It's just one more example of the right wing's use of smoke and mirrors to "demonstrate" a "fact" which common sense and everyday logic tells any sane and normal person is just totally absurd. The "alternate reality" or Bizzarro World of the extreme right, where up is down, black is white and it can all be "proven" by reference to "authoritative" sources, be they doctored stats NIEs or whatever. Does anyone see a pattern here?
Despite two ongoing, savage, fiercely contested wars, more American military lives were lost under the preceding administrations than under war-mongering "President" G.W. Bush. Here, look, the figures prove it. Tiny Iraq and its 23 million people pose an existential threat to the U.S.A. and its 300 million people ten thousand miles away that is so imminent and dire that only an invasion can save the larger nation from its tiny foe. Here, look at the NIEs, they "prove" it.
Goebbels and Hitler may have invented the technique of the Big Lie, but there is no doubt at all that it was Bush and Cheney and their crooked administration and twisted MSM supporters who perfected it.
