Bush lied -- and a lot of people have died

By Nancy Jane Moore

Bush lied when he tied Saddam Hussein to September 11.

Bush lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

You don't have to take my word for it. Read the reports of the Senate Intelligence Committee (two long pdf files):

• Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments
• The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress

The New York Times begins its story on the reports:

The Senate Intelligence Committee said today that there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein had prewar ties to Al Qaeda and one of the terror organization's most notorious members, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The Times goes on to say:

The intelligence committee report notes that the Central Intelligence Agency concluded that, despite rumors of contacts between two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and members of the Hussein regime, "We have no credible information that Baghdad was complicit in the attacks on the Pentagon or the World Trade Center on 11 September or any other Al Qaeda strike."

The report also says that postwar findings in Iraq do not support a 2002 intelligence estimate that Iraq was busily reconstituting it nuclear-weapons program or was in possession of biological weapons.

No evidence that Iraq had anything to do with September 11. No evidence that Iraq was building up its weapons of mass destruction. No reason to go to war.

The Senate Intelligence Committee -- like all Senate committees -- has a majority of Republicans and is led by the very right wing senator from Kansas, Pat Roberts. But it still issued these reports.

Not that there wasn't a lot of partisan bickering. According to The Times:

Senator Roberts said Democrats were indulging in selective amnesia about their own earlier support of the war and were "cherry-picking through the intelligence and the facts in a political attempt to rewrite history."

Well, I was angry back in 2002 that so many Democrats let Bush get away with these lies, but at least they're now admitting they were wrong. Someone should tell Sen. Roberts that it's time to pack it in. The truth is out.

The reports included additional views by various members of the Senate committee. In one set of such views, Democrats on the committee included the following conclusion:

The Committee's investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq has revealed that the Administration's case for war with Iraq was fundamentally misleading. Administration officials repeatedly characterized Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs in more conclusive and threatening terms than were substantiated by the underlying intelligence assessments. Analytical judgments of the intelligence community that were not in line with the more strident Administration view on alleged Iraqi links to al-Qai'da and the 9/11 plot were ignored and denigrated by senior policymakers. Most disturbingly, the Administration in its zeal to promote public opinion in the United States for toppling Saddam Hussein, pursued a deceptive strategy prior to the war of using intelligence reporting that the U.S. intelligence community warned was uncorroborated, unreliable, and, in critical instances, fabricated.

Read that again: "The Administration ... pursued a deceptive policy ... of using intelligence reporting that ... was uncorroborated, unreliable, and, in critical instances, fabricated."

Bush lied. And he didn't lie about his sex life. He lied to drag us into war.

Now that is worthy of impeachment.