President Bush and top administration officials made more than 900 false statements in the two years following Sept. 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Iraq under Saddam Hussein, according to a new report by a public interest group.
The statements by Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses," the Center for Public Integrity says in the report.
Steve Inskeep talks with Charles Lewis, founder of the center, about the report, called "The War Card: Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War." The report includes an online database that allows readers to search by phrase, person and subject.
Lewis is currently president of The Fund for Independence in Journalism.
Bush has acknowledged that the prewar intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction turned out to be wrong, but says that the United States was nonetheless right to remove Saddam from power.
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