If I remember correctly, one of the oh so many “selling points” for the war was that it would be short, decisive and inexpensive (fought on the cheap). It sure hasn’t turned out that way.
True. In the same sense that I would say “the fact that so many hundreds of brave young Americans have died for no clear purpose based on faulty information from an administration that refuses to ever admit its own mistakes is a f***ing crime”, without actually being able to tell you what specific part of the criminal code has been violated.
Except that he also did have parts of our intelligence agencies telling him (incorrectly) that there were WMDs. My point is, if someone has 4 people telling them A and 2 people telling them not-A, and he gets up and say “I am quite sure that A is true”, and then it later turns out that not-A is true, is he a LIAR? And do we know that it was Bush, specifically, as opposed to nefarious aides, speechwriters, handlers, etc., who specifically chose to include particular pieces of information? If 3 people in the administration know that a particular fact is wrong, but they don’t communicate that knowledge well to others, and that “fact” ends up in a Bush speech, is that a LIE?
Ignoring evidence that contradicts what you believe is stupid and shortsighted and illogical, but it’s not lying. Suppressing evidence that contradicts what you believe is stupid, shortsighted, illogical, and a betrayal of logic and reason. Doing the above while you’re president magnifies the importance 1000-fold, and doing it while starting a war magnifies the importance yet again. BUT, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t honestly believe it in the first place, it just means that you’re a blind, willful, arrogant, idiot.
But, given that Bricker is a reasonable enough person that he has admitted that the Bush administration was criminally unprepared for the war, and thus demonstrates that he is willing to use reason and truth in this discussion, mightn’t we be better off discussing other actual issues, rather than going back on forth on what “liar” means?
(Of course, who am I to talk? I’ve spent all this effort typing up a post that’s not just a discussion of whether Bush lied, but a discussion of a DISCUSSION of whether Bush lied 
)
So, what do you think of all the really dire accusations that have been leveled against Bush, for instance, gee, oh, I dunno, he led us into war under false pretenses? Given that you seem to think that both sides are equivalent, you presumably either (a) think that claim is false, (b) think it’s no big deal, or (c) think that liberals have done something equally destructive. Which is it?
A reading from the Book of [del]Croaker[/del] Cecil:
In those days the Company was in service to the eradication of ignorance. Cecil said that it’s impossible to know fact unless all evidence is weighed–or at least most of it. Making a decision without all the facts is as dangerous as making a decision with no facts. Even if it seems a small piece of evidence, it must still be thrown into the pot–only then can a reasonable conslusion be drawn.
And yet, it’s difficult to know when to stop gathering evidence.
Thus we approved by acclamation the Cecilian Paradox: “Keep an open mind.”
Here ends the reading.
Well, quite, and I certainly don’t wish to stifle debate; my point is solely that the mere appearance of bias doesn’t necessarily mean that the bias is indeed present, or if present, unreasonable or unfair.
The above may or may not be applicable in the case of apparent left-leaning bias on the SDMB, but I still say that as a general principle, bias, or the appearance thereof, is not necessarily automatically bad.
You lost me completely…
He made the claim that the situation with Bush is not so simplistic as people claim it is. However, liberals’ view of the situation is incredably simplistic.
“Liberals”, the group, not the person, that is.
Do you have an example of something that happened 6 months ago about which there is now unanimous and wrongheaded consensus among bleating SDMB liberals?
Also, if in six months someone posts that Bush’s speech made NO link whatsoever between Iraq and 9/11, that sure as heck won’t be true.
You’re conflating two things. Most anti-Bush people, including myself, are absolutely positively convinced that Bush is a terrible president, this will go down in history as a disastrous 8 years for America, etc. Being convinced of that and being convinced that we will win an election are two very different things. And losing an election doesn’t in any way prove we’re WRONG, just that our views weren’t shared by a majority.
When was the last time you heard anyone even quasi-seriously mention election fraud? Given the bad memories from 2000, and given the early exit polling that tended to lean towards Kerry, things seemed suspicious to begin with, and people were angry and confused and upset, but… they got over it.
Again, you are conflating two things. I’m absolutely convinced that Gore would have been a better president than Bush, that Kerry would have been a better president than Bush, and that the country would be generally far better off right now if democracts had been in control for the past 5 years instead of republicans. And yes, I’m certain I’m rightrightright about that. Why wouldn’t I be? Isn’t that what having opinions is? But that doesn’t mean I don’t think the democratic party is doing anything that needs changing. Of COURSE we are doing things that need changing, we’re getting our asses kicked.
Republicans, at least recently, have been WAY better at politics than Democrats. Thus, their extraordinarily narrow victories in the past two presidential elections don’t necessarily prove that Republican positions are preferred by voters, all other things equal. And they CERTAINLY don’t prove that Republican positions are BETTER. (Nor, of course, do they prove the opposite).
You seem to believe that the results of the election have proven something, and that we liberals are all in denial. As in, “well, back in 2003, there was legitimate debate about whether the war was right, but now there was an election, so we KNOW the war was right and Bush didn’t lie, but those damn liberals just don’t get it!” And that’s just silly. The results of the election proved precisely one thing: very slightly more Americans voted for Bush than for Kerry that day.
I’d say the rather large number of people civilly discussing this and other political issues here means that we DO take our opposition and its arguments seriously. Yes, it’s easy and tempting to cry foul in various ways. Heck, I’d bet very big money that at least SOMETHING dishonest happened SOMEWHERE in that election, if only because people can be dishonest. Certainly, the Democratic party doesn’t have a history of sainthood when it comes to elections.
But, honestly, what should the reaction be? Particuarly on issues where there’s not really any middle ground, if I truly believe X, and argue for X, and you truly believe Y, and argue for Y, and then 100 people vote, and 48 agree with me and 52 agree with you, should I then retire to a cave for a period of soul-searching? Should I pretend that I don’t believe X? Should I just give up in the face of your overwhelming support?
Plenty of reasonable people support Bush. Any implication otherwise (ie, “what? you said something nice about Bush? you must be an idiot/stooge/dupe/racist/fascist”) is ungrounded, insulting, unfair, untrue, and really does do harm to the SDMB.
I don’t think thats what Shodan was saying. I read it that they are interpereting Bush’s statements through their own filters and prejudices, and then by repeating their interperatation on this board, it becomes ‘fact’.
-XT
Back to that again.
I want to reempasize this point.
There have been times in America’s past when there was legitimate debate among honest, intelligent, patriotic people about controversial issues, and then slowly the pendulum swung, and one of those positions is now viewed as totally wrongheaded.
Imagine a version of the SDMB in the late 1940’s, with a discussion of integration, miscegenation etc. To begin with, there would probably be well meaning, intelligent people arguing on both sides. Then as society shifted and the pendulum swung, the anti-integration side would have started getting smaller and smaller. At some point, they would have been saying exactly the same thing that the conservatives here today are saying, “this board is left-leaning”, “I’m sick of getting piled on”, etc.
Which doesn’t, of course, prove that this situation is in any way comparable. But we don’t know that it’s NOT comparable, either, and won’t for 40 or 50 years. It’s certainly not prima facie ridiculous to think that at least some of the overwhelming anti-Bush bias is, bluntly, because that side is RIGHT.
bordelon:
?
This is obviously, and with all due respect rather trivally, the case.
I’m asking Bricker what he considers to be “convincing” so that I might better meet his standards. As long as his standards seem reasonable to me, then I’ll do what I can to meet them. If they seem unreasonable, I can argue why they seem that way to me, or simply give up the debate. Generally speaking, I don’t debate walls; but I also don’t think Bricker’s a wall, despite the connotations of his username.
If you wish to continue this line of argument, I think you should start a thread on epistemology instead. For the sake of this discussion let us assume that our views on truth and so forth are at least congruent enough to permit communication despite our ideological differences.
John:
Yeah, I don’t agree with Finn’s formulation myself. I don’t think anyone knew with much certainty what we would find in Iraq after the invasion, including the Bush administration.
The lie was the assertion that we did know, with 100% certainty, when in fact, we were only guessing; that Bush and his cronies stated – and continue to state – as fact, assertions that they knew, without doubt, to be dubious speculation.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/29/bush.intl/index.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/28/politics/main704954.shtml
NOTE: Bush kept trying to conflate 9/11 with Iraq, while trying to not actually doing so(?). That way, he and his followers can say “he never did it”. He mentioned 9/11 several times. Never mind that he had been trying to get into Iraq before the attacks, never mind that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. He slipped up during the election debates by saying Saddam attacked us. That was after WMD, false 9/11 links, yellow cake, freedom, h8ers,etc. Now it’s the “shining city on the hill” when it was at one time insisted that he was not interested in “nation building”. He flipflops worse than anyone else. He lies. No cite for the debates transcripts, look for it yourselves. He really thinks we are that stupid. Cheney says “they” are in the final throes” He also thinks we are really that stupid. Rove calls damn near everyone a traitor who wants our soldiers killed (the Motives). When are the apologists going to stop making excuses for these people?
Did he say “with 100% certainty”? That’s the problem with exagerations*-- they can undermine your basic argument. Here’s the thing: we can never know something with 100% certainty, so if that’s the requirement, no one can ever say “I know that …” about anything. Clearly Bush exagerated his level of certainty. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that he really did believe WMDs existed in Iraq.
*pronounced: ex-A-ger-AAAA-tions
You mean like the administration’s repeated iteration of a lie until the majority accept it as truth?
I’m not boofu, but I can imagine a fourth possible thing he might be thinking:
(d) He might not have made up his mind yet as to whether the claim is true or false.
Ed
I am on record on saying this before: what Bush and buddies are doing is called Equivocation.
Bush is continuing to mislead the people who still think Saddam was involved in 9/11, while at the same time trowing a good denial bone to the more understanding followers.
The result: reasonable conservatives patting themselves in the back thinking that liberals are silly for complaining, but that is indeed simple minded: for the desired effect is not to mislead more sophisticated conservatives, but to keep the misled people still off course.
For more reasonable folks, equivocation remains. And as my teacher of marketing in a conservative institution told me about the equivocation fallacy: it is the same as lying.
So… what’s he waiting for? The 2016 elections?