A point with which I completely agree.
Assuming “criminally” is meant as hyperbole for “really, really, REALLY” and not that Rumsfeld factually committed any violations of law.
Please. None of that is hearsay; it’s not offered for the truth of the matter asserted.
That’s certainly possible. But that goes to what weight you assign them. It’s not a foregone conclusion.
No.
It was known then that they weren’t true. That’s the point. Bush had our intel agencies telling him that the claims of Iraqi exiles were false. He knew, while he was making the statements, that they were not true.
Okay… so Intel analysts say “Mr. Bush, this whole yellowcake thing? Totally untrue.” We have Czech intel services saying “The meeting in Prague? Never happened.” So what does Bush do, having been told that? Goes and claims that they’re true.
It’s not ‘silly’ to call a spade a spade. And at this point we’d have to conclude that he’s too stupid to tie his shoes let alone run the country if he was honestly confused.
Because it’s the truth.
Not at all. He has intel agencies telling him that there was no yellowcake, that the aluminum tubes weren’t suitable for neuclear purposes, etc… When he gets this information, he goes and says the exact opposite. We’d need to postulate that he’s beyond a drooling moron for this to be an honest mistake.
Isn’t that ironic? That the only way to defend Bush is to claim that he’s so incompetent that he shouldn’t be president? Isn’t it even more ironic that this fact seems lost on many Bush apologists?
Naw, that factors into Bush’s presidency, but does not directly go to proving that he lied. The other facts, however, do.
I only addressed that one specifically… don’t worry I’m not rooting for anyone…
I think there is more common ground than what you say… but I agree that there tends to be a division that seems insurmountable.
bordelond, with all due respect, we’d really be going in a whole other direction now with your tangent. It’s a valid epistemological debate, but it’s best saved for another thread.
If you have any specific questions on the veracity of the information we have collected about the march to war, I’ll be happy to address those.
No, there are other defenses of Bush – though they are highly Machiavellian, to put it charitably. One would be that lying is justified/necessary to facilitate employment of Agenda X for some greater good.
Again, it comes down to what is valued and what is not. Different people assign different priorities to different things (in this case, being truthful versus the merits of neocon agenda).
Regrettably … that division is all I can see when I visit Great Debates. It’s a great place for catching up on current events, though.
Again, Bricker, I have to ask, and I mean this seriously: At what point do we get to draw conclusions? Do we, the public, even get to draw conclusions? Must we keep our minds open unless and until there is an impeachment trial? If the Republican Congress chooses never to impeach a Republican president (a considerable likelihood), do we all have to continue to give him the benefit of the doubt?
And, yes, the argument that the problem was incompetence is stronger than plain dishonesty. But I truly think what we have here is a combination of the two, operating in various proportions at different stages. In any case, if Bush’s opponents agree to dispense with the dishonesty argument, will his supporters stipulate incompetence?
Bricker, that really is all you’ve got to show us?
Max, we are “ignoring” nothing. The War On Ignorance is fought one battle at a time, one opponent at a time, one topic at a time. This is the one before us at the moment, no more - and because it’s the worst example, conservatively thousands of people being dead and tens of thousands more being maimed for life as a result of it.
I agree with Bricker; we currently lack iron-clad ”proof” that Bush lied to garner public support for the invasion. I’m not sure myself what such proof would look like; probably, it would take the form of testimonial contradictions during the course of an impeachment trial.
However, we do have very, very strong evidence that Bush lied/ wilfully mislead the American public prior to the war. Just a very short and incomplete list:
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The employment of the OSP to stovepipe previously discredited intelligence directly into the White House;
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The infamous “yellowcake” statement in the SOU – intentionally included after specifically being stricken by Tenet from a previous speech;
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Assertions that Iraq was “six months away” from building a nuclear weapon, a claim based on a non-existent report;
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Documented rhetorical exaggerations of the evidence, including the wholesale removal of caveats or assertions of uncertainty in the relevant intelligence reports;
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Claims of total certainty prior to the war exchanged for assertions that intelligence is by its very nature a “murky” business, after the invasion;
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Statements that there existed a clear, documented relationship between al-Qaida and Hussein’s regime;
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Assertions that the “aluminium tubes” were intended for use as enrichment centrifuges, in complete contradiction to the conclusions of the overwhelming (read: total) majority of the government’s own experts on these devices;
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The State Department’s pre-war assessments that containment was working, and that the sanctions had effectively curtailed Saddam’s “WMD” programs;
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The Downing Street memos;
And, of course, finally:
- No WMDs, despite administration assurances there could “be no doubt” Iraq possessed them.
Against this mountain evidence we have very little evidence that he did not lie, as far as I can see. We have Bush’s own testimony, and the testimony of his allies in the administration; but as Bricker himself notes, this evidence carries about the same weight as the testimony of a man caught red-handed in the course of a theft.
So, while we may not have complete proof, it seems to me that we have very strong evidence of guilt here. I’d like to ask Bricker to assess the evidence I’ve presented above, to provide convincing counter-evidence (beyond mere testimonials) that support the view that Bush told the truth, and to explain to me what standard of evidence he feels would be necessary to assert, with a strong level of confidence, that Bush actually did lie to start this war.
In other words: what would I need to do to convince you?
No specific questions at all. But I do think my “tangent” is central to the current debate. Disagreement about what constitutes truth, fact, and value seems to be what keeps most all debate here in GD from generating any light.
If one is absolutely certain one is correct, then any opposing argument is futile. Debate can only win over an unconvinced mind.
Because people here are better informed, less willing to be sheep, and for the most part work to be honest and will not stop holding those people accountable that persist in lying.
Or it’s the far right’s delusion that this is some liberal hate blog.
:rolleyes:
And what of the Machiavellians who are not ignorant, but rather do not care about what you may value, so long as their agenda (for the greater good, in their mind) is advanced? How are they to be convinced of “the truth”?
I got up to get a snack, and the topic go on to another page. Well, that is what you get for not being on the computer 24/7. 
I planned to put a clarification of my last post here, (business=evil) but I do not want to distract from people who want to pin down bricker’s definition of evidence. Thus, I will post my remarks later.
Whenever I peruse the boards here and anything political comes up I always get the impression that the “liberals” are shrill and the “conservatives” are whiny (that is, after my chest gets tight and I think “oh no, not again”). Does it really matter how the board skews? I mean, if 95% of posters are liberal or Democrats (which, to be fair, are not necessarily interchangable terms), last I looked the red states outnumbered the blue.
People are not looking for “fair” and “balanced.” It seems to me that people only cry for such a thing when their voice is being heard. If the liberal voice was the one crying to be heard, would most conservatives say to themselves, “Man, we need some more liberals here. It seems awful one-sided.” Or would they congratulate themselves on a job well done, being on a board with such thoughtful considerate people?
Why are all the conservative posters leaving because they are in the minority? The board would not be leaning left of they stuck it out. Isn’t this creating a self-fulfilling prophesy? Isn’t it in the best interests of the board for them to stay? It seems to me that you are saying since there are not more people that believe what you say that the boards, and the posters themselves, are not honest nor fair. That is disingenuous at best.
As a decidely undecided person politics-wise, I see almost nothing from ANY side that would make me want to align myself with them, exclusively. It seems like you are either Democrat/left or Republican/right (there are those libertarian nut-jobs 
). I think I will sit it out with the internationals.
See, Finn – here’s why my tack is not a tangent to the thread.
We have here a clear demonstration that Mr. Svinlesha and Bricker have differing views on “truth” … on what is “convincing”.
If people can’t even agree on that kind of stuff, then any debate is dead before it starts. This leads to birds of a feather flocking together, ad hominem attacks (when fair-game debate proves ineffective), pile-ons, etc.
The you get OPs like … the OP.
Lord, ain’t that the truth. If we were to start allowing peaceful honest people to pursue their own happiness in their own way, God only knows what could happen.
Let’s be clear about the “lie” that started this side discussion:
The claim was that Bush knew Saddam didn’t have WMDs, not that he didn’t know if Saddam had WMDs. Two very different things. Is there any significant evidence that Bush knew no WMDs existed? That seems like quite a stretch to me.
The Al Qaeda connection can probably be shown technically to be correct, although the “link” (via Zarkawi) was so tenuous as to be virtually non-existent. Perhaps it depends on what the defintion of “is” is.
What I suspect is happening is that we are seeing the evolution of a meme on the SDMB.
Bush, as you say, describes Iraq as part of the global war on terror. As he did previously with North Korea and other members of the Axis of Evil. But, in his speech, he makes the distinction among the various groups who form the other side (who I referred to earlier as Islamo-fascists).
But that part - the distinction - doesn’t register with the SDMB - not very well, anyway.
What seems to be happening is that we are evolving a meaning from Bush’s speech that leaves out the parts that nobody likes. And, since contrasting voices are less common on the SDMB, and since the Usual Suspects have so strong an interest in shouting down those voices in favor of the general chant of “BUSHLIED! BUSHLIED!” that seems to form the basis of much political thought, the meaning of Bush’s speech gets shoved pretty hard along the route of what the Usual Suspects want to believe all along. I have no doubt that in six months, or perhaps six minutes , someone will be posting as if Bush’s speech said specifically “We all know that Saddam plotted and carried out the 9/11 attacks”. And getting a chorus of general approval and agreement along the way - and Pitting anyone who dares to dissent.
And that is a loss. There is no practical limit to the nonsense that one can convince oneself of if there is no one to point out how bizarre your thoughts are.
Consider what happened during the last campaign. Here on the SDMB it was like Pauline Kael’s famous line about the Nixon election - “How could he have won? No one I know voted for him.” In much the same way, more than one Doper was convinced that it was going to be a ringing Kerry victory, because they had closed themselves off from any arguments to the contrary. They were convinced they were unassailably, obviously, unarguably correct. They really did think Bush was stupid, that the Swift Boat veterans were clearly proven wrong on every single thing they ever said, that the CBS documents were genuine, and all the rest of it.
And then along came the election, and yanked the rug out from under them. Which I suspect accounts largely for the intense need to cling to rather far-fetched suspicions about election fraud and Karl Rove with such touching faith.
And the determination of many to deny that the Democratic party is doing anything that needs changing. No, darn it - we are right!right!right! And the only possible explanation for losing the election - again - cannot possibly be anything except cheating, or unfair election laws, or racism, or dirty campaigning, or something that doesn’t mean we have to take our opposition and its arguements seriously.
I have heard Mr. Moto and some others trying to make this point, usually better than I could. But it is difficult to convince many here on the boards that an irrelevant Democratic party is not a “best case” scenario for reasonable people, even Republicans. And they tend to interpret any post that does not attack Bush as one that comes from someone who is not reasonable. Pretty much by definition.
Like I said, some topics can’t be discussed on the SDMB, because some Dopers cannot discuss those topics reasonably. Sam Stone classes the war among those topics, and I am coming to think he is right.
I was kind of hoping the latest Supreme Court decision about eminent domain would work the other way. I guess we’ll see.
Regards,
Shodan
This division is seen all over the american political landscape… I don’t think its a SMDB thing per se.