It is not at all clear that there was intentional deception
Actually facts revealed recently, but fully known at the time, show quite clearly that the deception was intentional.
My distinct recollection was that the aluminum tubes, so claimed Condi Rice at the time "only really suitable for nuclear weapons production" were used as *the* smoking gun.
Support for going into Iraq was still pretty luke warm, events of 9/11 notwithstanding. There was a distinct, quite perceptable shift once the ground work by Rice and Cheney was laid - falsely - by continually repeating mistatements surrounding the aluminum tubes.
The facts surrounding the tubes we now know were well known by the administration in August of 2001. Pre 9/11. While Bush was holiday, ignoring warnings about Al Queda, I might ad.
Fully two years before the invasion of Iraq, they knew that those materials were not designed for centrifuge use. They knew from their own top experts, US experts, the very people who build these things for the US.
Yet they used this arguement as the lynchpin in their case to secure support from Congress and the Senate.
This was not a matter of interpretation, as Rice tried to claim this past weekend. Specifically stated by her own experts, the tubes would represent an "enormous step backwards" in any nuclear weapons program. They were unsuitable due to mechanical construction, due to materials used and because they were anodized.
They were, however, perfect for making small artillery rockets, and were exactly identical in specification to the very materials used to produce Iraqi artillery rockets in the past. It was, quite simply, a restocking order.
The administration knew all of this and no doubt much more. Yet they twisted these facts and used public fear and the media and Powell to sell the arguement.
I call that deception.
Others would call it an out and out lie, and what they did fits the pure definition of the word.
lie:
n.
1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression. |
