Whether or not numbers lie (official 1115 position: of course they do), when you lie and someone does a formal study of your lying, and produces numbers that are then widely disseminated, you do have a certain amount of egg on your face, that’s for sure.

Two non-profit organizations — the Center for Public Integrity and the Fund for Independence in Journalism — have released a study that officially certifies that President George Bush‘s administration lied us into the War on Iraq. They have carefully counted out the lies, coming up with a grand total of 935 over the two year period following the 9/11 attacks.

The biggest liar? To my surprise, it’s the Liar-in-chief himself. I would have thought he delegated most of the lying. But I guess if you want anything done right, you have to do it yourself. Besides, he is certainly one of the most accomplished liars in his administration. He may as well play to his strengths.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaeda or both.
[...]
Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq’s links to al-Qaeda, the study found. That was second to Powell’s 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaeda.