Iraq: Did President Bush lie?

Search the Internet for “Bush lied, and people died,” said Fred Hiatt in The Washington Post, and you’ll find more than 1,000 different products—bumper stickers, coffee mugs, T-shirts. Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the decision to invade Iraq that’s bound to boost sales of “Bush lied” paraphernalia. The committee’s report—released amid rancorous disagreement between Democrats and Republicans—concludes that to build the case for war, the Bush administration deliberately twisted and exaggerated the intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. In case after case, said Bob Frankel in Huffingtonpost.com, the committee found proof that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and then–Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cherry-picked the most alarming speculation from the intelligence, ignoring the expressed doubts and uncertainties, in order to convince Americans that Saddam posed an imminent threat. It’s official: These men now have “the blood of thousands on their hands.’’

That slander has no basis in fact, said Stephen P. Hayes in The Weekly Standard, and even this politically biased report proves it. The committee’s Democrats grudgingly had to concede that the CIA and other intelligence agencies did tell the White House that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he’d proved himself willing to cooperate with terrorists. It was the White House’s decision to act on this intelligence that committee chairman Jay Rockefeller and his fellow Democrats now want to second-guess. But after 9/11, no responsible president could ignore a rogue regime’s pursuit of WMD. In 2002, Rockefeller himself described Iraq as “an imminent threat,” and said, “To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk.”

What a profoundly cynical argument, said Dan Froomkin in Washingtonpost.com. Yes, back in 2003, most congressional Democrats believed that Iraq was riddled with underground bunkers filled with anthrax, nerve gas, and other horrors. Why did they believe this? Because Bush, Cheney & Co. relentlessly told them so. “It takes a lot of chutzpah to defend yourself against charges that you’ve engaged in a propaganda campaign by noting that it worked.” As the report makes clear, that propaganda was not always based on faulty intelligence, said the Portland Oregonian in an editorial. Warning of “mushroom clouds” over American cities, Bush and Cheney claimed to have certain knowledge that Saddam was close to building nuclear weapons, even though no intelligence agency agreed with that assessment. “Most people would call that lying.” As a result, more than 4,000 Americans and at least 85,000 Iraqis have died. The bumper stickers, it seems, are right.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up