Lies My President Told Me

[TexasEditor]

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.17.03/lies-0329.html

Lies My President Told Me

As officials and journalists try to set the record straight, 10 whoppers the American public--and the world--was told about Iraq

By Christopher Scheer

"The Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons."
--George Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati

THERE IS A small somber box that appears in The New York Times every day. Titled simply "Killed in Iraq," it lists the names and military affiliations of those who most recently died on tour of duty. The June 25 edition listed just one name: Orenthial J. Smith, age 21, of Allendale, S.C. As of presstime, the list of American military dead in Iraq was 217 names long.

The young, late O.J. Smith was almost certainly named after the legendary running back, Orenthal J. Simpson, before that dashing American hero was charged for a double murder. Now his namesake has died in far-off Mesopotamia in a noble mission to, as our president put it on March 19, "disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."

Today, more than three months after Bush's stirring declaration of war and nearly two months since he declared victory, no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons have been found, or any documentation of their existence, or any sign they were deployed in the field.

The mainstream press, after an astonishing two years of underexamination, is belatedly drawing attention to what now appears to be an unconscionable level of administrative deception. They seem surprised to find that, when it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration isn't prone to the occasional lie of expediency or rushed deadline but, in fact, rode roughshod over the truth.

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