The Guardian, not to be outdone by the Independent and Vanity Fair, is the latest anti-American rag to misquote Paul Wolfowitz, with a hideously misleading headline and a quote that’s taken so far out of context that it qualifies as deliberate deception: Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil. (Hat tip: NC.)

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

Here we go again.

The official DoD transcript of Wolfowitz’s remarks: Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz Remarks at the IISS Asian Security Conference. Notice please: no mention of oil (in the Guardian’s context) in the transcript at all.

But here, in Maryland’s sunspot.net, we find the truth about the comment the Guardian tried to use to smear Wolfowitz and the United States, which apparently happened in a Q&A session, not in the actual speech:

Wolfowitz is on a five-day visit to Asia to coordinate U.S. military strategy with Asian allies, and will travel from Singapore to Seoul, South Korea and Tokyo. He has been calling for a “firm, common, multilateral position” among the United States, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia to put economic pressure on North Korea for a verifiable dismantling of its nuclear weapons programs. Because most aid and trade with North Korea comes from the other nations, the United States cannot go it alone, he said.

The difference between North Korea and Iraq, Wolfowitz said, is that the United States could not use economic pressure to strangle Hussein’s regime “because the country floats on a sea of oil.” North Korea, by comparison, is near economic collapse, and that offers “a major point of leverage,” he said.

Once again, British scum sheets are showing their utter desperation and moral bankruptcy, by lying blatantly about Paul Wolfowitz. Disgraceful.

UPDATE: LGF reader Dave H. points out this DoD transcript of the Q&A session which contains the actual quote from Wolfowitz: Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Q&A following IISS Asia Security Conference.

Look, the primary difference — to put it a little too simply — between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil.

UPDATE: The Guardian has retracted their story and admitted their lie: Corrections and clarifications.

UPDATE: Even more amazing and disgraceful! The accurate quote from Wolfowitz was published last weekend on the Guardian’s own site, in a context that makes it unmistakably clear what he was saying: U.S. to Put Economic Pressure on N. Korea.

North Korea would respond to economic pressure, unlike Iraq, where military action was necessary because the country’s oil money was propping up the regime, Wolfowitz told delegates at the second annual Asia Security Conference in Singapore.

“The country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse,” Wolfowitz said. “That I believe is a major point of leverage.”

“The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil,” he said.