The AP: willful accomplice in the run-up to idiocy

 
The Associated Press is marketing a new website by antiwar watchdog group Center for Public Integrity,, which lists "935 false statements" by President Bush and his administration during the run-up to war. The new site's headline reads Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War.

The Center's claim is galling on two fronts:

• The group had no access to any classified documents, intelligence summaries, shared foreign intel, Presidential Daily Briefs, or similar material that would help them judge the veracity of the statements.
• The group carefully restricted which persons could issue false statements (e.g., they had to be Republicans), ignoring the scores of Democrats who had access to the same information and made the same "false" claims.

"Saddam's goal ... is to achieve the lifting of U.N. sanctions while retaining and enhancing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. We cannot, we must not and we will not let him succeed." -- Madeline Albright, 1998

"I never believed in the link between Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and Islamist terrorism," -- Madeline Albright, 2003


"As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process." -- Nancy Pelosi, 1998

"This war has been a grotesque mistake that has diminished our reputation in the world and has not made America safer." -- Nancy Pelosi, 2004


"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability." -- Robert Byrd, 2002

"[I]t is clear that the Administration's rhetoric played upon the well-founded fear of the American public about future acts of terrorism." -- Robert Byrd, 2003


"There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed." -- Ted Kennedy, 2002

"Iraq was not a breeding ground for terrorism. Our invasion has made it one." -- Ted Kennedy, 2003.


"Saddam’s existing biological and chemical weapons capabilities pose a very real threat to America, now. Saddam has used chemical weapons before, both against Iraq’s enemies and against his own people. He is working to develop delivery systems like missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles that could bring these deadly weapons against U.S. forces and U.S. facilities in the Middle East." -- John Rockefeller, 2002

"The absolute cynical manipulation, deliberately cynical manipulation, to shape American public opinion and 69 percent of the people, at that time, it worked, they said 'we want to go to war'... [Saddam] wasn't going to attack us. He would've been isolated there... He would have been in control of that country but we wouldn't have depleted our resources preventing us from prosecuting a war on terror which is what this is all about." -- John Rockefeller, 2006


"The community of nations may see more and more of the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction, ready to use them or provide them to terrorists. If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow." -- Bill Clinton, 1998

"Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done... It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors ... one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country." -- Bill Clinton, 2005


"Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." -- Al Gore, 2002

"He [Bush] betrayed this country! He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place." -- Al Gore, 2004


"(W)e need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation." -- John Kerry, 2003

"Iraq was not a terrorist haven before the invasion... Iraq was not even close to the center of the War on Terror before the president invaded it." -- John Kerry, 2003

No party has changed course more often, more wrongly and with less commitment to the national security of the United States than the modern Democrat Party.

I think I'm going to summarize all of the false statements by the AP and the CPI and publish my own expose of their idiocy. Though I may need something more powerful than an Access database to track all of their fabrications.