From the White House:
In 2001, an Iraqi defector, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, said he had visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Mr. Saeed, a civil engineer, supported his claims with stacks of Iraqi government contracts, complete with technical specifications. Mr. Saeed said Iraq used companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of the United Nations – and then secretly used the equipment for their weapons programs.
Bush offered this as a reason to believe that Hussein was such an immediate threat to warrant an invasion, even without UN authorization. Was he telling the truth?
If you want to believe that Bush wasn’t lying, the information is presented in such a way to provide cover for your delusional thinking. Al-Haideri did make statements to the CIA in 2001. He was from Iraq. He did claim to be a civil engineer. He did make the claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. All of these statements are facts. Nobody disputes them.
According to Lyndon LaRouse, the world will enter a new Dark Age because the world’s finances are similar to those of the 14th century. It’s true that he said this, but does that really matter? What if I was the President, and based on what LaRouse was saying I declared war on the International Monetary Fund. And what if I kept repeating this claim of LaRouse, without explaining that respected economists had doubts about using a crackpot like LaRouche as a source? Would I be lying then?
The above quote is still on the White House website as evidence supporting the US invasion of Iraq – as evidence the Hussein posed an immediate threat to the United States, requiring action without delay, without inspections, without allies, without UN authorization. And that quote is still on the White House’s web site, despite the fact that (1) al-Haideri’s claims have been proven totally false, and (2) the CIA didn’t trust him way back then, before the invasion.
The CIA had rightly determined that al-Haideri didn’t provide accurate information. So why didn’t the Bush administration point this out when using al-Hairderi’s false claims to bolster their case for war? (Or, more to the point, why were they listening to him in the first place?) Because they were lying. They were digging for anyone who would say anything that would back the US going to war. They knew that al-Haideri was a liar, but gave him the White House’s stamp of public approval anyways. And that is what makes Bush a liar.
At best, the Bush administration failed to meet the high standard of truth demanded of a President when going to war. More likely, Bush outright lied to trick Americans into war. Either way, he failed to meet any standard of truth required of the President.
