An investigative journalism group has actually quantified the extent of the Bush administration's dishonesty. And the results are staggering, if not embarrassing.

Eight members of the Bush administration, including the President himself, made 935 false statements regarding Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, or links to Al Qaeda, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. These statements took place on 532 separate occasions over a two-year period prior to the March 18, 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The Center's findings cast doubt on the repeated assertion of Bush administration officials, that in the run up to war they themselves were the unwitting victims of bad intelligence. It also raises questions about why Congress has forgone, to a large extent, its investigative and oversight responsibilities.

"Bush and the top officials of his administration have so far largely avoided the harsh, sustained glare of formal scrutiny about their personal responsibility for the litany of repeated, false statements in the run-up to the war in Iraq," said Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center and now president of the Fund for Independence in Journalism and a professor at the American University School of Communications in Washington. "There has been no congressional investigation, for example, into what exactly was going on inside the Bush White House in that period, and now millions of White House emails from 2001 to October 2003 apparently may have been destroyed."

According to the Centers report, the frequency of the Bush administration's false statements, not surprisingly, increased as the case for war grew more heated. During the early weeks of 2003, when the President gave his State of the Union address and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered his memorable presentation to the U.N. Security Council, was when the lying was most systemic. In all, President Bush made the most false statements with 260 while Secretary of State Colin Powell offered up 254 falsehoods.

The Center's work has been documented in a fully searchable 380,000-word database, assembled from primary and secondary public sources, major news organizations and more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

"Today, the Center is releasing a remarkable report that squarely meets our mission, to produce original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable," said the Center's Executive Director Bill Buzenberg. "This is a report like no other, which calls into question more than 900 false statements that were the underpinnings of the administration's case for war."

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