You can debate just what constitutes a lie - but in my opinion the evidence certainly suggests that the Bush team misrepresented the siuation. Here is something I had to write for another occasion that may make sense here too:
Did Saddam have anything to do with 9/11?
The administration has yet to offer any proof of an Iraqi connection to 9/11. There have been a couple defectors who claimed there was, and a couple captured prisoners. But thats about it. As we know, if the Administration could find any proof at all, they would be all over Fox News describing it in vivid detail. Here's a quote:
"I do think this argument about terrorism is disingenuous," said James Steinberg, vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan public policy center in Washington. "This wasn't the place you had to confront Al Qaeda. They weren't there, and this is not what that war was about." Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, 09 Sept, 2003.
The irony is, that with our invasion, Iraq appears to be becoming the center of terrorist activity, something it wasn't prior to the war.
Question: Did the US actually have any evidence for WMD as it claimed it did?
Apparently not. My assumption here is that if the US did have any information about Iraq's WMD they would have given it to the UN inspectors initially, and our own inspectors currently. Before our invasion Bush and the others: Rice, Powell, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scofield, etc. all talked at length about Iraq's WMDs. But they couldn't share that information with UN weapons inspectors for "security reasons" - wink, wink. Now that those security issues are no longer a concern, we still can't find any WMDs - hmmmmm. Before the war we had clear evidence, after the war we, well darn it, it was here some where....
Question: Is the proof the Administration suggested it had prior to the war evidence of deception?
Lets see. First there were the aluminum tubes. The US said they look like tubes used to enrich uranium. So they went to their experts at Argon National Laboratory (or was it Oak Ridge?). Anyway - their experts said, no- these tubes are all wrong, they can't be used to enrich uranium. (This was from an interview with the very expert who analyzed the tubes for the government). But a few months later poor Colin Powell was sitting in front of the UN Security Council talking about these same tubes. I can't find the transcript but I recall the scientist said he was amazed and saddened by the obvious disingenuousness, which is a really hard way to spell "lie" Here's a quote from Bush prior to the war:
Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb. He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries, even after inspections resumed. - Colin Powell, Speech to the UN Security Council. [He is refering here to the same aluminum tubes that had already been described by our own experts as inappropriate for the enrichment of uranium....does this constitute a lie?]
Then there was the yellow cake from Niger. As we know now, the documents were forged, and even the Italian secret service detected this fact. But the US ignored this fact and mentioned the false reports repeatedly - even in Bush's State of the Union Address. Here's yet another reference:
"In an unusual step, the Bush administration this week admitted the President should not have accused Iraq of trying to obtain nuclear material from Niger in his State of the Union Address this year. In the months leading up to the war with Iraq, President Bush and other senior members of the administration often pointed to Saddam Hussein's nuclear aspirations as a reason to preemptively strike the country. Now the Administration is backpedaling on this claim and Democrats on Capitol Hill are now calling for an investigation."http://uspolitics.about.com/library/weekly/aa060903_SOTU_investigationa.htm
And of course, this was just the half of a sad story. A former US ambassador to Africa (Joe Wilson) went to Niger to investigate the administration claim. He returned and published his findings in an editorial. His wife, a CIA operative, suddenly lost her career when she was outted by unknown sources within the administration. An investigation is on-going, but we have to ask ourselves, is this the kind of governement we want running things? Threatening family members because one has spoken out against the government seems a wee bit un-american, if you know what I mean.
Did the Administration's false informatio and assertions inform the legislature which then voted to support an Iraqi invasion?
I think I summerized my perspective above. But read the quote below. This is president Bush on the now famous aircraft carrier in front of the now famous banner that the Navy guys, no wait, the whitehouse produced, talking about Saddam and 9/11. Even though a connection between the 2 has never been shown to exist. You tell me - is our leader being sincere? Check it out....
The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on 11 September 2001, and still goes on.
That terrible morning, 19 evil men - the shock troops of a hateful ideology - gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions.
They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that 11 September would be the "beginning of the end of America".
By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world.
They have failed.
And just to recap- He refered to the Iraqi invasion as a war on terror, even though no significant connection has ever been made, and even though his actions may have produced more terrorists than ever existed. Later in the same speech aboard the same aircraft carrier and under the same banner, whose origin he lied about, President Bush said:
The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror.
We have removed an ally of al-Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding.
Again, even though no evidence for that has every surfaced. So is this a lie? As my daughter says, I stink so.
Finally - I want to re-emphasize- I examine these issues not because I want to attack President Bush. I hope he is more intelligent and insightful then I give him credit for (although this does seem like a long shot 
). I hope he is right in his scenario planning, his environmental scanning, his systems analysis. But at the very least, I don't think he has been honest with us. This may be due to poor intelligence he has recieved. (pun intended) But this may also be due to an assumption that we just can't handle the truth...that we need his fabrications in order to support what only he and his advisors "know" to be true.
This country was built on a distrust of authority, a questioning of the status quo. The founders had the guts to stand up and ask tough questions. For us to do anything less is an abrogation of our heritage.
Joe
) -LOL
