Pre-war lies, post-war lies

A recent survey discloses the media campaign that precedeed the US invasion of Iraq. This survey is summarized in this AFP wire «Truth was first US casualty in Iraq war: study»
We read : «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, a study released Wednesday found.
Bush and his administration “waged a carefully orchestrated campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,” said the damning report entitled “False Pretenses.”
According to the Center for Public Integrity, eight administration officials “made at least 935 false statements” about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, or links to Al-Qaeda, on 532 separate occasions.
“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.”»

People can enjoy that such a study has been carried out. An exemple of transparency.

But :
1. The Bush administration still keeps its position, claiming that «what (the administration) said was a consensus that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.»
2. Very few medias were critics at the time of these statements.
3. Very few medias acknowledged their mistakes.
4. A vast majority of the medias still refuse to listen to what the Iraqi regime was saying prior to the invasion.

On Jan. 24th, CBS’ 60 minutes released an exclusive interview with George Piro, a Lebanese-American working for the FBI who interrogated Saddam Hussein for seven months.
The main point of this interview is that Saddam was surprised by the invasion. He «initially didn’t think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen.»

It is a mistake and even a lie to say that Saddam Hussein « kept secret the fact that he had no WMD’s. » On numerous occasions, the Iraqi diplomacy claimed, in press statements or in public speeches (Unmovic, UN Security council, …), that these weapons were destroyed in the 1990’s.

At that time, at least on this issue, the US administration was the only to lie.
Saddam’s regime wasn’t.