Ten great Bush lies

I was actually asked today what Bush had lied about, versus just being taken out of context or treated otherwise unfairly about. Here's a quick list of ten of them, with sources.

1. "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Included in the 2003 SOTU address. The previous autumn, George Tenet urged Bush to remove this line from any speeches because it was "highly dubious." In Dec 2002, ElBaradei told the White House that the documents were forgeries. Bush chose to keep the line in his address despite knowing that the Niger docs were forged.

2. "I would like this to end as quickly as possible. If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

"President Bush declassified sensitive intelligence in 2003 and authorized its public disclosure to rebut Iraq war critics...." So Bush himself misused the declassification process to out a covert CIA agent for political gain. OK, technically might not have been a crime, but boy, if Clinton did that....

3. "177 of the opposition party said, 'You know, we don't think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.'"

This flat-out lie is one of the more transparent. The vote was over whether the administration would need to get readily obtainable secret warrants to continue to wiretap. In no way is this not a lie.

4. "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us. I would have used very resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people."

CNN related this quote, in a piece that also talks about how the airplane attacks were thought about six years earlier in the Pentagon.

CBS reporter David Martin revealed that weeks before the attacks, the CIA had warned Bush personally of Osama Bin Laden’s intent to use hijacked planes as missiles.

5. "We do not torture."

Bush claimed this on a visit to Central America.

Human Rights Watch documented that Bush authorized "unlawful interrogation methods.

6. "These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren't wearing uniforms . . . but were there to kill."

This is from a boilerplate Bush sound bite about how all the Guantanamo detainees are all evil and stuff.

Even the conservative Andrew Sullivan has documented otherwise, via Stuart Taylor. For example, "a high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on 'the battlefield in Afghanistan.'" And "the majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability."

7. "A wiretap requires a court order."

Bush also said that "When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

So go back to #3 above and explain the anger as Bush accused Democrats of near-treason for wanting to require a court order before wiretaps.

8. "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories."

Wrong. You can argue that Bush was too stupid to actually have lied about it, but he didn't exactly issue any timely retractions.

9. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

The Washington Post documented this statement, as well as ripping it apart. "In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show."

10. "I remember campaigning in Chicago and one of the reporters said, 'Would you ever deficit spend?' I said, 'Only – only – in times of war, in times of economy insecurity as a result of a recession or in times of national emergency.'"

Bush used this line quite a bit in the earlier days of his presidency. Too bad it was completely made up.