one at a time or it is just rhetoric. She spoke often of the alumionum tubes always trying to portray them as something they were not. This is not about perfeect it is about a dishonesty that has cost thousands of lives.

Transcript of Second Day of Rice Hearings

Published: January 19, 2005

(Page 12 of 22)

So you received a memo in September '01 clearly stating there was no link. The president himself was part of a State Department publication which said there were no al Qaeda in Iraq prior to 9/11. There's documented history of bin Laden's loathing of Saddam. And in spite of this, you went on TV and told the American people there was a clear connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. Even the State Department was very clear that there was no such contacts.

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So it is very disturbing to think that in spite of everything and all the information that you had, you continued to go out there and claim this contact and make the people feel that somehow going to war against Iraq was our response to 9/11.

Now on the aluminum tubes, I'm not going to get into the back and forth with you on the aluminum tubes but I'm going to lay this into the record because I think it's essential. On September 8th - first, I believe you tried to convince the American people that Iraq's purchase of aluminum tubes proved positively that they were going to build a nuclear weapon; thus your statement about the mushroom cloud, which scared the heck out of every American.

On September 8th, '02, you were on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" and you made this statement: "We do know there have been shipments going into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that are really only suited to" - "high-quality aluminum tubes that are only" - I'm reiterating what you said - "really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." That unequivocal statement was wrong.

You never mentioned to the American people that there was a major dispute about the tubes, even though our nation's leading nuclear experts in Department of Energy in 2001 said the tubes were for small artillery rockets, not for nuclear weapons. It is reported that one Energy Department analyst summed up this issue for the Senate Intelligence Committee saying, quote, "The tubes were so poorly suited for centrifuges that if Iraq truly wanted to use them this way, we should just give them the tubes," unquote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/politics/19cnd-rtex.html?pagewanted=12

For example, in a September 8, 2002 interview on CNN, Rice issued this dire warning about Saddam Hussein: “We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into … Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes … that are really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.”

http://peacepundit.com/category/a-war-based-on-lies/