Is Bush lying?

Is President Bush lying about WMD in Iraq?

If he is, and it can be proven that he knew there were no WMD there, his presidency will be over. He would face immediate demands to resign or an impeachment. The loss to the nation and the presidency is so grave, he and Cheney could not survive the uproar.

Have presidents lied about national defense? Yes, but not about the actual cause for war. Even the Gulf of Tonkin was not an outright lie, There were plenty lies of ommission there, but no lie of commission.

However, I tend to think that Bush actually believes that WMD will be found. His pathetic claim that three broken down trailers are some kind of James Bondian laboratory is not an act of a liar, but of a mark. He refuses to believe the obvious, because the fantasy is much more appealing.
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Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?
By John W. Dean

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a joint resolution authorizing the use of U.S. military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake -- acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away -- unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.
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Blow to Blair over 'mobile labs'
Saddam's trucks were for balloons, not germs

The British review comes amid widespread doubts expressed by scientists on both sides of the Atlantic that the trucks could have been used to make biological weapons.

Instead The Observer has established that it is increasingly likely that the units were designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons, part of a system originally sold to Saddam by Britain in 1987.
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Iraq's WMD Intelligence: Where is the Outrage?
by US Senator Robert Byrd

Meanwhile, the President seems oblivious to the controversy swirling about the justification for the invasion of Iraq. Our nation's credibility before the world is at stake. While his Administration digs in to defend the status quo, Members of Congress are questioning the credibility of the intelligence and the public case made by this Administration on which the war with Iraq was based. Members of the media are openly challenging whether America's intelligence agencies were simply wrong or were callously manipulated. Vice President Cheney's numerous visits to the CIA are being portrayed by some intelligence professionals as "pressure." And the American people are wondering, once again, what is going on in the dark shadows of Washington.

It is time that we had some answers. It is time that the Administration stepped up its acts to reassure the American people that the horrific weapons that they told us threatened the world's safety have not fallen into terrorist hands. It is time that the President leveled with the American people. It is time that we got to the bottom of this matter.

We have waged a costly war against Iraq. We have prevailed. But, we are still losing American lives in that nation. And the troubled situation there is far from settled. American troops will likely be needed there for years. Billions of American tax dollars will continue to be needed to rebuild. I only hope that we have not won the war only to lose the peace. Until we have determined the fate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, or determined that they, in fact, did not exist, we cannot rest, we cannot claim victory.

Iraq's weapons of mass destruction remain a mystery and a conundrum. What are they, where are they, how dangerous are they? Or were they a manufactured excuse by an Administration eager to seize a country? It is time to answer these questions. It is time- past time - for the Administration to level with the American people, and it is time for the President to demand an accounting from his own Administration as to exactly how our nation was led down such a twisted path to war.
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