In Sept. '02, Bush invoked a nonexistent IAEA report to claim that Iraq was "six months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon." From that nonexistent report, Bush concluded: "I don't know what more evidence we need."

During his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, Bush defrauded Americans at least three times. He presented a less than candid assessment of the intelligence linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. He also presented a less than candid assessment of the intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction. As former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega, demonstrated in her book, U.S. v. Bush, according to Title 18, United States Code, Section 371"It is still the law of the United States that once politicians become Executive Branch officials, they are legally required to be honest and forthright about public matters." [p. 197]

Bush then built upon these two fraudulent assessments to establish a third, Saddam's link to 9/11: "Before September 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents and lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons, and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein."

In order to defraud the American public a third time, Bush and his speech writers employed a hallowed axiom of propaganda; one recognized by Walter Lippmann decades earlier: "[T]he more untrained the mind, the more readily it works out a theory that two things which catch its attention at the same time are causally connected."

Bush also lied in mid-July 2003, when he told reporters that "we gave him [Saddam] a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in." In fact, Saddam did let the inspectors in. But, the Bush administration made them leave, lest they discover that no WMD existed and scotch the invasion.

In December 2003, ABC's Diane Sawyer pressed Bush about justifying a war to the American public by stating "as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he [Saddam] could move to acquire those weapons." Put on the spot, Bush asserted: "So what's the difference?"

In late 2005, Bush lied again, when attempting to justify his unconstitutional order permitting the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without obtaining the required court-approved warrants. Bush defended his directive as a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism, evidently forgetting that, in April 2004, he assured an audience in Buffalo, New York: "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

And he lied again on December 14, 2005, when he asserted that his critics in Congress "saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein." In fact, Bush was receiving many more intelligence reports than any member of Congress.

Bush lied again, on the eve of the November 2006 mid-term elections, when he said that he wanted Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to stay on until the end of his presidency. In fact, Bush already had commenced work on replacing Rumsfeld and knew he was lying when he said Rumsfeld would stay on.

In a December 19, 2006, interview with the Washington Post, Bush lied again. According to the Post, when he was asked to reconcile his "absolutely, we're winning" in Iraq assertion of October 25, 2006, with his new assertion, "We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush "recast" his former assertion "as a prediction rather than an assessment."

Just a few days ago, during his August 6, 2007 "Joint Press Availability" (mini news conference) with Afghanistan's President Karzai, Bush lied again. This time the lie concerned Iran's nuclear program. Bush lied after being asked to respond to Karzai's recent assertion that Iran was playing a helpful role in Afghanistan.

Thus, after noting that it was up to Iran to prove that it is a stabilizing force in the world, Bush proceeded to lie: "After all, this is a government that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon."

We can be sure that Bush lied, because virtually everyone, except for a few morons, knows that "the Iranian government has never articulated such a desire and in fact has repeatedly claimed, genuinely or disingenuously, the opposite." [Farideh Farhi, "Afghanistan, Iraq and the Bush Administration's Incoherent Iran Policy," Informed Comment Global Affairs, Aug. 7, 2007]

Let us assure that this lie is not another lie for another war.

Yet, beyond the lies, I've noticed another pattern in the president's recent speeches; suggesting a type of psychological projection that results in the "pot calling the kettle black."

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