Counting the lies

Bob Kemper of the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau writes:

On the defensive over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush administration officials increasingly argue that the U.S.-led war was justified because it toppled the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein and paved the way for a new era of peace and stability in the Middle East.

But the violence and strife roiling U.S.-occupied Iraq, including a vehicle bombing Thursday that killed at least 11 people in Baghdad, is emboldening critics who maintain the White House overstated its primary case for war: that Iraq posed a direct and immediate threat to the United States.

Four months after U.S. forces seized Baghdad, an in-depth look at that case shows that virtually all the administration's allegations regarding Iraq's destructive capabilities remain unproven or in dispute, according to outside experts, former intelligence analysts and a variety of foreign-policy think tanks.

Kemper goes on to enumerate the still-unproven claims, from the biological and chemical weapons to the aluminum tubes, to the mobile labs, to the 30,000 warheads, and on and on. No surprises here, not to anyone with an ounce of skepticism...but the Bush League's political strategy consists of repeating the lies more often than anyone repeats the truth; that's why we have to keep repeating the truth.

P.S. In case you don't want to register (for free) at the Trib website, there are copies of this article (minus the first couple of paragraphs) at
http://www.statesman.com/asection/content/auto/epaper/
editions/sunday/news_f353ee540662109e1071.html

and
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=12599.