UPDATED: the White House's latest bald-faced lie: 'The UN authorized our invasion of Iraq'

Posted by Joshua Holland at 5:13 AM on February 27, 2007.

ThinkProgress caught this wild bit of revisionism during Friday's White House presser by Mini-Tony Snow, Tony Fratto:

"The president said this isn't the fight we entered in Iraq, but it's the fight we're in," Fratto told reporters Friday. "We went in as a multinational force under U.N. authorization to take military action in Iraq. We were there as an occupying force, and now we're there at the invitation of the sovereign, elected government of Iraq."

Actually, Bush promised to go to the Security Council for a vote, but then realized he couldn't purge any of those darkie countries from the UN voter roll and blew it off. As ThinkProgress noted, Kofi Annan described the invasion of Iraq as "not in conformity with the UN charter...from the charter point of view, it was illegal."

What's pretty amazing is that a room full of journalists let the statement go unchallenged. But Fratto wasn't done. "I'm not sure if the Democrats are contemplating that the United States should not enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions," he added. "If that's something that they're contemplating, I think that would be interesting to some people, to say the least." No, Tony. What's interesting, to say the least, is that the White House's deputy press flack doesn't know that the UN charter specifically prohibits countries from enforcing UN resolutions without specific Security Council authorization.

These people are so wanton in their criminality.

Update: MediaMatters notes that the Washington Post contradicted its own reporting and "parroted [the] White House claim that Iraq war was authorized by U.N. Security Council." Thanks, WaPo, for the great journalism!

Tagged as: lies, whote house, un, iraq

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.