You can’t count the whoppers without a scorecard: According to a report issued last week by the Center for Public Integrity, “President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials … made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. … [An] exhaustive examination of the record shows the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.” Check out www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard for more.

This article appears in February 1 • 2008.

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Contributing writer and former news editor Michael King has reported on city and state politics for the Chronicle since 2000. He was educated at Indiana University and Yale, and from 1977 to 1985 taught at UT-Austin. He has been the editor of the Houston Press and The Texas Observer, and has reported and written widely on education, politics, and cultural subjects.