A Guide to the Presidents First Post-Downing Street Speech on Iraq

[doublethink]

Written by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese
Monday, 27 June 2005

President Bush will be addressing the nation about Iraq on Tuesday night. This is the first time he will be speaking to the country on the U.S. occupation of Iraq since the Downing Street Memos have been released. As ten senators pointed out in a letter on Friday, June 24 "at a time the White House was promising Congress and the American people that war would be their last resort, that they believed military action against Iraq was 'inevitable.'"

Thus, the President was telling the public he was seeking a peaceful resolution when in fact he was planning an invasion. He told Americans there were unmanned Iraqi aircraft that could drop bombs over our cities. His own intelligence agencies told him this was inaccurate. He tied Saddam to Al Qaeda and Bin Laden - there was no evidence of that. Indeed, the two - one secular, one fundamentalist - were mortal foes. He talked about Saddam being able to launch a strike on the United States in 45 minutes - there was no evidence Iraq was capable of such an attack. He talked about the potential of a mushroom cloud over the United States - a nuclear attack by Saddam - when there was no evidence that a weakened, surrounded and embargoed Saddam had any nuclear capability. When he was going to the U.N. it was not to seek peace but to try and make an illegal invasion legal by tricking Saddam into a misstep. For month after month, it now seems evident, President Bush and his minions misled the nation, repeating the fabrications and manipulations about weapons of mass destruction, over and over and over in a drum beat to war.

The administration has claimed the insurgency's demise repeatedly for the last two years - when the Iraq Governing Council was created, when Saddam's sons Uday and Qusai were killed, when the Coalition Provisional Authority handed over powers to an Iraqi interim government, when Saddam Hussein was captured and after the elections in January. Yet the most recent months, have been the most violent. It seems to be time for the American public and media covering Iraq to have some doubt about the president's sugarcoated assurances.

When the President speaks on Tuesday night, viewers must take his words with caution - with doubt - with an ear for the false statement, phony motivation and exaggeration. Sadly, our commander in chief has made it hard for the people to trust him on the Iraq situation as shown in poll after poll. To assist viewers we provide the following guide to the realities of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. -snip-

rest of article here http://democracyrising.us/content/view/264/151/