Joe "Sweetheart" Lieberman's Long History of Lying About Iraq and WMD

Just as the sun always rises in the east, so too does Joe Lieberman always lie about Iraq and WMD.

This morning Lieberman told Morning Joe that:

LIEBERMAN: ...the evidence is very clear that [Saddam] was developing weapons of mass destruction...Charles Duelfer conducted the most comprehensive report on behalf of our government...he found, and proved I think, that Saddam...was developing chemical and biological weapons.

Lieberman followed up this embarrassing performance with snide condescension toward Arianna Huffington, who was also on the program:

HUFFINGTON: Well, based on this completely unfounded assumption, I sincerely hope for the sake of the country that you do not become Secretary of Defense.

LIEBERMAN: Now Arianna, these are not unfounded. Go read the Duelfer Report.

HUFFINGTON: There is nothing in the report that proves anything that you have said.

LIEBERMAN: I don't think you've read it, sweetheart.

Obviously this is false. The report that Lieberman was referring to was produced by the Iraq Survey Group, headed by Charles Duelfer. The report certainly isn't impartial, given that it was written by U.S. government officials who—as is obvious from the report—felt considerable pressure to spin things in the most favorable possible way for war supporters like Lieberman. So it's even more notable that it says nothing like what Lieberman claims.

Here's the report's conclusion (available on the CIA website) about Iraq's non-existent chemical weapons program:

Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter...

And here's the report's conclusion about Iraq's non-existent biological weapons program:

...in 1991, Iraqi leaders decided to destroy Iraq’s undeclared weapons stockpile in secret...in late 1995, ISG judges that Baghdad abandoned its existing BW program...ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program...

Of course, as noted, this is far from the first time Joe Lieberman has lied about what was found in Iraq. In fact, he usually lies with even more gay abandon than he did today. Here's Lieberman on the Hugh Hewitt Show back in 2007:

HEWITT: Do you think Saddam had WMD in 2002?

LIEBERMAN: Well, look, he surely, even the Duelfer report, which was the most authoritative report, said he had some, and he had a network of chemical and biological experts working on it, and a kind of fallback network on nukes, which is what he really wanted. Here’s the point. In 2002, Saddam himself said he had weapons of mass destruction, and we gave him every chance, pursuant to the UN resolutions, which the U.S. asked for, to come clean and show us that he had destroyed the inventory of WMD that he filed with the UN as a condition of the end of the Gulf War in ’91, and he wouldn’t do it. So you know, I know people look back and say this was some classic colossal act of deceit by our government. I think everybody in the world, and the best intelligence services, frankly, including most people around Saddam Hussein who’ve been interviewed since, thought that he had WMD.

Let's go through these lies one at a time:

1. "The Dueler report...said he had some." False; see above.

2. "...he had a network of chemical and biological experts working on it." False; see above.

3. "...a kind of fallback network on nukes." God only knows what Lieberman's weaselly words are supposed to mean, but here's what the Duelfer report said on this subject:

Saddam Husayn ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program. Although Saddam clearly assigned a high value to the nuclear progress and talent that had been developed up to the 1991 war, the program ended and the intellectual capital decayed in the succeeding years.

4. "In 2002, Saddam himself said he had weapons of mass destruction." Completely false. On the contrary, Iraq and Saddam Hussein said over and over again from 1991 onwards, and especially in the run up to war in 2002 and 2003, that Iraq had no WMD.

5. "...we gave him every chance, pursuant to the UN resolutions, which the U.S. asked for, to come clean...and he wouldn’t do it." Completely false. Iraq explained over and over again to the UN what had happened to its WMD programs after 1991. The reports Iraq filed with the UN say almost exactly the same thing as the CIA's 2004 Duelfer report.

6. "...everybody in the world, and the best intelligence services...thought that he had WMD." Completely false. Here's what Alan Foley, who ran the CIA's efforts to investigate Iraq's WMD programs, thought (according to the book The Italian Letter):

There were strong indications that Foley all along was toeing a line he did not believe. Several days after Bush's State of the Union speech, Foley briefed student officers at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, DC. After the briefing, Melvin Goodman, who had retired from the CIA and was then on the university's faculty, brought Foley into the secure communications area of the Fort McNair compound. Goodman thanked Foley for addressing the students and asked him what weapons of mass destruction he believed would be found after the invasion. "Not much, if anything," Goodman recalled that Foley responded. Foley declined to be interviewed for this book.

On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge Lieberman has never claimed that Saddam Hussein was 2000 feet tall and could shot nuclear laser beams out of his eyes. So I guess we should be grateful for small blessings.

P.S. I would bet $1 million that Joe Lieberman has never read the Iraq Survey Group report.

—Jonathan Schwarz