Hentet fra moveon.org WEKNOWthat long before September 11th, indeed from its first days, the Bush Administration was planning for war with Iraq and the subsequent occupation of the country.That decision having been made, the president ran a campaign of misinformation, of cherry-picking and distorting intelligence, of hype and hysteria that led America into an unnecessary war. For all these reasons, Congress must censure George Bush. Ignoring reports from weapons inspectors, overriding objections from our allies, overruling the dissenting views of his intelligence agencies, George Bush relentlessly led us into a war that has cost 500 American lives, left 3,000 seriously injured, and has already cost more than $100 billion. For all these reasons, Congress must censure George Bush. Before the war, the president was repeatedly told there was no definitive evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. He knew Iraq was not a nuclear threat. He knew there was no Iraq connection to 9/11. Iraq posed no imminent danger to the United States.There was no case for a pre-emptive war. There must be consequences when a president misleads the American people, and the Congress, with such disastrous results. An independent commission can deal with failures at the intelligence agencies. Congress should deal with the failures at the White House. Censure the president. He knew. Congress must censure the president. A failure of leadership, not intelligence: • George Bush claimed that Iraq could not account for massive stockpiles of biological weapons, citing a prominent Iraqi defector who actually had contradicted Bush’s claim.1 • President Bush emphatically stated that Iraq possessed “dispersed” and “weaponized” chemical weapons, despite a report from his own Defense Intelligence Agency that “there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons…” 2 • The president flatly stated that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes to be used for enriching uranium, when this erroneous view had already been disputed by top government technical experts.3 • George Bush claimed that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium in Niger, even though the CIA had sent two memos to the White House voicing strong doubt about the veracity of this claim.