A Times Editorial
A year ago, President Bush used his State of the Union address to sound a
frightening alarm about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The president
told the nation that Iraq had amassed 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000
liters of botulinum toxin and 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas.
He also charged that Saddam Hussein's regime had sought to acquire
"significant quantities" of refined uranium and special aluminum tubes whose
only practical use was as part of a program to develop nuclear weapons.
And he offered a chilling warning that only one vial from those vast
stockpiles of weapons could "bring a day of horror like none we have ever
known."
That dire, detailed warning of a looming threat to our national security
served as the Bush administration's justification for war in Iraq. Of
course, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind have been found there. No
anthrax. No botulinum. No VX. In fact, U.S. weapons inspectors have not even
found significant evidence of programs that might eventually have led to the
development of weapons. And the allegations concerning Iraq's efforts to
develop a nuclear weapons program were proved to have been based on
fraudulent evidence. . . .
The president made it clear Tuesday night that he doesn't think he owes the
American people or the world an explanation for the exaggerated claims he
made a year ago in building a pretext for war. Since then, hundreds of
Americans and thousands of Iraqis have died in that war, and Iraq's future
remains uncertain. American credibility has been a casualty, too.
As the president himself said with no apparent sense of irony: "For
diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible."
FULL TEXT
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Editorial, "George Bush Has Presided Over a Vast
Catalogue of Failure and Division," The Independent, January 20, 2004
"The
50 lies, exaggerations, distortions and half truths that took this country
to war," The Independent, January 25, 2004
