Sen. Graham on the Bush Bait-and-Switch

Much like a profiteer who advertises a too-good-to-be-true deal to lure customers into his store, this White House is willing to shade and manipulate information to sell its policies to the American people and our allies.

But that cynical strategy erodes our government's credibility at home and abroad. It must stop.

To justify a pre-emptive war with Iraq, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-level officials selectively used -- and may have misused -- intelligence information to make the case that Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to his neighbors, U.S. interests in the Mideast and even Americans here at home.

The most egregious example: Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union Message that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for production of nuclear weapons -- when in fact that information had been discredited at least three months earlier.