Bush: 935 Lies

According to a study released last Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups, Dubyah and his top aides "publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001."

The overview of the study says:

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino's defense? "They [the study] only looked at members of the administration." Huh? What? Is the official party line that if other people lied, it's OK that Dubyah, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice lied to the world?

By the way, Dana, those other people in Congress and around the world were somewhat less culpable because they did not initiate and methodically propagate the lies, they were just repeating the lies of the administration. Their lies were based on the false and misleading evidence cherry picked and trumpeted by the administration.

You see, back then folks trusted the executive branch of the US government. Based on past presidents, they probably thought to themselves, "Well, this sounds like bullshit, this looks like bullshit, this smells like bullshit (and is Colin Powell really pointing to finger-paintings as incontrovertible evidence?!?)...but this is the leader of the free world we're talking about here. He wouldn't just make this shit up, right? He'd make certain his information was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt before launching a trillion dollar war against a terrorist-free nation that had nothing to do with 9/11."

You'd think this might make neocon apologists at FOX and MSGOP question the administration's more recent assertions about the security risk posed by Iran, but they are not likely to call attention to the study in part because it also calls them out: "Much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq."

The Top Five Liars:

Dubyah: 260
Powell: 244
Rumsfeld: 109
Fleischer: 109
Wolfowitz: 85

Read about it at CNN.com, or better yet read Mark Morford's take on it here.