Excerpt: "The White House intervened in the CIA's pre-publication review process, and has threatened me with criminal prosecution if I publish this op-ed ... because, in the White House's view, that op-ed contains classified information.

"That claim is false. Indeed, I would say that claim is fraudulent. The people making that claim know it is not true.

"The White House is using the rubric of protecting classified information, not to protect classified information, but to limit the dissemination of the views of someone who is very critical of their approact to Iran policy."

Excerpt: There can be no reasonable dispute about this, since the President at his Press Conference not only admitted lying when he told the reporters that Rumsfeld would stay, but he even went on to explain his reasons for lying ("the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you on to another question was to give you that answer"). The decision was clearly a fait accompli before the election, as the President himself said: "win or lose, Bob Gates was going to become the nominee."

Excerpt: "We've got the basic strategy right," Cheney told George Stephanopoulos in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on This Week.

Comment: Nobody knows where Bush-Cheney's lies end and the insanity begins ...   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt: Just last month, the Senate Intelligence Committee -- chaired by Bush-ally Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) -- concluded that there was absolutely no relationship between Saddam Hussein and the late al-Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Nevertheless, in an interview with a South Bend, Indiana television station yesterday, Vice President Cheney falsely asserted that Zarqawi was proof of a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Excerpt: We found this long-forgotten press release at the White House website on September 29, 2006 -- the day the President is expected to sign the new law ending eight hundred years of habeas corpus, authorizing torture on the President's say-so, and retroactively legalizing torture previously authorized by the despicable President of the United States.

The text of the press release, probably never even read and certainly never comprehended by George W. Bush, is credited as a "statement by the President."

The illustrations did not come from the White House website, but what's illustrated certainly did.

We republish Bush's old press release as a tribute to the nation America could be, if men like Bush were imprisoned instead of President, and because we expect this "statement by the President" won't remain on the White House website much longer.

Excerpt: A bipartisan Congressional report documents hundreds of contacts between White House officials and the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his partners, including at least 10 direct contacts between Mr. Abramoff and Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist.

The House Government Reform Committee report, based on e-mail messages and other records subpoenaed from Mr. Abramoff's lobbying firm, found 485 contacts between Mr. Abramoff's lobbying team and White House officials from 2001 to 2004, including 82 with Mr. Rove's office.

Comment: And of course, the White House lied about it.   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

White House Press Conference, 1/17/2006:

Question: Can you be more specific about [Jack Abramoff's] contacts with the senior staff? You said you were going to get back to us on that. Can you give us --

Press Secretary Scott McClellan: I did check. There were a few staff-level meetings. As I indicated there were -- I think I previously indicated that he attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House. It is actually only two Hanukkah receptions that he attended.

White House Press Conference, 1/17/2006:

Reporter's question: why are you guys resistant to open this here? What is there to hide, or why not just say, here are the contacts he had, here are the issues he talked about when he came to the White House, here are the people --

Press Secretary Scott McClellan: Well, I did do a check, and I indicated to you exactly what I just told you. I indicated to you that there were a few staff-level meetings that he attended at least -- he attended two holiday receptions, in 2001 and 2002.

Excerpt: During today's press conference, ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz asked Bush why he continues to say Saddam "had relations with Zarqawi," despite the Senate Intelligence Report findings that Hussein "did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi." Bush replied: "I never said there was an operational relationship."

In fact, Bush has repeatedly asserted that Saddam "harbored" and "provided safe-haven" to Zarqawi...

Excerpt: U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Comment: The US Congress is LYING to make the case that we have to attack Iran, now, for the love of Pete.

The House report says that Iran is producing weapons-grade enriched uranium, but the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, says that's a giant big fat lie.

The rat bastards in the Republican Party, after they've completely destroyed our military AND our credibility on the last lie-based war, are now actually trying to LIE THIS COUNTRY INTO ANOTHER DAMN WAR!

Peter Hoekstra's (R-MI) pants are COMPLETELY ON FIRE! Experts are saying that this is just like before Iraq, which ALSO DIDN'T HAVE A NUCLEAR PROGRAM!

Dagnaggit, these people are starting to REALLY PISS ME OFF!!!   Madeline Zane   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt: The U.S. military did not count people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks when it reported a dramatic drop in the number of murders in the Baghdad area last month, the U.S. command said Monday.

The decision to include only victims of drive-by shootings and those killed by torture and execution, usually at the hands of death squads, allowed U.S. officials to argue that a security crackdown that began in the capital August 7 had more than halved the city's murder rate.

But the types of slayings, including suicide bombings, that the U.S. excluded from the category of "murder" were not made explicit at the time. That led to confusion after Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed that 1,536 people died violently in and around Baghdad in August, nearly the same number as in July.

Excerpt: CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing, according to current and former intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the program.

Comment: How could any American read this news and not feel ashamed, outraged?

Government-reimbursed insurance shields CIA employees from paying for their crimes — including "abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

There's only one reason the CIA would offer reimbursement for such policies and, as this article reports, encourage its officers to sign up. There's only one reason a CIA officer would want this kind of insurance:

If their actions are brought to the light of day, it's likely that what they've done and what they're doing will be found illegal.

This is shameful, despicable on how many different levels?

Federal employees are paid to torture, to violate human rights, American law, and the Geneva Conventions...

... And the Bush-Cheney administration authorized it, but lies about it constantly ("We don't torture," as Bush himself said again last week, while pushing for new laws shielding torturers from prosecution)...

... And little-known government-backed insurance policies are being pushed, so government workers who torture for a living needn't worry about paying any civil damages for their illegal acts...

Is this the America Tom Jefferson and Ben Franklin and George Washington fought to establish?

Or is this the tyranny they fought against?   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt: Five years after Sept. 11, seven out of 10 first responders and workers who toiled at Ground Zero suffer from chronic lung ailments that probably will be lifelong, doctors said yesterday in announcing the largest-ever study of 9/11 health effects... Doctors at Mount Sinai also said they expect to find cancer among the study's participants in coming years.

Comment: It would be an appropriate gesture, commemorating five years since September 11, 2001, to finally, finally take care of the rescue workers.

Appropriate, but unlikely.

The Bush-Cheney administration uses the rescue workers' heroism for photo ops and propaganda, but when it comes to the heroes' health, White House policy is, You're screwed.   Helen & Harry Highwater   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt: "What bothers me the most is how clever the enemy is," he continued, launching an extensive broadside at Islamic extremist groups which he said are trying to undermine Western support for the war on terror.

"They are actively manipulating the media in this country" by, for example, falsely blaming U.S. troops for civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said.

Comment: Will any American reporter challenge Rumsfeld's absolutely delusional propaganda?

He names no names, cites no examples, offers no evidence because, of course, anyone who's brighter than a dustmop knows "Islamic extremist groups" have no viable access to American media.

But pathological liars in the Bush administration can say anything they wish, even outrageous and obvious lies like this, knowing the US media will report it virtually without question.   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt: Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers are voicing anger that American spy agencies have not issued more ominous warnings about the threats that they say Iran presents to the United States.

Comment: This news got buried on a Friday at the end of summer, but save it to your hard drives, everyone. Keep it in the same file with the stories from a few months back about the unanimous consensus that Iran is a decade away from a nuclear weapon.

I have a sneaking suspicion that after the elections are out of the way, the crazies in charge are actually going to try to lie us into yet another war.   Madeline Zane   PERMANENT LINK

Comment: Because really, who are you going to trust - intelligence officers who do this kind of work for a living and whose careers depend on getting their facts right...

Or Republican politicians whose careers hang in the balance of the next election?   Rebecca   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt: With New Yorkers already fuming about reports that the feds downplayed the danger of Ground Zero dust, the White House gave EPA chief Christie Whitman the power to bury embarrassing documents by classifying them "secret."

"I hereby designate the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to classify information originally as 'Secret,'" states the executive order, which was signed by President Bush on May 6, 2002.

Excerpt: With the exception of the mentally handicapped and the chronically un-informed, nobody in the world is stupid enough to believe that Bush and Cheney are men of honor steering America's future to the best of their abilities.

Comment: They've gotten away with so many lies for so long, Republicans can now exist only in an environment of lies.

So hey, why not make up a phony floor debate in the Senate, submit it to the Congressional Record, and then reference it in Supreme Court briefs as evidence of legislative intent?   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

Comment: Isn't it obvious, as the lies continue, that virtually everything Bush & Cheney have announced about the 'war on terror' is an un-ending parade of blatant lies?

... Today they're lying to keep a man in prison, to prevent him from having a fair trial. Tomorrow they could be lying to imprison you.   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt: The Bush administration has been unable to muster even half of the 2,500 National Guardsmen it planned to have on the Mexican border by the end of June.

As of Thursday, the next-to-last day of the month, fewer than 1,000 troops were in place, according to military officials in the four border states of Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona.

Excerpt: In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare. Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph. A few days later, the lines were back in the speech.

Comment: This memo from the US embassy in Baghdad might be worth remembering, the next time lying Republicans and TV propagandacasters tell you things are looking up in Iraq, or President Bush claims that "freedom is on the march."   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

Comment: This is probably the end of this entirely sordid episode, and the AP's reporter has summed things up with what seems to me a fairly fair recap -- with one glaring but utterly ordinary exception:

Like virtually all mainstream reporters, AP's Pete Yost is congenitally incapable of typing the words "lie," "lied," or "liar" when referring to anyone in the White House.

So we'll help...   Helen & Harry   PERMANENT LINK

Comment: In a word, bullcrap. This isn't about budget priorities, it's about the Bush-Cheney-rightwing war against any science (any facts, any intelligence) that disputes the Bush administration's Cro-Magnon outlook on everything.   Helen & Harry   LINK

Comment: It is not just international communications. The program includes calls placed within the United States. They are putting into the database every call made in the US.

... They have been lying to us about this, over and over and over again. They've been lying to us about it, and they've been lying to Congress about it.   Rachel Maddow   LINK

Excerpt: The Pentagon chief denied he had lied and said he had relied on official intelligence reports about Saddam's weapons.

His questioner persisted: "You said you knew where they were."

Rumsfeld: "I did not. I said I knew where 'suspect' sites were."

The record shows that in the weeks preceding the war, Rumsfeld flatly claimed to know the whereabouts of Saddam's WMD arsenal.

On March 30, 2003, 11 days into the war, Rumsfeld was asked in an ABC News interview if he was surprised that American forces had not yet found any weapons of mass destruction.

"Not at all," Rumsfeld said, according to an official Pentagon transcript. "The area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

Excerpt: In September 2000, then-Gov. George W. Bush criticized President Clinton for proposing to use the strategic oil reserve in response to high prices:

"The Strategic Reserve is an insurance policy meant for a sudden disruption of our energy supply or for war. Strategic Reserve should not be used as an attempt to drive down oil prices right before an election. It should not be used for short-term political gain at the cost of long-term national security."

Today, Bush did precisely what he criticized President Clinton for five-and-a-half years ago.

Comment: This is very reasonable, calm, dispassionate and interesting. It recounts evidence conclusively showing that the title is true.   Zebra   LINK

Salon requires non-subscribers to view a brief advertisement  Excerpt: Lacking evidence of a real-world link between Saddam and the perpetrators of 9/11, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by Bush appointee John Negroponte, has apparently decided to create one in cyberspace -- by seeding its new online Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents archive with suggestive jihadist materials, and by linking the site to an entirely unrelated database of al-Qaida materials.

... Strikingly, many of the interlopers share some key characteristics: Their origins trace to al-Qaida or other jihadist groups, they frequently involve unconventional weapons -- and they have nothing at all to do with either Saddam's regime or prewar Iraq. Also striking is their inclusion in an archive purportedly dedicated to captured Iraqi documents specifically from the Saddam regime; U.S. forces surely captured a wealth of other materials in Iraq that have nothing to do with the regime and that are not included in the archive. The fact that the only such relics to worm their way into the Operation Iraqi Freedom Documents focus on al-Qaida, the jihadist fringe and unconventional weapons strongly suggests an attempt to reinforce the Bush administration's prewar claim of ties between a WMD-hungry Saddam and al-Qaida terrorists.

Excerpt: The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved.

Excerpt: Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.

Excerpt: The Times article reviews for the first time the full text of a confidential memo of a two-hour meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair on Jan. 31, 2003. The memo makes clear that the White House was bent on attacking Iraq two months later no matter what, "even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons," writes Don Van Natta, Jr.

Excerpt: In fact, Bush did claim such a connection existed, often generally and specifically in a letter to Congress at the start of the war.

Excerpt: "It's such a phenomenal hole in the national debate that you can have arguments with nonexistent people. All politicians try to get away with this to a certain extent. What's striking here is how much this administration rests on a foundation of this kind of stuff."

Comment: When he quit his high-level White House position in February, the Bush-Cheney administration claimed that Dr Allen was leaving "to spend more time with his family." In reality, he had been arrested a month earlier, for "refund fraud" -- shoplifting.

There is apparently nothing so trivial that the Bush-Cheney White House won't lie about it.   H&HH   LINK

Excerpt: "No matter where you look at [Iraq's] military, their police, their society things are much better this year than they were last."

Excerpt: "I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by Hamas' strong showing," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, referring to the landslide victory of the Islamic Hamas party in the January 25 Palestinian elections. Hamas won 76 out of 132 seats in the Palestinian legislature, compared to 43 seats for the ruling Fatah party.

... But despite Secretary Rice's odd protestations, no one did a better job of tracking the growing popularity of Hamas than the State Department's own intelligence analysts.

"When the parties [Hamas and Fatah] are directly compared, likely voters tend to see Hamas as more qualified to clean up corruption, resist occupation, and uphold societal values," the analysts reported in a January 19, 2006, pre-election assessment obtained by Secrecy News.

Comment: The video is quite incriminating, and shows yet again that the President was lying when he said he hadn't been warned. Of course, the Republicans who control Congress wouldn't care, even if the video shows Bush flipping the Gulf Coast the finger and announcing, "I hope thousands die."   H&HH   LINK

Excerpt: "There was no real investigation conducted during the 30-day period," Rep Peter King (R-New York), who has been a vocal critic of the deal, told CNN. "I can't emphasize this enough."

Excerpt: John Scott, a human rights lawyer, said: "There's certainly enough in this account for a charge of careless driving. Anyone else would have been warned for dangerous driving.

"I have had clients who have been charged with assaulting a police officer for less than this. The issue of how long the police officer was out of action for is also important. He was away from work for 14 weeks, and that would normally be very significant in a case like this."

According to day-after press reports on July 7th, Bush blamed wet pavement and high speed for the fall. "We were flying," Bush said at a press conference in Gleneagles.

Comment: In reality, Bush carelessly took his hands off the bike's handlebars, causing the accident, and injuring a policeman so seriously he missed more than three months' work.

There is no matter so trivial that the Bush administration won't lie about it.   H&HH   LINK

... None of the coverage at the time suggested the constable was hurt beyond the "minor" injury, and the incident was soon forgotten.

Comment: We told you to keep this one in your bookmarks. It's a Washington Post article from 6 months ago, saying Iran is ten years away from having its first nuclear weapons. We've heard no facts to contradict it, just posturing and fear-mongering from the usual death merchants.   Madeline Zane   LINK

Excerpt: Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public on Thursday that President Bush met him "almost a dozen" times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal.

Excerpt: One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

... "This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

Comment: Sure ... an example of LYING!   Madeline Zane   LINK

Excerpt: "The area does see movement of people from across the border. But we have not found one body or one shred of evidence that these people were there."

Excerpt:  According to Press Secretary Scott McClellan, Abramoff had "a few" such meetings. But the spokesman won't say when or with whom. Nor will he say which interests Abramoff was representing -- or how he got access to the White House.

Comment:  Predictably, McClellan's line about "a few" meetings was yet another lie (see below).   H&HH   LINK

Abramoff had hundreds of White House meetings

Excerpt:  The Associated Press reported Tuesday that Abramoff and his associates had nearly 200 contacts with the White House during Bush's first 10 months in office.

Excerpt:  The controversy erupted again last week at Alito's confirmation hearings. After Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., referred to the Knight Ridder story, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., introduced a critique of the story by the Republican staff of the Judiciary Committee into the record. Kyl said that the story, "has, to my understanding, been rather completely discredited." The first paragraph of the Republican critique, however, said that the story was based on "dozens" of Alito's opinions, creating the false impression that Henderson and Mintz didn't examine the judge's entire body of published work.

The Republican National Committee circulated a blistering personal attack on Henderson to some reporters, taking quotes out of context in an attempt to portray him as biased.

The RNC said Henderson "admitted he was previously an editorial writer," as though that part of a distinguished reporter's career was a secret that he'd been trying to hide. The RNC statement linked Henderson to editorials he didn't write.

This hysteria over a carefully researched article that documents the obvious -- that Samuel Alito is a judicial conservative -- is the latest example of a disturbing trend of attacking the messenger instead of debating difficult issues.

Fact-based reporting is the lifeblood of a democracy. It gives people shared information on which to make political choices. But as people in new democracies risk their lives to gather such information, in this country fact-based reporting is under more relentless assault than at any time in my more than 40 years in Washington.

Excerpt:  According to a declassified document, the National Security Agency's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president, and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

Excerpt:  "It's total hubris. It's arrogance by the people doing this," said a second senior U.S. counter-terrorism official. "This is a 24-hour thing, and you can get these kinds of warrants immediately. I think they are just being lazy."

New York Times sat on the story for a year, at the Bush administration's request

Salon requires non-subscribers to view a brief advertisement  Excerpt:  But by Dec. 8, 2005, the military had evacuated another 25,289 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses not caused directly by enemy bullets or bombs, according to the U.S. Transportation Command. That statistic includes everything from serious injuries in Humvee wrecks or other accidents to more routine illnesses that could be unrelated to field battles.

Yet those service members are not included in the Pentagon's casualty reports. That's odd. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a casualty as "a military person lost through death, wounds, injury, sickness, internment or capture or through being missing in action."

"We don't do Webster's," Jim Turner, a Pentagon spokesman told me in 2004 as I was reporting on counting casualties. In a written statement, the Department of Defense told me that the casualty reports describe casualties to fit the "understanding of the average newspaper reader."

Excerpt:  Why did the U.S. military mislead the media and the families of ten Marines killed near the Iraqi city of Falluja while "on patrol" last week about how they were killed? The military announced on Tuesday that it actually happened at a "promotion" ceremony and they were not on foot patrol as initially reported.

Comment: Is there any lie too small for military and Bush administration officials to tell? Have they told us the truth about anything, ever?   Helen & Harry Highwater   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt:  A Bush administration analysis of air pollution legislation uses assumptions that boost the benefits of its own proposal while overstating the costs of alternatives, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service.

Comment: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't we say that if the Iraqis asked us to leave, that's when we would know it was time to, you know, LEAVE?   Madeline Zane   PERMANENT LINK

Comment: That's what President Bush said. And that's what then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said. But it's not like this is the Bush administration's first lie about Iraq, or even in the first few hundred.   Helen & Harry Highwater   PERMANENT LINK

Comment: Is there anything, anything at all, any tiny aspect of anything Mr Bush or anyone in the upper levels of his administration has ever said, planned, promised, or done, that doesn't boil down to a lie?

Is there any limit to the depths they'll stoop? It's not enough to send American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and National Guardsmen to fight, kill, and die for vague causes which aren't worth a single American military casualty. No, that's not enough. While uniformed Americans are in Iraq risking their lives for bullshit, Bush uses their living bodies as propaganda props.   H&HH   PERMANENT LINK

Aug. 8, 2003:
US official said it was "patently false," but US forces did use napalm in Iraq

Excerpt:  "Quite a few people think that smoking pot is less likely to cause cancer than a regular cigarette. You may even have heard some parents say they'd rather their kid smoked a little pot than get hooked on cigarettes. Wrong, and wrong again. ... One joint can deliver four times as much cancer-causing tar as one cigarette."

... "As a parent, I'm appalled that the White House is actually telling parents not to worry about a drug that's proven to be both deadly and highly addictive," Fox said. "I'd much rather my kids not smoke anything, but the data is crystal clear that of the two drugs, tobacco is far more carcinogenic and far more addictive. And the message to kids is even worse. The ad says, in effect, 'If you've already tried marijuana, cigarettes are no big deal because they have one-quarter the tar.' That's a message that could literally kill."

Excerpt:  A US government document confirms for the first time that the al Qaida leader was camped out at the Tora Bora mountain hideout before managing to escape.

Both President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have repeatedly claimed that they did not know whether bin Laden was at Tora Bora when it was attacked by US forces in December 2001.

The document, obtained by the Associated Press under freedom of information legislation, says the unidentified terrorism suspect "assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora".

... The issue was a source of contention during last year's presidential election and both Mr Bush and Mr Cheney referred to a column written by the former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, who said bin Laden "was never within our grasp" as evidence of their claims.

General Tommy Franks wrote in the New York Times: "We don't know to this day whether Mr bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001."

Excerpt:  When the Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a rule last week to limit mercury emissions from U.S. power plants, officials emphasized that the controls could not be more aggressive because the cost to industry already far exceeded the public health payoff.

What they did not reveal is that a Harvard University study paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer- reviewed by two other EPA scientists had reached the opposite conclusion.

Excerpt:  "Al-Qa'ida leadership's intention to attack the United States is not in question," the report reads. (All spellings are as rendered in the original report.) "However, their capability to do so is unclear, particularly in regard to 'spectacular' operations. We believe al-Qa'ida's capability to launch attacks within the United States is dependent on its ability to infiltrate and maintain operatives in the United States."

And for all the worry about Osama bin Laden's sleeper cells or agents in the United States, a secret FBI assessment concludes it knows of none.

The 32-page assessment says flatly, "To date, we have not identified any true 'sleeper' agents in the US," seemingly contradicting the "sleeper cell" description prosecutors assigned to seven men in Lackawanna, N.Y., in 2002.

Excerpt:  The way privatizers link the long-run financing of Social Security with the case for private accounts parallels the three-card-monte technique the Bush administration used to link terrorism to the Iraq war. Speeches about Iraq invariably included references to 9/11, leading much of the public to believe that invading Iraq somehow meant taking the war to the terrorists. When pressed, war supporters would admit they lacked evidence of any significant links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, let alone any Iraqi role in 9/11 -- yet in their next sentence it would be 9/11 and Saddam, together again.

Similarly, calls for privatization invariably begin with ominous warnings about Social Security's financial future. When pressed, administration officials admit that private accounts would do nothing to improve that financial future. Yet in the next sentence, they once again link privatization to the problem posed by an aging population.

Excerpt:  Scientists in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say they've been forced to alter or withhold findings that would have led to greater protections for endangered species, according to a survey released Wednesday by two environmental groups.

The scientists charge that top regional and national officials in the agency suppressed scientific information to avoid confrontations with industry groups or to follow the Bush administration's political policies.

Excerpt:  At this point, the focus is no longer on the bogus WMD rationale used to promote the attack on Iraq, intelligence analysts say. It's the claims the vice president is now making regarding Iran's nuclear capability -- and, given the deliberate distortions on Iraq, whether anyone should believe him.

Appearing January 20 on MSNBC's Imus in the Morning, Cheney warned that Iran has "a fairly robust new nuclear program." And besides, it sponsors terrorism. Sound familiar?

Use our Los Angeles Times login xoxounknown@ yahoo.com and password unknownnews Excerpt:  "Troops crossed the line of departure," 1st Lt. Lyle Gilbert declared, using a common military expression signaling the start of a major campaign. "It's going to be a long night." CNN, which had been alerted to expect a major news development, reported that the long-awaited offensive to retake the Iraqi city of Fallouja had begun.

In fact, the Fallouja offensive would not kick off for another three weeks. Gilbert's carefully worded announcement was an elaborate psychological operation -- or "psy-op" -- intended to dupe insurgents in Fallouja and allow U.S. commanders to see how guerrillas would react if they believed U.S. troops were entering the city, according to several Pentagon officials.

Excerpt:  It's a wonder that millions of TV screens didn't shatter as U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's nose poked right through them last night. ...

Cheney lied about presiding over Senate

Cheney lied about having never met Edwards

Excerpt:  "Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight," Cheney told Edwards during the debate.

On Feb. 1, 2001, the vice president thanked Edwards by name at a Senate prayer breakfast and sat beside him during the event. On April 8, 2001, Cheney and Edwards shook hands when they met off-camera during a taping of NBC's "Meet the Press," moderator Tim Russert said Wednesday on "Today." On Jan. 8, 2003, the two met when the first-term North Carolina senator accompanied Elizabeth Dole to her swearing-in by Cheney as a North Carolina senator, Edwards aides also said.

Excerpt:  At a town-hall style forum in the swing state of Ohio, Cheney described Saddam as a "man who provided safe harbour and sanctuary to terrorists for years" and a man who "provided safe harbour and sanctuary as well for al Qaeda."

The commission that investigated the September 11, 2001 attacks has said it had not discovered any evidence of a "collaborative" relationship" between the fallen Iraqi government and al Qaeda.

Excerpt:  Are there any depths to which these guys won't sink? What's next? Alleged al-Qaeda infiltration of labor unions? Email from Osama to the NAACP?

Excerpt:  Downing Street has admitted to The Observer that repeated claims by Tony Blair that '400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves' is untrue, and only about 5,000 corpses have so far been uncovered.

The claims by Blair in November and December of last year, were given widespread credence, quoted by MPs and widely published, including in the introduction to a US government pamphlet on Iraq's mass graves.

In that publication -- "Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves" produced by USAID, the US government aid distribution agency, Blair is quoted from 20 November last year: 'We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.'

Colin Powell:  "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence. ..."

Excerpt:  "He was a patron of terrorism," Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. "He had long established ties with al Qaida."

Comment: Mr. Cheney is a habitual liar: As stated ad nauseum, there is no credible evidence linking Hussein or Hussein's Iraq with al-Qaida in any significant way.   H&HH   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt:  "As vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government," Cheney told NBC's "Meet the Press" in September, Time said.

Comment: When USDA says America's beef is safe, they're lying. If you'd like to live a long and healthy life, don't take them at their word.   H&HH   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt:  The public version of the U.S. intelligence community's key prewar assessment of Iraq's illicit arms programs was stripped of dissenting opinions, warnings of insufficient information and doubts about Saddam Hussein's intentions, a review of the document and its once-classified version shows.

What that comparison showed is that while the top-secret version delivered to President Bush, his top lieutenants and Congress was heavily qualified with caveats about some of its most-important conclusions about Iraq's illicit weapons programs, those caveats were omitted from the public version.

Which means, it was $600-million for a knowing lie

Excerpt:  When officials misstate conclusions of ... any scientific work, they undermine their own credibility, said Frank Ackerman, a Tufts University economics professor, author and critic of the Bush administration's selective use of science in rule-making.

"If you tilt entirely toward saying that a study with a zillion caveats has made definitive proof of a conclusion which can't be found in the study, then it looks like you made up your mind beforehand," Ackerman said.

Excerpt:  At his press conference yesterday, President Bush was asked about charges that he had received warnings prior to the September 11th attacks that a terrorist incident was imminent. He answered that even asking such a question was "an absurd insinuation." It was the same sentiment expressed by Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who said in May of 2002 that "[no one predicted] that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane."

The problem for the president and the administration is that the White House has previously admitted that the president had personally received such specific warnings. ...

Excerpt:  I obviously believe Bush has lied often and consistently about grave matters, but I have shied away from labeling Bush "pathological" and the like.

Now I wonder about that.

What forced this reconsideration was a speech Bush delivered in late November to several thousand troops at Butts Army Air Field in Fort Carson, Colorado. On this occasion, Bush served up the usual rah-rah about the war on terrorism. But as he was hailing the U.S. military, he remarked, "Working with a fine coalition, our military went to Afghanistan, destroyed the training camps of al Qaeda and put the Taliban out of business forever."

Out of business forever?

Excerpt:  You learn in flight school to cinch those straps tight -- while you're seated in the cockpit -- in the event that you have to eject or bail out. But every kid learns, quickly, that you don't stand up with those straps tight; it pinches your nuts. And yes, Bush would have been very familiar with that.

Comment: The only American people being defended from danger by U.S. troops in Iraq are the U.S. troops in Iraq -- and they're only in danger because they're there.   H&HH   PERMANENT LINK

Comment: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it's "unsafe" for Americans to buy Canadian prescription drugs at vastly cheaper prices than they can be bought in America, but the lie is so obvious I feel silly even pointing it out.

It isn't "unsafe," it's just unprofitable for giant U.S. pharmaceutical corporations, and the FDA is THEIR spokesman, not YOURS.   Rebecca   PERMANENT LINK

# Bush continues to shamelessly lie and wag the dog while shedding phony crocodile tears for deaths of his cannon fodder...

=Liberez L'Ours=

"We're fighting the terrorists on the streets of Afghanistan and Iraq so we do not have to fight them on the streets of our own cities ... "

# That's a lie. The only terrorists fighting on American streets are the FBI, DEA, ATF, and ETC.

=Grandma & Grandpa=

"This war began on Sept. 11, 2001 ..."

# That's another lie (yawn). Anyone who's not hypnotized knows Iraq had no significant connection to international terrorism.

=Grandma & Grandpa=

"Freedom is not America's gift to the world freedom is the almighty God's gift to every person who lives in the world."

# I've never seen evidence Bush knows what the word 'freedom' means, but evidence he's against it accumulates every day of the year.

=Grandma & Grandpa=

Under White House rules, reporters were not allowed to interview soldiers before, during or after the president's speech.

# ... while censoring freedom of the press with the heavy hand of "freedom"

=Liberez L'Ours=

Cheney still lying, too

"In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists and had a relationship with al Qaeda -- and his regime is no more."

# Same old bull. Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, and had no means to deliver the weapons he didn't have. There's no credible evidence Hussein gave any support to international terrorists, no evidence al-Qaida was anything but another enemy to the Iraqi regime.

=H&HH=

Excerpt:   "Iraq has now become the central front in the war on terror," he said at a Bush-Cheney fund-raiser in Cleveland and at a fund-raising reception for Rep. Anne Northrup in Louisville, Ky. "We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there, so we do not have to face them on the streets of our own cities."

It's a line that generates applause. It's also a line that makes several military and intelligence analysts cringe.

Sept. 17, 2003:
Mr. Vice-President: Please stop lying
Editorial, Star-Tribune [Minneapolis-St. Paul]

The follow-up news

Excerpt:  The mainstream press, after an astonishing two years of cowardice, is belatedly drawing attention to the unconscionable level of administrative deception. They seem surprised to find that when it comes to Iraq, the Bush administration isn't prone to the occasional lie of expediency but, in fact, almost never told the truth.