A distinction without a difference, in this case. W was obliged to find out the truth and easily could have if he had actually wanted to, which he didn’t.
Does your amplifier go to 11?
There’s nothing secret about it. Woodward has been a fan of George Bush for years. He’s written extensively about the Bush administration. He’s close to many of the people in that administration and he relies on that closeness for special insider access.
So now Woodward is trying to peddle the idea that George Bush told his people not to rely to much on the weapons of mass destruction evidence. Does Woodward provide any evidence to corroborate this assertion? Not in the links you’ve provided, no.
How does Woodward explain George Bush’s caution when his administration was out talking about smoking guns that might turn into mushroom clouds? Colin Powell’s speech to the UN - what was that, in Woodward’s retelling? Just some over zealous underling?
Let’s look at the actual things George Bush said in public about weapons of mass destruction. Here’s a quote from the Washington Post’s Fact Checker column that quotes a speech by George on October 7th, 2002.
Of course, it’s all bullshit. The Fact Checker article goes on to dismiss the exact claims by George before the war and how none of them panned out. It also covers how George himself tried to spin later in another display of errant lying. Funny how George’s supposed misgivings about the WMD evidence is nowhere to be found here while he’s trying to gin up support for his war in public.
I think Woodward was played by the Bush admin, just like Judy Miller. I think Woodward is pushing this story now because he doesn’t want to admit that he was taken for a ride. I also think Woodward will do anything for “access” to powerful people. Powerful rich people.
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Woodward gets trotted out when the Bush family is trying to sell the idea that anyone might have made the same mistakes that George made.
It’s a lie. It’s rotten, like everything the Bushes touch. George lied then, and he and the organized crime family to which he belongs, is lying now in order to get the next one into position. Woodward has been carrying water for the Bush family for years. This is just more of the same from him.
I believe that he lied, but in the worst way possible-he lied to himself. He wanted to believe what was expedient, and he allowed himself to believe what wasn’t possible and what was against the available evidence. I can’t believe he was as stupid as he made himself appear to be in public, so if he was a dupe he was a deliberate dupe-he just passed the lies along willingly without glancing at them.
I think Bush lied about his own motivations for going to war with Iraq. Incidentally, this opinion puts me in the same camp as none other than Bill O’Reilly, who suggests that Bush et al. wanted a strong US ally in the region, and Iraq seemed like a easy target. Having thus made the decision to invade Iraq, Bush then sold it as a necessary war to protect Americans, and later as a war to liberate the Iraqi people. I think he may have ultimately convinced himself of the latter, but I don’t think he ever really truly believed the former.
I don’t know what Bob Woodward investigated or what angles he explored, but Bush’s defense has always been that he believed his own bullshit. Barring some declassified document written in his own hand, or a deathbed confession, where he admits that he was never really concerned about WMDs, or that he knew most of the intelligence he was passing on to the public was bullshit, I don’t see how we’d ever be able to prove that he lied. But given the scope of the error that was the Iraq war, Bush was either a reasonably smart liar who made a bunch of bad calls, or the stupidest person on the planet who made every bad call possible. Occams razor tells me its the former, because nobody is that stupid.
Assuming you voted for him, you ether voted for a liar or the stupidest person on the planet. I’m not sure why people are so quick to jettison the first option.
We all know Bush didn’t lie.
It was Cheney!!
That’s not right. Saying he lied is not like saying he’s dumb or evil or gullible or whatever else uses a broad brush. Saying someone “lied” is a specific accusation. It either needs to be substantiated or withdrawn. It appears you’re trying to have it both ways. You want the stink of him being a liar to stick to him, but without being able to substantiate the specific claim. If “he lied” is true, you need to be able to point to the actual lie. Without that it’s just lazy ad hominem throwing. You might as well call him a poppyhead.
Let’s assume someone, Bush for instance, is really stupid and makes lots of mistakes in his job and in his life. There are any number of ad hominems that you can heap on him without bringing our own credibility into question. But if you call him an embezzler, a thief, a vandal, a rapist, a diddler of little boys, a wife beater, etc., without being able to substantiate the accusation, then you’re the one with the moral failing. “Liar” is just like that.
Oh, it was easy? Says you? Oh, okay. :dubious:
There is no specific accusation in “Bush lied to get us into war”. You can refute specific claims that he lied if you like, but you aren’t going to be able to show that he never lied. So you’re just flat out wrong.
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You’re depending here too much on your 20-20 hindsight.
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Intelligence is almost always imperfect.
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Look at the vide I cited in the last link I provided.
Actually, I’ve I’ve stated numerous times on this board, I did not vote for him either time. I was incensed he got the nomination. I like Bush the Elder, but have no use for the other two. If Jeb is the nominee this time around, I won’t be voting for him either.
I think you, too, should watch the video in the last link of my OP.
If you’ll look back on the contemporaneous reporting, and even this very board, you’ll find no end of people screaming about the falsehoods the pending war was being predicated on - with foresight. :dubious: You do know that, don’t you?
Especially if you manufacture it, interpret it to fit a predetermined conclusion, and dismiss if it doesn’t fit what you want to say. Which is what happened in this case, as you also know.
How about just listing the few key points you’re claiming Woodward made, and the basis on which he made them? Or, if in fact he presents nothing new other than his name, just say that. You need to make your own case here.
This thread isn’t about Cheney’s and his staff’s, including Bush’s, lying us into a ruinous and murderous war of aggression, not really. It’s about the failure of some people to face up to the way and the extent to which they got fooled by those lies, and the fact that so many others never were.
You’ll need a corset if you want to use such narrow tailoring.
The whole thing about the WMDs is that most people were, I think, willing to believe that SH had some bad shit hidden somewhere. It wouldn’t have been too hard for him to do if he wanted to. But that’s only a part of the story. The other two parts that “stretch credulity” are 1) that SH had ties to al-Qaeda; and 2) the WMDs were any threat to the US. For me, it was those two issues that I was concerned about-- not whether WMDs existed or not, since that was something very difficult to ascertain.
Let’s say I am called as a witness in a trial about a man who robbed a bank. As it happened, last year I was on the street when I saw someone who was 5’3", 250 lbs, with bright red hair run out of Wells Fargo carrying a bag with a dollar sign on it.
So I’m called to testify about what I saw. The defendant matches the description perfectly, and when asked by the prosecutor, I say, “That’s him! That’s the man I saw.”
Then the defense attorney comes up and says, “But aren’t you aware that my client as a twin brother? And that at the time of the crime, my client was undergoing extensive DNA analysis that conclusively proves that he was at the Georgetown University Medical Center, 10 miles from the bank, at the exact moment you said you saw him downtown?”
Clearly, my testimony was incorrect. Would you say I have committed perjury?
If you repeated my statement to the prosecutor 1,000 times while posting on a message board – “That’s him! That’s the man I saw.” – would the number of times it is repeated then make me guilty of perjury?
Identical twin? If so, who can we be certain which one was undergoing DNA analysis? 
Had you, prior to your testimony, rejected any information that would have subverted what you wanted to believe, and failed to question the information manufactured by your staff that supported it?
It’s certainly possible to lie to one’s own self. It actually makes it easier to go on to lie to other people.
I wonder how reliable Woodward’s sources were.
Does that sound like Bush? Skeptical? Cautious about the existence of WMDs? My guess is that there was a bit of revisionist history being sold to Woodward.
We all remember Bush talking about smoking guns in the form of a mushroom cloud, how he tried to mention Saddam and 9/11 in the same sentence without coming out and saying he was involved, but surely trying to get us to infer the same. Even if we generously assume that Bush had doubts in private meetings, when he made public statements he made every effort to give us the impression that he harbored no doubts at all. He very clearly said that Iraq was a clear and present danger to the US. That was a lie, even if he believed it.
It certainly doesn’t jibe with any other reporting, or anything Bush or Cheney or anyone else in the administration said at the time. Cheney set up his own intelligence organization to tell him what he wanted to hear, if you’ll recall, since the CIA wouldn’t.
Are we going to continue responding to questions with other questions? Is your definition of perjury and lying broad enough to include “If I think a reasonable person SHOULD have come to another conclusion, but you didn’t, you have lied or committed perjury?”