At least 72 more words, for starters. The entire Iraqi nuclear case...

...knowingly hyped by Bush in SOTU.

The obvious place for the "16 words" controversy to lead is this: What OTHER claims might the Bush administration have made that were not supported by the evidence? It's one thing to say that a single claim made its way into repeated statements even after it was known to be dubious (although this does stretch credibility to the breaking point). But if a pattern can be shown, then the Bush administration has serious problems.

As of today, this pattern HAS been shown.

Although the controversy, for the moment, has waned in the public eye in deference to such earth-shattering events as the Kobe Bryant trial and soon-to-be Governor Schwarzenegger, there are still more reports coming out every day. Reports like the Washington Post article of Sunday, July 10th (Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39500-2003Aug9.html) and the MSNBC/Newsweek article of Friday, July 8th (Is Iraqi Intel Still Being Manipulated?: http://www.msnbc.com/news/950224.asp?0cv=KB20). The story is obviously not over. The latter story pre-emptively calls into question findings by the upcoming report by the White House appointee David Kay, which it is said will be the definitive report on Iraqi WMDs (and supposedly will contain some "amazing" revelations). In light of recent revelations, there had better be some iron-clad humdingers in that report, or it will only raise more questions for the White House. We should all view this report with an extremely skeptical eye.

So what about other claims? It is now obvious to all of us that nearly every claim made by the Bush administration regarding the threat from Iraq and their "weapons programs" was greatly exaggerrated, often to the point of outright lying.

One doesn't have to look far to see that the case was not an aberration, but was the norm. The entire paragraph from the 2003 State of the Union dealing with the alleged Iraqi nuclear program reads:
"The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide."

The first sentence (39 words) is a blatant attempt at misleading the American public into thinking that Iraq might now have an advanced nuclear weapons program when in fact, the IAEA confirmed this to be the case BEFORE the Gulf War. The IAEA also confirmed (though Bush and his staff always neglected to mention this) that Hussein's entire nuclear weapons program was destroyed in 1991. Similarly, Dick Cheney on August 26th, 2003, invoked the testimony of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, as proof that "Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons". Yet he neglected to mention the inconvenient fact that Kamel said in the same testimony that ALL of the weapons material was destroyed in 1991. In other words, both Bush and Cheney blatantly lied. A lie of omission is still a lie.

The second sentence contains the famous 16 words. Now thoroughly debunked, "responsibility" has been surrepitiously taken for the claim by various Bush administration officials including, sort of, the President. It merits no further discussion here, except to say that their "blame-taking" might have ended the story, were it not for the simple fact that it is far from the isolated case they would like us to believe.

The third sentence (19 words) revolves around the aluminum tubes. It is now clear that the administration knowingly, and repeatedly, misrepresented these tubes as evidence for an Iraqi nuclear weapons program, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The two articles cited above clearly demonstrate this.

The last two sentences (14 words) are misleading by inference. If there were known to be credible explanations for these activities (and there were), then Saddam Hussein did not "clearly" have "much to hide."

72 more words, right in the same paragraph of the State of the Union. And that's just scratching the surface, but it demonstrates a clear pattern of deception. I suppose these 72 words could have also gotten into the address (and everywhere else) due to memory lapses by the President, the Vice President, and the entire National Security Council. That is a highly unlikely scenario which, at best, would demonstrate that the entire Bush White House is horribly incompetent.

On the other hand, perhaps there's a simpler explanation. They wanted war and they knew that the evidence did not support their case for war, so they lied. THEY LIED. It's as simple as that.

Keep up the pressure! Continue to write your Senators. Write your Representatives. Write your news outlets! Do not let this story drop!!

eom