Monday, November 14, 2005

Claim: "Rewriting History." Here's the First Draft.

Testimony to Congress in 2001 suggests the administration manipulated evidence to push the US toward war with Iraq. CIA Director George Tenent (left, recieving the Medal of Freedom) told Congress in February, 2001, that while Iraq was "probably" pursuing a WMD program, the CIA had no evidence to support it as fact.

Words such as "may" and "probably" were later removed by the Bush administration when referring to the testimony.

“We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox (December, 1998) to reconstitute its WMD programs. Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating… Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the U.S. to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.” -- then-CIA Director George Tenent, February 7, 2001 report to Congress

The Raw Story reports that top Bush administration officials -- including the Secretaries of Defense and State -- testified more than 24 times to Congress prior to 9/11 that Saddam was not a threat to the US. (The Raw Story)

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