Did Bush lie to justify invading Iraq for bad reasons?

[Starving_Artist]

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
No one ever knows what anyone else is thinking: this is a revelation?

He can’t decide to go to war on the belief that maybe, just possibly, there just might be a valid rationale going to war.
[/QUOTE]
blink blink

You are aware of course of the irony of these two statements. By your own admission, neither you nor anyone else can possibly know that Bush believed any such thing, and yet you follow right on the heels of that declaration with an assertion that indicates that you believe you do.

And now I really am out of here. Goodnight, friend and foe alike.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
blink blink

You are aware of course of the irony of these two statements. By your own admission, neither you nor anyone else can possibly know that Bush believed any such thing, and yet you follow right on the heels of that declaration with an assertion that indicates that you believe you do.

And now I really am out of here. Goodnight, friend and foe alike.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, of course. I assert that no one can absolutely, defitively know what another person is thinking, but I can (and do) believe that I can discern what another person is thinking, especially when his later actions give me information that I could only take (or leave) at face value at an earlier time.

You’re taking great solace in contending the specious nonsense that we can can know another’s inner htoughts, which is almost by definition strictly technically true, but only true in the extremely narrow sense. The fact that you are clinging to this reed of a lifeboat just puts the desperation of your argument on full public display. Thank you for that.

If you need an illustration, say you come up to me on the street and say, “give me five dollars–Ninja killers are chasing me and I need it to bribe them” and I give you the five bucks, and you pocket it and laugh and yell “SUCKER!” in my face. Now, I can’t possibly know for a certainty that you weren’t delusional, or paranoid, or even that you’re just an ungracious receiver of gifts but actually being pursued by very slow-running Ninjas, and I can’t even be certain that you won’t mail me the five bucks the next day with a sweet note explaining that you were just joking around, but the smart money says that you’re a lying motherfucker. I’m comfortable making that assertion.

[tomndebb]

[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
Damn, this shit is tiresome!

Even dirty fucking hippies have to realize that wars call for preparation, even if simultaneous public efforts are underway to find a peaceful solution.
[/QUOTE]
You imply an action that does not correspond to the facts.

Preparation for a war would include such things as actually preparing intelligence (rather than putting 18 PR flacks with no training in intelligence in an office in the DoD to spin the intelligence reports to make a fake case for war), listening to the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarding their estimates of the numbers of troops required to successfully complete the mission, and actually supplying the troops with appropriate armor.

Instead, while pretending that he was “considering” “whether” to go to war, Bush ordered the actual troops (at insufficient numbers and bearing insufficient armor) into the staging areas for an invasion while dismissing the officers who were responsible to carry out his plan and relying on his PR flacks to give him plausible deniability that he was unaware of the lack of serious intelligence for WMDs.

There was no reason why the deployment could not have taken place after the actual public decision had been made. It was, in fact, his premature deployment that caused a number of potential allies to back away from supporting the U.S. in the UN, based on the understanding that they were being railroaded into an unjustified action.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
Yes, of course. I assert that no one can absolutely, definitively know what another person is thinking, but I can (and do) believe that I can discern what another person is thinking, especially when his later actions give me information that I could only have taken (or have left) at face value at an earlier time.

You’re taking great solace in contending the specious nonsense that we can’t know another’s inner thoughts, which is almost by definition strictly technically true, but only true in narrowest sense. The fact that you are clinging to this reed of a lifeboat just puts the desperation of your argument on full public display. Thank you for that.

If you need an illustration, say you come up to me on the street and say, “give me five dollars–Ninja killers are chasing me and I need it to bribe them” and I give you the five bucks, and you pocket it and laugh and yell “SUCKER!” in my face. Now, I can’t possibly know for a certainty that you weren’t delusional, or paranoid, or even that you’re just an ungracious receiver of gifts who actually is pursued by very slow-running Ninjas, and I can’t even be certain that you won’t mail me the five bucks the next day with a sweet note explaining that you were just joking around, but the smart money says that you’re a lying motherfucker. I’m comfortable making that assertion.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry for the late edit–in addition to fixing typos and rewording some infelicities, I also changed one “can” to the “can’t” I’d intended, making my meaning clearer.

[Fuji]

Hey, prr, glad I could finally make it. Good thing I checked GD - I was just about to post a smart-ass comment about you in that pit thread.

Anyway, my objection to your original statement was that you drew an equivalence between the motivations for aggressive war between Nazi Germany and the US in 2003 by asserting that both were done in large part “in a misguided attempt to restore national pride”. Looking through this thread, I still see no evidence to support such an assertion. I think that John Mace in Post 49 of this thread neatly summarizes my view on this issue.

As a side note, I wouldn’t even necessarily agree with your assertion that Hitler went to war to “restore national pride”, either. With the explicit public renunciation of the Versailles Treaty (including the “guilt clause”), the re-occupation of the Rhineland, the hosting of the 1936 Olympics, the Anschluss with Austria, and the annexation of the Sudetenland, I would argue that he had already largely done so. AFAICT, he invaded Poland with the straightforward goal of seizing territory and resources to further his hideous ambitions.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

[QUOTE=Fuji]
Hey, prr, glad I could finally make it. Good thing I checked GD - I was just about to post a smart-ass comment .
[/QUOTE]

To which I could have re-posted my invitation–you know, “You and me. Great debates.” Too bad.

And I’ll concede how surprised I am that this issue is in such hot contention as this thread demonstrates. I would have thought that the tighty-righty position by now would be, “Okay, he lied and caused ONE little six-year war over the issues you claim, PRR, but that could have happened to anyone” but you’re right that there are actually sentient beings disputing my thesis here, so in that large sense, I think you win this debate.

On the smaller stuff, I will contend that all the jingoism, all the fear-mongering, all the “bring it on” stuff (that Bush himself concedes now was a mistake, btw) was pure posturing that could only have had “morale-building” at its aim. I don’t know quite how to quantify or demonstrate that, since to admit that “morale-building nonsense” was the real purpose behind the empty rhetoric would be a concession that it was a diversionary gesture, and there is no reason to Bush and Co. to confess it–I’m not sure what, short of such a confession, would seem to you satisfying proof. I thought that unanimous agreement here might bolster my case, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, though I still feel that defense of Bush on these grounds is mostly defensive refusals to concede that which is not “provable.”

But maybe it is provable and I just don’t have the right evidence handy. For now, though, you’ve persuaded me that this is at least a far more hotly contested issue than I would have thought, and that was my main contention.

[jshore]

[QUOTE=Starving Artist]

I’m sure what it all boiled down to in Bush’s eyes is what I said upthread: Hussein simply presented too much of a threat (a threat, ironically, that Hussein himself worked to perpetuate) and he had to go.
[/QUOTE]

Dammit! If you are going to type **** like this then you freakin’ can’t just ignore my post. If Bush thought that Saddam’s WMDs posed such a threat if they were to end up in the hands of terrorists then why did he not take extraordinary measures to prevent this rather than basically taking every measure possible to insure that they would end up in the hands of terrorists?!?!

[jshore]

Oh, and another thing that Bush flat-out lied about (which elucidator has already alluded to): If you go back to when he introduced the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq to Congress, he argued that this was actually necessary to keep the peace…e.g., to get the inspectors in, etc. However, when campaigning in 2004 (and after), he has repeatedly referred to those who voted for the resolution as having voted for the war.

He can’t have it both ways. Either one or the other of these was a lie.

[Whack-a-Mole]

[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
blink blink

You are aware of course of the irony of these two statements. By your own admission, neither you nor anyone else can possibly know that Bush believed any such thing, and yet you follow right on the heels of that declaration with an assertion that indicates that you believe you do.

[/QUOTE]

This just boggles my mind.

If you see a bird and it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is probably a duck. It might be an alien that looks like a duck or it might be a nifty robot made to look like a duck. You cannot know for certain without catching the duck and doing DNA testing and an autopsy on it. But I think most people would feel safe in saying, with the evidence available (waddling and quaking like a duck), that it is almost certainly a duck.

I will quote Vincent Bugliosi from his book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder p.137 (in this respect his bonafides are his lifetime as a very successful prosecutor):

I said earlier that Bush took the nation to war under false pretenses, which were the lies he told the American public about Hussein being an imminent threat and being involved in 9/11. For those who believe that there is no lie or false pretense unless the defendant states it expressly, this is not the law. Indeed, even conduct will suffice. As the courts have consistently held, “A false pretense may consist in any act, word, or symbol calculated and intended to deceive. It may be made either expressly, or by implication.”

There is abundant evidence (to the point of whole books providing extensive detail as well as numerous articles in the media) Bush & Co. did precisely that.

[elucidator]

[QUOTE=jshore]
Dammit! If you are going to type **** like this then you freakin’ can’t just ignore my post. If Bush thought that Saddam’s WMDs posed such a threat if they were to end up in the hands of terrorists then why did he not take extraordinary measures to prevent this rather than basically taking every measure possible to insure that they would end up in the hands of terrorists?!?!
[/QUOTE]

I rise to defend The Leader! There is no chance…none, sir, none!..that The Leader put the nation at such risk. He was fully aware that no such risk existed and therefore cannot be accused of accepting such a risk. I’ve no doubt, none whatsoever, that if such weapons existed, they would have been carefully and fully guarded. They probably would have been accorded the same protection as any other site vital to our national security, such as the Oil Ministry. The Leader was not about to risk our heroes to protect non-existent weapons!

You go too far, sir! Too far!

[RedFury]

[**President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

**](http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/) my highlights.

Searchable database included at source.

Have fun kids – 935 lies should be enough keep you apologizing till at least the next election.

[magellan01]

[QUOTE=RedFury]

Have fun kids – 935 lies should be enough keep you apologizing till at least the next election.
[/QUOTE]

Directly from what you quoted:

…made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001…

Even assuming your cite is 100% correct, even it refers to them as “false statements” not “lies”—even in the very portion you quoted. You guys crack me up.

Little Billy: “Mom, I got my math test back. I got a 97! I only got 3 wrong.”

Mom: “Billy, we told you that lying is wrong. So why did you lie 3 times on your test? Now go to your room young man.”

[John_Mace]

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
On the smaller stuff, I will contend that all the jingoism, all the fear-mongering, all the “bring it on” stuff (that Bush himself concedes now was a mistake, btw) was pure posturing that could only have had “morale-building” at its aim. I don’t know quite how to quantify or demonstrate that, since to admit that “morale-building nonsense” was the real purpose behind the empty rhetoric would be a concession that it was a diversionary gesture, and there is no reason to Bush and Co. to confess it–I’m not sure what, short of such a confession, would seem to you satisfying proof. I thought that unanimous agreement here might bolster my case, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, though I still feel that defense of Bush on these grounds is mostly defensive refusals to concede that which is not “provable.”
[/QUOTE]

But anytime a country goes to war, the leader of that country is going to engage in at least some “moral building”. The question here is whether it is comparable to the “moral building” that went on in Nazi Germany prior to WWII. Seem like it’s nowhere in that league to me, and you haven’t attempted to offer any evidence that it was.

As for this being “the smaller stuff”, well, it’s actually supposed to the heart of this debate. Here’s a suggestion: Quit trying to get the pro-war side to renounce their position as a prerequisite for debate, and see if you can get us anti-war folks to buy into your thesis. It’s way past the time that the folks on the pro-war side are going to change their minds. Otherwise, all you’re going to do is end up debating the justification for the war-- something we’ve done dozens of times already.

[Whack-a-Mole]

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Even assuming your cite is 100% correct, even it refers to them as “false statements” not “lies”—even in the very portion you quoted. You guys crack me up.

Little Billy: “Mom, I got my math test back. I got a 97! I only got 3 wrong.”

Mom: “Billy, we told you that lying is wrong. So why did you lie 3 times on your test? Now go to your room young man.”
[/QUOTE]

What kind of nitpicky smokescreen is this? You want to quibble over the differences between the definition of a “lie” and a “false statement”? Is that in any way meaningful?

Again, “As the courts have consistently held, ‘A false pretense may consist in any act, word, or symbol calculated and intended to deceive. It may be made either expressly, or by implication.’” It is crystal clear that is precisely what they were doing (intent to deceive).

If you want to claim that somehow Bush & Co. believed what they were saying to be true at that time then you can easily level the charge of criminal negligence at them. There is ample proof that at the time they made their statements evidence existed to show they were false or gross misrepresentations of what they knew (or should have known) to be true. And not hidden or obscure evidence either. One example (of many):

On August 26, 2002, in an address to the national convention of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, Cheney flatly declared: “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” In fact, former CIA Director George Tenet later recalled, Cheney’s assertions went well beyond his agency’s assessments at the time. Another CIA official, referring to the same speech, told journalist Ron Suskind, "Our reaction was, ‘Where is he getting this stuff from?’ "

SOURCE: http://projects.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/

[Voyager]

[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
No, what I am saying is if one is in in the position of having to decide whether or not to go to war, to continually delay taking action pending verification of every bit of the thousands of pieces of intelligence coming in would result in such a log jam that the final decision could never be made.

As I said upthread, there were many, many considerations to take into account in deciding whether or not to oust Hussein. In a sense, the decision to go to war is like a rendering a courtroom verdict; if the overwhelming evidence suggests guilt, it overrides this or that odd piece of evidence to the contrary that may or may not prove valid. In the case of Hussein’s Iraq, the overwhelming evidence dictated that military action was necessary.

Neither Bush nor any other president, when faced with the decision of whether or not to go to war, is going to sit in the Oval Office frantically sifting through the thousands of pieces of intelligence pouring in daily and continually holding off giving the order until each and every one is verified.

I’m sure what it all boiled down to in Bush’s eyes is what I said upthread: Hussein simply presented too much of a threat (a threat, ironically, that Hussein himself worked to perpetuate) and he had to go.
[/QUOTE]

No President sifts through thousands of bits of information. They get briefings that should have a summary of both sides of the argument - a fair summary. One possibility is that Rummy or Cheney filtered out the causes for doubt in the summaries which Bush saw. Remember how when there wasn’t adequate evidence of WMDs Bush, instead of questioning whether this meant there might not be any instead demanded that evidence be found? Maybe you’ve never dealt with an exec who wanted to hear only stuff supporting their preconceived ideas. I have, and you quickly learn how to filter information.

There was plenty of reason for an intelligent and inquisitive president to ask questions about why the UN inspectors weren’t finding anything. An incurious president, the kind whose reaction to a briefing about a threat to the country being to go off to cut brush, wouldn’t.

You say that overwhelming evidence dictated that military action was necessary. What is this evidence again, and was there evidence showing it was unreliable? I agree that in Bush’s eyes Saddam was a threat, but that was a preconceived notion, supported by Rummy and Cheney, was was not based on evidence but rather distorted how he viewed the evidence.

[jshore]

[QUOTE=magellan01]
Even assuming your cite is 100% correct, even it refers to them as “false statements” not “lies”—even in the very portion you quoted. You guys crack me up.
[/QUOTE]

So, you are saying that Bush and Co. actually believed that there was a significant danger of Saddam’s WMDs getting into the hands of terrorists but it never occurred to them to make significant efforts (or, as near as we can tell, really any efforts) to try to prevent this from happening during the invasion? You guys crack me up!

[Fuji]

[QUOTE=pseudotriton ruber ruber]
To which I could have re-posted my invitation–you know, “You and me. Great debates.” Too bad.

And I’ll concede how surprised I am that this issue is in such hot contention as this thread demonstrates. I would have thought that the tighty-righty position by now would be, “Okay, he lied and caused ONE little six-year war over the issues you claim, PRR, but that could have happened to anyone” but you’re right that there are actually sentient beings disputing my thesis here, so in that large sense, I think you win this debate.

On the smaller stuff, I will contend that all the jingoism, all the fear-mongering, all the “bring it on” stuff (that Bush himself concedes now was a mistake, btw) was pure posturing that could only have had “morale-building” at its aim. I don’t know quite how to quantify or demonstrate that, since to admit that “morale-building nonsense” was the real purpose behind the empty rhetoric would be a concession that it was a diversionary gesture, and there is no reason to Bush and Co. to confess it–I’m not sure what, short of such a confession, would seem to you satisfying proof. I thought that unanimous agreement here might bolster my case, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, though I still feel that defense of Bush on these grounds is mostly defensive refusals to concede that which is not “provable.”

But maybe it is provable and I just don’t have the right evidence handy. For now, though, you’ve persuaded me that this is at least a far more hotly contested issue than I would have thought, and that was my main contention.
[/QUOTE]

Fair enough, man. I would never undertake a defense of the whole sorry Iraq debacle, and I’ve gone on record here as saying that I’d have no problem with someone putting forth the argument that Dubya is the worst POTUS in history. I just have a problem with the whole “Bush = Hitler” thing, and I’m glad to see that you’ve backed down somewhat from the claim you initially put forward in the Pit thread.

[Whack-a-Mole]

To the notion that Bush wanted to go to war to provide a morale boost I am just not seeing it.

Nothing in Bush’s demeanor suggests he cares one whit for the American public. Sure he pays lip service to it like any politician and if a morale boost had occurred I am sure he would have been happy for it for the boost it would grant him. But as an actual motivation to go to war? No way.

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

[QUOTE=John Mace]
Here’s a suggestion: Quit trying to get the pro-war side to renounce their position as a prerequisite for debate, and see if you can get us anti-war folks to buy into your thesis.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the suggestion. I honestly thought that Bush had fewer defenders than this thread suggests he still has, and I wanted to see how much of this debate we could dispense with, so we could get to the issues actually in contention. As I say above, I’m surprised and disappointed that so much is still eminently debatable.

If we’re talking about whether a lie = a false statement, or if mislead = deceive, we might be stuck in a semantic morass for quite a while.

[Starving_Artist]

[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
To the notion that Bush wanted to go to war to provide a morale boost I am just not seeing it.
[/QUOTE]
Gah! :smack: I knew better than to check in on this thread in the middle of a busy day.

No one is saying Bush wanted to go to war to boost anyone’s morale!

They are saying he and his administration likely put a more positive spin on things in an effort to boost the nation’s morale prior to taking on the war, and that this something that leaders everywhere do in times of conflict.