http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39500-2003Aug9.html
Actually the question is more, does anyone care to argue that his staff has not?
My apologies if the article has been posted before, I didn’t see it on any of the recent threads.
He either lied, or he was clueless enough to be misinformed. Neither choice is a good one.
Furthermore, his refusal to take responsibility for those “misstatements” and repeated attempts to pass the blame onto others shows a lack of character.
Instead of opening a new thread, you might want to join one of the many ongoing discussions on this topic. For example, december opened this thread.
And welcome to SDMB!
Umm Age Quod Agis, I guess you didn’t notice the (current) in this thread’s title. He’s obviously already looked at december’s latest BS rhetoric (which is now locked BTW).
Purposely selected dubious information and disregarding majority expert opinion because you’ve already decided what’s “right” is no different from lying in my book. Maybe some have a more generous definition. Whether is was done out of righteous zeal or cold pragmatism matters not.
In a word: yes.
In two words: yes. Yes.
Hhhmmm… do Puppets technically lie ?
Does Bush understand enough about international relations, world economics or terrorism to say something he THINKS about the subjects ?
So I dont even think he knows what he is lying/exagarating about... but his staff do thou.I apologize. I guess I was duped by december’s reference to “the President,” too. However, I remain steadfastly convinced that topic this has been debated numerous times in numerous threads.
Carry on.
While it’s true that this has been (and is being) debated extensively in other threads, I shall sum up my position thusly: It is immaterial whether the Bush Administration’s chronic and ongoing dissemination of patently false information is due to deliberate and knowing deception specifically in contravention of what they knew to be the facts, or self-deception and a delusional apprehension of the world based on ideological fantasy. Either way, they aren’t qualified to hold office.
Its been debated to death in several threads, though I’m much to lazy to do a search atm.
From Cervaise
I’ll agree that Bush should be gone, and its my fervent hope that he is come next election. I doubt we’ll get much better matterial, looking at the various democratice contenders though…however they certainly can’t do worse.
As for the OP: Did he/they lie? IMO, no, he/they didn’t. Having seen it debated endlessly, having read all the cites, I’m unconvinced that either he or the administration ‘lied’. To me, many people making this statement are doing it from obviously partazan thinking and for partasan reasons. However, just because he/they didn’t lie, doesn’t preclude the fact that he/they were frigging WRONG!! He/They were wrong, and it should cost him/them dearly. I HOPE it costs him dearly, and I hope we get someone else in the officer that is at least marginally better.
But then, hope springs eternal and its not looking good for the home team atm. I really thought that Bush II wouldn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of getting re-elected, but I’m starting to worry a bit…
-XT
What December did in the linked post was awesome. The liberal posters really put their respective feet in their mouths, and then cried foul when the ruse was figured out. Then, they get mad at December for factually quoting a true published source, the source of his post. Classic.
What december did really might have made some people look like partisan mouthpieces, but he did it by framing his statements in a way that deliberately misled people. You know, like President Bush!
To address the OP, Did GWB lie? Yes and No. I do think that George, as many had before him, was absolutely certain that Saddam possessed lots of WMDs, and firmly believed that he was a threat to our national security. In that regard, he did not lie.
When it comes down to the evidence though, that’s another matter. When he made the case for war he started from the conclusion and picked evidence to support it, ignoring all the contrary evidence completely. No, that’s too kind. His administration ignored some of the contrary evidence, and did its best to discredit the rest whenever it appeared in public. It’s rather like Alice’s Red Queen : “Sentence first, then the verdict!”
I do not believe the Bush administration lied. However -
I think this position is problematic, mostly for the reasons that Chicago Faucet described.
What december did in his now locked thread was to point out that Bush and Clinton expressd identical opinions on Iraqi and WMD. This went so far that no one could tell from reading a statement on the subject whether it had come from Bush or Clinton - which was exactly december’s point. Both Bush and Clinton had access to the same intelligence sources, both came to the same conclusions, both even took military action against Iraq based on those conclusions - although to much different degrees and with very different motivations.
Which was why I found it so amusing to see the usual knees jerking so reflexively in december’s thread, and how quickly the thread ended without being able to debate the obvious implications of what had been shown.
If you are willing to condemn a President for lying about Iraq, it cannot make any difference what political party the President belongs to. If the lefties on the SDMB are willing to say that “the President was lying” when he made a statement about Iraq and WMD, then the fact that the President is Clinton instead of Bush should make no difference to an honest analyst.
To say that the statement “Iraq has WMD” is a lie if it comes from Bush but not if it comes from Clinton is simply partisan hypocrisy.
And I do not see how it helps to say that Bush launched an invasion and Clinton did not. Clinton launched missiles, and killed Iraqis, and did so (it seems obvious) in order to forestall impeachment. And the Clinton attack did nothing to force Saddam Hussein to comply with the inspection regime.
A lie is a lie. If Clinton killed a few people and lied about it and Bush killed more and lied about it, the lie is the same in both cases. And if the Clinton killings achieved essentially nothing, at least the Bush killings brought about the downfall of an obnoxious regime. And established once and for all that Saddam would never use the centrifuges and nuclear plans he had buried to develop weapons to blackmail the world, as Kim Jung-Il is doing.
What is the principle being defended here? That it is OK to lie about Iraqi WMD and kill a few people (if you are a Democrat) but not OK to lie about Iraqi WMD and kill a few more (if you are a Republican)?
If Bush lied, Clinton lied, and people died. Both times.
I prefer a different principle. Both Bush and Clinton believed in all honesty that Iraq had or were attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction. Clinton used this as an opportunity to further a personal, political agenda, namely not getting impeached, and failed. Bush, fueled largely by the immediacy of world terrorism brought home by 9/11, decided that enough was enough, and invaded Iraq to eliminate one of the threats posed by the “axis of evil”. And succeeded.
So the lefties are caught in a cruel dilemma. If they want me to believe that Bush lied about Iraq’s WMD, then I am forced to conclude that they want me to catch Clinton in yet another lie as well.
And this one has nothing to do with blowjobs.
Regards,
Shodan
So its ok to lie if its a Bi-Partisan effort ? Is that your conclusion ? So that if Bush gets a blowjob and lies about it, its ok too ?
Clinton was no angel… and Saddam did have a WMD program that apparently didnt survive or barely survived a decade of sanctions. The issue left still are many:
- Iraq and Terrorists (No proved Connections)
- WMDs (No real IMMEDIATE threat so no hurry)
- Al Qaeda should be the priority… not fueling more terrorism.
Actually no. There is about a 4 year difference in between the two people’s attack on Iraq. So Clinton could have been telling the truth while Bush lied. The thing is they were using the same intelligence, but in Bush’s case that makes that intelligence old.
Strange I don’t remember a war started by the Clinton Admin on the basis that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the US and her allies.
30 days delay wasn’t even accepted because the threat was that strong IIRC.
Should I go to the doctor about this or could it be that it didn’t happen?
Welcome to post hoc justification world, yojimbo.
Actually I see a very important differnce between what ush did and what clinton did. Clinton was working from 1997-1998 intel, Bush 2002-2003. I don’t know what conclusions are resonable from the first, but the second has been shot to hell.
What I found interesting about this article is that it was a very comprehensive accounting of pretty much the entire admin case on Iraq’s nuclear program. I’ve seen the bits and pieces elsewere, but the Post has a higher standard than the average blog and seeing that they could source out a 7 month campaign struck me as shocking.
P.S. whats up with the server?
Do you remember the missile attacks? Military action against Iraq under Clinton was based (allegedly) on the belief that Iraq had, or was developing, WMD. It was different from the invasion in degree, but not in kind.
Clinton claimed the evidence was strong enough to kill Iraqis over, and so he did. Bush claimed the evidence was strong enough to kill Iraqis over, and so he did.
Which, if any, were lying? Or, as I mentioned earlier, is the principle that it is OK to kill a few Iraqis over a lie, but not more? If so, what figure do you believe is reasonable, and how did you arrive at it?
What evidence does the board believe is available to Bush that was not available to Clinton? If you are talking about the Nigerian uranium report, I don’t believe a new piece of false intelligence would be sufficient to disprove previous, reasonable intelligence conclusions. If you are claiming that that Bush must have known because time has passed, you are assuming facts not in evidence.
The only reason we know that Saddam did not have live nukes, for instance, is because we invaded. If Bush had done no more than Clinton did (fire some missiles at Iraq and go on to something else), we would be in the same position we were in 1998 - relatively sure that Iraq had, or was trying to develop, WMD, and entirely sure that Saddam had no intention of abiding by any inspection regime sufficient to establish that he had disarmed.
And we would not know that Saddam had nuclear centrifuges, plans and blueprints for building nukes, mobile labs that could be used to create bio-weapons, etc.
So what, specifically, did we know, after 1998 but pre-invasion, that should have demonstrated that Saddam did not have WMD? If we are willing to assume that Clinton was not deliberately lying, what has happened in the interim that means we cannot assume Bush was also telling the truth as far as he knew it?
Regards,
Shodan
Telcontar,
The server is always like this.
Colin Powell sure came across as a prick in that piece.
To me personally, this whole thing stinks. It really looks like a well orchestrated propaganda campain.: from name-calling through false connection to fear and all the little methods inbetween. Don’t forget the pentagon tried to start a propaganda office in 2002(Office of Strategic Information) cite. Which is gone, but Rumsfeld has stated that everything it was to do is being done. DoD Transcript, his remarks on this contain the words “Henny Penny.”
Collection of urls about this: here.
Nice Definition of propaganda here.
Anyway, The President (and I do mean Bush), probably believed there were Weapons of Mass Destruction, programs to build more, etc., not that he had any concrete proof, but beliefs do not require proof. Do you say someone is a liar if he says that the Godess Gaia guides us?