The genesis of a lie: How George Bush fabricated the Iraqi WMD myth
By Dennis Rahkonen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 21, 2006

Maybe we’ve forgotten. Or perhaps we just weren’t paying attention in the first place.

But, before 9/11, the Bush administration itself denied the existence of WMD in Iraq:

"He (Saddam) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors." --Secretary of State Colin Powell, in Cairo, Feb. 24, 2001

"We're working toward what will be a significant change in our approach to Iraq in the United Nations . . . The focus is on strengthening controls to prevent Iraq from rebuilding military capability in weapons of mass destruction, while facilitating a broader flow of goods to the civilian population of Iraq." --State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, May 17, 2001

The first quote categorically confirms that no WMD threat, or even a conventional one, existed. The second underscores that fact, by declaring Saddam would have to “rebuild” a capability he didn’t have at the time.

Just weeks before 9/11, Bush himself said the following, with his typically choppy syntax:

"He's been a menace forever, and we will do -- he needs to open his country up for inspection, so we can see whether or not he's developing weapons of mass destruction." --Aug. 7, 2001

Well, Hussein did in fact allow such inspections, and they were ongoing until the immediate lead-up to war. As former inspectors have themselves since said, they’d have found nothing if Bush’s unprovoked aggression hadn’t cut short their task...http://tinyurl.com/pdny2
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