Presidents lying to lead us into War... it should be illegal

Great Debates
41

Of course I disagree.

But since you’re undoubtedly immune to any suggestions that your premises are flawed, let me try a different tactic.

You concede that President Bush won’t be prosecuted because, apart from other flaws you cannot evidently understand, “…our country has a history of backbreaking deference to the executive in times of war.”

For the precise same reason, your proposal can go nowhere. Forget anything except the practical, in other words: as a matter of practicality, we as a nation will never accept hamstringing our President in this way.

42

Yea - you keep on believing that is what the thrust of the Senate report was. You know they lied and I know they lied. Presenting as unassailable truth what in fact was deliberately filtered intelligence is lying.

You know full well, and if you don’t you can check the statements in the two reports, that the White House stated categorically as fact things that were in dispute - and in the case of al-Assaff’s claims regarding mobile biological labs, mentioning him by name when there was a fabrication notice issued by the DIA. See page 25-26 of the phase 2a report.

You and your ilk can do your little word game dances all you like but they lied. Stating something as categorically true, when the intelligence is in dispute or has already been proven to be a fabrication is a LIE.

The two reports list statement after categoric statement that were not in any sense undisputed. Stating something as categorically true when you know it is not categorically true is simply lying.

End of.

43

Read the Downing Street memo about facts being fixed around the policy too. It’s been discussed here enough. But you know that.

44

Its like a leper colony for bad analogies.

LBJ and Tonkin Bay? Didn’t buy it then, don’t buy it now. An attack without casualties? What were they attacking with, Nerf torpedoes? Even if it were true, it would have been like a mastodon savaged by a chihuahua.

As for FDR, it was clear and unmistakable that the Nazi regime was a threat and a menace, having invaded Belgium, Holland, France, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. And Poland, mustn’t forget Poland. And I reject the interpretation that FDR was trying to get us into the European war, by my lights, he was trying to find ways to evade the legal complications of providing material support to a belligerent, while remaining officially neutral.

Who did Saddam invade and/or threaten? Kuwait, once, years previously, and got spanked and sent home.

Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot!

45

It is probably a broad definition of lying, but does it meet the political standard of lying (I ask this seriously, not sarcastically).

Doesn’t EVERY advocate of a position state that what the believe to be true, is in fact true? Don’t they minimize the weaknesses in their positions and enhance their strengths? That’s what I’ve been taught in any advocacy course I’ve ever taken.

These seem to be commonly accepted advocacy tactics and not fairly classified as “lying.” To get to lying, I think you have to assert something that you KNOW is patently false. For example, I do not think Bush saying that Iraq has stockpiles of WMD was a lie, as I think he believed it. Sure, his evidence might not have been as rigid as he claimed, but again, isn’t that mere advocacy?

I’m not a Bush supporter, but I don’t like bad laws. This would be a bad law because it would hinge of the subjective nature of “truth.” It would be difficult to draft a law distinguishing lying from advocacy that would pass the “vague” test.

Besides, can you guys imagine what the Newt/DeLay led Congress would have tried to do to Clinton with such a law? Remember the “Wag the Dog” accusations? (People don’t bring that up as much as they used to. That guy he was targeting turned about to be a real dirtbag, eh?)

Was Clinton going after terrorists or trying to knock Monica off the front page?

Does it matter? Clinton was authorized to fire those missiles. We voted for him and the Const. empowered him.

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Cheney saying that Saddam had ties to 9/11? Well… that’s just a lie. I support any law that would eliminate Cheney. Advocacy or otherwise!
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46

When the issue is as serious as war and the killing of innocent people then yes - lying has to be defined in this way. It is not ‘broad’ it is the commonly understood term. It is the resident shils who play the narrow legal card and treat every debate like it is Argue Like a Nine Year Old Day.

If I came up to you and said, categorically, that an asteroid is going to strike tomorrow and wipe us all out, when in fact I knew only one observatory out of many reporting observatories had come to that conclusion, and even then that single observatory had hedged it with caveats then I would be lying.

It’s a simple word with a simple, commonly understood usage and only gets complicated when the shils are doing their Canute impressions.

47

Your point is well taken. So well taken that it points out quite clearly that a blanket law prohibiting such lying without taking all of these matters into consideration isn’t wise.

Thanks.

48

If the current relative peace holds and the next president is able to withdraw the majority (or all) troops over the next year and a half, does this statement still hold? Even if chaos starts anew after we leave and violence and disarray eventually returns, if it happens after withdrawal, does the political blame for that fall on the next president, leaving Bush’s terms in a positive light? (Ignore for the moment whether the “surge” was actually responsible–politically speaking, it will be given credit in the same way Reagan is credited with the downfall of the Soviet Union.)

49

It’s a shame there are many million dead vietnamese and however many hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi’s whose opinion we can’t ask.

If a leader wants a country to go to war they should lay out the honest facts in all their muddy glory. And if then, and they have the power or authority, they choose to go to war they can stand or fall on their honest opinion. It is never excusable to lie a nation into an aggressive war of choice.

50

Yeah, the thing is… when you supply support to one side of a war, you don’t get to remain “officially neutral.” Even if I were to agree that support for the Brits was all that was on FDR’s mind, the fact is that he procured that support by lies to Congress and the American people. And in executing his plan of providing support, he placed the nation in the position of being a legitimate war target for Germany.

Now, your other point – that Germany was a genuine threat and menace – is absolutely correct.

Nor do I suggest that FDR should have done anything different. We needed to get in that war, and public opinion was steadfastly against it. FDR did what he needed to do, and it was the right thing.

Of course, if he had run the risk of being sent to federal “butt-pounding” prison, he might have just said, “Ah, fuck the Limeys,” and the world would be much worse today.

51

All other arguments aside, with whom are we at war? If we win said war, who will surrender to us or seek a ceasefire? Will that person or persons speak for all with whom we are war?

In the worst case, if we lose said war, to whom will we surrender? With whom will we attempt to negotiate a ceasefire? Instead of fixing blame, we need to fix the problem It is way past the time to simply call the game and come home.

In my view, Bush and the Congress didn’t get us into a war; they got us into a never ending gun fight and there will never be a point where there is a winner and a loser.

52

Even if you believed the one observatory was correct? Why would you try to weaken your position by mentioning the other experts. Public policy is an adversarial pursuit. It is up to the other side of an issue to mention the three hundred observatories who believe that this observatory just needs to clean the lens of its telescope.

I just cannot buy this as the definition of lying. Especially in a legal context. I just don’t see the duty of the advocate to advance an argument that hurts his cause. In fact, I even support the tactic of attempting to minimize the strength of the many other observatories.

Lying is when you know or believe something to be true and say otherwise. I do not think that your defintion, of not making the case for and against your position, is in anyway a commonly accepted definiton.

ETA: I offer these arguments not in defense of Bush, but as broad principles to answer the OP’s hypothetical for future presidents.

53

Dunno. One of our first conflicts was against the Barbary Pirates, commemorated in the lyric “the shores of Tripoli.” I doubt individual pirates that surrendered spoke for all of them.

Well, perhaps. But in reference to my above point, that war was pursued by Jefferson and Madison, and it seems to have ended at some point (that point being 1815 for the Second Barbary War). I think this one will as well - all wars do, for better or worse.

54

There is advocacy and then there is outright deception. It is one thing to focus on the strengths of your arguments and minimize the counterpoints. It is another to misrepresent what you know. This is particularly true when you are doing it to a group (Congress) which you have an obligation to give the unvarnished truth to. So, when Bush & Co. say they know Hussein has mobile labs (as an example) because they have information to that effect you go with it. However, is it still advocacy when the guy who said that was never interviewed by the CIA? Still advocacy when the Germans who were handling him told the CIA the guy was completely unreliable? Advocacy when the Germans found many of his claims provably false? Advocacy when the Germans told the US the guy was actually crazy (yes, they said he was crazy)? In my book that is intentional deception and that equals a lie.

Further, as noted in the book The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder there is a misconception among the public that circumstantial evidence is insufficient to come to a guilty conclusion. As the author notes (and he was a highly successful prosecutor so I would guess he knows what he is talking about on this point) almost all legal cases are built on circumstantial evidence. Rarely is there an overt smoking gun with pictures and video and 20 reliable witnesses and a signed confession. With a preponderance of evidence you can wash away reasonable doubt and easily find someone guilty. In Bush’s case there it more than a preponderance of evidence. Whole books are written on the subject (more than one). Congressional hearings have been conducted on the subject. Piles of news articles from major media and small on this topic. Substantial and well researched and cited web sites exist on the subject. Major western foreign governments/intelligence agencies have evidence and memos regarding the overt push for war regardless of the evidence. If it actually ever did manage to go to court I would think this would be a prosecutor’s wet dream with such abundant evidence.

What the hell more do you need?

55

Let me get back to the OP for a second, because I think it is a very interesting question, aside from the “Did Bush lie” argument we’ve had dozens and dozens of times before.

Let’s say President Obama goes to Congress with satellite photographs of tanks poised on the Canadian border. The CIA judges with high confidence that the tanks are loaded with ammunition and fuel, and troops are ready to march. The CIA judges with moderate confidence that Canada has a hidden plan to seize Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. President Obama goes to the leadership of Congress with the evidence, and the general view of Congress is that the President doesn’t need a war authorization to thwart what appears to be an attack on the US that could begin within hours – there just isn’t time for Congress to properly draft and vote on a resolution of war.

(Note that this scenario is substantially different than Iraq – short time frame, little time to decide, no war authorization, the President presumably isn’t an incompetent – so comparisons to 2003 are a different issue.)

So we bomb the crap out of Canada, and for whatever reason, we learn that the Canadian armed forces were actually planning a surprise parade for their great friends to the south.

Under the OP’s proposal a law that bans lying to Congress to start a war, would the President be subject to criminal charges? Can a President be in error? And does it matter that Congress didn’t approve the war?

56

I understand circumstantial evidence can merit a conviction. (It is not a preponderance of evidence in a criminal trial, however).

Perjury trials (we’ll treat it as such for our hypothetical) are terribly difficult without a “smoking gun”, as you must often prove the defendants state of mind. Libby’s case had a smoking gun in the form of a stark contrast and reliable witnesses with no “angle” to play.

The sources you cite are certainly evidence of the truth behind the claim, however truth is often immaterial in a case such as this. These sources do not reflect Bush’s belief in the veracity of his statements, which is the only issue in a perjury case. There is an incredibly subjective standard.

Defenses could include:

  • Bush believed all his statements were true.
  • Bush applied subjective weight to counter-positions and deemed them immaterial.
  • Bush was unaware of counter evidence because it was kept from him by his staff to preserve plausible deniability.
  • Bush didn’t finish reading his briefing books because he fell asleep watching a Rangers game.
  • Bush is too dumb to understand the counter argument so he skipped that page.

Plus, all it takes is ONE right leaning juror to prevent a conviction. I have no doubt a prosecutor in a liberal district would love this case for the platform, but the case is a loser legally. And it should be. As a civil libertarian (imagine a civil libertarian defending Bush on anything!) I think the burden of proof on a case like this SHOULD be difficult to prove as it is a politically charged area, and I do not believe that people should be prosecuted for carrying out politically unpopular acts.

This is a political issue and should be handled by the American electorate.

My best advice? Vote Obama.

57

I have spent a great deal of time in other threads showing why this prosecution would not be tenable.

And I was a highly successful defense attorney, so I guess I know what I am talking about. :rolleyes:

More to the point: can you find any other serious legal commentator that believes the arguments offered by the author have any reasonable probability of success?

58

Also, let’s suppose Bush wanted a war with Iraq but was afraid of the newly passed “no-lying” law. It would be easy enough for him to have provoked SH into attacking some US target or other in order to trump up support for a war.

A new law isn’t a solution to the problem. The problem can only be fixed by Congress reasserting its constitutional role to declare war. That’s what needs to be done. Bush was given a blank check by Congress, and he cashed it. Shame on Bush for doing this, but shame on Congress for letting him. Checks and balances can’t work when one party is right blank checks.

59

IIRC your arguments have been based on the notion that you cannot prosecute an ex-president for this by virtue of him having been a president. I do not recall you saying the actual reasons, if such a case actually could be brought, were baseless.

Besides, I was merely noting his expertise as a prosecutor in his assertion that circumstantial evidence was fine in a criminal prosecution. If you think that is in error then let us know.

60

But as has been pointed out over and over, there are all sorts of things Congress could do if they wanted to nail George Bush to the wall. Congress clearly has the authority to declare war, they clearly have the authority to approprate money, they clearly have the authority to impeach the President and Vice President and any other cabinet official.

They don’t need new laws to deal with a lying weasel of a president. They have all the authority they need. They just don’t want to exercise that authority.

Let’s put it this way. The purpose of such a law would be to protect the country from a rogue president, yes? Punishment of said rogue president might be one method to do so, but the most important thing is to protect the country, and if that means said rogue president leaves office in disgrace rather than leaves office to go to prison, well, so what?

Bush was re-elected by the voters, even after we all knew he lied us into war with Iraq. We didn’t care, because the war hadn’t gone sour yet at that point. Congress voted to authorize the war because very few congressmembers wanted to be on the wrong side of the issue. They didn’t want to have to explain why they voted against the triumph, like the first Gulf War. Well, it turns out that the war wasn’t a triumph. So the thing to do is vote to end the war and bring home the troops. Except congress won’t do that. And so what next?

The problem with just passing a law making it a crime for the president to lie (to congress, presumably), is who’s going to prosecute? Normally the justice department would prosecute this sort of crime. The trouble is that the Attorney General is appointed by the president, and you’re not going to find many Attorneys General who are going to prosecute their boss. And so Congress would have to authorize a special prosecutor. But if Congress can’t even vote to cut off funding for the war, if Congress can’t even vote to bring the troops home, if Congress can’t vote for impeachment, what good is technicially allowing them to appoint a special prosecutor to indict the president?

Sending the president to jail for being a liar isn’t an end, it’s a means. The end is wise governance. But that requires a legislative branch that is willing to stand up to the rogue president. If the legislature isn’t willing to do so, then the voters need to elect a legislature that will. And if the voters won’t do that, we’ve run out of appeals, because the voters are the ultimate authority in a democracy. If we vote for lying scumbags and cover our ears when we’re told what the lying scumbag is a lying scumbag, then all the checks and balances written into the constitution don’t mean a thing. What ultimately protects us from rogue officials and lying scumbags is the American people’s belief in good government. If everyone from the voters to the congress to the courts to the president is in favor of doing something scumbaggy then scumbaggery we shall have, regardless of what the law says.