Bush Gave One-Sided Data on Iraq: New York Times
After a lengthy investigation, New York Times reporters have found that the Bush Administration provided dubious, one-sided data to support its conclusion that Saddam was rebuilding his weapons program, thereby sending us off to war in Iraq. For example,
Speaking to a group of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States now had "irrefutable evidence" - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before some were seized at the behest of the United States.
The tubes were the only physical evidence the Bush team had to back up their claim:
Those tubes became a critical exhibit in the administration's brief against Iraq. As the only physical evidence the United States could brandish of Mr. Hussein's revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his advisers. The tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Yet Team Bush knew their portrayal was disputed by their own experts:
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