Defending the lies - hilarious considering public ignorance.

"The Bush statement about supply of uranium to Iraq came in the most important speech an American president can make, apart from a declaration of war : the annual State of the Union Address in January. ... If Bush's definitive speech was not triple-checked for accuracy, then the White House is grossly incompetent. If it was checked and the several untrue items were detected and allowed to remain in the speech, the White House is contemptuous of the truth and of all of us out here. If it was checked and the untrue items were not identified (which is what Rice is claiming), the intelligence process of the United States is a shambles - not just "in the bowels of the agency", as Rice condescendingly has it, but throughout the entire intelligence system. ... The most notably mendacious statement was that by vice-president Cheney who said on 16 March that "we believe [Iraq] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think [the UN nuclear expert] Mr. El Baradei, frankly, is wrong". But it was Cheney who was wrong, because there were no nuclear weapons. Cheney and the rest of them lied to us."