Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: 935 mezogne

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimes_against_peace#Definition
In 1950, the Nuremberg Tribunal defined Crimes against Peace (in
Principle VI.a, submitted to the United Nations General Assembly) as
    (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of
aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements
or assurances;
    (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the
accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i)
----------------------------------------
Dal 2001 all'inizio della guerra, Bush e il suo governo hanno mentito,
sull'Irak,
935 volte intotale.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top
officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made
at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11,
2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's
Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive
examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an
orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and,
in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings,
interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key
officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari
Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them),
links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning
of the Bush administration's case for war.
It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass
destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the
conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including
those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006),
the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose
"Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's
nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
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. Not
surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make
speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public
debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-
ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.
President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons
of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about
Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-
highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al
Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed
by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and
McClellan (with 14).
The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what
President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public
consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a
day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public
statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official
transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations)
over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces
relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books,
articles, speeches, and interviews.
Consider, for example, these false public statements made in the run-
up to war:
    * On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of
the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: "Simply stated,
there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass
destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our
friends, against our allies, and against us." In fact, former CIA
Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney's assertions went well
beyond his agency's assessments at the time. Another CIA official,
referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our
reaction was, 'Where is he getting this stuff from?' "
    * In the closing days of September 2002, with a congressional vote
fast approaching on authorizing the use of military force in Iraq,
Bush told the nation in his weekly radio address: "The Iraqi regime
possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the
facilities to make more and, according to the British government,
could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45
minutes after the order is given. . . . This regime is seeking a
nuclear bomb, and with fissile material could build one within a
year." A few days later, similar findings were also included in a much-
hurried National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction -- an analysis that hadn't been done in years, as the
intelligence community had deemed it unnecessary and the White House
hadn't requested it.
    * In July 2002, Rumsfeld had a one-word answer for reporters who
asked whether Iraq had relationships with Al Qaeda terrorists: "Sure."
In fact, an assessment issued that same month by the Defense
Intelligence Agency (and confirmed weeks later by CIA Director Tenet)
found an absence of "compelling evidence demonstrating direct
cooperation between the government of Iraq and Al Qaeda." What's more,
an earlier DIA assessment said that "the nature of the regime's
relationship with  Al Qaeda is unclear."
    * On May 29, 2003, in an interview with Polish TV, President Bush
declared: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found
biological laboratories." But as journalist Bob Woodward reported in
State of Denial, days earlier a team of civilian experts dispatched to
examine the two mobile labs found in Iraq had concluded in a field
report that the labs were not for biological weapons. The team's final
report, completed the following month, concluded that the labs had
probably been used to manufacture hydrogen for weather balloons.
    * On January 28, 2003, in his annual State of the Union address,
Bush asserted: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our
intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-
strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Two
weeks earlier, an analyst with the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research sent an email to colleagues in the
intelligence community laying out why he believed the uranium-purchase
agreement "probably is a hoax."
    * On February 5, 2003, in an address to the United Nations
Security Council, Powell said: "What we're giving you are facts and
conclusions based on solid intelligence. I will cite some examples,
and these are from human sources." As it turned out, however, two of
the main human sources to which Powell referred had provided false
information. One was an Iraqi con artist, code-named "Curveball," whom
American intelligence officials were dubious about and in fact had
never even spoken to. The other was an Al Qaeda detainee, Ibn al-
Sheikh al-Libi, who had reportedly been sent to Eqypt by the CIA and
tortured and who later recanted the information he had provided. Libi
told the CIA in January 2004 that he had "decided he would fabricate
any information interrogators wanted in order to gain better treatment
and avoid being handed over to [a foreign government]."
The false statements dramatically increased in August 2002, with
congressional consideration of a war resolution, then escalated
through the mid-term elections and spiked even higher from January
2003 to the eve of the invasion.
Click to Enlarge
Click to Enlarge
It was during those critical weeks in early 2003 that the president
delivered his State of the Union address and Powell delivered his
memorable U.N. presentation. For all 935 false statements, including
when and where they occurred, go to the search page for this project;
the methodology used for this analysis is explained here.
In addition to their patently false pronouncements, Bush and these
seven top officials also made hundreds of other statements in the two
years after 9/11 in which they implied that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction or links to Al Qaeda. Other administration higher-ups,
joined by Pentagon officials and Republican leaders in Congress, also
routinely sounded false war alarms in the Washington echo chamber.
The cumulative effect of these false statements -- amplified by
thousands of news stories and broadcasts -- was massive, with the media
coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical
months in the run-up to war. Some journalists -- indeed, even some
entire news organizations -- have since acknowledged that their
coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and
uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall
media coverage provided additional, "independent" validation of the
Bush administration's false statements about Iraq.
The "ground truth" of the Iraq war itself eventually forced the
president to backpedal, albeit grudgingly. In a 2004 appearance on
NBC's Meet the Press, for example, Bush acknowledged that no weapons
of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. And on December 18, 2005,
with his approval ratings on the decline, Bush told the nation in a
Sunday-night address from the Oval Office: "It is true that Saddam
Hussein had a history of pursuing and using weapons of mass
destruction. It is true that he systematically concealed those
programs, and blocked the work of U.N. weapons inspectors. It is true
that many nations believed that Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction. But much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As
your president, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet
it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Bush stopped short, however, of admitting error or poor judgment;
instead, his administration repeatedly attributed the stark disparity
between its prewar public statements and the actual "ground truth"
regarding the threat posed by Iraq to poor intelligence from a Who's
Who of domestic agencies.
On the other hand, a growing number of critics, including a parade of
former government officials, have publicly -- and in some cases
vociferously -- accused the president and his inner circle of ignoring
or distorting the available intelligence. In the end, these critics
say, it was the calculated drumbeat of false information and public
pronouncements that ultimately misled the American people and this
nation's allies on their way to war.
Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely
avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their
personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements
in the run-up to the war in Iraq. There has been no congressional
investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the
Bush White House in that period. Congressional oversight has focused
almost entirely on the quality of the U.S. government's pre-war
intelligence -- not the judgment, public statements, or public
accountability of its highest officials. And, of course, only four of
the officials -- Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz -- have testified
before Congress about Iraq.
Short of such review, this project provides a heretofore unavailable
framework for examining how the U.S. war in Iraq came to pass.
Clearly, it calls into question the repeated assertions of Bush
administration officials that they were the unwitting victims of bad
intelligence.
Above all, the 935 false statements painstakingly presented here
finally help to answer two all-too-familiar questions as they apply to
Bush and his top advisers: What did they know, and when did they know
it?

 935 volte in totale.
dici che andrebbero impiccati seduta stante? Quoto

 nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.
Peccato che WMD non significa "nuclear weapons" per il *PIRLA* che ha
scritto l'articolo e il *PIRLA* Torrieri che l'ha citato :)
<CUT resto delle stronzate di fantasia>
-Stefano