Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Facts Are Facts--Unless They're Not Mentioned

Hello everyone!

I just finished looking up and article that I was discussing with a friend earlier tonight. He hadn't read it, so I promised to send him a link. I regularly try to read many online news outlets (including the Bonner County Daily Bee for a laugh or two), or at least scan the headlines for something that catches my attention. Because of that, I couldn't quite remember exactly where I originally saw the article, so I went to Google news to find it. Like any major story, Google gave me a list of several headlines with links to the articles. Here's the search. I'm not sure if you can link a search that might change later, so here's a reproduction with links to each original article:
Database assembles US warnings of Saddam threat
Reuters - 9 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The Bush administration's warnings about prewar Iraq, from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's "mushroom cloud" to Vice ...
Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war
CNN - 13 hours ago
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following ...
Web Site Assembles US Prewar Claims
New York Times, United States - Jan 22, 2008
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr. WASHINGTON — Students of how the Bush administration led the nation into the Iraq war can now go online to browse a comprehensive ...
935 Iraq Falsehoods
Washington Post, United States - 9 hours ago
By Dan Froomkin A nonprofit group pursuing old-fashioned accountability journalism is out with a new report and database documenting 935 false statements by ...
Bush Administration Lied 935 Times About Iraq Before Invasion: Study
MTV.com - 8 hours ago
President cited as most frequent liar, with 259 false statements about weapons of mass destruction and more. By Gil Kaufman For years, ...
Reporters count Bush team's falsities before Iraq
Baltimore Sun, United States - 12 hours ago
by Frank James The Center for Public Integrity has a new report out this morning which it says chronicles at least 935 falsities that President Bush and his ...
Truth was first US casualty in Iraq war: study
AFP - 4 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush and his top officials ran roughshod over the truth in the run-up to the Iraq war lying a total of 935 times, ...
Database lists 935 false prewar statements
United Press International - 10 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- The Bush administration made more than 900 false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq on weapons of mass destruction, ...
Fighting "State of the Union" Deception
Yahoo! News - 6 hours ago
The Nation -- President Bush has been caught lying again: [Hundreds of false statements about Iraq] were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively ...
George W Bush, White House told 935 lies after September 11
NEWS.com.au, Australia - 10 hours ago
By staff writers US President George W Bush and other top officials issued almost one thousand false statements about the national security threat from Iraq ...
Study: False Statements Preceded War
The Associated Press - Jan 22, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) — A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false ...
Study: Bush, others 'methodically propagated' false info before ...
USA Today - 14 hours ago
In a report that is sure to evoke passionate responses from supporters and opponents of the Iraq war, two nonprofit groups have concluded that President ...
President Bush's Lies According to the Center for Public Integrity
Associated Content, CO - 6 hours ago
President Bush's Lies: A report released by The Center for Public Integrity has put out a list of 935 false statements put forth by the Bush administration ...
Study highlights hundreds of false claims about Iraq
Belfast Telegraph, United Kingdom - 14 hours ago
A study in the United States has found that the Bush administration issued nearly 1000 false statements about alleged security threats from Iraq in the two ...
The Center for Public Integrity: Administration Lied About Iraq
HULIQ, NC - 12 hours ago
A new web project called The Center for Public Integrity, which focuses on ethics and integrity, concludes in a recent study that the Bush administration ...
One Lie is Okay, 935 Lies = War
Seattlest, Seattle - 4 hours ago
Not that there's anything remarkably surprising about this. Most of us here in this hippy haven understand full well that the War in Iraq was forged under ...
Database of deception
Medill Reports, DC - 5 hours ago
by Adam Amaro WASHINGTON -- Many critics have accused the Bush administration of misleading the public to justify the Iraq War. Now, people have a new tool ...
ThinkFast: January 23, 2008
Think Progress, DC - 13 hours ago
A new study by the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism found that President Bush and his top officials issued 935 false ...
Today's Must Read
TPMmuckraker.com, NY - 13 hours ago
By Paul Kiel - January 23, 2008, 9:24AM Somebody had to do it. And hooray to the Center for Public Integrity and Fund for Independence in Journalism for ...
Study: Bush administration issues hundreds of false statements for ...
Xinhua, China - 14 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- US President George W. Bush and top administration officials made hundreds of false statements about security threat from ...
Bush Administration Makes 935 False Statement About Iraq ...
Associated Content, CO - 3 hours ago
Is it possible that high level members of the Bush Administration, including the President and Vice President, made 935 false statements regarding Iraq ...
Bush Administration Accused of Deception in New Center for Public ...
Associated Content, CO - 3 hours ago
The Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit news organization devoted to transparent, honest reporting on public issues, has issued a new report outlining ...
Study: Bush, other officials issued hundreds of false statements ...
WLOS, NC - 22 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A new study finds President Bush and his top aides issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat posed by Iraq ...
Center For Public Integrity: The Lies that Led to Bush's War in Iraq
Associated Content, CO - 4 hours ago
Center For Public Integrity: The Lies that Led to Bush's War in Iraq: It is difficult to believe that there are still people in the world who cling to the ...
Independent Study Finds Bush "Unequivocally" Lied US into War with ...
OpEdNews, PA - 18 hours ago
by Frank J. Ranelli Page 1 of 1 page(s) A nonprofit collaboration of two independent, non-governmental organizations has concluded that President Bush used ...
Q&A: "We Are Haunted By a War Begun Under False Pretences"
IPS, Italy - 12 hours ago
WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (IPS) - Eight key players in the George W. Bush administration, including the president himself, made at least 935 false statements in ...
New Study Finds Bush Administration Officials Made Hundreds of ...
Center For American Progress, DC - 8 hours ago
A new study by two journalism nonprofits, the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism, found that President Bush and top ...
Reporters Enumerate Shocking Number of Bush’s Lies
Javno.hr, Croatia - 12 hours ago
George W. Bush and his administration have stated a total of 935 lies within a two-year period. The research carried out by two non-profit journalist ...
Bush Lied 935 Times on Iraq says Report
ShortNews.com, Germany - 19 hours ago
Two nonprofit journalism organizations have concluded in a report that President Bush and top White House administration officials issued hundreds of lies ...
Bush ‘faked Iraq reports’
Glasgow Evening Times, UK - 17 hours ago
UNITED STATES: A study by two non-profit journalism organisations says US president George Bush and administration chiefs issued hundreds of false ...
935 Falsehoods From Bush Administration Led to Iraq War
ShortNews.com, Germany - 23 hours ago
Two nonprofit organizations have tallied up the number of false statements about the threat from Iraq made by Bush administration members between Sept. ...
Why Did We Go To War?
ShortNews.com, Germany - Jan 22, 2008
The Center For Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism has verified that on 532 occasions Bush and his administration officials have ...
Bush Agrees He Lied Hundreds of Times About Iraq to Promote War
The Spoof (satire), UK - 6 hours ago
WASHINGTON (FMLiveWire) - President Bush has acknowledged that he lied hundreds of times about Iraq in order to warp public opinion into supporting the Iraq ...
False Pretenses
uruknet.info, Italy - 19 hours ago
Following 9/11, President Bush and seven top officials of his administration waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat ...
It's amazing to me how many different versions of the "truth" there are and how easy it is for some people (presumably with an agenda) to leave out key facts.

Case in point: in both the Reuters and New York Times articles, the focus of the story is that someone made a database. Big deal, right? But that wasn't the point of the study.

The point was that the entire Bush administration deliberately spoon fed bullshit to us in order to scare the crap out of us so we'd let them invade Iraq. There were almost 1000 of them.

I'll let the study speak for itself:

"In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," and, "an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

But do Reuters or The New York Times mention that? No! Sure, a few paragraphs in they casually mention that "[m]uch of their case for war has since been discredited," or "there is now evidence that some statements contradicted even the sketchy intelligence of the time." But that's it.

You'd think that documentation that an American President and his administration repeated bogus information almost 1,000 times, which then caused a war that so far has been going on almost five years and has killed 4,000 Americans, injured tens of thousands more, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and has displaced three million more would be the focus of a news story, not the fact that a nonprofit group compiled all the statements into an easy to search database. You'd think so, but you'd be wrong.

And it doesn't matter whether or not they know it was bogus, it simply means that they're either liars or completely incompetent. Either way, they need to go.

By the way, if you think they simply made a mistake, I've got this great bridge for sale. Dirt cheap.

Besides those two articles, almost every other one uses words like "false", "deception", and "lies", and that's just in the headline.

I believe Google ranks its listings based on popularity, but I could be wrong, and if I am, I really don't need to hear about it. The Reuters and New York Times articles were numbers one and three respectively. The article I originally read was the AP one, eleventh from the top.

What's more telling is that there is no Fox News story.

So the message here is to always be suspicious of everything you read. Unless it's on my blog, of course.

Rob

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