Yesterday George W. Bush told the American people that:

"... a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander in Chief".

And he was absolutely correct. In fact, to help President Bush complete his argument, we’re offering the top 31 Conclusions that Bush and his administration jumped to regarding Iraq that illustrate unequivocally that Bush is absolutely ‘not a person you want as your Commander in Chief!’

1st Conclusion jumped to by Bush regarding Iraq that shows he is ‘not a person you want as your Commander in Chief!’) On May 1, 2003, President Bush landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln and, under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," declared major combat over. The message was clear.

Hostile US Fatalities Since May 1, 2003: 737

2nd Conclusion jumped to by Bush regarding Iraq) The Bush administration claimed at every point in the run-up to the Iraq invasion that they had sufficient troops on the ground despite warnings to the contrary by top military officials.

Senior generals like Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki and CENTCOM Commander Tommy Franks said that it would take at least 200,000 for the offensive and far more to police and rebuild the country after victory.

About 133,000 US troops are currently deployed in Iraq.

It has now become painfully clear that the administration jumped to the wrong conclusion despite having the correct advice served to them on a silver platter from the foremost experts in the field.

Although a tad too late and many dollars too short, at least one administration member has come to his senses. Paul Bremer recently admitted that:

"We never had enough troops on the ground," Ambassador Paul Bremer told a conference of insurance professionals in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, on Monday.

He said the lack of adequate patrolling after the fall of Baghdad and other parts of the country to US troops had resulted in what he called "horrid" looting.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness," he said.

Well, Paul, do you think that looting could apply to several hundred tons of high explosives?

3rd Conclusion) The conclusion reached by the administration regarding the level of resistance, cost to US taxpayers, reception of US troops by Iraqi civilians, time to accomplish the mission and virtually every other aspect of the invasion was an excerpt from some delusional, drug-induced hyper-fantasy conceived of half-wits and snake oil salesmen. Lead half-wit Dick Cheney summed things up perfectly:

Vice President Cheney... predicted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's troops would "step aside" and that the conflict would be "weeks rather than months," a phrase repeated by other top officials. Others in advisory roles in the administration predicted Iraqi soldiers would "throw in the towel" and Hussein would collapse like "a house of cards" -- phrases senior administration officials often echoed in private.

[...]

Cheney said, "I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." It was then he predicted that the regular Iraqi soldiers would not "put up such a struggle," and that even "significant elements of the Republican Guard . . . are likely to step aside." Asked if Americans are prepared for a "long, costly and bloody battle," Cheney replied: "Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way. . . . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein, and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that." Cheney has spoken that way for months.

In the administration's defense, I honestly do NOT think they jumped to the wrong conclusion on this one...no...I think they simply lied through their teeth in order to con the American public into supporting their war of lies.

4th Conclusion) Bush assured us that Iraq’s reconstruction would be nearly completely funded by its own oil revenues. Before the invasion, then-White House budget director Mitch Daniels predicted Iraq would be "an affordable endeavor," and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz assured Congress: "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon."

Yet so far, Congress has approved $120 billion for Iraq and Bush has plans on the table to request an additional $75 billion in the near future. On top of that, Congress has set up a $25 billion contingency fund for the Pentagon. That's $220 billion that we could be using toward health care, education, homeland security and a host of other projects sorely in need of proper funding.

Continue reading to discover Conclusions 5 through 31

5th Conclusion) As a centerpiece to its argument for invading Iraq, the Administration boldly pursued the idea that Saddam and al Qaeda are in cahoots. The Final Report from the 9/11 Commission unconditionally states that the commission found no "credible evidence" that Iraq helped the militants carry out the 9/11 attacks. Nor did it find any 'working relationship' between Iraq and Osama bin Laden. This runs directly counter to the administration's assertions of "long-established ties" between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Even before the invasion began, both the CIA and the FBI said the administration was wrong.

"analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency have complained that senior administration officials have exaggerated the significance of some intelligence reports about Iraq, particularly about its possible links to terrorism, in order to strengthen their political argument for war, government officials said."

and...

"At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government official said."

This is consistent with what they were saying back in October, 2002:

"They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq."

In addition, in a January 30, 2003, interview, Blix revealed that:

"he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda, which Mr. Bush also mentioned in his speech."

Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice alleged that al-Qaeda operatives have had a direct relationship with the Iraqi government:

"There clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented."

She did not document them and a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, indicated the evidence for linkage is tenuous, based on sources of varying reliability.

6th conclusion) Bush used questionable ‘evidence’ to conclude that Saddam had an active nuclear weapons program:

"A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated", the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said [March 6] in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

And the Administration's response to this revelation?

"We fell for it," said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.

7th Conclusion) The Bush Administration insisted that Iraq was developing an 800-mile-plus range missile. A prior UN resolution made it illegal for Iraq to build missiles that had a range in excess of 93 miles.

In fact, The al-Samoud 2, the missile to which the administration refers, had indeed been flying too far in tests... by about 15 miles and that is because it isn't yet loaded down with its guidance system.

8th Conclusion) The administration claimed they had satellite photographs that showed new research buildings at Iraqi nuclear sites. However, when the U.N. went into the new buildings they found "nothing".

9th Conclusion) The administration asserted that specific presidential palaces were places the inspectors would find incriminating evidence. Again, they found "nothing".

10th Conclusion) It was reported that an al Qaeda informant claimed that terrorists had found a way of smuggling radioactive material through airports without being detected.

Unfortunately, the 'informant' then failed a polygraph test.

"This piece of that puzzle turns out to be fabricated and therefore the reason for a lot of the alarm, particularly in Washington this week, has been dissipated after they found out that this information was not true," said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism chief.

Even so, the 'Orange' alert status, which was activated when the Administration made these claims public, remained. But wait, if the reason for the heightened alert status was proven false, then why keep it' Good Question. Let's see. If I was Bush and I wanted to paralyze the populace with fear in order to force them to fall in line with my rather dubious agenda, I would certainly take advantage of this miscue by allowing the alert to remain. Nothing like a little orange to make people see red. Besides, how many people could possibly have even heard about the whole 'Hoax' thing?

True to form, Tom Ridge made no mention of the 'Hoax' to anyone so why should Bush.

"We have not received any additional intelligence that would lead us to either raise or lower the threat level at this time."

11th Conclusion) Administration minion, Rupert Murdoch helped the Administration by spreading this lie (as though Fox News and the NY Post wasn't enough):

"Saddam Hussein's senior bodyguard has fled with details of Iraq's secret arsenal. His revelations have supported US President George W. Bush's claim [that] there is enough evidence from UN inspectors to justify going to war. [The bodyguard] has provided Israeli intelligence with a list of sites that the inspectors have not visited."

They include:

* An underground chemical weapons facility at the southern end of the Jadray Peninsula in Baghdad.

* A SCUD assembly area near Ramadi. The missiles come from North Korea.

* Two underground bunkers in Iraq's Western Desert. These contain biological weapons.

And...

"William Tierney, a former UN weapons inspector who has continued to gather information on Saddam's arsenal, said Mahmoud's information is 'the smoking gun'."

Needless to say, all of these have proven to be 100% false.

12th Conclusion) Central to Bush’s Saddam - al Qaeda connection claim is the assertion that Czech authorities had evidence of a meeting between one of the September 11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague in April 2001.

Both Czech President Vaclav Havel and Czech intelligence refuted this report. To this day, members of the Administration cite the Prague report as evidence of an Iraq - al Qaeda connection.

13th Conclusion) The Administration latched onto the idea that Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, escaped from New York on a false passport provided by Iraqi intelligence. The reasoning for this speculation is so far-fetched as to be laughable.

14th Conclusion) Bush and Co. claimed that al-Qaeda refugees from the war in Afghanistan have found refuge in Iraq. Some of this relates to a group called Ansar al, which has taken over a small area near the Iranian border. This part of Iraq, however, is in Kurdish hands and outside the direct control of the Iraqi Government.

15th Conclusion) The Bush administration jumped on claims by Rafed Ibrahim Fatah, an Ansar member now in Kurdish hands who spoke of meetings between [Ansar] and al-Qaeda leaders, though not Osama Bin Laden himself. Although the implication was that the Iraqi's did indeed have ties to Iraq, as explained above, this in no way implicated the Iraqi government.

16th Conclusion) Rafed Fatah and a senior al-Qaeda operative captured in Morocco, Abu Zubair, supposedly underwent training in Iraq. This "evidence" was touted to be a feature in the British Government's dossier against Iraq. In fact, They were not mentioned in the report. Nor was any alleged link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. Recall that The Bush administration accepted the dubious conclusions of the now notoriously debunked British dossier (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,890916,00.html) without confirmation from our own intelligence operatives.

17th Conclusion) Bush pounced on this claim by Hans Blix, who touted a discrepancy in reported Chemical weapons as potential proof that Iraq has 1000 tons of chemical weapons stashed away. He reported that a document given to UN inspectors by the Iraqis:

"...gives an account of the expenditure of bombs, including chemical bombs by Iraq in the Iraq-Iran War... The document indicates that 13,000 chemical bombs were dropped by the Iraqi air force between 1983 and 1998; while Iraq has declared that 19,500 bombs were consumed during this period. Thus, there is a discrepancy of 6500 bombs. The amount of chemical agent in these bombs would be in the order of about 1000 tons."

The implication was clear: There are probably 1000 tons of chemical agents hidden from us, waiting to be used.

But Scott Ritter, former top UN weapons inspector, points out that the viable existence of these agents is impossible:

"Through its inspection activities, UNSCOM [the precursor to the current weapons inspection body UNIMOVIC] obtained reasonable information concerning Iraq's chemical weapons (CW) activities from 1981 to 1987, with the exception of data on the use of CW against Iran. Iraq consistently refused to provide details to UNSCOM regarding such use, probably because of the political fallout that such an admission would cause."

and...

"While this refusal prevented a full accounting of Iraqi CW, Iraq could not still have viable CW from that period because the chemical agent would have long since deteriorated... As an internal UNSCOM working paper noted, an Iraqi declaration of CW use during the war with Iran was not required for any meaningful verification: 'Taking into consideration the conditions and the quality of CW-agents and munitions produced by Iraq at that time, there is no possibility of weapons remaining from the mid-1980s'."

and...

"What was overlooked in 1998 [when UNSCOM inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq] was the extent to which UNSCOM had actually eliminated Iraq's CW capability. The Muthanna State Establishment and most of Iraq's associated production equipment had been destroyed, either through aerial bombardment during Operation Desert Storm [the US military's operational designation for the 1991 Gulf War] or under the supervision of UNSCOM inspectors. Iraq's stockpiles of CW agent had either been destroyed in the same manner or could be assumed to have deteriorated."

Blix made no mention of this in either his December 19, 2002 or January 27, 2003 report.

18th Conclusion) Bush, in his speech to the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 12, 2002, said Iraq had made:

"several attempts to buy-high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 28, 2003, Bush said Iraq had

“attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

By early January, the IAEA had reached a preliminary conclusion:

"The 81mm tubes sought by Iraq were 'not directly suitable' for centrifuges, but appeared intended for use as conventional artillery rockets, as Iraq had claimed. The Bush administration, meanwhile, stuck to its original position while acknowledging disagreement among U.S. officials who had reviewed the evidence."

In February of 2003, Powell likewise dismissed the IAEA's conclusions, telling U.N. leaders that Iraq would not have ordered tubes at such high prices and with such exacting performance ratings if intended for use as ordinary rockets. Powell specifically noted that Iraq had sought tubes that had been "anodized," or coated with a thin outer film -- a procedure that Powell said was required if the tubes were to be used in centrifuges.

"A number of independent experts on uranium enrichment have sided with IAEA's conclusion that the tubes were at best ill suited for centrifuges. Several have said that the "anodized" features mentioned by Powell are actually a strong argument for use in rockets, not centrifuges, contrary to the administration's statement."

"[An IAEA] report yesterday all but ruled out the use of the tubes in a nuclear program. The IAEA chief said investigators had unearthed extensive records that backed up Iraq's explanation. The documents, which included blueprints, invoices and notes from meetings, detailed a 14-year struggle by Iraq to make 81mm conventional rockets that would perform well and resist corrosion. Successive failures led Iraqi officials to revise their standards and request increasingly higher and more expensive metals."

19th Conclusion) In September of 2002, the United States and Britain issued reports accusing Iraq of renewing its quest for nuclear weapons. In Britain's assessment, Iraq reportedly had "sought significant amounts of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear program that could require it."

The IAEA reported finding no evidence of banned weapons or nuclear material in an extensive sweep of Iraq using advanced radiation detectors.

20th Conclusion) Powell claimed that Saddam was hiding ‘illicit materials’. In a January 30 interview, Blix:

"...took issue with what he said were US Secretary of State Colin Powell's claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents."

21st Conclusion) Further debunking the hastily jumped-to conclusions of the Bush administration, Blix said:

"he had not seen convincing evidence that Iraq was sending weapons scientists to Syria, Jordan or any other country to prevent them from being interviewed. Nor had he any reason to believe, as President Bush charged in his State of the Union speech, that Iraqi agents were posing as scientists..."

22nd Conclusion) Bush cited a satellite photograph and a report by the U.N. atomic energy agency as evidence of Iraq's impending [nuclear] rearmament. But in response to a report by NBC News, a senior administration official acknowledged that the U.N. report drew no such conclusion, and a spokesman for the U.N. agency said "the photograph had been misinterpreted".

23rd Conclusion) [Bush] has consistently lied about Iraq's nuclear capabilities as well as its missile-delivery capabilities...Bush tried to frighten Americans by claiming that Iraq possesses a fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used 'for missions targeting the US'. "[This statement is] false"

24th Conclusion) Apparently, some conclusions are so ridiculous that the administration can only pretend to jump to them. We call that LYING. Nevertheless, publicly, President Bush's officials touted reports that al-Qaeda operatives had found refuge in Baghdad and that Iraq once helped them develop chemical weapons. Privately, government intelligence sources hedged on that subject, suggesting there might be "less than meets the eye".

25th Conclusion) Contrary to the assertion by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Iraq kicked out U.N. weapons inspectors in 1998, Charles Duelfer, who was deputy chairman of the U.N. inspection agency at the time asserts, "We made the decision to evacuate."

26th Conclusion) Vice President Dick Cheney alleged that Iraq will have nuclear weapons "fairly soon." In reality, no one at the time outside Iraq really knew how close Baghdad was to that point. Now we know.

27th Conclusion) Bush warned the United Nations that Saddam could have nuclear weapons within a year of acquiring fissionable material. Cheney said:

"On the nuclear question, many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire such weapons fairly soon."

The CIA's own forecasts do not support these assertions.

28th Conclusion) The administration characterizes Saddam as a supporter of terrorism generally. Rumsfeld told Congress:

"Iraq's ties to terrorist networks are long-standing."

This characterization is disingenuous at best. In fact, one group the U.S. government brands as a terrorist outfit has been favored not only by Iraq but by many members of the U.S. Congress. That group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, advocates the violent overthrow of the religious government of Iran. It recently held a news conference two blocks from the White House.

29th Conclusion) The administration alleged that al Qaeda operatives, including senior figures, have been in Iraq. But AP reporter, Calvin Woodward notes that U.S. intelligence sources have said al Qaeda members are believed to be simply moving through Iraq en route to their home countries. They have not offered evidence these sojourners are putting down roots in Iraq, setting up camps, or making contact with Saddam's government.

30th Conclusion) Regarding the alleged Iraqi-ordered assassination attempt on George H. W. Bush:

"A senior White House official recently told me that one of the seemingly most persuasive elements of the report had been overstated and was essentially incorrect," said Seymour Hersh in a 1993 article. "And none of the Clinton Administration officials have claimed that there was any empirical evidence - a 'smoking gun' -directly linking Saddam or any of his senior advisers to the alleged assassination attempt. The case against Iraq was, and remains, circumstantial."

31st Conclusion) And let's not forget this little classic:

"The International Atomic Energy Agency says that a report cited by Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was 'six months away' from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist. 'There's never been a report like that issued from this agency,' said Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman."

From all of this, there is at least one conclusion that can be safely formulated…

…Throughout Bush’s tenure, the White House and its apologists have had a field day pointing their fingers anywhere and everywhere except where it most certainly belongs...at the White House.

Vote November 2nd.

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