McClellan: Hadley admitted responsibility for false Iraq claims, said he would resign.»

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/29/mcclellan-hadley-admitted-responsibility-for-false-iraq-claims-said-he-would-resign/

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank writes today that in Scott McClellan’s new book, the former White House press secretary reveals that National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley once admitted that he was responsible for the false claims about Iraq’s WMD in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address:

McClellan recounts how Hadley confessed to his colleagues that he, and not CIA chief George Tenet, was to blame for Bush’s unfounded claim about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions in a State of the Union address. “I blew it,” McClellan quotes Hadley as saying. “I think the only solution is for me to resign.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/28/AR2008052803030.html

(snip)

But Hadley survives, and so does the propaganda. It was being churned out again yesterday morning before the Proliferation Security Initiative, a five-year-old counterproliferation effort by the Bush administration that Hadley hailed as "successful all over the world" in interdicting nuclear equipment.

In fact, nonproliferation has been a conspicuous failure in recent years. North Korea has tested nukes, Iran appears to be on its way, and the arms-control bureau at the State Department has been abolished. The United States went to war in Iraq to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, only to discover that Iraq had no nuclear program. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has undermined the two pillars of proliferation, the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency, instead putting its emphasis on alternative, voluntary arrangements such as the Proliferation Security Initiative. Even John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, distanced himself from Bush's nonproliferation policies in a speech on Tuesday.