Remember how pictures of W fully involved in writing the pre-war SOTU speech (but still wearing his suit jacket in the Oval Office)were everywhere all day.
President Bush reviews the text with Director of Presidential Speechwriting Michael Gerson in the Oval Office, Jan. 23, 2003
President Bush gives his speechwriting team a few points after revising the State of the Union Address in the Oval Office Jan. 23, 2003. Meeting with the President are, from left, Matthew Scully, John McConnell, Mike Gerson and Advisor Karen Hughes.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/preparation/ THEN he got caugth in a flat out LIE
the sixteen words
“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”
So, the White House is not contesting the fact that the President made a false claim — merely whether he, or those who prepared his speech, knew at the time that it was false. And holding the line forces White House press secretary Ari Fleischer into a rhetorical dance that can only be called Clintonesque: conceding on the one hand that the claim made by the President was based on forged evidence that Iraq had tried to buy "yellow cake" refined uranium from Niger, but at the same time maintaining that "I see nothing that goes broader that would indicate that there was no basis to the President's broader statement."
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,463779,00.htmlhttp://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030729.htmlFirst, there was a stir over how the false information made it into one of the president's most important speeches. CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley shouldered much of the blame.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79393