Did Bush manipulate Iraq data?

[Nicodemus Phaulkon]

Quite like your president, you seem content in taking a source of information and pulling out specific soundbites in order to present your case. Regardless of your pontifications, that's called a "Lie of Omission", the same as what the 43 Administration is being accused.

Now then, let's take some OTHER parts of the article you quote:

Now, there are intelligent anti-Bush arguments out there. The most defensible, and therefore most serious, is that Bush exaggerated one threat or another, particularly the danger from Saddam's nuclear weapons program. It's certainly true that the White House was wrong to place so much credence on forged documents purporting to show Saddam was trying to purchase uranium in Niger.

And that brings me to the main reason I've kept my tongue on this whole issue. We don't know enough yet. Worse, every week something we thought we knew turns out not to be true.

If Bush lied, we'll find out. And if he did, he should face the consequences. But because I'm not an opportunistic Democratic presidential candidate or batty Bush-hating journalist, I don't mind waiting a few months to get my facts straight.

Perhaps the last quote is the most important. As the days and weeks and months tick by, the onus remains on the US to prove they were right about it all along. Alas, the US, with its unilateral decision to police the situation in defiance to the world, seems caught on the horns of its own bullish attitudes.

Where this to be compared to an individual's case, it wouldn't be hard to find the issue resolved. Policeman-USA had enough intelligence, records of previous offenses and observation, it felt, to ask for the issuing of search warrant into Mr. Iraq's estate house to discover a stash of illegal weapons. The DA-UN disagreed, and wouldn't issue the warrant. It should have stopped there, but Policeman-USA declared itself independant of the DA-UN's office and strolled into Mr. Iraq's House killing anyone that opposed the home invasion. Now, in court, Policeman-USA cannot seem to find the illegal weapons that he claims were there (although he did indeed find some 7.62mm shell casings) and the Judge-GeneralWorldPopulace is thinking that Policeman-USA is acting less the Policeman and more the Vigilante and needs to make an appointment with his Internal Affairs department.

A facetious metaphor, but hits close enough to the mark to make you think about it.