Who has lied?

Seven years to the month after the invasion of Iraq, lefty pundit David Corn is still pushing the “Bush lied” theme. Fortunately, Pete Wehner is determined not let Corn get away with the falsehoods upon which he bases his case.
In this post, Pete demolishes Corn’s latest “Bush lied” argument almost line-by-line. If you take the trouble to work through Pete’s extended analysis, I think you will reach two conclusions: (1) Bush didn’t lie and (2) Corn recklessly disregards the truth in contending otherwise.
As Pete concludes:

[T]his whole “Bush lied” enterprise, in addition to damaging the reputation of those who have engaged in it, has done considerable harm to our country. Propagating fantastic conspiracy theories, sowing unnecessary seeds of distrust and division, and allowing ideology to fan a burning hatred for an American president, often does.
The truth is troubling enough. There were serious intelligence gaps that we failed to find before the war. Some claims — by Bush administration officials as well as by leading Democrats and leaders of other nations — were made with too much certainty. And as I have written multiple times in the past, there were serious mistakes in the conduct of the war prior to the new counterinsurgency strategy being announced in January 2007. I have no interest in whitewashing history. But it is long past time that critics of the Iraq war stop willfully and deceptively twisting history to serve their own partisan ends.

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