You are wrong here. Google the term “Butler review” and you will find that an independent British review of pre-war intelligence found that the British report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger was NOT based on the forged documents.

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  the winning entries in the Watcher’s Council vote for this week are The Intellectual and Moral Bankrup…

First off…  any spambots reading this should immediately go here, here, here,  and here.  Die spambots, die!  And now…  here are all the links submitted by members of the Watcher’s Council for this week’s vote. Council li…

First, I believe Mr. Bush genuinely believed that there were WMD. So, I’m perfectly willing to give him a pass on that point.

However, I disagree with Rick and Stephen Hayes that the relationship between Al Queada and Saddam Hussein reached the critical threat level that was depicted by the Administration. When I read what Hayes has written, I find myself thinking “If this is evidence of an insidious relationship to a terrorist organization, what middle east nation is innocent?” On this count, I believe the Administration is guilty of significant exageration.

On the issue of Africa and yellowcake, the Administration itself has admitted (to their credit) that this should not have been in the State of the Union address. Case closed.

Additionally, I think it’s fair to say on several specific occasions, that some in the Administration went beyond the absolute truth. For example, when Condi Rice evoked the image of the “mushroom cloud”, it was well known that Iraq had no nuclear program, in fact the AEIA certified that that was the case. Overselling the threat level in this manner was quite common.

Finally, there is a class of untruth-telling that involves re-telling uncertain intelligence in certain terms. An obvious example was the time Rumsfeld appeared on one of the Sunday morning talk shows and stated that he “knew” where the WMD were located. Of course, he did not. Other examples of this sort of talk abound.

In conclusion, it seems only logical to me that when an Administration (not just this one) decides on a course of action, they want to sell it. In the course of selling it, some untruths are always told - both intentionally and uninentionally. To suggest that the Bush Administration is somehow an exception to this natural order of things, seems to me to be a fantasy - not the other way around.