There was a campaign of deliberate deception; one that employed the media as
its willing interlocutors. In March of this year, a report prepared by the
Committee on Government Reform Minority Office for Rep. Henry A. Waxman
(D-CA) called "Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public
Statements on Iraq," shed some light on just how straight forward the
administration has been with the American people about the reasons for
invading Iraq. The report tracks public comments made by Bush, Cheney, Rice,
Rumseld and Powell from March 2002 to January 2004, and finds 237 specific
instances where they made willfully misleading statements. Never one to rest
on his laurels, Cheney has been hard at work since January. Two weeks ago he
told CNBC's "Capitol Report" that "There clearly was a relationship [between
Iraq and al Qaeda]. It's been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming."
He went on to add that "We don't know, [if Iraq was involved in the 9/11
attacks]," a statement that's an intentionally muddier way of echoing the
president's own assertion that "We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was
involved with the 11 September attacks," in September 2003.
Waxman's report is scrupulous in its unwillingness to include "statements
that appear in hindsight to be erroneous but were accurate reflections of
the views of intelligence officials at the time they were made." The Iraq on
the Record report breaks down the misleading statements into four
categories: statements suggesting that Iraq posed an urgent threat, (there
are over 10); references to Iraq's nuclear activities, (there are more than
80); statements regarding Iraq's biological and chemical weapons
capabilities, (again, more than 80) and statements regarding Iraq's support
of al Qaeda (there are more than 60).

Remember Colin Powell's now infamous address to the U.N. Security Council in
February 2003. Almost nothing that Powell claimed to be true back then has
survived the light of day, as even the embarrassed secretary of state would
now admit. But how did the men and women who find themselves so offended by
exaggerations in Moore's film react to Powell's pro-war parade of fiction?
Despite, as Gilbert Cranberg, former editorial page editor of the Des Moines
Register, pointed outrepeated signals of phony, stretched and insufficient
evidence, including almost no verifiable sources, and more than 40 vague
references such as "human sources," "an eyewitness," "detainees," "an
al-Qaeda source," "a senior defector," "intelligence sources," and the
like." Nevertheless, a survey of the coverage from some 40 papers nationwide
found such contentions as:

"a massive array of evidence," "a detailed and persuasive case," "a
powerful case," "a sober, factual case," "an overwhelming case," "a
compelling case," "the strong, credible and persuasive case," "a persuasive,
detailed accumulation of information," "the core of his argument was
unassailable," "a smoking fusillade . . . a persuasive case for anyone who
is still persuadable," "an accumulation of painstakingly gathered and
analyzed evidence," "only the most gullible and wishful thinking souls can
now deny that Iraq is harboring and hiding weapons of mass destruction,"
"the skeptics asked for proof; they now have it," "a much more detailed and
convincing argument than any that has previously been told," "Powell's
evidence . . . was overwhelming," "an ironclad case . . . incontrovertible
evidence," "succinct and damning evidence . . . the case is closed," "Colin
Powell delivered the goods on Saddam Hussein," "masterful," "If there was
any doubt that Hussein . . . needs to be . . . stripped of his chemical and
biological capabilities, Powell put it to rest."