its funny that the republicans attacked Clinton's semantics
over the Monica affair (an issue that was essentially no ones business) but now theyre taking the same stance over taking the country to war.

also when Clinton fired missiles at AlQaeda training camps in Afghanistan - they said 'wag the dog'

the link below would explain why a majority of Americans still think
there was link between Iraq and 911 even though there was no proof of such a link.

http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do
pageID=world_home&articleID=1559410

and if that doesnt work here it is.

Democrats compile list of 237 'misleading' administration statements on Iraq

WASHINGTON (CP) - It was released with little fanfare and attracted scant notice.
But a compilation of statements on the alleged threat posed by Iraq made by President George W. Bush and four top officials provides an eye-popping look at how public opinion was shaped months before the war - and after. The list of 237 "misleading" comments by key administration officials in 125 public appearances was released last week by Democratic staff attached to the House of Representatives government reform committee.

The White House has said any misstatements were just a small part of an "overwhelming" case against Iraq.

But they paint a picture of a well-organized campaign, said Joseph Cirincione, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who reviewed the reported for accuracy and fairness.




"It's just overwhelming how many times they said things that just weren't true," Cirincione said in an interview Thursday.

"Putting them all together shows how comprehensive, sweeping and unrelenting they were.

"This was not a couple of statements in a couple of speeches. This was a very well-executed strategy to attract support for the war and to scare the American public."

Last July, Bush was forced to admit that he shouldn't have said Iraq was trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons in his January 2003 state of the union address.

And he was forced this year to call a public inquiry into faulty intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities after months of questions about why no weapons of mass destruction had been found.

But the inquiry will likely not examine the extent to which intelligence was exaggerated by U.S. officials and it won't report until next year, well after the Nov. 2 election.

The report divides statements into four categories: Eleven claimed Iraq posed an urgent threat, 81 exaggerated Iraq's nuclear activities, 84 statements overstated chemical and biological weapons and 61 misrepresented Iraq's ties to al-Qaida.

"Most of the statements in the database were misleading because they expressed certainty where none existed or failed to acknowledge the doubts of intelligence officials," said the report.


"Ten of the statements were simply false."

Most of the declarations, 161, were made in the buildup to war. They began at least a year before the invasion on March 19, 2003, when Vice-President Dick Cheney stated: "We know they have biological and chemical weapons."

And as late as Jan. 22, 2004, Cheney insisted "there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government."

No evidence of such a link has been put forward, but surveys suggest a majority of Americans still believe there was and that Iraq had a hand in the horrific terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The month-long period with the most misleading statements, said the report, occurred just before Congress voted to back Bush's invasion plan last October.

Three days before the vote, Bush gave a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, with 11 misleading statements there alone, said the report. Overall, 55 of the comments are attributed to him and 51 to Cheney.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is credited with 52. He told Americans that within "a week, a month" Saddam could give his weapons of mass destruction to al-Qaida terrorists, which could use them to kill "30,000 or 100,000" Americans.

Secretary of State Colin Powell often used qualifying language in public statements and those weren't included. But 50 times he didn't.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice is credited with the fewest misleading statements, 29, but the highest number that were false, with eight.

They include assertions that the White House didn't know the intelligence community had doubts about Bush's assertion that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.

CIA Director George Tenet has said that intelligence officials never described Iraq as urgent threat and the White House later admitted the intelligence agency provided repeated warnings about the uranium claim.

The report, prepared for Democrat Representative Henry Waxman, says statements were considered misleading if they conflicted with what intelligence officers knew at the time, not those that appear mistaken in hindsight.

Democratic staff used several sources to determine the intelligence available to White House officials, including parts of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that have been released to the public and Tenet's public statement in February.



© The Canadian Press, 2004