From the Tubes (Not Trucks)
Today my love of colorful charts and my hatred for the Bush Administration's tendency to be about as straight as a Slinky have met in a happy-fun nexus. What has brought about this overlap in my Venn Diagram? The Center for Public Integrity has created The War Card, a detailed account of 935 false statements made by the Bush Administration in the months leading up and into the war in Iraq. Not only have they compiled these statements into a searchable database with Boolean search functions (for the less nerd-savvy among you, it means you can search using AND/OR parameters, eg - you can search for "mobile" AND "weapon" AND "labs"), but they've also put together a graph breaking down the number of false statements per month. Behold ye mortals, and despair!
The interesting thing is that the chart shows an organized effort to deceive the American people in the days leading up to the 2002 mid-term elections as well as the beginning of the Iraq War (note the spikes in September 2002 and February 2003). In addition to some very cool data on public opinion, showing a correlation between the volume of untruths and the percentage of the American people who believe supportive statements to be true, the War Card has some surprising information as well.
For instance, if you search for the phrase, "mushroom cloud," you get only three hits, which I personally find odd as the sound bite got played over and over again. There are only three specific instances of the words being mentioned, although I can think of one more occasion on which the words "mushroom cloud" were uttered, specifically, by President Bush. So this database is by no means perfect. Still, it's an amusing and informative distraction. Type in your favorite catch phrases and see what pops up. Coming up: a Supreme Court case you've never heard of and why it matters.