Did Bush Lie?

Wikileaks documents shine light on the search for WMDs in Iraq.

I never knew these two facts:

In July 2003, former U.S. career diplomat Ambassador Joe Wilson, in a New York Times op-ed, claimed he had been sent to Africa by the Bush Administration in 2002 — and had debunked the yellowcake claim. While Wilson reported he had met with a former Niger prime minister, who said he knew of no such sales, that prime minister also recalled a 1999 visit by the Iraqis seeking to buy yellowcake. Despite Wilson's claim, a 2004 bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report found his visit actually supported evidence Saddam was undertaking a WMD effort, based on the 1999 incident.

and

In July 2008, in an operation kept secret at the time, 37 military air cargo flights shipped more than 500 metric tons of yellowcake — found in Iraq — out of the country for further transport and remediation to Canada.

The only story we all knew from the intense media coverage was the Joe Wilson story that he debunked the yellowcake claim and was subsequently punished by Bush goons by outing his wife Valerie Plame. Thank goodness for wikileaks for clearing the air!

But seriously, there is an issue here: Did Bush purposefully lie about WMDs in order to create a pretext to invade Iraq? It is pretty clear he did not. I'm pretty sure reasonable liberals understand this to be true. Yet...they never say it. They never stand up to the crazies who say things like "Bush lied and people died." Which unmasks them as partisans and devalues their own values and point of view. It cheapens the real arguments and I find it continually disappointing.