Statements make Bush unfit

Tom Munk, Chapel Hill Herald, 7/17/03

CIA director Tenet has taken the blame for allowing the president to make a false claim in his State of the Union address. You report that the president is satisfied and hopes to move on. I'm sorry, but I am neither satisfied nor ready for Bush business as usual.

We are talking about a decision to go to war against the wishes of the United Nations, a decision that resulted in the deaths of far more Iraqi civilians than the number of people who died in the United States on Sept. 11, a decision that is still costing our nation $3.9 billion a month and the lives of American soldiers nearly every day.

Military families are suffering without their loved ones for endless months. Iraqis are feeling more occupied than liberated. Much of the world has been alienated. This was a massively important decision that should have been based on good, clear, honest intelligence.

It was, instead, based on a pattern of deception that has led large numbers of Americans to believe lie after lie after lie? the biggest being that Iraq was an imminent threat to the United States. This administration has implied that Iraq was involved in Sept. 11; that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaida; that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons.

None of these was true, but all were believed by many Americans

Our president is certainly decisive. But when his decisiveness includes misleading the American people on an issue of this importance, he is no longer fit to be our president.