Text of Mayor Anderson's speech

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the (same) secretary of defense who assured us that the war would take maybe six days, maybe six weeks, but he doubted as long as six months. He told us at that time, "We know where the weapons of mass destruction are." Vice President Cheney and then-Secretary of State Powell also joined in the chorus of lies and misinformation about weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, no stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons were found. Bush Administration Weapons Inspector David Kay, appointed by the Bush administration, noted that Iraq did not have an ongoing chemical weapons program after 1991 — a conclusion remarkably similar to statements made by Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice just months before the 9/11 attacks — and before they sacrificed the truth in the service of promoting the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq.

On February 24, 2001, less than 7 months before 9/11, Colin Powell said that Saddam Hussein, and these were his words, "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors," said Colin Powell, some seven months before 9/11.

And in July 2001, two months before 9/11, Condoleezza Rice said, and these were her words: "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt." She told us two months before 9/11.

It is astounding how they changed their claims after the President decided to make a case for the invasion and occupation of Iraq!

To think that we could be lied to by so many members of the Bush administration with such impunity is frightening — chilling. Yet these imperious, arrogant, dishonest people think we should continue to just fall in line with them and continue to take them at their word after we have been lied to time after time after time by these people.

The truth has been established. It is the established truth. Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on the United States. There is no evidence of any operational ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. And there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

What a tragedy, leading to greater tragedy. We are fed lie after lie, our media reinforces those lies, and we are a nation that has been led to a tragic, illegal, unprovoked war.