We now know that Bush spoke untruth when he claimed that Iraq had WMD’s that were an imminent threat against us. There are two possible explanations:
He was wrong in good faith. Either intentionally mislead by advisors, willingly mislead, or just that our intellignece is that piss poor. These are bad things that speak to an incompetant administration that went to War and got us into this quagmire on the basis of mistaken facts.
OR
He felt it was in our best interest to go to war for other reasons and knowingly lied about the magnitude of the threat to justify the action.
My question is to conservatives: if the latter is shown to be true, would you be outraged? Would you call for impeachment?
Given that such is a real possibility would you call for an independent inquiry to ascertain the facts given that Clinton’s lie about something as inconsequential as a blowjob and a cigar was cause for outrage? One presumes that a lie that gets us into war is more critical.
I know that such won’t happen. We are in a war and while BUsh will be attacked some, no one will have the guts to do something like call for impeachement while we are still so early in the fray. But the lack of outrage amazes me.
Sure it should outrage anyone but before the war for years every intellignece agency on the planet beleived that Iraq had WMD’s in some form or another so I think the chances of it being proved that he knowingly lied are slim at best.
What part of perjury do you not understand. Clinton lied under oath to a court of law to save his butt.
I’m not a conservative, but for what it’s worth, I would not be outraged – I would just roll my eyes and shrug my shoulders.
I do not believe that impeachment is appropriate for that kind of lie – for better or for worse, those sorts of lies are an accepted part of the political process. Politicians of all stripes lie to the people on a regular basis.
What’s outrageous is that the American people accept and embrace these sorts of lies.
Lying under oath is a more difficult question. Certainly the decision to impeach Clinton is defensible.
…And if Bush knowingly died, he violated the sacred oath of the Office of the President itself by lying directly to Congress while carrying out his Constitutionally mandated duty to report the state of the union. In order to start a war on false premises. And, if he knowingly did it, we can also conclude that the enormous raft of misleading intelligence which was fed to Congress was also intentionally, falsely presented.
Right now it’s obvious that whether it was intentional or not the President manipulated his intelligence agencies in order to reach an erroneous conclusion. That too is an impeachable offense.
Long ago on these boards I predicted that this would be the most corrupt administration since Warren G. Harding’s. Now, three years later, I have say that I underestimated the Bush administration. I’m confident that the future will reveal to us that the Bush administration was just as corrupt as Harding, just as self-serving as Grant, just as transparently aggressive as Polk, and just as easy to manipulate as Harrison II. I can’t prove it now, but if we’re lucky we’ll look back on Bush as the worst President in American history. If we’re not lucky, we’ll look on him as the last President in American history. That’s how bad it is.
Boy, your bias shows. It wasn’t only Bush-administration intelligence that said Saddam was developing WMD. While it may have been of questionable veracity, it was certainly of the same caliber that other nations’ intelligence agencies and that previous administrations’ intelligence had. The only difference was his lower threshhold for action. (which, in turn, is directly attributable to 9/11)
As for impeachment…McKinley wasn’t impeached for the Spanish-American War, was he?
If something was believed as definite fact, enough to present as the definite fact that provided a basis for war, and was honestly mistaken, then what other options are there than the ones I have presented? It was not presented as “we believe that …” but as “we know that … but we just can’t share this top secret evidence … and they are an iminent threat”
I honestly am amazed that people find the possibilty of a President having intentionally lied to Congress about the facts that justified going to war to be no biggee.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Are you suggesting that because we can give it legal label that it is worse than lying to send Americans off to DIE?
What the lie is about really does count.
And to save his butt from * what, *by the way? Embarassment, shame, and Hilary’s wrath. Hardly earthshattering issues. Bill Clinton lied about his private behavior. The man occupying the office of the President of THe United States, acting in that capacity, lied to the country to get them to acquiesce to a war. Absolutely no comparison.
Yes - that the intelligence failure on Iraq was not indicative of a failure that was specific to the Bush administration due specifically to (supposed) Bush administration incompetence, but was a common one amongst Western governments in general.
To single out the Bush administration as incompetent for that, as you did in your OP is wrong.
how many times does it need to be pointed out that bush said “we cannot afford to wait until the threat is imminent”?
when does stretching the truth become a lie?
and when can it be said that critics’ failure to see the forest for the trees is an act of bad faith?
does a general analysis of iraq as rogue state, seen through the lens of our national security strategy justify such marginal consideratons as iraq’s current WMD inventory?
a courageous and good faith position of dissent from bush policy would address specific elements of our national security policy and argue for a better alternative.
It is one thing to suspect that Iraq has unconventional weapons and another to use it as a basis for a full-scale invasion. Clearly the standards of evidence have to be higher in the latter. Since Clinton didn’t invade Iraq you can’t compare the two.
Secondly you have to distinguish between the different claims. It is true that there was widespread suspicion that Iraq did possibly possess some chemical weapons. However the Bush administration was largely on its own in the claims of nuclear weapons facilities and signficant ties to Al-quaeda. As it happens these were the most frightening claims and probably the most effective in building the case for war.
In fact it’s clear that there was widespread dissent in the intelligence community about the nuclear and Al-queda claims. Cheney and his minions put enormous pressure on the intelligence agencies to produce the kind of claims they wanted rather than those based on their professional assessment. Then these hyped-up claims were used to build the case for war.
Regardless of whether Bush,himself, knowingly lied this is a major scandal. It indicates not just a dangerous detachment from reality on the part of the Bush political appointees but a willingness to ride rough-shod over the real professionals when what they say is ideologically inconvenient.
Personally I don’t believed Bush knowingly lied. I have seen little to believe that he is really involved in the highly detalied bureaucratic struggles which led to the war. However regardless of his personal role he is responsible for the
process and its outcome. If he is not guilty of dishonesty he certainly is of incompetence.
But when we’re talking about the Bush admin’s dishonesty, we’re not just talking about their conclusion that Iraq had WMDs. There was plenty of reason to believe that Saddam had Bad Shit squirreled away somewhere or other. I can’t fault the Bushies for so concluding. Hell, I too believed that Saddam had something to hide, though not in sufficient quantities or condition to pose any real threat to anyone else.
The actual, verifiable lies of the administration were much more specific. Since they didn’t have the goods on any real threat, they just made them up or repeated intelligence reports that they knew to be false. Saddam’s buying uranium from Niger! He’s enriching it in these uranium tubes this very moment! And don’t forget his intercontinental drones equipped with nuclear anthrax spores!
Those are the lies we’re talking about, not the broad conclusion that there were WMDs in Iraq.
Yes, I think that getting us into war on the basis of lies to Congress should be grounds for impeachment. I never was a big Kennedy fan, although I was just a toddler at the time.
