“Mistakes were made.”
As close to a confession signed in blood as you get in D.C.
It was a nationally televised address to the nation.
<Some snips>
Carter? Ford?
And given the historical evidence, I’d rather have a President who lies about his bedroom antics than one who lies to get people killed.
I honestly don’t understand how the Uranium clause is a lie.
-Bush doesn’ write his own speeches (which doesn’t mean he’s not repsonsible for what’s in them)
-The CIA vetted it as it was for accuracy.
-The statement is consistent with the just declassified intelligence documents giving the intelligence agencies stance on the issue (with the exception of a footnote in the intelligence brief that the President would not see, according to Novak)
-It is not that the allegation was false, it is that one of the documents used to support is forged.
-British intelligence still maintains that the allegation is absolutely true
-The State of the Union address is a political speech not a scientific report. One would expect the President to present viewpoints and argments that support his conclusions, as Presidents have done in every other State of the Union address.
-There is little evidence to support the contention that the President was aware the statement was in doubt when he issued it, so therefore bad faith can not be demonstrated.
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, the statement is being pronounced a bald lie by some of Bush’s detractors.
My read on this, is that they are simply taking a ball and running with it, trying to create a scandal. More importantly, their standard upon which they base the allegation that Bush lied, does not live up to the same standard that Bush followed when he made the statement.
If they wish to impose the standard of incontravertability into every utterance, then those who say Bush lied are also liars by their very own standard since it is not an incontravertible fact that he did.
Scylla:
Well, to begin with, it appears to be a factually untrue statement. Okay, technically, it is “true,” because it refers to a British report as its basis. It just so happens that US intelligence doubts the veracity of the British report. More importantly, the White House had been made aware of those doubts months before the statement was made. By the time it was included in the SOTU, practically everyone involved in writing and vetting the speech must have known that the claim was poorly supported by evidence and disputed by numerous sources. It was nevertheless presented as a cause for war in a sort of unproblematic sense.
Taking your points in order:
– Whether or not Bush actually wrote the speech himself isn’t relevant; you point out yourself that he is personally responsible for its contents, as is in fact the office of the President.
– There is at the moment considerable lack of clarity concerning the CIA’s “vetting” of the speech. According to Tenet, and in particular Foley – testifying before a Senate committee – the allegation was reluctantly approved by the CIA after the specifics were removed and the phrase “according to British intelligence” was inserted. Foley informed the speechwriters that the CIA had considerable doubts as to the accuracy of the intelligence on which it was based. Those doubts were ignored. An unnamed White House official, on the other hand, gives a contradictory version of events, saying that the “British intelligence” phrase was inserted merely to make the accusation appear more well-supported, stylistically.
– The information is not consistent with the NIE, really, and you point out yourself that there was footnote (specifically from State’s own intelligence division) that clearly expressed doubts over the allegation. (The Energy Department, if I understand correctly, also expressed doubts.) By the way, Bush could and should have read that footnote; a “senior White House official” (see above) said he failed to do so, stating, “the president is not a fact-checker.” The info was nevertheless available to Bush in black and white. In point of fact, while the allegation itself was included in the body of the report, it was not included in the summary, indicating that it was not considered to be particularly relevant to conclusion of the NIE.
Your next argument is rather unbelievable:
On the contrary: the documents in question were known by at least some members of the administration to be forgeries before the speech was given. If I know a given document is false, but pass it off as true, how in hell am I not lying?
Of course, the President is supposed to argue his case; but there is a difference between arguing ones case on the basis of factual information, on the one hand, and presenting unconfirmed or disputed information as fact, on the other. Surely you see this difference. While not a scientific report, the information presented in the SOTU should nevertheless be true, especially when making such grave accusations on the eve of launching an unprovoked war of aggression against another state.
There is, on the other hand, plenty of evidence to suggest that the information was readily available to him, should he have chosen to simply read up a bit. You are actually using “The president is ignorant” as a defense. I mean seriously; numerous members of the administration as well as the CIA were aware that the “statements were in doubt,” and it says as much in the friggin’ NIE; and besides, it’s the president’s GODDAMN JOB to know these things. That’s why y’all elected him, no?
Well, at the very least, people are beginning to ask critical questions. Howard Dean has a list of 16 very good questions on his website, for example, regarding the apparent contradictions in the story as presented by the Bush administration. And from my perspective it looks very much like Bush willfully bent the truth in the SOTU to argue for war. Either that or he’s just real stupid, which ain’t much better.
Right.
My point is that there seems to be a lot of evidence that a number of statements – not just the one about the uranium purchases, by the way – in the SOTU were misleading, if not downright false. There should be an investigation of how such falsehoods found their way into the SOTU and to what extent the president was aware that they were false.
There might be a case for Bush simply being mislead, but I seriously doubt it. After all, even I knew that some of his claims were misleading when he delivered the speech (specifically the part concerning the aluminum tubes); and if I knew it, how could Bush not know it?
Hell, y’all were ready to go to war with Iraq on significantly more inconclusive evidence than what we have regarding this issue, and now you balk?
It’s another “not-lie.”
Big difference between a not-lie and a lie.
Big difference betweena not-lie and the truth.