NIGER? Let's catalog ALL the lies and mistatements in Bush 2003 SOTU

[TruthIsAll]

I am going to bed now. But here is a project all DUers can help on.
Disect the Bush 2003 SOTU speech. We all know about the ONE BIG BUSH LIE on the Iraq/Niger Uranium forgery. But there are probably at least a few others.

Pick your poison...

Bush’s State of the Union speech: the war fever of a ruling
elite in crisis. By the Editorial Board 30 January 2003. ...

www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jan2003/bush-j30.shtml - 24k - Jul 8, 2003 - Cached - Similar pages

WSWS : News & Analysis : North America

Bush’s State of the Union speech: the war fever of a ruling elite in crisis
By the Editorial Board
30 January 2003

The State of the Union speech delivered by George Bush to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night reflected a government in deep crisis. The war fever in the chamber and Bush’s litany of lies and threats created the impression of a ruling elite that feels itself under siege and overwhelmed by economic contradictions it barely comprehends. Bush speaks for a regime that is going to war in the hope that it can somehow extricate itself from its crisis by means of military aggression and the seizure of Persian Gulf oil.

It was impossible to sit through Bush’s hour-long tirade without wondering what George Orwell would have made of such contributions to Newspeak as Bush’s description of the massive invasion force assembling on Iraq’s borders as those “who will keep the peace.”

Or such grotesque assurances to the Iraqi people as, “Your enemy is not surrounding your country; your enemy is ruling your country”; and the claim that an American military occupation of Iraq “will be the day of your liberation.”

These words were spoken as the Pentagon leaked reports that the US will strike Iraq with up to 400 cruise missiles in the first 24 hours of war, in what is described as a “shock and awe” strategy aimed at terrorizing the country into submission. (See “US plans “shock and awe” blitzkrieg in Iraq”)

Secretary of State Colin Powell, meanwhile, has dismissed charges that Washington is going to war in order to seize control of the country’s vast oil reserves, insisting that it will only hold them in “trusteeship,” a euphemism for colonialism that came into vogue in the aftermath of World War I.

snip

Bush went on to announce the formation of a “Terrorist Threat Integration Center,” merging functions of the CIA, FBI, the Pentagon and the new Homeland Security Department. The creation of this new super-spy agency tears to shreds Constitutional safeguards against government surveillance of American residents and citizens.

While White House officials had claimed the speech would make the case for war against Iraq, it did nothing of the kind. Bush reiterated a litany of alleged transgressions by the Iraqi regime that have all been heard—and refuted—before.

There were the unsubstantiated and politically implausible allegations of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, a movement whose Islamist hostility for secular nationalist movements like the Baathists in Iraq is well known. Bush again claimed that the Iraqi regime had purchased aluminum tubes “suitable for nuclear weapons production,” an allegation already discounted by the International Atomic Energy Agency based on its inspections in Iraq.

In a cynical slight of hand, Bush presented UN charges that Iraq has failed to prove that all of its non-conventional weapons from the 1980s have been destroyed as proof that such weapons exist today—something even chief weapons inspector Hans Blix does not assert.

As a “moral” justification for war, the US president cited human rights reports detailing savage methods of torture used by the Iraqi regime’s secret police. “If this is not evil then evil has no meaning,” declared Bush. But the US administration’s moral outrage over torture is relative. It all depends on who is doing it. All of the hideous methods mentioned by Bush have been catalogued for decades in human rights reports issued on the practices of US-backed dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere.

Moreover, the US itself is presently using interrogation techniques described as torture against its own detainees, and sending some supposed terrorist suspects to the secret police of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where methods paralleling those allegedly used by Iraq are employed. According to some reports, US intelligence agents participate directly in these torture sessions.

Finally, the speech included the ritualistic comparison of Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler. “Throughout the twentieth century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world,” Bush declared, in what could serve as an apt description of his own trajectory since the theft of the 2000 election.

He continued: “Now in this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared again....Once again we are called to defend the safety of our people and the hopes of all mankind.”

Yet, by all accounts, the vast majority of mankind—including most Americans—oppose a war against Iraq. The bulk of humanity correctly sees Bush’s allegations of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as a cynical pretext for a war of conquest and plunder. The “ideology of power and domination” is broadly identified with the Bush administration’s own policy of “preemptive war” and its attempt to use US military might to seize strategic resources and intimidate potential rivals.

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President Delivers "State of the Union"
... his State of the Union speech, President Bush waves to his wife, Laura Bush, as he leaves the House Chamber at the US Capitol Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003. ...
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2003/01/20030128-19.html - 67k - Cached - Similar pages


OnPolitics (washingtonpost.com)
Text: Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, ...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/ transcripts/bushtext_012803.html - Similar pages

Responses to Bush
... United States of a light-water reactor project by 2003. ... as a direct result of last year's State of the Union address, when President Bush declared North ...
www.accuracy.org/2003/ - 101k - Cached - Similar pages

CNN.com - Bush's State of the Union speech - Jan. 29, 2003
... Students at New York University watch Bush's speech Tuesday evening. ... Secretary of State Powell will present information and ... 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP ...
www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/sotu.transcript/ - 82k - Cached - Similar pages

NPR : State of the Union Speech - 2003
... Listen to NPR coverage of President Bush's speech. President Bush delivers the State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress, Jan. 28, 2003. ...
www.npr.org/news/specials/sou/2003/ - 42k - Cached - Similar pages

The State of the Union Address Drinking Game
... our website host is trying to gouge us for money for having too many hits. Hits since 12:00 AM, Jan. 27, 2003 See hit-count chart.
www.marcmelzer.net/sotudg/ - 2k - Cached - Similar pages

President Bush 2003 State of the Union Address promotes hydrogen ...
... Copyright © 2003 Republican National ... hybrid, fuel cell and direct hydrogen burning vehicles which President Bush mentions here in his State of the ...
www.electrifyingtimes.com/state_of_the_union_2003.html - 6k - Cached - Similar pages

CBS News | Poll: Bush Gets Boost From Speech | January 29, 2003 ...
... 29, 2003 (CBS/AP). ... (CBS) According to a CBS News/Knowledge Networks Poll, President Bush's State of the Union address reassured viewers that he shares their ...
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/29/ opinion/polls/main538364.shtml - 48k - Cached - Similar pages