The American public's not even supposed to notice when Bush – as recently as July 14 – altered key facts about how the war to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein began earlier this year. "We gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in," Bush said at the White House. "After a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."

With U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan sitting next to him and White House reporters in front of him, Bush lied.

[..]

While much attention has focused recently on Bush’s use of the apparently bogus claim that Iraq tried to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger or some other African country, that was only one element of Bush’s larger strategy of deception.

In pushing the emotional hot button of nuclear war, Bush and his aides also cited Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes as evidence of a reconstituted Iraqi nuclear program. Scientific experts concluded that the tubes were unfit for that purpose.

[...]

Bush and his team also hyped claims of an Iraqi connection to al-Qaeda, causing nearly half the American public to believe falsely that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Bush and his administration insisted, too, that Iraq had trigger-ready weapons of mass destruction consisting of tons of chemical and biological weapons. The administration also said the Iraqis had unmanned aerial vehicles that somehow could spray these lethal agents over the United States

[..]

The CIA and the Pentagon issued a report in May alleging that two captured trailers amounted to proof that the Iraqis had a mobile biological weapons program. The report rejected explanations from Iraqi scientists that the trailers were for producing hydrogen for weather balloons used for targeting artillery.

"Those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons are wrong," Bush declared, referring to the mobile labs. "We found them." However, more detailed analysis of the trailers by U.K. and U.S. experts determined that the trailers were unfit for biological weapon production and appear to have been for making hydrogen as the Iraqis had claimed.

Lying -- a Bush Family Value By Robert Parry also highlights the lying game as played by "Poppy" Bush, including the so-called October Surprise, the Iran-Contra affair, Chile, and "Read my lips."

As Parry puts it "The Bushes simply aren’t capable of lying, even when the public is watching a train wreck of lies about the reasons for the Iraq War."

Indeed.

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