Bush's Pattern of Lying Continues

Condi Rice in the late spring of 2003 went on TV and claimed that information the Niger/Iraq documents were forgeries was not known to the White House and if the information existed it must have been "lost in the bowels" of the CIA. It's been known for some time that the White House lied about the Niger/Iraq uranium connection but Jason Leopold at Truthout has further information:

One high-ranking State Department official said that when the department's analysts briefed Colin Powell about the Niger forgeries Powell met with former Director of the CIA George Tenet and shared that information with him.

Tenet then told Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and her former deputy, Stephen Hadley, that the uranium claims were "dubious," according to current and former State Department and CIA officials who have direct knowledge of what Tenet discussed with the White House at the time.

The White House has long maintained that they were never briefed about the State Department's or the CIA's concerns related to the Niger uranium claims.

Now setting aside, if possible, that the White House is guilty of lying to the American people in order to lead us into war in Iraq and that such an act makes Bush and Cheney impeachable, it would appear to be a mistake to trust George W. Bush with the handling of Iran without close oversight and accountability at this time. Gregory Djerejian of The Belgravia Dispatch point to a repetition of a pattern: "From Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor's must-read Cobra II--The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq:"

In late May [of 2002], Bush sought to repair ties with Europe and promised a deliberate response to the terrorist threat, one that would not be purely military and would enlist the help of the U.S. allies. In a May 23 press conference in Berlin, Bush asserted that Iraq's WMD programs were a serious threat but that he had not prepared an invasion strategy. "I told the Chancellor that I have no war plans on my desk, which is the truth, and that we've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein." The president made a similar comment in Paris three days later. [Ed. note: See here too for a third example of the 'no attack plans on my desk' stump response. Clearly this was language the President had decided to go with purposefully, in other words, it was not a slip of the tongue at a single press conference].

[Tommy] Franks went further. In late May, a radio reporter asked him how many troops he would need for an invasion of Iraq. "That's a great question and one for which I don't have an answer because my boss has not yet asked me to put together a plan to do that," Franks said. "They have not asked me for these kinds of numbers. And I guess I would tell you, if there comes a time when my boss asks me that, that I'd rather provide those sorts of assessments to him. But thanks for your question.

The president's statement was true in only the most literal but trivial sense. Bush had ordered the development of a new CENTCOM war plan, repeately met with Franks to hear its details, offered his own views on the schedule for deploying troops and on the military's effort to couch the invasion as a liberation, and sent his vice president halfway around the world to secure allies for the war. And as for Franks, even the cleverest hair-splitting could not reconcile his remarks with the activity of CENTCOM during the previous six months. (Cobra II, p. 51-52)

The Belgravia Dispatch goes on to illustrate further but even here it's clear we're hearing the same nonsense that we heard in 2002 and this time the equipment is already in place. America needs answers. And please, the real ones this time.