The Great Lie "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," said Mark Twain. On November 19, 1989, I heard President George H.W. Bush on the NBC Nightly News and ABC's Good Morning America proclaim that he had "no doubt" that the first shots fired in the Gulf War were by Iraq. Bush had not taken military action against Iraq prior to the launching of a massive air war against Iraq on January 16, 1991, despite Iraq's previous war with Kuwait and a U.N. Security Council Resolution demanding Iraq withdraw from Kuwait. On March 1, 2003, I heard Secretary of State Colin Powell give a speech at West Point in which he proclaimed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and the biological and chemical munitions were capable of being deployed in 45 minutes. No U.S. officials took the time to confirm what Powell was saying or how he could know the extent of Saddam's alleged weaponry. On March 11, 2003, The New York Times ran a front-page story with the banner headline: "Bush Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts, Adding to U.S. Worries." Reporter Michael R. Gordon admitted that the information, from a senior U.S. intelligence official, was "rarely available to the news media." Sometime in May or June of 2003, I saw a CNN news report in which an anonymous Iraqi government official insisted that the Iraqi government had no weapons of mass destruction. As the CNN news story closed, the anchor stated that there was no way to corroborate the information. On September 9, 2002, prior to the second Iraq war, I saw George W. Bush declare, "the danger from Saddam Hussein is grave and his intentions are evil." On September 23, 2002, Bush stated that "we know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction." Once again, no one stepped forward to corroborate Bush's statements. On September 26, 2002, I read a report in The Washington Post that a senior administration official admitted that there was "no evidence" that Saddam Hussein had any weapons of mass destruction and that his government was "cooperative" in the search for the missing weapons. Yet the same day that report ran, the front page of The Washington Post ran the headline, "U.S. Officials Report on Iraq's WMD Programs." On September 28, 2002, as the second Iraq war was about to begin, the Post ran an article by Walter Pincus, titled "U.S. Warns Iraqis: Take No Steps Toward Weapons." On October 8, 2002, the Post ran a front-page story by Pincus titled, "Bush Administration Proposes More Flexibility in U.N. Vote on Iraq War." In July of 2003, The New York Times reported that Iraqi scientists who had worked in developing Saddam's alleged weapons programs in the past 15 years had all fled the country. The Times also reported that the information came from a senior official in the Defense Department, which at that time was headed by none other than Donald Rumsfeld. The White House, Pentagon, U.N., NATO, British government and the Israeli government all accused Saddam of building weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapon. On September 27, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and the technology to produce and deliver the weapons. During testimony on the administration's campaign to build support for an invasion of Iraq, the House Committee on International Relations reported that Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction were known to have been destroyed by the United States when it invaded Iraq in 1991. Yet the U.S. was going to go to war against Iraq anyway. As the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared, "regime change" was an "escalating reality" in the world. The Bush administration took its case directly to the people by claiming that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were part of a worldwide conspiracy to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. President Bush declared, "Iraq could provide these terrorists with a chemical weapon or biological agent, possibly enough to kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people. And if we fail to act, our enemies will." How was the Bush administration privy to the secret information that Saddam had the capacity to bring the world to its knees and that there were secret labs and production sites for these weapons? What were the "independent sources" that informed Secretary Powell? What were "secret intercepts" that showed Iraqi attempts to obtain nuclear weapons and biological and chemical weapons? Who were these unnamed "sources?" Were they reliable, credible and trustworthy? Why is there no way to verify the information? In October of 2003, the Congressional Research Service reported that the "Bush administration does not know whether Iraq has a continuing program of weapons of mass destruction." The report further concluded that the administration did not know whether any nuclear weapons or materials were transported from Iraq to Syria. The report also concluded that a "key defect in the U.S. intelligence effort was that the Iraqi regime was able to evade many of the controls on imports imposed under the authority of the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention and its 1997 successor." It continued, "Iraq was able to import large quantities of dual-use items, such as aluminum tubes, without having to provide end-user certificates showing that they were going to be used to develop weapons." It's not that the Bush administration never produced evidence for Saddam Hussein and Iraq's weapons programs, it is that the evidence was never produced or presented to the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. When it became clear to the president, his national security adviser, and his secretary of state that there was no way that they could produce the evidence, they simply asserted that it existed. On March 16, 2004, on the CBS News program, "60 Minutes II," the following exchange occurred between former CIA Director George Tenet and reporter Scott Pelley: PELLEY: There's another allegation that's been out there for years now, that the White House has been sitting on evidence that the head of the Iraqi intelligence service had tried to contact al-Qaeda in January of 2001. That's the allegation, and it came from the Senate intelligence committee. Mr. Tenet, there was another one in your piece, talking about meeting a man who you suspected had come to Washington to kill the president in July of 2002. And then there were other people telling you that these things were a fact. TENET: I'm not going to go into details of those. That's classified. But I will say this, my response is, it is not true. The "it is not true" phrase was repeated five times in an eight-minute interview. What was not true was the allegation that the Bush administration was withholding evidence. What was not true was that the president and his national security adviser were lying to the American people. On May 16, 2004, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, led by former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, concluded that the Bush administration's claim of Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction was wrong, and that "there was in fact no reliable intelligence reporting of either clandestine [stockpiling or production] or even illicit efforts to obtain these items." The report also concluded that the "central fact" regarding Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program is "that the U.S. intelligence community was almost unanimous in its judgment that Iraq did not have such a program." Despite these conclusions, the Bush administration continued to assert that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and was connected to terrorists. On August 26, 2004, President Bush declared, "Iraq is a grave threat. This Iraqi regime has developed biological and chemical weapons, and is seeking nuclear weapons." On September 26, 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress that Iraq's links to terrorists were well known, and noted "that Iraq has continued to pursue weapons of mass destruction. ... It is continuing to pursue active chemical and biological weapons programs. That's known by the Iraqis. It is also known to the United States." The Bush administration and the CIA did not present the evidence to Congress. On October 16, 2004, the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the intelligence community had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was in contact with al Qaeda. The New York Times reported that a National Security Council spokesman said that "there were doubts about [the reliability of the] intelligence, but none of that information was 'fabricated' and none of it was 'wrong.' " However, what was wrong was the CIA's analysis. An analysis is simply a statement of facts. The CIA's conclusion that Iraq was an active terrorist sponsor was one conclusion, not the conclusion of the available facts. The CIA may or may not have been correct, but one thing is certain, there is no way to independently verify its assertions or even to see the evidence upon which it based its conclusion. Yet the CIA, under the direction of George Tenet, continued to assert that Iraq was linked to al Qaeda. On January 18, 2006, Secretary of State Rice asserted that Iraq had the capability to build a nuclear weapon in 90 days. The information she was citing did not come from intelligence sources, but from a speech by then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah on January 28, 2005. A Newsweek report noted that the intelligence was "missing in action." Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota, said he knew for sure that Saddam Hussein had