The President knew that the claims he made were false at the time he made them.

CLAIM: “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” President Bush, March 17, 2003 (from official White House transcript).

TRUTH: “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq used the period since 1998 to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.” CIA report, February 2003

CLAIM: “The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program … The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” President Bush, State of the Union Address, January 2003.

TRUTH: “The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa.” Washington Post, July 23, 2003

CLAIM: “Our intelligence sources tell us that he (Saddam) has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” President Bush, State of Union Address, January 28, 2003.

TRUTH: “INR (US State Dept Bureau of Intelligence and Research) is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors…the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program.” National Intelligence Estimate, October 2002

CLAIM: “I would remind you that when the inspectors first went into Iraq and were denied – finally denied access, a report came out of the IAEA – that they were six months away from developing a nuclear weapon. I don’t know how much more evidence we need.” President Bush, September 6, 2002

TRUTH: According to the IAEA, no such report exists.

CLAIM: “In 1995 … the head of Iraq’s military industries [Hussein Kamal] defected. It was then that the regime was forced to admit that it had produced more than 30,000 liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents.” President Bush October 7, 2002

TRUTH: The transcript of Kamel’s 1995 debriefing by the inspectors and the IAEA indicates he said the opposite. After the Gulf War, he told the UN, “Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them.”

CLAIM: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we’ll find more as we go along. But for now, those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.”

TRUTH: “Administration officials systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile program.” “WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

CLAIM: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases.” President Bush, Cincinnati, 2002

TRUTH: According to Defense Intelligence Agency documents, the source of the statements the Bush administration used as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons was a known fabricator.