It’s Pope(il). Insomnia + late night television = useless knowledge. For a second I thought Popeli was some physicist I’d never heard of. Maybe Fermi’s cousin?
Oh yeah, WMDs. How about those statues coming down?
:D&R:
What, specifically, did BC say to the grand jury that was false. As I said before, he copped to the bj, so what specific statement were they alleging was a lie? What was their evidence that it was a lie?
He said that he was not in a relationship with Miss Lewinski.
He argued that since their relationship was over, and “is” refers to the present tense, his statement was accurate: at the he gave the response, he was not in a relationship with her.
According to the affadvit, there doesn’t seem to be any specific allegation of a lie by BC, himself, before a grand jury, they’re saying that he told other people (i.e Lewisnsky and his lawyer) to lie to the grand jury. The evidence for both of these was extremely weak. IIRC what the affadvit is referring to is Lewinsky’s “talking points” which Starr utterly failed to ever connect with Clinton, and Bob Bennet’s assertion that “there is no sexual relationship” between BC and ML (which is what prompted the infamous “…depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is…” response from BC. He was arguing that Bennet’s assertion, as it was stated in the present tense was true).
So we have no federal perjury here, we have some very lame attempts to tag him with witness tampering.
I’d say “ex-girlfriend” is a sexual relationship.
I must be in the twilight zone. I’d swear I clicked on a thread titled, “Did Bush Admit to Lying about WMD in Iraq?”
Oh well.
Really? Do I still have a relationship with every girl I dated twenty years ago in high school? Silly me, I thought once you stopped boning somebody the sexual relationship was over.
You have a point. The answer to the OP is yes he did lie, but no, he’ll never admit it.
People ask questions, I try to answer them. Now you’re asking me to stay on topic as well? :eek:
What happens after a bad action cannot justify or make that action good. If a cop initiates an illegal search, the search will be illegal and held illegal by the courts no matter what happens after that. The fact that he finds drugs does not make it legal. Conversely, if the search is legal, it wil not be rendered illegal by the fact that nothing was found. An act is good or bad, legal or illegal, by the facts as they are at the moment of the act and not by anything which happens later.
There was never any sufficiently credible evidence for the charges of the US government against the Iraqi government and therefore the aggression was illegal. That is why most countries refused to go along.
Finding something now, if it should happen, does not change the fact that the USA invaded a country which the rest of the world did not see as a credible threat. The invasion was illegal and a subversion of international law and nothing that happens now is going to change that.
But the fact that WMD are not being found definitely shows the USA was making up the evidence.
The USA is in the position of the racist cop who illegally searched a black man and did not find anything. Even if he found it the search was illegal but the fact that he didn’t find it proves that the evidence he cited as a reason was a lie.
No, this is not so.
sailor, I have to admit to being a bit chagrined; I believe the US’s action was probably wrong, but I keep having to correct your faulty logic in your efforts to supprt the case that the US was wrong.
If the Iraqis destroyed all the prohibited weapons during the first days of hostilities, that would be a case in which the US did not lie, but also in which WMD are not found.
If the evidence turned out to be wrong, but still trustworthy, then the US didn’t lie, either. To turn back to the (flawed) example of a traffic stop, suppose I call the police and tell them that my neighbor has just loaded a corpse, some bags of cocaine, an automatic rifle, and some DVD-cracking code into the trunk of his car, a 1996 Toyota Avalon, metallic gray in color, license plate CRIME4ME. I have a videotape of him doing this, and I give my name and address.
Based on that tip, which is not anonymous and has sufficient detail to render it reliable, the police are entitled to stop and search the car – EVEN IF I MADE IT ALL UP. Now, if nothing is found, that doesn’t mean the cop lied about his reasons for searching the car.
In other words, the question is not settled by noting that we didn’t find WMD, nor is it settled by saying the evidence wasn’t good enough. In both cases, we don’t know for sure.
My position is that I accepted, at first and reluctantly, the proposition that we had secret evidence, evidence that could not be revealed for fear of damaging the source. With Iraq fallen, the chances of damaging the source seem small. So I’d like to hear, now, what the evidence was and how we graded its reliability. The fact that such explanations haven’t been made public troubles me greatly. I am still prepared to accept reasonable explanations; I am NOT prepared to accept that the issue vanishes from the radar screen.
- Rick
if there are no WmD found, then the situation becomes very serious for Bush and Blair. Going to war strictly to achieve a regime change in a country, is illegal under International Law. Blair knew this, and that’s why he was so anxious to secure second UN resolution.
"Iraq is threatening no country with aggression and its violations of Security Council resolutions, while clear, are technical, mostly a matter of providing incomplete documentation about weapons that may or may not exist, and for the use of which there are no apparent plans.
At the same time, Israel is in violation of, at a very conservative count, over 30 resolutions, pertaining among other things to the very substantive issue of the continuing illegal occupation of another people, along with violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention through steady encroachment on and effective annexation of that land.
Indonesia, another U.S. ally, violated U.N. resolutions for a quarter of a century in East Timor with relative impunity. Morocco is illegally occupying Western Sahara. In each of these cases, the United States wouldn’t be required to go to war to help uphold international law; it could start simply by terminating aid and arms sales to these countries.
The United States is also a very odd country to claim to uphold such a principle. Ever since a 1986 International Court of Justice ruling against the United States and in favor of Nicaragua, the United States has refused to acknowledge the ICJ’s authority (the $17 billion in damages it was ordered to pay were never delivered).
Shortly after that judgment, the United States actually vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to respect international law. Of course, the United States doesn’t itself violate Security Council resolutions, since it can always veto them – as it did when the Security Council tried to condemn its blatantly illegal invasion of Panama in 1989, and on seven occasions regarding its contra war on Nicaragu"
"It surely is unprecedented in world history that a country is under escalating attack; told repeatedly that it will be subjected to a full-scale war; required to disarm itself before that war; and then castigated by the “international community” for significant but partial compliance. "
FROM THIS SITE:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3237
US denial and withdrawal from the International Court of Justice, is effectively sending the message “nobody can touch us and we’ll do as we damn well please” to the other nations in the world.
After all, who’s strong enough to stop them? We’ve just seen the way they’ll go about getting what they want, giving it another name and reason.
>> I am NOT prepared to accept that the issue vanishes from the radar screen.
Bricker, you are supporting my point, finding WMD now changes nothing. What could change things is if the USA were to show clear and irrefutable evidence that at the time it launched the attack it had clear and convincing evidence that would lead it to believe Iraq was a clear and present threat. If it could be proven that the USA used its best intelligence efforts and had clear and convincing evidence that Iraq was a clear and present danger, then the attack would be justified. But it is the burden of the USA to show this and they have not done it so far.
And on the other hand, we’ve got the “Iraq is trying to buy uranium from Africa” claim, which President Bush made in his State of the Union address. That claim appears to have been based on clumsily forged documents. That doesn’t inspire much confidence in the US intelligence analysis.
Don’t forget that the WH has basically admitted that Bush lied about an intelligence reort claiming that Iraq was six months away from getting the bomb.
I am in complete agreement with the above, with the possible exception of “clear and convincing” evidence – I’d settle for a preponderence of the evidence.
- Rick
Bricker, When going to war I think the standar should be a bit higher but never mind, either way I do not think it’s going to happen. If the US had that evidence at the time I am quite sure it would have shared it with the governments of a few countries and it would have received their support.
Even if it shared it now most people would say “yeah, with that information they believed Iraq was a clear and present danger at the time and that justified going to war”. I know a few people would stick to their guns anyway But I believe most of us a reasonable people who would admit the justification. I surely would.
But the standard is that the USA used its best efforts to get the best intelligence and that intelligence showed Iraq to be a clear and present danger which did not allow for any waiting. I just can’t see that happenning, as I say, because if they had that intelligence they would have shared it.
Now, after the fact, a letter from Ben Laden, a drum of chemicals, or other small stuff, prove nothing. They certainly do not come anywhere close to meeting the standard of proving a “clear and present danger”.
No, Clinton did NOT commit a “criminal offense”- he commited “Contempt of Court”- and I am not sure that is actually a crime, per se but you claim to be the legal eagle here. Nor is lying in a civil lawsuit a *federal * crime.
Good thing you don’t claim to be a legal eagle, since you evidently can’t read the US Code.
18 USC § 1621, which Northen Piper helpfully quoted above, defines a federal crime. It sort of has to, being a federal law and all.
Lying under oath is a crime. It may ALSO constitute contempt of court, but it’s a crime in and of itself. It’s perjury.
- Rick
He wasn’t convicted of lying under oath he was cited with contempt. Also lying under oath per se is not perjury. It has to be a lie about a material matter in the case. Since a consensual blow job had no relevance to the Paula Jones case, it did not constitute perjury not to volunteer information about it.