When is a lie not a lie?

When you repeat it enough times.

Draft of a speech Bush was to give Oct. 7:
"The regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa."
This reference was removed at the request of CIA Director, George Tenet.

* The CIA arranged to have a similar allegation deleted from a speech that John D. Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was to give Dec. 20 before the U.N. Security Council
.
The administration reported to Congress on Jan. 20:
Iraq has failed to report to the United Nations “attempts to acquire uranium and the means to enrich it.”

A report distributed to the public Jan. 23:
Highlighted Baghdad's failure to explain "efforts to procure uranium from abroad for its nuclear weapons program."

Jan. 23:
On the op-ed page of the New York Times, Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice wrote that the Dec. 7 declaration of its (Iraqi) weapons of mass destruction to the U.N. Security Council "fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad."

Jan. 23:
In a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Paul Wolfowitz said: "There is no mention of Iraqi efforts to procure uranium from abroad."

Three days later:
Colin Powell, in a speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, asked: "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?"

And the day after the State of the Union address:
Donald Rumsfeld opened a news conference by saying of Hussein: "His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon; it was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

I try to bookmark these things and save them in my favorites...but they're all so scattered. I wish we have an archive here--or somewhere to store everything on a topic as important as this.

Here's what I dug up from http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A42517-2003Mar17¬Found=true


Bush Clings To Dubious Allegations About Iraq

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 18, 2003; Page A13


-snip-

For months, President Bush and his top lieutenants have produced a long list of Iraqi offenses, culminating Sunday with Vice President Cheney's assertion that Iraq has "reconstituted nuclear weapons." Previously, administration officials have tied Hussein to al Qaeda, to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and to an aggressive production of biological and chemical weapons. Bush reiterated many of these charges in his address to the nation last night.

-snip-

In his appearance Sunday, on NBC's "Meet the Press," the vice president argued that "we believe has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." But Cheney contradicted that assertion moments later, saying it was "only a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons." Both assertions were contradicted earlier by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who reported that "there is no indication of resumed nuclear activities."

ElBaradei also contradicted Bush and other officials who argued that Iraq had tried to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes to use in centrifuges for uranium enrichment. The IAEA determined that Iraq did not plan to use imported aluminum tubes for enriching uranium and generating nuclear weapons. ElBaradei argued that the tubes were for conventional weapons and "it was highly unlikely" that the tubes could have been used to produce nuclear material. Cheney on Sunday said ElBaradei was "wrong" about Iraq's nuclear program and questioned the IAEA's credibility.

Earlier this month, ElBaradei said information about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium were based on fabricated documents. Further investigation has found that top CIA officials had significant doubts about the veracity of the evidence, linking Iraq to efforts to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger, but the information ended up as fact in Bush's State of the Union address.

In another embarrassing episode for the administration, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cited evidence about Iraq's weapons efforts that originally appeared in a British intelligence document. But it later emerged that the British report's evidence was based in part on academic papers and trade publications.

Sometimes information offered by Bush and his top officials is questioned by administration aides. In his March 6 news conference, Bush dismissed Iraq's destruction of its Al Samoud-2 missiles, saying they were being dismantled "even as has ordered the continued production of the very same type of missiles." But the only intelligence was electronic intercepts that had individuals talking about being able to build missiles in the future, according to a senior intelligence analyst.

Last month, Bush spoke about a liberated Iraq showing "the power of freedom to transform that vital region" and said "a new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region." But a classified State Department report put together by the department's intelligence and research staff and delivered to Powell the same day as Bush's speech questioned that theory, arguing that history runs counter to it.

In his first major speech solely on the Iraqi threat, last October, Bush said, "Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles -- far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations -- in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work."

Inspectors have found that the Al Samoud-2 missiles can travel less than 200 miles -- not far enough to hit the targets Bush named.

Iraq has not accounted for 14 medium-range Scud missiles from the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but the administration has not presented any evidence that they still exist.

This gang tells so many lies that you find yourself overtaxed to "out" them. I like to hammer away at one lie at a time until it can't come back.