Administration leaving out important details on Iraq (Seibel)

[struggle4progress]

By Mark Seibel
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

WASHINGTON - President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.

... the president's account understates by at least 15 months when Shiite death squads began targeting Sunni politicians and clerics. It also ignores the role that Iranian-backed Shiite groups had in death squad activities prior to the Samarra bombing ...

Much like the administration's pre-war claims about Saddam's alleged ties to al-Qaida and purported nuclear weapons program, the claims about the bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra ignore inconvenient facts and highlight questionable but politically useful assumptions ...

U.S. diplomats, reporters and military and intelligence officers began reporting that Shiite death squads were targeting Sunni clerics and former officials of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime at least 15 months before the Samarra bombing ...

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/myrtlebeachonline/news/politics/16460915.htm

[seesdifferent]

1. also, the rebuilt schools

http://seesdifferent.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/the-dirty-little-truth-about-those-re-painted-schools-in-iraq-the-teachers-got-fired/

[Fridays Child]

2. Dishonesty will define Bush's legacy.

k/r

[necso]

3. Good piece.

SCIRI shares responsibility for this mess, but they're much better at playing our dimwits (PR, false-flagging?, blaming others, etc) than some groups ("judging" based on what little data I have, of course).