1) The President told the nation that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used “for missions targeting the United States.” In fact, none of those aircraft have the range to reach the U.S.
They could be used to strike at American forces or American interests in the region and theoretically could be
launched from somewhere other then Iraq, but if your point is that they are not much of a threat I agree.
5) The President suggested a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq in the form of a high-ranking Al Qaeda member getting medical treatment in Baghdad earlier this year. Intelligence officials later acknowledged they had no “hard evidence” that Iraq’s government knew the Al Qaeda member was there.
The suggested links go beyond that, but it is true that the evidence is flimsy.
6) Mr. Bush implied that an Iraqi defector had provided information concerning the state of Iraq’s WMD program as of 1998. The defector had no information concerning the state of that program since his retirement in 1991.
There has been more then one defector but also knowledge of the state of the program in 1991, plus knowledge of what we destroyed and what the inspectors saw destroyed gives us knowledge about what Saddam has not accounted for. Not accounting for WMD is itself a material breach, we don't have to actually find the WMD tucked away in some back corner of a good sized country.
7) Mr. Bush suggests on the stump that his 2001 tax cuts were limited to nine years as a result of a “quirk in the rules in the United States Senate.” In truth, the tax cut was limited to nine years by Mr. Bush and the Republicans in an effort to keep the cost of the bill to $1.35 trillion and to disguise the long-term fiscal consequences of the cut.
It was a quirk in the rules that measured the costs of a certain time. You could take a 0.0001% tax cut and give it a figure that makes it look like the biggest tax cut in history if you project it out for enough years. The reduction as measured by a % of the GDP was rather small.
8) Mr. Bush brags he enacted “the biggest increase in education spending in a long, long time." In fact, the 15% increase authorized in Mr. Bush’s education bill is the largest since the year before when Mr. Clinton’s budget increased education spending by 18.5%.
If the facts in your claim are correct then you have a point but 15% in a year is still a large increase. 18.5% or even 15% rate of increase is not sustainable for the long term.
11) The administration has been relentless in promoting the story that Al Qaeda and Iraq were in league with regard to 9/11 based on an alleged meeting between Iraqi officials and hijacker Muhammed Atta in Prague. That story has now been shown to be a fiction by no less a source than Vaclav Havel.
This appears to be more faulty intel then a lie. Actually it would be hard for Havel or anyone else to be sure it didn't happen, but the sourse that said it did was apparently at least unreliable.
12) Mr. Bush suggested that Ken Lay of Enron supported Anne Richards in the Texas Governor’s race. That was a real whopper.
He probably did. He might have given 10 time more to Bush but a lot of businessmen give to both parties to try to get some protection against what the other party might do to them if they lose.
13) The administration has been evasive on the issue of the percentage of benefits flowing to the top 1% of earners from the 2001 tax cut.
Evasiveness isn't a lie, and not concentrating on the issue doesn't really amount to evasivness or if it does then every politician is evasive. But it is true that under the new tax plan the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the wealthiest 1% will probably go up, their rates will go down, and the rate reduction amounts to a big savings for them because they pay so much taxes now, but the rates for other people will go down as well, in many cases by a larger amount, and in some cases to 0%. |
