Bush, George W.

George W. Bush was president of the United States from January 20, 2001, to January 20, 2009. After narrowly winning the 2000 presidential election against Vice President Al Gore, the Bush administration faced the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush and his administration have been publicly scrutinized and criticized for providing false information to the American people in the run-up to the Iraq War.

The Bush administration first made claims against Iraq and the country's connection to weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in February 2002. Joseph C. Wilson, the former ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Principe, was commissioned by the administration to investigate Iraq's alleged desire to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger in 2002. Wilson reported to Bush and his colleagues that the belief that Iraq was engaging in illicit construction of a nuclear weapon was “unequivocally wrong.” However, the administration persisted in searching for a connection between Iraq and WMDs. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush professed that raq [Page 104]sought to obtain uranium, despite a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) investigation confirming the opposite to be true.

President George W. Bush signs the U.S. Department of Defense Authorization Bill at the Pentagon on December 2, 2002, noting that Iraq's responses up to that date were “not encouraging.” Signing the act helped chart the course of the War on Terror.

In September 2002, the Bush administration, the CIA, and the Defense Intelligence Agency suspected that Iraq was looking for ways to acquire high-strength aluminum tubes in order to “make centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs.” The Bureau of Intelligence Research and Department of Energy refuted the assertion that high-strength aluminum tubes were being used to build nuclear weapons. Rather, the two agencies maintained that the tubes were being used for conventional military procedures, and that the tubes were not able to enrich uranium. Despite this information from various government departments, Secretary of State Colin Powell presented information to the United Nations (UN) implicating Iraq as a country destined to use high-strength aluminum tubes for the eventual creation of a nuclear bomb. Upon further review, Powell rescinded his statements to the UN, and noted that he was given “deliberately misleading” information on Iraq's quest for nuclear weapons.