When is a lie not a lie?

[bigendian]

When you repeat it enough times.

Draft of a speech Bush was to give Oct. 7:
"The regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa."
This reference was removed at the request of CIA Director, George Tenet.

* The CIA arranged to have a similar allegation deleted from a speech that John D. Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations was to give Dec. 20 before the U.N. Security Council
.
The administration reported to Congress on Jan. 20:
Iraq has failed to report to the United Nations “attempts to acquire uranium and the means to enrich it.”

A report distributed to the public Jan. 23:
Highlighted Baghdad's failure to explain "efforts to procure uranium from abroad for its nuclear weapons program."

Jan. 23:
On the op-ed page of the New York Times, Bush’s national security advisor, Condoleeza Rice wrote that the Dec. 7 declaration of its (Iraqi) weapons of mass destruction to the U.N. Security Council "fails to account for or explain Iraq's efforts to get uranium from abroad."

Jan. 23:
In a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Paul Wolfowitz said: "There is no mention of Iraqi efforts to procure uranium from abroad."

Three days later:
Colin Powell, in a speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, asked: "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?"

And the day after the State of the Union address:
Donald Rumsfeld opened a news conference by saying of Hussein: "His regime has the design for a nuclear weapon; it was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa."