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Bring 'em On!: The Bush administration's top 40 lies about war and terrorism (Steve Perry, 7/30/03, City Pages)

1) The administration was not bent on war with Iraq from 9/11 onward. [...]

2) The invasion of Iraq was based on a reasonable belief that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to the U.S., a belief supported by available intelligence evidence. [...]

8) Saddam was involved with bin Laden and al Qaeda in the plotting of 9/11. [...]

9) The U.S. wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East. [...]

11) The United States is waging a war on terror. [...]

12) The U.S. has made progress against world terrorist elements, in particular by crippling al Qaeda. [...]

13) The Bush administration has made Americans safer from terror on U.S. soil. [...]

15) U.S. air defenses functioned according to protocols on September 11, 2001. [...]

23) The Bush administration is seeking to create a viable Palestinian state. [...]

24) People detained by the U.S. after 9/11 were legitimate terror suspects. [...]

25) The U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions in its treatment of terror-related suspects, prisoners, and detainees. [...]

39) "The Iraqi people are now free." [...]

40) God told Bush to invade Iraq.

Not long after the September 11 attacks, neoconservative high priest Norman Podhoretz wrote: "One hears that Bush, who entered the White House without a clear sense of what he wanted to do there, now feels there was a purpose behind his election all along; as a born-again Christian, it is said, he believes he was chosen by God to eradicate the evil of terrorism from the world."

No, he really believes it, or so he would like us to think. The Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, told the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz that Bush made the following pronouncement during a recent meeting between the two: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

Oddly, it never got much play back home.

This is a terribly strange collection of things no one ever maintained (that Saddam helped plan 9-11?), things only paranoid conspiracists believe (that the "real" events of 9-11 are being covered up), things that are indisputably true (it is reasonable to believe Saddam had WMD, the U.S. has made progress against terror), and things that are now and may ultimately be unprovable (that America is safer, that President Bush truly wants a Palestinian state, that God told him to invade Iraq). The couple of statements that may indeed be lies--that we had credible reports that Iraq tried to buy uranium or that it was capable of launching WMD on 45 minute notice--are so obscured by these other scurrilous and sometimes lunatic charges as to fatally weaken the rest of the case. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 29, 2003 8:36 PM