The president’s address last night on conditions in Iraq was filled with errors of fact and judgment, but perhaps the strangest misstatement dealt with arithmetic.
“To the international community: The success of a free Iraq matters to every civilized nation. We thank the 36 nations who have troops on the ground in Iraq and the many others who are helping that young democracy.”
Now, some White House lies deal with subjective questions that are open to some spin. But counting to 36 is pretty straightforward. Either there’s a list or there isn’t. Either the White House was telling the truth, or it wasn’t.
Here’s the WaPo on the question.
[T]he State Department’s most recent weekly report on Iraq said there are 25 countries supplying 11,685 troops — about 7 percent of the size of the U.S. forces.
OK, so that’s 25 of the 36; how about the other 11? Spencer Ackerman noticed that the State Department gets the total number up to 33 by first including the United States (Bush was thanking himself last night) and then also including “‘seven NATO countries’ that aren’t — aren’t — a part of Multinational Forces-Iraq: Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Turkey and Slovenia.”
That’s particularly amusing because a) Bush credited countries that don’t have troops in Iraq for having troops in Iraq; and b) the administration listed six countries and said they’re seven.
Of course, even if you include countries that aren’t part of the coalition, and you include one imaginary NATO country, you’re still up to 33, not 36.
To be sure, this is pretty much trivia. Among Bush’s lies, there are others far more serious, and far more consequential, than this. No matter how many countries are part of Multinational Forces-Iraq, every one already knows that it’s the U.S. paying the greatest price and dictating the policy on the ground.
But this lie is nevertheless interesting for its simplicity. The president wants Americans to believe that the burden is not ours alone, so he (and his speechwriters) decided that this is just another number to play games with. It’s easy to check, and see that Bush was wrong, but he did it anyway. He just doesn’t care.
It was so bad, even Chris Matthews called Bush out.
“The fact we have 36 countries fighting on our side in Iraq must be news to the soldiers over there. I don’t know who these people are or how many divisions they have. All we read about in the papers are American GIs getting killed by IEDs and terrible accidents and all kinds of enemy action over there…. The idea we’re one of 36 countries fighting the war I think is ludicrous and why the President would throw that out there, I think it only opens him up to ridicule.”
Bush? Ridicule? Never.