A lie by lie timeline

OCTOBER 2000- In a presidential debate with Vice President Al Gore, George W. Bush says, "The Vice President believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders." He added that the US military was already "overextended in too many places," and ought to be used to "prevent war from happening in the first place." In the same campaign, VP candidate Cheney says the US stopped short of toppling Saddam Hussein, in 1991, so as to avoid being "an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments."

JANUARY 2001-"From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go." Saddam's removal is the first item of Bush's inaugural national security meeting. Then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill later tells journalist Ron Suskind, "It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying, 'Go find me a way to do this.'"

APRIL 2001- According to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Paul Wolfowitz challenges Clarke at a meeting: "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack in New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages (between Saddam Hussein and Al Queda) doesn't mean that they don't exist."

SEPTEMBER 16, 2001-
MR. RUSSERT [Meet the Press]: Do we have any evidence linking Saddam Hussein or Iraqis to [9/11]?
VICE PRES. CHENEY: No.

JANUARY 2003-Two reports from the National Intelligence Council warn Bush that an Iraq invasion could spark sectarian violence and an anti-US insurgency. One says an occupation could "increase popular sympathy for terrorist objectives." They also express skepticism about the Niger uranium story.

Hans Blix appears before the UN on the same day as ElBaradei to comment on the Iraqi weapons declaration and to present an update on inspections. He reports that inspectors have found no "smoking guns" in Iraq after two months' work, and that they have not encountered any impediments from the Iraqis. He does say the Iraqi declaration was incomplete, and calls on the Iraqis to show more evidence of disarmament.

The UN issues a press release regarding Iraq's response to Resolution 1441. "It would appear that Iraq had decided in principle to provide cooperation on substance in order to complete the disarmament task through inspection." The press release reports that UN weapons inspectors, after 60 days on the job, have inspected 106 locations and found "no evidence that Iraq had revived its nuclear weapons programme."

President Bush, in his State of the Union address, says the infamous l6 words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Various intelligence agencies know this to be false. The CIA made sure the claim was removed from an October 2002 speech Bush gave in Cincinnati.

JANUARY 31, 2003- British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush meet in the Oval office to discuss the impending invasion of Iraq. A memo of the private meeting written by two senior British officials later reveals that Bush and Blair were aware that no WMDs had been found and that it was possible that they never would be, but Bush, determined to invade, spent the meeting discussing ways in which the two could justify the invasion. Bush also says that it would be a quick victory and it was ''unlikely [that] there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.''

FEBRUARY 1, 2003- Officials in the Bush Administration come together to prepare for Secretary of State Powell's February 5 speech to the UN, in which Powell will put all credible US evidence on the table and make the case for war to the international community. Powell reads an early draft based on work down by Cheney aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and, finding the material poorly sourced and misleading, throws several pages in the air and exclaims, "I'm not reading this. This is bullshit."

FEBRUARY 2003- Donald Rumsfeld ballparks the length of the coming war at a town hall meeting, on an Air Force base. "It could last, you know, six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."

Three State Department bureau chiefs prepare a secret memo for their superior and cite "serious planning gaps for post-conflict public security and humanitarian assistance." They write that "a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally." They advocate that the State Department stand strong against the Pentagon, which is ignoring the State Departments work in preparation for post-invasion Iraq.

Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRA) chief Gen. Jay Garner prepares a document for Rumsfeld decrying the fact that his team has only $27 million to rebuild Iraq. Garner forecasts the cost of reconstruction to be upwards of $12 billion. Shortly before Garner deploys to the Middle East, Rumsfeld tells him, "If you think we're spending our money on that, you're wrong. We're not doing that. They're going to spend their money rebuilding their country." By fall 2006, the US spends $2 billion a week in Iraq.

MARCH 2003- President Bush tells the nation, "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq."

Halliburton is awarded a $7 billion reconstruction contract over the objections of Army Corps of Engineers procurement officer Bunnatine Greenhouse. Testifying before Congress, she later calls the contract "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed." She is demoted in short order.

JUNE 2003- Rumsfeld brings Gen. Jay Garner -- whom he has just fired -- on a visit to the White House to meet with the president. Not once does Bush ask Garner about the state of Iraq, though the meeting lasted for almost an hour. But at the end of the meeting, Bush asks Garner "jokingly," "You want to do Iran for the next one?" To which Garner replies, "No, sir, me and the boys are holding out for Cuba."