Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [20]
The aluminum tubes “discovery” also turned out to be a fictitious threat. On January 27, 2003—the day before Bush’s State of the Union address—the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, told the U.N. Security Council that two months of inspections in Iraq had produced no evidence of prohibited activities at former Iraqi nuclear sites. In addition, ElBaradei said, the aluminum tubes “unless modified, would not be suitable for manufacturing centrifuges.”
According to reports in The Washington Post, Newsweek, and other publications, the assertion that the tubes could be used for nuclear weapons production had already been questioned by U.S. and British intelligence officials. U.N. inspectors said they had found proof that Iraq planned to use the tubes to build small rockets, not nuclear weapons. And the Iraqis were not trying to buy the equipment in secret—their purchase order was accessible on the Internet.
But Mr. Bush didn’t let facts stand in the way of his tough-talking State of the Union address to almost sixty-two million viewers on January 28, 2003: “. . . Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” he stated. “Imagine those nineteen hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes.”
On March 16, Co-President Dick Cheney appeared on Meet the Press and told the nation that Hussein has “been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
Three days later, we went to war.
In the spring and summer of 2003, criticism of the administration’s reliance on lies about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities heated up to the point that even President Bush could no longer ignore it or put a stop to the questions just by acting cranky. First, he tried to make CIA Director George Tenet the sacrificial lamb. “[The] CIA approved the president’s State of the Union address before it was delivered,” Tenet was ordered to say in July. “I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And . . . the President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These sixteen words [regarding the African uranium] should never have been included in the text written for the president.” But then came the memos from October that showed that Tenet’s CIA did tell the White House not to make such a bogus claim. While the White House initially took this advice, they repeatedly disregarded it afterwards, most notably in the State of the Union. The next scapegoat became Condoleezza Rice’s deputy, Stephen Hadley, who said it was he who approved the language in Bush’s January address. This looked so lame that finally Bush, in a rare press conference on July 30, said that he and he alone is responsible for any words that come out of his mouth. That those words even need to be said should make an entire nation wonder whether this guy should be the leader of the free world or flippin’ Whoppers at the Waco Burger King.
#2 Whopper with Cheese: “Iraq has chemical and biological weapons!”
In his October 7, 2002, address from Cincinnati, George W. Bush offered up this freshly cooked whopper: “Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today—and we do—does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?” Then, just a few months later, Bush added the cheese: “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons—the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
Who wouldn’t want to bomb that bastard Saddam after hearing that? Then