Pack of Lies (Special Edition, Part 1)

by eriposte

Given that some in the right side of the blogosphere/media - and their political masters in The Party - have recently been exuding the unimaginable stench of mendacity that is also bottomless in its moral depravity, a wee bit - just a wee bit - of history is in order. All of the citations below are from Billmon/Lunaville - where the URLs to these citations are also provided.

Ari Fleischer, 12/4/02:

The president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it...

[Well, wouldn't ya know it! Silly me, I just thought they were just fabricating things!]
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Dick Cheney, 8/26/2002:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

George Bush, 10/5/2002:

Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons

George Bush, 10/7/2002:

The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.

George Bush, 10/7/2002:

We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas...

Donald Rumsfeld, 3/30/03:

We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Ari Fleischer, 4/10/03:

But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.

George Bush, 5/3/03:

We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.