Karl Rove’s Latest Attempt to Rewrite History and Save Bush’s Legacy

A soon-to-be-released book by Karl Rove is the latest attempt from disgraced former Bush administration officials to rewrite history and George W. Bush’s legacy. According to the Associated Press, which has a copy of the book that will be released Tuesday, Rove blames himself for not pushing back against claims that President George W. Bush took the country to war with Iraq under false pretenses, referring to it as one of the worst mistakes he made during the Bush presidency.

Despite evidence documenting, among other things, at least 935 lies used by the Bush administration to get public support for invading Iraq, Rove claims Bush did not knowlingly mislead the American public about alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). It’s also well known that the U.S. intended to invade Iraq two years before Bush was appointed to the Presidency by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Setting aside the fact that the vast majority of the Bush presidency was nothing but false premises and lies designed to subvert the Constitution and American rights and freedoms while enriching a select, corrupt few, there are many other factors that Rove has selectively forgotten or intentionally lied about in his attempt to save Bush’s legacy.

Rove is the latest in the long line of Bush administration officials who, in addition to trying to save face and Bush’s legacy, are desperate to make sure they’re not held accountable for their crimes against humanity and acts of treason against the U.S.

Prior to the Iraq war — as is going on now in the government’s propaganda campaign to gather support for invading Iran — as noted by Mother Jones, U.S. intelligence, which in fact has perpetrated numerous false flags attacks against Americans, produced faulty information overstating Saddam Hussein’s WMD capabilities, which were nonexistent.

Bush Intentionally Pushed the WMD Lies to Gather Support for Invading Iraq

Bush and his administration intentionally mislead the public by pushing the WMD lies — along with other lies that were not connected to the prefabricated intelligence — to gather support for invading Iraq.

Mother Jones put together a little timeline listing some of the false Bush administration assertions to remind people — particularly Rove and his masters — about some of the outrageous lies that are already known.

On March 17, 2003, Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein, declaring “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” However, there was quite a bit of doubt.

Key elements of Bush’s case for war — Iraq attempting to obtain uranium in Niger, and whether Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes for enriching the uranium to make material for nuclear weapons — were doubted by intelligence analysts. The doubters were right.

Seven months earlier, Vice President Dick Cheney lied in a speech when he said “Simply stated, there’s 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 reality, there was no evidence suggesting that Saddam’s intention was to build his WMD arsenal up to use against the U.S. In fact, a showdown with the U.S. would have been suicidal for Iraq.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair Helped Bush Concoct Lies to Invade Iraq

In an October 7, 2003 speech in Cincinnati, Bush claimed UN inspectors ‘concluded’ that in 1990s Iraq produced ‘two to four times’ 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents. Bush further claimed that it was a massive stockpile of biological weapons that was never accounted for, and capable of killing millions.

Bush lied. UN inspectors concluded no such thing. They reported destroying key Iraq facilities that had been used to develop chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Bush was intentionally misstating the facts to turn a possible stockpile of WMDs into an actual arsenal capable of killing millions.

Through the fall of 2002 and the winter of 2003, Bush and his administration continued the lie that Iraq had all kinds of WMDs. In January 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld continued lying about Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, despite a September 2002 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency noting that there was no reliable information on Iraq producing or stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities. A national intelligence estimate produced around the same time asserted that Baghdad had chemical and biological weapons, contradicting the Defense Intelligence Agency report, but Bush et al. selectively ignored data undermining their determination to invade Iraq.

In September 2002, during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush lied about a 1998 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report claiming Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. In fact, there was no such report. In 1998, the IAEA reported that there were no indications that Iraq was producing nuclear weapons. Bush, aided by Tony Blair, concocted lies about a nonexistent report to build the case for war.

It’s also known that in a January 2003 meeting with Tony Blair, Bush raised the idea of staging an incident — a false flag — by having U.S. reconnaissance planes painted in UN colors fly over Iraq to try and draw fire as a means of provoking an excuse for war.

A Prefabricated PR Campaign Designed to Knowingly Deceive the Public

In November 2002, Bush claimed Hussein was dealing with Al Qaeda. Even the hamstrung joke of a 9/11 Commission noted that there was nothing that confirmed contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda that added up to an operational relationship.

Rumsfeld claimed he had ‘bullet-proof’ evidence tying Hussein to Osama bin Laden in September 2002 but never produced it. Cheney claimed that Hussein had a ‘long-standing relationship’ with Al Qaeda in March 2003, but he didn’t. In reality, Bush and his family have a long-standing relationship with Osama bin Laden and his family. Those two families have a history that goes back a long way.

Despite claiming that we didn’t know whether or not Hussein has a nuclear weapon at a December 31, 2003 press conference, there was no intelligence at the time that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. A faulty October 2002 national intelligence estimate erroneously declared Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, concluding that Iraq had no nuclear weapons and would not be able to produce one for years. There was no basis for Bush suggesting Hussein could be nuclear-armed, but Bush did so any way.

Practically every relevant fact in a lengthy UN presentation by Colin Powell proved to be false. As noted by Mother Jones, Rove can argue that in the run-up to the Iraq war, Bush and his administration believed what they were saying about Iraq’s WMDs, but they demonstrated a profound disinterest in sorting out the truth. No effort was made to distinguish between known facts and convenient suppositions. Instead, they preferred to lie, exaggerate, and selectively trump up unconfirmed information as needed to further their cause and invade Iraq. It was all a prefabricated PR campaign designed to knowingly deceive the public.

As noted above, at least 935 lies were used by Bush and his administration to push for the invasion of Iraq. While Rove makes the rounds on his book tour, and appears on the networks that helped enable and spread Bush’s lies, he needs to be called out on all of this. Rove helped spin the lies the pushed the U.S. into an illegal war with Iraq and now he’s trying to cover it up.

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