#2 - The Final Countdown: War, on Terror and Otherwise

George Bush claims he's made this country safer. You've heard the words; here are the actions:

June 2003: With weapons of mass destruction as his justification for the war in Iraq, and no WMD found, President Bush suggests they were looted:

"Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world, and in the regime's final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned."

June 2003: In December 2002, Bush announced a program to have 500,000 medical professionals who would be emergency responders in the event of a biological attack receive small pox vaccinations. Five months later, only 36,217 healthcare workers had been vaccinated.

July 2003: Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice have blamed the CIA and its director George Tenet for the inaccurate information that Bush presented in his 2003 State of the Union address regarding Iraq’s alleged attempts to buy uranium in Africa as part of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program. Within hours, Tenet issued a press release accepting full responsibility.

However, in September 2002 the CIA tried unsuccessfully to persuade the British government to remove the uranium claim from an intelligence document. Four months later Bush used the same claim in his annual speech to the nation. Clearly, the CIA had early doubts about the information.

July 2003: The Bush administration pledged for the first time that the United States will not torture terrorism suspects or treat them cruelly in an attempt to extract information, a move that comes as the deaths of two Afghan prisoners in U.S. custody are being investigated as homicides.

August 2003: Two private studies have found that police officers, firefighters, public school safety officers and other emergency response workers believe that nearly two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, they are unprepared if terrorists strike again.

The larger of the studies, prepared for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and made public today by the Rand Corporation, found that police officers and firefighters agreed that "they do not know what they need to be protected against, what form of protection is appropriate and where to look for such protection."

The report, which surveyed 190 emergency workers in 40 cities and towns in the nation, said a "majority of emergency responders feel vastly underprepared and underprotected for the consequences of chemical, biological or radiological terrorist attacks."

August 2003: President Bush, revising his earlier characterization of the fighting in Iraq, said in an interview released yesterday that combat operations are still underway in that country.

In his May 1 speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln, Bush declared: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed. And now our coalition is engaged in securing and reconstructing that country." The headline on the White House site above Bush's May 1 speech is "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended."

Since then, a search of Bush speeches on the White House Web site indicates, the president had not spoken of the guerrilla fighting in Iraq as combat until this interview; he had earlier spoken of the "cessation of combat" in Iraq.

September 2003: President Bush, having repeatedly linked Saddam Hussein to the terrorist organization behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, said yesterday there is no evidence that the deposed Iraqi leader had a hand in those attacks, in contrast to the belief of most Americans.

The president's comments came in response to a reporter's question about Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion Sunday on NBC's "Meet The Press" program that Iraq was the "geographic base" of the terrorists behind the attacks on New York and Washington.

September 2003: After failing to build a substantial coalition for the invasion of Iraq, President Bush heads to U.N. to ask for money and troops:

According to the officials involved in drafting the speech, for an audience they know will range from the skeptical to the angry, Mr. Bush will acknowledge no mistakes in planning for postwar security and reconstruction in Iraq. Privately, however, many officials are acknowledging that the Pentagon was unprepared for the scope and duration of the continuing guerrilla-style attacks against the American-led alliance and the newly appointed Iraqi Governing Council.

October 2003: The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials.

The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said.

Despite those findings, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that "we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Moreover, Vice President Dick Cheney said in April, on the day Baghdad fell, that Iraq's oil production could hit 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year, even though the task force had determined that Iraq was generating less than 2.4 million barrels a day before the war.

Now, as the Bush administration requests $20.3 billion from Congress for reconstruction next year, the chief reasons cited for the high price tag are sabotage of oil equipment — and the poor state of oil infrastructure already documented by the task force.

October 2003: The Bush administration is seeking more than $600 million from Congress to continue the hunt for conclusive evidence that Saddam Hussein's government had an illegal weapons program, officials said Wednesday.

The money, part of the White House's request for $87 billion in supplemental spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, comes on top of at least $300 million that has already been spent on the weapons search, the officials said.

January 2004: President Bush opposes granting more time to an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A growing number of commission members had concluded that the panel needs more time to prepare a thorough and credible accounting of missteps leading to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

January 2004: The President on Meet the Press on NBC:

Russert: On Iraq, the vice president said, “we would be greeted as liberators.”

President Bush: Yeah.

Russert: It's now nearly a year, and we are in a very difficult situation. Did we miscalculate how we would be treated and received in Iraq?

President Bush: Well, I think we are welcomed in Iraq. I'm not exactly sure, given the tone of your questions, we're not. We are welcomed in Iraq.

March 2004: Richard Clarke, the president's former chief counter-terrorism adviser accused him of doing "a terrible job" in protecting America against attack, largely because of a fixation on Iraq.

Clarke, who retired as the White House counter-terrorism coordinator last year, accused the president of putting pressure on him to find evidence of Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks, despite being told repeatedly that there was no link.

"I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism," said Mr Clarke.

"Frankly, I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."

April 2004: The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Thursday that it was pressing the White House to explain why the Bush administration had blocked thousands of pages of classified foreign policy and counterterrorism documents from former President Bill Clinton's White House files from being turned over to the panel's investigators.

The White House confirmed on Thursday that it had withheld a variety of classified documents from Mr. Clinton's files that had been gathered by the National Archives over the last two years in response to requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law enforcement failures before the attacks.

May 2004: One year ago, Bush donned a flight suit, landed on an aircraft carrier and declared "victory" beneath a banner that read "Mission Accomplished." He said:

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed," he said. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on."

While at least 594 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq since the carrier speech, compared with 138 beforehand, the White House insisted yesterday that major combat has not resumed in the country.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, pressed repeatedly yesterday on how the fighting could not be considered "major," described the violence as "certain areas in Iraq that are dangerous" and "certain areas in Iraq where there are pockets of resistance."

May 2004: Paul Bremer apologizes for saying in a speech six months before the September 11 attacks in 2001 that the Bush administration seemed to be ignoring the problem of terrorism and would "stagger along" until a major incident.

May 2004: President Bush responds to the torture at Abu Ghraib by telling the Iraqi people what they "must understand".

June 2004: Iraq costs are $119.4 billion and rising., Oh and:

In late 2002, months before the Iraq war started, the Bush administration rebuked its own chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, for publicly estimating that a war in Iraq might cost $100 billion to $200 billion. In December 2002, Mitch Daniels, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said the cost more likely would be $50 billion to $60 billion — which now looks like a fraction of the actual expenses.

September 2004: Congressional hearings confirmed two glaring gaps in the Bush administration's response to hundreds of cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The first is one of investigation: Major allegations of wrongdoing, including some touching on Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials, have yet to be explored by any arms-length probe. The second concerns accountability. Although several official panels have documented failings by senior military officers and their superiors in Washington, those responsible face no sanction of any kind, even as low-ranking personnel are criminally prosecuted.

September 2004: President Bush falsely claims nearly 100,000 fully trained and equipped Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel in Iraq, and this number would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year.

But documents prepared by Defense Department officials and given to lawmakers show that fewer than 100,000 will be trained by the end of this year.

The Pentagon also said on Monday that only about 53,000 of the 100,000 Iraqis on duty now have undergone training.

The documents, obtained by Reuters, show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. And it will be July 2006 before the administration's new goal of 135,000 fully trained police is met.

October 2004: In the face of a report that confirms there were no weapons of mass destruction, and with over 1,000 American casualties, costs at $160 billion, and the creation of an environment that actually fosters terrorism and anti-American sentiment, George Bush says he'd do it all again:

"Based on all the information we have today, I believe we were right to take action, and America is safer today with Saddam Hussein in prison," the president said.

And a new study puts the civilian death toll in Iraq over 100,000.