Harley Sorensen (San Francisco Chronicle): Selling The War Without Lying

[Jack Rabbit]

From the San Francisco Chronicle
Dated Monday February 16


View from the Left
By Harley Sorensen

Last year, in his State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush appears to have been somewhat in error when he described the vast array of weapons controlled by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
With some qualifiers, Bush said Saddam had 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent and upward of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering those chemical and biological agents. He also said Saddam had several mobile biological-weapons labs, which could be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. And, for the pièce de résistance, Bush offered proof that Saddam was working on nuclear weapons.
As if that weren't enough, Bush also suggested strongly a link between Saddam and terrorist members of Al Qaeda.
It was a sobering report. Those of us listening to it had little reason to doubt its authenticity. And it became the foundation for the Bush administration's claim that Saddam was a threat to the United States of America, and it behooved us to get him before he got us.
So we went to war with Iraq and discovered in due time that Bush had used his reputation as a straight shooter to convince us of "facts" that just didn't exist.

Read more.

[indepat]

1. We can rest assured that a born-again Christian would never lie,

never mislead the nation. Not even Jerry or Pat would ever do that <sarcasm off>

[ixion]

2. had no reason to doubt its authenticity?

Uh, I don't know about Sorenson, but I had plenty of reason to doubt this maladministrations authenticity on everything they have ever said or done.