in Iraq while debunking whatever that wasn't. This group resorted to taking info out of context and juxtaposing unrelated data. Meanwhile, the real intelligence community repeatedly warned that the WMD case was weak.

Then, on May 1, 2005, The Sunday Times of London published the 'smoking gun' memo, which beyond a doubt confirmed that everything the Bush administration said about the Iraq invasion was manufactured. The memo came from a report from two of Blair's top officials on discussions they had just held in Washington with officials at the top levels of the Bush administration. The memo disclosed, "...The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." (The policy to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD's)

The sorry truth is the war was in the works as far back as 1998. Then, a 'Neo Con' group, including Bush's Vice President, Sec. of Defense, former Asst. Sec. of Defense and brother Jeb Bush, lobbied Congress and President Clinton. They called for a more aggressive foreign policy in which an already weakened Iraq would be conquered and colonized to become a sphere of U.S. military dominance with four U.S. bases in the oil rich Middle East. Furthermore, both former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former terrorism czar Richard Clarke revealed that Bush was planning to attack Iraq from the first days of his administration.

Actually, President Bush should now be facing Congress and explaining why he lied to them about the Iraq War.

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Dan Merica is a political cartoonist and opinion writer battling the right wing scourge now devastating our country. His work is posted on his website, www.cartoons-political.com.

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