Database lists 935 false prewar statements

WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- The Bush administration made more than 900 false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq on weapons of mass destruction, U.S. researchers said.

The Center for Public Integrity, a Washington research group on ethics in government and public policy, designed the online database to allow simple searches for specific phrases, such as "yellowcake uranium," in transcripts and documents, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Researchers Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith said their work documented "at least 935 false statements."

The information itself isn't new because the documents all have been published, the researchers said. The database, however, is remarkable for its breadth -- transcripts and documents totaling some 380,000 words.

Administration officials -- from President George Bush to Vice President Dick Cheney and from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- defended many of their prewar statements as being based on intelligence available at the time, the Times said. Now there is evidence that some statements contradicted intelligence of the time.

President Bush said in 2005 that "much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong" but that "it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."