Making a shooting sign with his hand he went on: "Once you'd reached the objective, and once you'd shot them and you're moving through, anything there, you shoot again. You didn't want any prisoners of war. You hate them so bad while you're fighting, and you're so terrified, you can't really convey the feeling, but you don't want them to live."

And despite there being no link between Iraq and the September 11 attacks Richardson admitted that it gave him his motivation to fight Iraqis.

"There's a picture of the World Trade Centre hanging up by my bed and I keep one in my flak jacket. Every time I feel sorry for these people I look at that. I think, 'They hit us at home and, now, it's our turn.' I don't want to say payback but, you know, it's pretty much payback."

Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion.

In the end, E.P.A. staff members, after discussions with administration officials, said they decided to delete the entire discussion to avoid criticism that they were selectively filtering science to suit policy. ...

An April 29 memorandum circulated among staff members said that after the changes by White House officials, the section on climate "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."

Another memorandum circulated at the same time said that the easiest course would be to accept the White House revisions but that to do so would taint the agency, because "E.P.A. will take responsibility and severe criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly representing the science."

The Republicans have seized control of the American judicial, legislative and executive branches. Their immensely effective corporate mass media misinforms, misleads and manipulates. They control the world’s most powerful army, and are glad to use it without provocation.

Having stolen the election of 2000, Bush’s minions are rigging America’s voting machines and erasing countless suspected Democrats from voter rolls nationwide.

Their goal is to shock and awe the opposition into extinction.

If “image is everything,” Bush sits atop a dictatorial fortress, not likely to fall soon.

But history teaches that, ultimately, Truth is more powerful than image: All the people can’t be fooled all the time.

Questions we address:
-Have weapons of mass destruction been found in Iraq?
-Has evidence of links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda been found in Iraq?
-Were thousands of items looted from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad?
-Where did the American flag come from that was placed on the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad?
-What actually happened to Pfc. Jessica Lynch?

But the June 15 edition of NBC 's Meet the Press was unusual for the buzz that it didn't generate. Former General Wesley Clark told anchor Tim Russert that Bush administration officials had engaged in a campaign to implicate Saddam Hussein in the September 11 attacks-- starting that very day. Clark said that he'd been called on September 11 and urged to link Baghdad to the terror attacks, but declined to do so because of a lack of evidence.

How else to explain the wildly different treatment accorded to Bill Clinton and George W. Bush?

Now, of course, there are plenty of differences between the two cases. Former president Clinton lied under oath about his under-the-desk encounter with Monica Lewinsky.

Bush's apparent lie — that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction even though his own intelligence agency could find no such evidence and his own army can find no such weapons — was made repeatedly to the American people, but not under oath.

So, does that explain it? Lying to the American people is okay, as long as it's not done under oath?

Of course, Bush did swear an oath upon taking office, vowing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." Are we to conclude that, even after taking this oath to uphold the fundamental principles of American democracy, it's okay for a president to lie to the American people, as long as he hasn't taken an oath pledging not to lie in this particular case?

This seems to have caught a lot of pundits unaware. While some seek to continually justify the war effort, a lot more are wondering exactly what the hell is going on in Iraq.

Let's take a short tour of today's US and UK newspapers:

Before the war, half of those polled in a survey said Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001.

The facts:

- Such weapons have not been found in Iraq, and were never used.
- Most of the Sept. 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. None was Iraqi.

How could so many people be so wrong about life-and-death information that has dominated news coverage for almost two years?

"It's a striking finding," said Steve Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which asked the weapons questions during a May 14-18 poll of 1,265 respondents.

"Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention, this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."

That is, having their beliefs conflict with the facts.

Blair says the charges are totally untrue. There are two main issues. The first is whether the British and US Governments exaggerated ("sexed up" in the words of one unnamed source) the basic intelligence on Iraq weapons in order to justify a war.

The second is whether the intelligence was wrong in itself.