(Political Ideas Less than 100% Baked)

Billmon: What a Tangled Web We Weave when first we practice to deceive!

Some selected quotes:

• "Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons." - George W. Bush, September 12, 2002
• "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." - George W. Bush, January 28, 2003
• "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." - George W Bush, March 17, 2003
• "We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad." - Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003
• "There are people who in large measure have information that we need... so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country." - Donald Rumsfeld, April 25, 2003
• "We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so." - George W. Bush, May 3, 2003
• "I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country." - Donald Rumsfeld, May 4, 2003
• "I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago." - Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne, May 13, 2003
• "They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer." - Donald Rumsfeld, May 27, 2003
• "For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." - Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003

Number of Weapons of Mass Distruction Found in Iraq: Zero

Explanations:

1. Gross incompatence: Weapons were allowd to be moved to more terrorist-friendly nations. The distruction of the expection volumes of WMD would leave large and telltale traces, similar to a toxic waste dump cleanup.
2. Malignant Deception: The Bush Administration willfully misled the public about the size and nature of Iraq's WMD program in order to scare people into supporting the war.

Most Likely Truth:
A little bit of both. We know that nuclear and other weapons sites were looted in the aftermath of major conflict, along with musieums, schools, hospitals, banks and just about everything else. However, taking into account the CIA's protests that its intelligence was ignored and that the Pentagon admits it was running it's own in-house intel operation that produced only friendly results, it seems clear that there was also some deception going on.

The Bottom Line: Bush Lied, People Died