First, there were the 16 words:
The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.And just eight days later, there are the 20 Words:
President George Bush
January 28, 2003 State of the Union address
I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al-Qaeda.Just eight days later...
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell
February 5, 2003 U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell Addresses the U.N. Security Council
From AFP, a newly declassified report shows that the Bush administration knew there were doubts about another part of their rationale for going to war in Iraq - Saddam's connections to Al-Qaeda. Via Yahoo:
US military intelligence warned the Bush administration as early as February 2002 that its key source on Al-Qaeda's relationship with Iraq had provided "intentionally misleading" data, according to a declassified report.This is why what Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate did last week was so important. They shined a light back onto this issue. The question remains - was there a conspiracy of lies fed to the American public to bring us to war with Iraq? When the Secretary of State's Chief of Staff says there was a cabal in the White House, and over 50% of the public says that if Bush lied to us to go to war in Iraq he should be impeached, it's high time the rest of the media starts seriously covering this story.
Nevertheless, eight months later, President George W. Bush went public with charges that the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein had trained members of Osama bin Laden's terror network in manufacturing deadly poisons and gases.
These same accusations had found their way into then-secretary of state Colin Powell's February 2003 speech before the UN Security Council, in which he outlined the US rationale for military action against Iraq.
...
The administration's drumbeat over alleged Iraq-Qaeda ties reached a crescendo that same month when Powell went before the United Nations to accuse Iraq of hiding tons of chemical and biological weapons and nurturing nuclear ambitions.
His speech, according to congressional officials, even contained a direct reference to al-Libi's testimony, albeit not his name.
"I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al-Qaeda," insisted the secretary of state, who now says he regrets voicing many of the charges contained in that speech.
The unveiling of the documents came as Senate Democrats are stepping up pressure on their Republican colleagues, trying to force them to complete a second report on pre-war intelligence that would focus on whether members of the Bush administration had misused or intentionally misinterpreted intelligence findings.
...
Al-Libi formally recanted last year, according to congressional officials.
P.S. - Check out this White House page. Quite the inspirational graphic header, no? Our tax dollars paid for it to lie to us, maybe now it can help tell the truth.
