...in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.... The study counted 935 false statements.... It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "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."
Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.
Center For Public Integrity: http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx
From the United Kingdom, the New Statesman reports (Jan 23, 2008, Another NS victory and 'Release dossier', ministry told):
The Information Tribunal has just rejected an appeal by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to stop the release, under the Freedom of Information Act, of an early draft of the now infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction dossier.
The September 2002 dossier formed part of the government’s spurious case for war in Iraq. The draft in question was produced by John Williams, the FCO’s Head of News at the time. Its existence tore apart the government’s assertion, to the Hutton and Butler inquiries, that the dossier was the work of the intelligence services.
The Tribunal criticised inconsistencies in the Foreign Office’s account. It noted that the FCO’s chief witness and Director of International Security, Stephen Pattinson, "was not involved at the time and volunteered no information about the source of his information".
The decision follows a three-year battle by Chris Ames, a charity researcher from Surrey, who persisted in his quest for the truth....
From Chris Ames:
...the Tribunal has allowed a handwritten note to be redacted which the Foreign Office claimed would be damaging to international relations.
The FCO has said that it is studying the Tribunal decision and declined to name the authors of the handwritten comments....
...The tribunal also reveals that the draft was “annotated in two different persons’ handwriting, suggesting that at least one person other than the author had reviewed and commented on it despite Mr Pattison’s statement that it was put aside the moment it was first presented.” Again here, the tribunal can be seen to be skeptical of the government’s claim that Williams’ work was not taken forward.
However, the tribunal has ordered that one of the handwritten notes should be redacted from the draft when it is published. It is clear that the Foreign Office has claimed that disclosure of this comment would be damaging to international relations, a claim that it did not make at the time of its initial refusal. The decision notice states that this issue is covered in a confidential annexe.
On the content of the draft itself, the Tribunal reveals that some intelligence-related sections of the published dossier bear a resemblance to parts of the Williams draft, although this does not “lead on easily to the conclusion that one had been based on the other”. The dossier was finally published on 24 September 2002, two weeks after Scarlett’s “first draft”, and was central to the case it made to Parliament for war in Iraq.
Responding to the Information Tribunal decision, Conservative MP John Baron said: "This decision lifts the lid on government efforts to cover-up the role played by spin doctors in producing the Iraq Dossier.
"I am now pressing the Foreign Secretary immediately to make public the Williams draft, so that we can assess for ourselves the significance of this document in the run up to war – a war which we should never had been party to.
"The Tribunal agrees that the Williams draft could have played a greater part in influencing the drafting of the dossier than the Government has so far admitted - even to the Hutton Inquiry. The Government cannot hide this document any longer."
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