PUBLIC DOUBT GROWING QUICKLY AS BUSH'S WAR STORIES UNRAVEL

http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/gallagher124.html

PUBLIC DOUBT GROWING QUICKLY AS BUSH'S WAR STORIES UNRAVEL

By Bill Gallagher

DETROIT --

The lies and calculated deceptions George W. Bush used to make
his
case for war with Iraq are unraveling.

At long last, more Americans are realizing how intelligence
information was shaped and warped to support the case for an
attack on
Iraq to protect us from the "imminent threat" of Saddam's
phantom
weapons.

Nearly every day now, American soldiers die and the resistance
to the
occupation of Iraq grows stronger and more organized.

In a chilling interview with Newsday, a leader of Saddam
Hussein's
Fedayeen militia describes the strategy that will challenge the
new
American empire.

The militia fighter, living on the run and known as Khaled,
described
the secret leadership structure and how the insurgents operate
in
five- and six-member cells.

He says they are in it for the long run.

"We have many more people and we're a lot better organized than
the
Americans realize. We have been preparing for this kind of
guerrilla
war for a long time, and we are much more patient than the
Americans.
We have nowhere else to go."

American forces are living in a shooting gallery, and it's
likely to
get worse as the insurgents exploit the growing hostility toward
the
occupying troops.

Patience is not one of our distinguished national virtues and,
given
the dangers and the price tag of $4 billion a month for
occupation,
twice the original estimates, polls show American confidence in
the
ignoble experiment in Iraq is waning rapidly.

In his State of the Union address, President Bush said, with
resounding, unequivocal certainty, that Iraq was seeking nuclear
material from Africa.

That assertion was based on a British intelligence report that
was
actually built on forged documents.

CIA Director George Tenet has fallen on his sword and is taking
the
rap for the president's propagation of fraud to buttress support
for
war.

The speech never should have included the Iraq-Niger uranium
allegations, Tenet said in a prepared statement.

"This was a mistake," he said.

The Bush presidents always surrounded themselves with dutiful
butlers
willing to clean up their messes.

What's hilarious now is listening to the Clintonian parsing the
"straight-talking" Bush and his minions are using to justify the
deception.

Let's see.

We were just quoting the British.

The information showing the fraudulent documents never made it
to the
White House.

It was only 16 words in a long speech.

We know Saddam's a bad guy and if he wasn't shopping for uranium
then,
he would be sometime.

At the time it was said, it was believed to be true.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times notes, "More and more with
Bush
administration pronouncements about the Iraq war, it depends on
what
the meaning of the word 'is' is."

Rather than pledge to find out what really happened, King George
says
with sublime arrogance that, since Tenet took the fall, the
matter is
over.

Ari "I'll say anything" Fleischer says, "The president has moved
on.
And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on, as
well."

What they're really saying is that they don't want to get
straight
answers about how in God's name the President of the United
States
could possibly foist such a colossal lie on the world and what
role
top manipulators in the White House played in pouncing on the
bogus
information the CIA had already had serious doubts over.

Field Marshall Rumsfeld says he became aware of the fraud in
March,
and you have to assume the president was aware of the truth
also.

Why then did they wait until July to confess?

The president is really unrepentant about using the phony
Iraq-Niger
claim.

He just brushed it off, saying, "There is no doubt Saddam
Hussein was
a threat to world peace."

Let's remember the context of all this.

The Bush administration was always willing to inflate and
exaggerate
the threat Saddam posed whenever possible.

They consistently leaned on the side of pumping up whatever evil
intentions he had.

What's worse than the now-admitted "mistake" -- and you can bet
there
are many others -- is the deliberate rhetorical connection
repeatedly
made to tie Saddam and Iraq to al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

That is the biggest lie of all, but it worked so well in
convincing
the Congress and the American people that the two were
inseparable
partners in terror that Bush and company will never admit to
that
whopper.

As they scramble to cover up the deceptions for war with Iraq,
the
Bush people are doing a marvelous job in covering up the truth
about
intelligence information the government possessed before Sept.
11.

Note this very well.

George W. Bush never wanted an independent commission to
investigate
the events leading up to the worst terrorist attack in American
history.

He fought its creation and now he's doing everything he can to
scuttle
its work.

The Sept. 11 commission leaders -- chairman Thomas Kean, the
former
Republican governor of New Jersey, and Lee Hamilton, former
Democratic
member of the House from Indiana -- know the White House is
stalling
in providing documents and testimony needed for the commission
to do
its work.

The Pentagon and the Defense Department are not cooperating
quickly or
fully, and both agencies want to have witnesses interviewed in
the
presence of government colleagues from the departments -- a
situation
the commission considers "intimidation."

The delays and the witness "minding" seriously impair the
commission's
ability to present a full report to the nation by its deadline
next
May.

In an editorial, The New York Times warns we should all heed
Kean and
Hamilton's warning.

"When these seasoned, mild-mannered men start complaining that
the
administration is trying to intimidate the commission, the
country had
better take notice."

The Bush administration scoffed when UN weapons inspectors
interviewed
Iraqi scientists, with Saddam's agents present, and were
required to
have "minders'" as they toured suspected weapons sites.

How could the scientists possibly be candid and tell the truth
under
those circumstances, Bush operatives wondered.

Now the administration wants its own "minders."

The Times points to the dangers.

"Acting more like the Soviet Kremlin than the American
government, the
administration has insisted that monitors from various agencies
attend
debriefings of key officials by investigators. ... This is a
thinly
veiled attempt at intimidation."

The president is already nervous about the release of a report
on the
Joint House and Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Sept.
11.

Explosive areas are expected to be mistakes and gaps in systems
that
ignored evidence that al-Qaeda planned a significant assault
using
hijacked airplanes, and new information that links members of
the
Saudi royal family to funding the Sept. 11 attacks.

Those are not matters the president wants to give a full public
airing.

As has become the predictable pattern for George W. Bush and
company,
they will use an avalanche of lies to try to keep the truth from
the
American people.

But since the people are smarter than the politicians and the
corporate media propagandists who've aided and abetted the lies,
the
time has arrived when the public appetite for truth is growing.

That threatens George. W. Bush.

>PUBLIC DOUBT GROWING QUICKLY AS BUSH'S WAR STORIES UNRAVEL
>By Bill Gallagher
>DETROIT --
The lies and calculated deceptions George W. Bush used to make
>his case for war with Iraq are unraveling.
SNIP SNIP
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