I don’t agree it’s unambiguous. Unambiguous would have been, “…and each and every prisoner at Guantanamo was captured on the battlefield as they were fighting on the side of the Taliban.” His actual statement suggests, but does not unambiguously proclaim, that ALL, rather than most, detainees fit that description.
It does, if what you’ve said is correct. If the President knew there was no such report, but claimed there was anyway, that’s absolutely a lie.
My only caveat for this one is a wish for more detail. In other words, the President said, “I’m relyiing on this report from 1998.” No such report. “Oops, we meant from 1991.” Still no such report.
But this is where the investigation ends. I want to hear someone follow up on that question – “Hey, you’ve given us two different report dates, and turns out neither one exists! What’s up with that?”
Answer A: “The president was briefed on the existence of a report that was in draft stages, and never released; the analyst who briefed him failed to note that distinction.”
No lie here - he relied on his sources, even though they happened to be wrong.
Answer B: “The president regrets mentioning that report; he was thinking of something else.”
Lie.
In the absence of that follow-on question, I will reluctantly concede that the dancing of the side-step with the alternate dates business makes a lie likely.
But, the fact is that they’re all his intel experts. DOE, State, and the national labs are all executive branch. And, yes, after the experts have said they’ve disagreed, he no longer gets to state the opinion of one or more analysts as fact. He must then characterize it as opinion and he didn’t.
To answer the second question first, because the experts I’m touting are actually involved in the building of nuclear weapons, the inspection of nuclear weapons (both ours and others), and the formulation of nuclear policy.
First question, since “my” scientists are true scientists, no can say definitively that the tubes weren’t intended for centrifuges (since we can’t read people’s minds), but it should be noted thatat the tubes were not only not suitable for enrichment on an objective scale, they weren’t as efficient as centrifuges that Saddam was known to have purchased in the past, and just happened to be the right size to be rocket tubes. Please contrast this careful attitude with Bush’s analysts who were willing to state definitively that they were for centrifuges, in spite of the evidence otherwise.
<tangential hijack>
Although this’ll be dismissed by Bush supporters as liberal propaganda or the rantings of a nutjob, I thought this might be an appropriate place to post this link.
Peter Singer has written a book called all about the inconsistencies of the Bush administration. A choice quote from the review regarding truth/falsity:
I just figured that people participating in this thread might be interested in the reference. Sorry for the hijack…
</tangential hijack>
I should probably quit while I’m ahead, but I’m horrible at doing that.
The thing is, I kinda feel like you’re trying to get him off on a technicality, so I’m trying to keep him on the hook on a similar technicality.
I concede that he didn’t necessarily know about the report’s nonexistence when he spoke that line. However, I assert that that line was spoken in the service of an attempt to deceive.
Therefore we’ve got both elements of a lie: the misstatement was spoken in an attempt to deceive. Even if he thought that he was technically telling the truth in this attempt to deceive, he wasn’t.
Imagine I’ve discovered some hitherto-unknown way to defraud the IRS, to hide my money from them, that’s so creative it hasn’t been outlawed yet. I try to do everything just right so that I’m skirting the law and can laugh at the revenooers when they come knockin–but somewhere along the line I slip up and violate a section of tax code, without intending to.
Don’t think about this from the IRS’s perspective: think about it from the perspective of a judge of character. Am I a dirty tax dodger? Am I a worse tax-dodger than someone that accidentally violates the same section of the law while NOT attempting a new type of tax-dodge?
How about covering the truth that he was so incompitant that he overreacted to extremely important information that he did not corroborate that has since cost well over a thousand american lives and many thousands injured cost the American taxpayer billions of dollars caused the word of the US to be in doubt through out the world.((Takes big breath))
Perhaps you could come up with some places where they said as much.
If by “partly responsible” you mean that Iraq and al-Queda are both terrorist groups, both enemies of the US, both dangerous, etc., that is not the same thing as suggesting “Iraq was responsible for 9/11”.
Closest I ever heard was saying that there were links between Iraq and other terrorist groups. Which is true.
Although, again, you are going to have trouble because you are making assumptions about intent by the Bush administration that may or may not be justified. Saying Iraq is part of an Axis of Evil is not saying that Iraq was involved in 9/11 any more than it is saying that North Korea was part of 9/11. And I don’t believe the Axis of Evil speech was made with intent to deceive. Possibly you do, I don’t know. But unless you are willing to interpret all such remarks, coming from Democrats or Republicans alike, as clear-cut instances of deception, your standard for determining who is lying is not very useful.
By that standard, Clinton lied about Iraq. But the most common response from the lefties hereabouts when this is pointed out to them is to change the subject and start talking about blow-jobs.
It’s basically a lost cause. The meme “BushLiedBushLiedBushLied” is going to be established by sheer repetition on the SDMB. That doesn’t make it true, but a fair number of those who are determined to bring it off have no interest in the truth.
OK, Bricker, let’s make a deal to end this ghastly whorl of illogic and blind partisanship once and for all.
ahem
President Bush II made a rash decision based on the data he saw suited his needs best, recklessly entering the nation into a war, and goading Congress into authorizing it with a series of intellectually dishonest proclamations designed to mislead the public and government officials into believing that a threat was imminent without sufficient proof.
Where is THAT rule written? If seventy analysts agree on a conclusion and one didn’t, he’s obligated to qualify the seventy as opinion?
How about sixty-nine and two?
There is no such rule. As long as he can truthfully say that there are analysts who conclude X, he’s under no obligation to report that there are also analysts that conclude Y.
And the ones that concluded they were centrifuge parts? What was their area of expertise?
I disagree completely. If I intentionally mislead you, it matters not one whit whether my statements are factually accurate.
Suppose you and I and Mrs. Bricker are on a hike, and Mrs. Bricker is stung by a wasp. For the sake of this hypothetical, let us suppose she is severely allergic to wasp stings, and goes into anaphylactic shock. In a panic, you ask me if I might have an epi pen in my pack. As it happens, I do. Now consider the following two responses:
I say, “Let me check,” and open up my pack, poke around a bit, and announce, “Sorry, don’t see it here anywhere.” All the while, I know full well that it’s in the inner pocket, but I haven’t uttered a falsehood. I didn’t see it.
I just say outright, “Jeez, sorry, no, I don’t have one.”
If Mrs. Bricker dies, will you judge me any less harshly in the first case? Frankly, I can’t imagine why anyone would distinguish between the two cases. The two actions are, from a moral point of view, precisely equivalent. Case 1 might not technically be a lie, but I think it’s perfectly acceptable usage of ordinary English to call me a lier in that case anyways.
As you must know by now, the position he presented was very much in the *minority * among the analysts.
[/quote]
What the hell do you think the President is? One of the opposing attorneys in a court case? Get out of the belljar.
He’s the head of the government, chosen by the people (or not, in this case), charged with the responsibilities of Commander in Chief among the other executive duties we’ve delegated to him (back to Civics 101). If he wants us to support going to war, giving up some of our lives, yes, he most certainly has an obligation to be as open with us about the facts as possible.
You’ve already acknowledged that he’s a warmonger. No backtracking, now.
They apparently began the interview by playing a snippet of a previous interview with Cheney containing the “greeted as liberators” quote, but apparently nothing like what your blogs claim.
Absolutely, now that I’m over my shock that anyone is still in denial about this. How does The Washington Post suit you?
(emphasis added)
So the question was whether the Administration ever suggested (“implied” would be a better word, which I shoulda used) that Iraq was partly responsible for 9/11. Claiming that success in Iraq strikes at “the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11” certainly holds such an implication.
Does it not come outright and say that Iraq was partly responsible? No, it doesn’t: you can Clinton your way out of it by parsing the words with ridiculous rigor. That’s not the question: the question is whether a casual audience may come away with that inference and, more importantly, whether that implication occurs repeatedly enough that we may conclude it’s intentional.
So, when one convinces someone else that the President is a liar, should one feel pleased or even more depressed?
(I appreciate the conditional concession, even if it’s on a fairly bleak subject. Now, on a lighter note, I’m off to teach high school boys about animal cruelty; be back this afternoon!)
Pretty well. Cheney was likely referring to this (from your cite):
I think it is difficult to argue that Zarqawi is not al-Queda, or not linked to Iraq.
And:
Sort of. But, as I mentioned earlier, al-Queda != all terrorists, and not all terrorists are al-Queda.
True.
I think what we got is an administration speaking what it fully believes to be the truth - that Iraq is part of a group of terrorist organizations, linked by a common enemy. al-Queda, North Korea, Libya, Iran, Ansar al-Islam, Palestinian terror bombers - all linked (loosely) by their hatred of the West and democracy.
That’s a gem! A chestnut, a nearly perfect example of the prevaricator’s art. It carries the weight of inference and suggestion, without being needlessly burdened by definition. Are all who hate America in this flexibly defined coalition, or must they also hate democracy to pass through the stringent criteria for admission? It suggests so much, while saying nothing at all.
Yes, Shodan, it was made up entirely, despite having the name and source of the interviewer.
Blog? I got it from Bushwatch.org. Don’t use your laziness from doing a 3 second Google search dissuade you from finding the truth. We know you’re very dedicated to the truth. :rolleyes:
Here’s another for you to play with: