The Center for Public Integrity's study on Bush's false statements

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) last week released a study in which they claimed the Bush administration “made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.” Given that it has been nearly five years since Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the timing of this report is a bit curious. It's almost as if they held the report until it would have the greatest impact, i.e., a presidential election year.

It's not as if CPI just decided last year to take on alleged false statements concerning Iraq. For example, Charles Lewis, founder and executive director of CPI, wrote an opinion piece in 2005 in which he claimed, “[W]ith some notable exceptions such as Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and the Knight Ridder’s duo of Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel, investigative news coverage before March 2003 of the Bush administration’s ramp-up to the war in Iraq was underwhelming, to say the least.”

It's not a coincidence that Lewis made mention of Walter Pincus. The Washington Post reporter is married to Ann Pincus, who, as of December 2007, was listed as the director of communications and outreach for CPI. Ann Pincus, an Arkansas native, was appointed by Bill Clinton to the U.S. Information Agency. She later transferred to the State Department.

CPI has received several grants from George Soros' Open Society Institute. Soros, of course, spent more than $20 million to defeat George W. Bush in 2004. Soros also reportedly provided almost half of the funding for a 2006 study that claimed 650,000 people were killed as a result of the invasion of Iraq. That claim was 10 times higher than consensus estimates. According to the Times Online, "New research published by The New England Journal of Medicine estimates that 151,000 people - less than a quarter of The Lancet estimate - have died since the invasion in 2003. "

CPI claims to be non-partisan, yet where is the study in which this group detailed the false statements regarding Iraq made by the Clinton administration? That administration claimed that Iraq and al Qaeda were cooperating on weapons production and left office in January 2001 still claiming that Iraq had WMD. CPI may respond that such a study would not be relevant since Bill Clinton has been out of office for seven years. That is true. However, Hillary Clinton is running for president and it is quite possible that Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke, and other officials from the Bill Clinton administration would join her administration if she were elected. If the Bush administration made false statements concerning Iraq, CPI cannot deny that these Clinton administration officials also made false statements.

I doubt that we will see such a study since CPI appears to be aligned with Clinton Inc. and, therefore, lacks the integrity to share the whole truth with the American people.

Sins of the Husband nears completion

After several years of research and several months of writing, Sins of the Husband: The Rewriting of Bill Clinton’s Record on Iraq and Terrorism to Benefit Hillary Clinton is nearly ready for publication.

When I started writing the book last year, I assumed that Hillary Clinton would have a cakewalk to the Democratic Party nomination. However, Barack Obama proved to be a much stronger candidate than most of us expected. If the polls are correct, he will win today's primary in South Carolina, which leaves the race up in the air until at least February 5. I suspect that we will know who the Democrats' nominee is by the end of February. If it's Hillary, the book is ready for printing. If it's Obama, I'll have to rewrite a bit of the book. Either way, I believe Sins of the Husband will help to set the record straight concerning the Clinton administration, Iraq, and terrorism. I think it's clear that Clinton's policies vis-a-vis Iraq ultimately led to 9/11. History needs to reflect that fact.