The numerous misstatements about Iraq in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address have been well-documented, but it now we’re learning that some of the warnings raised in the 2002 SOTU weren’t true either.
Bush, in highlighting the value of our war in Afghanistan, said that our troops were making “discoveries [that] confirmed our worst fears.” Specifically, Bush mentioned that our forces had found “diagrams of American nuclear power plants” in Afghanistan.
The warning raised a terrifying prospect. Just four months earlier, the attacks of 9/11 occurred. Bush was explaining that these same terrorists may have been, and may still yet, target key U.S. sites that could kill untold thousands. As Bush put it, “What we have found in Afghanistan confirms that, far from ending there, our war against terror is only beginning.”
Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that the claim, like so many from this White House, wasn’t true.
Monday night, the White House defended the warnings about Islamic extremist intentions, but said the concerns highlighted by Mr. Bush were based on intelligence developed before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, and that no plant diagrams were actually found in Afghanistan. “There’s no additional basis for the language in the speech that we have found,” a senior administration official said.
One really has to wonder, does anybody bother to fact check the claims that go into the State of the Union? And isn’t there some larger problem with the fact that the president keeps telling Congress about international threats that turn out to be false?
The WSJ explains that the admission that the claim was false came after the claims were brought into question by others.
The suggestion that plant blueprints might have been in the hands of terrorists sparked concern among environmental activists and local communities near the country’s 103 nuclear stations, according to Greenpeace, the liberal advocacy group. The White House was forced to comb back over Mr. Bush’s 2002 speech Monday after Greenpeace released a letter from a senior official at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that cast doubt on Mr. Bush’s claim.
In a letter responding to a request by Greenpeace to clarify Mr. Bush’s assertion about the nuclear-plant plans, NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan wrote Feb. 4 to say that he had testified two years ago in “one or more” closed-door Congressional hearings and told lawmakers that he “was aware of no evidence” that plant diagrams had been found in Afghanistan. The NRC is responsible for maintaining security at the nation’s nuclear power plants.