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General News    H3'ed 2/16/17

Yes, It Was Blood for Oil (Part Four): Codepink Nails the Truth About George Bush's Wars

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Scooter Libby, Chief of Staff for Vice President Cheney

Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to the President

Dan Bartless, White House Director of Communications

Ari Fleischer, Press Secretary

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor

Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor

Karen Hughes, Counselor to the President

James Wilkinson, Chief of Staff for the Secretary of the Treasury

Mary Matalin, Vice President Cheney's staff

Nicholas Calio, Assistant to the President, Legislative Affairs

Michael Gerson, Chief speechwriter

The group operated in strict secrecy, sifting intelligence, writing position papers and speeches, creating "talking points," planning strategy and timing of messaging, and feeding information to the mass media. It emphasized the nuclear threat, and Condoleezza Rice's statement achieved iconic status: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

The stream of information was intentionally misleading and deceptive: that's the nature of propaganda. A Washington Post story on August 10, 2003, described the Group's overreach: "Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence." A subsequent expose' was entitled, "Not One Claim Was True."(2)

In 2008 the Center for Public Integrity published the most comprehensive inquiry into the Bush Administration's record of intentional deception: Iraq: the War Card. The Center studied the public statements made between September 11, 2001 and September 11, 2003 by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Press Secretary

Ari Fleischer, and his successor, Scott McClellan. Inventoried month-by-month, 935 of the statements were documented by the Center to be untrue.(3)

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Retired professor of public policy and administration. Author, frequent contributor to progressive websites.

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