Our own Anonalogue comes though with a heck of a post.

For reasons that are currently a complete mystery to me, Canadian blogger Anonalogue comes up with a heck of a post detailing various Bush administration "lies."

Naturally, given the banter around this blog lately, it's a matter of debate whether something technically constitutes a "lie," so I'm specifically interested in any examples he describes in which Bush or any of the other flying monkeys in his administration profess absolute certainty about something that turns out later to be false. Recall that that was one of my definitions of a flat-out lie -- claiming certainty about stuff that just ain't so.

And there's certainly enough of that in Anonalogue's piece, like this (emphasis added):

Most of the misleading statements involve the selective use of intelligence or the failure to include essential qualifiers or caveats. For example, statements of certainty that Iraq was close to possessing nuclear weapons were misleading because they ignored significant doubts and disagreement in the U.S. intelligence community regarding whether Iraq was actively pursuing a nuclear program.

In 10 instances, however, the statements were false statements that directly contradicted facts known at the time by the Administration.

For example, on July 11, 2003, Ms. Rice stated with respect to the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa:

“Now, if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence . . . those doubts were not communicated to the President, to the Vice President, or to me.”

This statement is false because, as Ms. Rice’s deputy Stephen Hadley subsequently acknowledged, the CIA sent Ms. Rice and Mr. Hadley memos in October 2002 warning against the use of this claim.

I'm still reading A's post but there's certainly enough there to say with little fear of contradiction that yes, that smarmy little weasel Bush lied.

BY THE WAY, one of my favourite Bush administration lies was when they claimed they never said Iraq was an "imminent" threat. No, they say, they never used that word.

In the first place, they certainly used enough other synonymous words to leave no doubt as to what they meant. In their own words, Saddam and Iraq were "a threat," "a serious threat," "terrible threats," "a serious and mounting threat," "a real threat," "a unique and urgent threat," "a threat of unique urgency" and so on -- you can read it all for yourself. But, they are arguing, we never actually used that word so everything's fine.

Except they most certainly did use that word, didn't they, although sometimes only indirectly. Here's former spokesweasel Ari Fleischer, disagreeing with Helen Thomas:

Q There is no imminent threat.

MR. FLEISCHER: This is where -- Helen, if you were President you might view things differently. But you have your judgment and the President has others.

Q Why doesn't he prove it? Why don't you lay it out? When have they threatened in the last 12 years?

MR. FLEISCHER: They have attacked their neighbors. They have gassed their own people.

Q Twelve years ago.

MR. FLEISCHER: They have launched attacks.

There's no doubt that Fleischer is taking the position that Saddam's threat is imminent, since he's disagreeing with Thomas' contention that it isn't.

Other examples can be found here, where we also have White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, being asked whether Saddam is an "imminent" threat and replying, "Well, of course he is." And there'e our own precious little pathological liar Scott McClellan who, back in 2003, spake thusly, "This is about imminent threat."

So, yeah, they lied. Trust me on this one.

P.P.S. And, no, this doesn't let Mr. Wudrick off the hook. I'm still not done with him.