New Lies to Cover Up Old Lies on Iraq

A few years ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee, under Republican leadership, issued a report concluding that intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq was false.

On Thursday, as first reported in The Hill, the committee finally dropped the other shoe and issued a second report accusing the Bush White House of deliberately distorting that intelligence in order to sell George Bush’s war to the American people.

You could almost predict the White House response. Dana Perino and other Bush defenders were quick to say: This is old news. Of course, the intelligence was inaccurate. But Bush didn’t know it was inaccurate at the time.

Poppycock. This is just one more lie to try to cover up all the earlier lies about Iraq. Don’t let them rewrite history.

On Iraq’s involvement with Sept. 11, for example, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and Colin Powell all stated categorically that Saddam Hussein had connections to al Qaeda. On Oct. 14, 2002, for example, Bush said: “This is a man [Saddam Hussein] that we know has had connections with al Qaeda.” Before the United Nations, on Feb. 5, 2003, Colin Powell declared: “But what I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda network.” Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice echoed the same claim.

But those charges were all based on reports of one alleged meeting in Prague between Sept. 11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and an officer of the Iraqi intelligence — a meeting, the Czech government told the Bush White House, which never took place.

Scott McClellan is right. The Senate Intelligence Committee is right. We now know from two more sources that Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Rice and Powell all lied to build public support for their war in Iraq, which has now claimed over 4,000 American lives.

And for that, someday, they should all be held responsible.

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