Deceiving us into war: using deception, inflammatory rhetoric, and bait-and-switch tactics, the Bush administration lured the American public into supporting a war that is becoming a global quagmire.

"Facing growing doubts at home about the wisdom of attacking Iraq, President Bush on Wednesday will launch a campaign to defend the U.S. invasion," began a Reuters wire dispatch on October 8. President Bush is going to need a public relations campaign of unprecedented proportions.

Bush initially persuaded the American people to accept the war because of the alleged imminent threat of chemical and biological attacks against the U.S. from Iraq. In addition, he warned, there was the loom ing danger of Iraqi nuclear terrorism. In an October 7, 2002 speech, President Bush summarized the justification for war against Saddam Hussein: "America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

It's hard to invoke an image more frightening than that. But mushroom cloud talk aside, the only cloud of smoke that emerged from the war debate was the evaporating smoke and mirrors campaign used by Bush administration officials to exaggerate--and perhaps falsify--intelligence to support launching the war against Iraq.

Most Americans thought that the Iraq War was fought for the limited objective of removing the putative threat--Saddam Hussein. Administration spokesmen repeatedly suggested it would be a "cakewalk." The general impression given was that we would be out in a relatively short time. But that war quickly mutated into an occupation and reconstruction projected to last for years (or decades), at an enormous cost of blood and treasure.

It is beyond doubt that Iraq pursued an active chemical and biological weapons program for more than two decades. Saddam also at one point had a primitive nuclear program. However, the charge that Iraq's nuclear program was advanced was far-fetched. The claim that Iraq still had vast stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the time of our Operation Iraqi Freedom invasion was also dubious and remains unproven. It was an obvious, calculated ploy to win public support for launching an aggressive war.

The new Bush public relations campaign is a classic bait-and-switch operation. The White House spinmeisters are laboring to divert public attention from past administration hoaxes and locus it instead upon the new freedom experienced by the Iraqi people, now that Saddam Hussein is no longer running the country. But freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny, no matter how desirable, was never a justification for war. If it were, we would soon be sending U.S. troops to overturn dozens of equally despotic regimes.

The administration already appears to be backing down from pre-war claims made by senior officials that there were huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and an advanced nuclear program. The Bush administration, recall, did not merely claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Iraq was bulging with such weapons, we were told, and the direct threat those weapons presented to the United States was supposedly so great and so imminent that we had no choice but to act quickly.

"There are a number of terrorist states pursuing weapons of mass destruction--Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, just to name a few--but no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 19, 2002. "The goals of our coalition are clear and limited. We will end a brutal regime, whose aggression and weapons of mass destruction make it a unique threat to the world," President Bush said in a message to the Iraqi people on April 10 of this year.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told NBC's Meet the Press on the September 28: "Let's remember that the intelligence going into the war--it's quite separable from what [arms inspector] David Kay now finds...." Rice would be correct if U.S. intelligence agencies were giving the White House different intelligence before the war from what U.S. inspector David Kay has found. But this has not been the case. The intelligence going into the war actually coincides with the virtually nonexistent threat Kay has thus far uncovered.

Following are some examples of how the Bush administration deceptively used (or flat-out ignored) intelligence from its own agencies to manipulate popular support toward the war against Iraq.

Saddam and 9-11

"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th [attacks]."

--President George Bush, after meeting with members of the Congressional Conference Committee on Energy Legislation, September 17, 2003

Huh? Most Americans would probably be somewhat startled to hear the president's remark above. According to opinion polls, a majority of Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. That's the main reason we went to war, right? Much of the popular support for attacking Iraq was based on this presumption of guilt and the need for a just response. The Bush administration and its media allies have done everything possible to create that impression. They have done this primarily through clever inference and insinuation, constantly juxtaposing Saddam's crimes and villainy with the 9-11 atrocity. But they have provided no hard evidence of Iraqi ties to the attacks. This is one of the biggest bait-and-switches in the "War on Terror."

Bush is following his own precedent in this matter. Remember Osama bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the universe? For a while he was the only man more reviled by the Bush war lobby than Saddam Hussein. President Bush also performed an incredible back flip on bin Laden as well. Most Americans probably think that we invaded Afghanistan to get bin Laden; that certainly was the impression the president gave. During a September 17, 2001 press conference, for instance, a reporter asked if the U.S. were prepared to move militarily since the Taliban regime had not handed over bin Laden. The president declared that "Osama bin Laden is a prime suspect.... I want justice. There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.'" A couple of months later, on December 28, the president responded to another reporter's question about bin Laden. "He is not escaping us," Bush asserted.

However, at a March 13, 2002 press conference, when he was asked about the al-Qaeda leader, President Bush said, "I truly am not that concerned about him." Even more astounding is the assertion by Bush's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, in an April 6, 2002 CNN interview that "the goal has never been to get bin Laden."

Significant Quantities of Uranium

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

--President George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28, 2003

This statement is now widely known to be based upon a forgery. Recently, the Bush administration's own chief investigator for weapons of mass destruction, David Kay, concluded: "[W]e have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material." In other words, Kay says there's no evidence that Bush's "mushroom cloud" was anything but a figment of overheated war propaganda.

That Bush's statement about uranium was false is now common knowledge; that Bush made the claim against the advice of his own intelligence agencies needs to be more widely known. According to CIA Director George Tenet, the CIA twice warned the Bush administration that the evidence supporting the claim was unreliable.

Other intelligence reports reached the White House revealing the same conclusion. Former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson explained to NBC's Meet the Press on October 3:

   When the State Department
   said, "We were duped by that
   information," that was a misstatement
   of fact because I
   knew that there were at least
   three reports pertaining to
   this particular case: mine, but
   also the report of our ambassador
   on the scene and, also, the report
   of the deputy commander in
   chief of U.S. Armed Forces Europe, a
   four star Marine Corps general, all of
   whom had gone down to take a look
   at this allegation and all of whom had
   reported that it was not true. There
   was one report, which turned out to
   be a forged document, which was so
   dicey that even an Italian weekly
   tabloid magazine would not use it.
   And yet it was that report that formed
   the basis for the 16 words in the State
   of the Union address.

Tenet explained in a July 11 press release this year: "[CIA] officials who were reviewing the draft remarks [in the State of the Union speech] on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues. Some of the language was changed. From what we know now, Agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct--i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa." Despite CIA concerns, the administration resorted to using the dubious--and now discredited--British report to alarm the American people.

Why? If President Bush did not know that the evidence supporting the allegation was fragmentary and unreliable, certainly his advisers did. Yet his advisers allowed him to use it anyway to make the case for war. Considering this example alone, a neutral observer might conclude that this case of exaggerating the evidence was an honest mistake.

But this was hardly a lone example of exaggeration or tinkering with the truth.

Cover-up

"The president quoted a British paper. We did not know at the time, no one knew at the time in our circles--maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew--that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course, it was information that was mistaken."

--National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, on Meet the Press, June 8, 2003

Rice's statement about President Bush's uranium warning was revealed to be false within two months. By July 31, Steven Hadley, Rice's chief deputy, stated in a press conference: "Today I learned of a second memorandum sent by the CIA on October 6 [2002].... The memorandum describes some weakness in the evidence.... The memorandum also stated that the CIA had been telling Congress that the Africa story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence. This memorandum was received by the Situation Room here in the White House, and it was sent to both Dr. Rice and myself." Despite Hadley's admission, Rice continued to defend her earlier statement in terms that can only be described as "Clintonesque." On the September 28, 2003 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Rice made the following defense after host Tim Russert played the tape of her June 8 statement:

MR. RUSSERT: "No one in our circles." That has proven to be wrong.

DR. RICE: No, Tim, that has not proven to be wrong. No one did know that they were forgeries. The notion of the forgeries came in February or in March when this was--when this came to the CIA. It is true that we learned, subsequent to nay comments to you, that Director Tenet did not want to stand by that statement.

As mentioned above, there were at least three separate reports circulating at the time President Bush's State of the Union address was being written. Each indicated the African uranium story was questionable at best, and one of those reports (according to Rice's top assistant) had been personally sent to Rice's desk. Despite this, Rice is still standing by her earlier assertions, such as her July 11 statement: "If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president or to me."

Trailer Trash

"We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons.... [W]e've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them."

--President Bush, in remarks broadcast by Polish television, after the discovery of two tractor trailers alleged to have been designed for producing biological weapons, May 30, 2003

The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that this statement contains both a major falsehood and a major sleight-of-hand. The falsehood is that the trailers were weapons of mass destruction--which they definitely were not. The sleight-of-hand concerns the administration's conspicuous switch from charges about actual weapons to weapons programs. Before the war, and up until June 9, Bush and his top administration officials spoke not about WMD weapons programs but actual stockpiled weapons.

A huge sea-change in the administration's claims of Iraq's on-the-ground threat occurred on June 9. When questioned at a photo-op on that date about the failure to find WMDs, Bush responded: "... I mean, Iraq had a weapons program. Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we'll find out that they did have a weapons program." (Emphasis added.)

President Bush said on the eve of war that "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised [emphasis added].... The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.... [W]e cannot live under the threat of blackmail." To go from talk about actual chemical and biological weapons already produced, to tractor trailers that may be capable of producing such weapons, constitutes a huge quantum leap downward in threat assessment.

But there is no reason to believe even this downgraded assessment. President Bush's own WMD inspector for Iraq, David Kay, concluded there was no evidence the two tractor trailers had ever been used to produce biological weapons. Kay reported that his investigation into "the two trailers found in northern Iraq in April has yielded a number of explanations, including hydrogen, missile propellant, and BW (biological weapons) production, but technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers."

Defense Intelligence Agency engineering experts concluded the trailers were designed for hydrogen production, according to a report in the August 8 New York Times:

   Engineering experts from the Defense
   Intelligence Agency have come to believe
   that the most likely use for two
   mysterious trailers found in Iraq was
   to produce hydrogen for weather balloons
   rather than to make biological
   weapons, government officials say.

      The classified findings by a majority
   of the engineering experts differ
   from the view put forward in a white
   paper made public on May 28 by the
   C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence
   Agency, which said that the trailers
   were for making biological weapons....

      The State Department's intelligence
   branch, which was not invited to take
   part in the initial review, disputed the
   findings in a memorandum on June 2.
   The fact that American and British intelligence
   analysts with direct access
   to the evidence were disputing the
   claims included in the C.I.A. white
   paper was first reported in June, along
   with the analysts' concern that the
   evaluation of the mobile units had
   been marred by a rush to judgment.

      "The team has decided that in their
   minds, there could be another use, for
   inefficient hydrogen production, most
   likely for balloons," a Defense Department
   official said.

Aluminum Tubes: A Hole in the Story

"Most U.S. experts think they [aluminum tubes] are intended to serve as rotors and centrifuges used to enrich uranium."

--Secretary of State Colin Powell in an address before the UN Security Council, February 5, 2003

Administration supporters now frequently cite Colin Powell's remarks before the United Nations Security Council as evidence of a strong case that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear program, especially because Powell did not use the now infamous "16 words" about the supposed attempt to purchase uranium from Africa.

But Powell's story is likewise proven false by the evidence. Bush administration investigator David Kay concluded "the evidence does not tie any activity directly to centrifuge research or development." In other words, Kay's report flatly contradicts Powell's sensational charges.

Former State Department intelligence official Grog Thielmann explained that Kay's conclusions constituted the consensus of some U.S. intelligence officials long before the Kay Report. Thielmann told PBS's Frontline for October 9, 2003: "We started out being agnostic on this but the more we got into it, it was not a difficult assessment for us to arrive at, ultimately, that the Department of Energy experts were correct in seeing that these tubes were not well suited for uranium enrichment centrifuge rotors but were in fact for something else." Thielmann had completed his work and left State Department service in October 2002, four months before Powell's address to the Security Council.

Bogus Botox Boast

"'Let me tell you what the report said. It states that Saddam Hussein's regime had a clandestine network of biological laboratories. They had a live strain of deadly agent called botulinum."

--President Bush, remarks in Milwaukee, October 3, 2003

London's Independent newspaper provided an analysis that exposed President Bush's insinuation. "Botulinum type A is one of the most poisonous substances known, and was developed in weaponized form by Iraq before 1991. However, type B--the form found at the biologist's home--is less lethal," the Independent noted. "Botulinum type B could also be used for making an antidote to common botulinum poisoning. That is one of the reasons why many military laboratories around the world keep reference strains of C botulinum Okra B. The UK keeps such substances, for example, and calls them 'seed banks.'"

Both strains of botulinum have wide commercial uses worldwide for less than insidious purposes. A form of Botulinum A is commonly marketed in the United States as an anti-wrinkle injection under the well-known brand name "Botox." Botulinum B, which was found in the scientist's refrigerator, is also used to create a muscle pain reliever in the United States under the name "Myobloc."

The Kay Interim report did say the botulinum "can be used to produce biological weapons," but the Independent pointed out that Kay did not allege that the botulinum samples found had been formed into anything resembling a weapon: "Note what that sentence does not say: these facilities were suitable for chemical and biological weapons research (as almost any modern lab would be), not that they had engaged in such research. The reference to UN monitoring is also spurious: under the terms of UN resolutions, all of Iraq's chemical and biological facilities are subject to monitoring. So all this tells us is that Iraq had modern laboratories."

Who Can Bring Us to War?

"Q There's a poll out in which a lot of people today are wondering whether the war was really worth the cost.

"THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

"Q How do you respond to that, sir?

"THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I don't make decisions based upon polls. I make decisions based upon what I think is important for the security, of the American people.

"... Sometimes the American people like the decisions I make, sometimes they don't. But they need to know I'll make tough decisions based upon what I think is right, given the intelligence that I know, in order to do my job, which is secure this country, and to bring peace."

--President George Bush, remarks after meeting with New York City Police Commissioner, October 3, 2003

President Bush's statement is based upon the falsehood that presidents have the authority under the U.S. Constitution to bring the United States into war. Yet the Constitution explicitly states that "Congress shall have the power ... to declare war" (Article I, Section 8). Congress is also solely charged in that same section with the power "to make roles for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces."

James Madison, rightfully known as the Father of the Constitution, wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1798: "The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It [the Constitution] has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature."

Even Alexander Hamilton, a great supporter of executive power by the standards of his day, conceded that "war is a question, under our constitution, not of executive, but of legislative cognizance. It belongs to Congress to say--whether the nation shall of choice dismiss the olive branch and unfurl the banners of war." (Americanus Letter #1, January 31, 1794)

The president, on the other hand, is merely the "commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States" in the sense that he gives the orders to follow out the instructions of Congress. As Alexander Hamilton explained in The Federalist, No. 69:

   The President is to be commander-in-chief
   of the army and navy of the
   United States. In this respect his authority
   would be nominally the same
   with that of the king of Great Britain,
   but in substance much inferior to it.
   It would amount to nothing more
   than the supreme command and direction
   of the land and naval forces,
   as first general and admiral ... while
   that of the British king extends to the
   declaring of war and to the raising
   and regulating of fleets and armies--all
   which, by the Constitution
   under consideration, would appertain
   to the legislature.

The evidence is overwhelming: The Bush administration continually hyped unproven but sensational allegations to get the American people to agree to a war against a regime that was not a direct or imminent threat to the United States. The administration's ongoing public relations campaign to justify transforming the war into an indefinite occupation of Iraq portends more of the same.