June 12th, 2003

Dear Senator Smith,

I’m writing because I become more outraged daily as the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction continues, day by day, in Iraq. In some reports, the search teams have all but given up, having visited all of the likely sites. What is being exposed gradually is that the Bush administration lied us into war - they cherry-picked the intelligence they wanted to hear from dubious sources, and passed it off to the public as gospel. It is scandalous, and it should be investigated by Congress.

Meanwhile, Bush has backed off the earlier claims of certainty, and is now revising history on a daily basis via a nuanced set of proclamations about our mission in Iraq. Conservative writers are busy pointing out all the other government officials, including Clinton and Gore (it always leads back to Clinton, doesn’t it?), who at one time or another have stated that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The essential, and crucial difference that is overlooked is this: only George W. Bush has the responsibility for what has taken place recently. He made the strongest, most consistent pronouncements about the Iraqi threat, and he put our soldiers in harm’s way, resulting in the deaths of a significant number of Americans and countless Iraqis. And now, I think the American public has a right to know: who lied to whom? I think it is Congress’ responsibility to act as the counterweight to an administration that has run amok. This turn of events is simply too egregious to be ignored.

Sincerely,

Kurt

• The most egregious example of the Bush administration lies in the run-up to the war with Iraq concerns the forged Nigerian documents purporting to show that Iraq had attempted to import uranium yellowcake. The CIA knew in early 2002 that these documents were bogus, yet they continued to pop up in Bush and Powell speeches as late as January and February 2003. Rep. Henry Waxman chronicled the evidence on the forgeries in a letter to Bush published on Truthout.org.
• Sometimes the best journalism comes from the virtual unknown: blogger Billmon chronicles Bush's slide from certainty to weaseling on WMD's on his site.
• Karen J. Alter, writing in the Chicago Tribune, asks "Who Lied?"
• Rep. Jane Harman, a member of the Intelligence Committee and privy to much of what was known prior to the war, has a few comments on the failure of intelligence.