Drawing Up the Indictment

The Democratic leadership is approaching a crossroads. During the 2006 campaign, the bulk of public opinion was extremely anxious for the Democrats not to be confrontational. People had all the confrontationalism from the Bush administration and the right-wing they could stomach and they did not want the Democrats adding to the burden.

However, the Bush administration's insistence on pursuing the surge in defiance of the outcome of the 2006 elections and the consensus findings of the Iraq Study Group seems to have changed the public mood. A full 70% of the population disapproves of the surge and it looks like more people are beginning to think that the Bush administration needs to be confronted over the lies they told to get into Iraq, the many crimes against humanity they've committed on terrorism suspects, the incompetence with which they have managed the war and more. As a result, the Democratic leadership is feeling pressure to bring the Bush administration to heal. This goes against the instincts of Democratic leaders to lay low and let the Bush administration destroy themselves.

One thing the Democrats can do is draw up an indictment of the full range of abuses involved in the Bush administration's conduct of the war and a good place to start is the enormous volume of lies that the Bush administration told to justify the invasion of Iraq. Here's a partial list of the lies drawn up by whatreallyhappened.com.

"There was the claim about the "Mobile biological weapons laboratories". Proffered in the absence of any real laboratories in the wake of the invasion, photos of these trailers were shown on all the US Mainstream Media, with the claim they while seeming to lack anything suggesting biological processing, these were part of a much larger assembly of multiple trailers that churned out biological weapons of mass destruction. The chief proponent of this hoax was Colin Powell, who presented illustrations such as this one to the United Nations on February 5th, 2003. This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.

Colin Powell's speech to the UN was itself one misstatement after another. Powell claimed that Iraq had purchased special aluminum tubes whose only possible use was in uranium enrichment centrifuges. . . Following the invasion, no centrifuges, aluminum or otherwise were found.

Powell also claimed to the United Nations that the photo on the left showed "Decontamination Vehicles". But when United Nations inspectors visited the site after the invasion, they located the vehicles and discovered they were just firefighting equipment.

Powell claimed the Iraqis had illegal rockets and launchers hidden in the palm trees of Western Iraq. None were ever found.

Powell claimed that the Iraqis had 8,500 liters (2245 gallons) of Anthrax. None was ever found.
Powell claimed that Iraq had four tons of VX nerve gas. The UN had already confirmed that it was destroyed.

Powell claimed that Iraq had an aggregate of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical and biological warfare agents. Powell gave no basis for that claim at all, and a DIA report issued the same time directly contradicted the claim. No biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq following the invasion.

Powell claimed that 122mm warheads found by the UN inspectors were chemical weapons. The warheads were empty, and showed no signs of ever having contained chemical weapons.

Powell claimed that Iraq had a secret force of illegal long-range Scud missiles. None were ever found.

Powell claimed to have an audio tape proving that Saddam was supporting Osama Bin Laden. But independent translation of the tape revealed Osama's wish for Saddam's death.

Colin Powell's UN debacle also included spy photos taken from high flying aircraft and spacecraft. On the photos were circles and arrows and labels pointing to various fuzzy white blobs and identifying them as laboratories and storage areas for Saddam's massive weapons of mass destruction program. Nothing in the photos actually suggested what the blobby shapes were and during inspections which followed the invasion, all of them turned out to be rather benign. "

The list of lies in whatreallyhappened.com was actually quite a bit longer, and that was just Colin Powell's lies. They didn't get into Dick Cheney's technique of splattering out lies until one of them stuck.