What if it can be shown that Bush knowingly lied?

Great Debates
61

So do I have you right Chiam, that you beleived that the Bush administration also believed the intellience to be “questionable”? But that questionable data was good enough? Cause I was under the impression that the Bush administration believed the data to be beyond question and that such was how it was presented. And it is that assessment of the data that was either a knowing lie or an incompentent assessment about a critical item.

Anyway, I’ve tried to rephrase it in a way that might be less objectionable to you and others. Care to take a stab at the question as last posed? (My last post.)

62

DSeid:

That was never my impression. The impression I had always gotten was…well, you know the old saying “Where there’s smoke there’s fire”? My impression was that everyone agreed that there was smoke. But, whereas Bush and Blair felt the smoke was a certain enough indicator of fire to call in the firemen, the French et al felt the need to see actual flames.

OK, I’ll do so…the following quotes are from the post you’re referencing.

I’ll grant this is true for the sake of debate, though it is possible we’ll eventually find actual hidden WMDs or evidence of immediate pre-war destruction or relocation.

This is only true if one grants, with certainty, that the “uranium from Africa” that Bush spoke of was the famed Niger yellowcake. Blair has said on numerous occasions that the African uranium thing was actually a different matter, and that British intelligence believes that (NOT the Niger yellowcake) to be true.

Yes, it would be a big deal.

If it was verifiably false at the time, then it’s the same as a lie.

I agree with that, but if Bush opponents wish for an independent inquiry, they (assuming that this group overlaps heavily with Clinton supporters) have only themselves to blame for screaming for an end to the Independent Counsel law in the wake of the Clinton impeachment. I remember quite well how Clinton supporters would often derisively surround the word “Independent” with quotes when referring to Ken Starr. He was in fact exactly as indepoendent as he was meant to be - independent of the White House/Justice Department/Executive Branch. Well, that opportunity is gone now, thanks to the machinations of the Clinton spin doctors.

Chaim Mattis Keller

63

Chiam, here is what the Bush admin was saying:

Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/sotu.transcript.8/index.html

Does this sound like saying there is smoke or that something is iron-clad true?

Thursday, January 30, 2003

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/01/30/sprj.irq.european.leaders/index.html

Of course we all remember how Powell’s “proof” was received by others … but to the Bush administration this was enough to say what was true to Congress and the American people.

64

And while I wish that the independent counsel law had revised to eliminate its abuses (it should have been limited to investigating the one item the the counsel is charged to investigate, not open ended open check book dirt digging), it should be noted that no serious voices were raised to continue it. Republicans had tried to kill it for years. Bush Sr. had advised Clinton to let it lapse (boy I’m sure he wished he had listened to that advice!) Even Starr advocated for letting the law lapse. You are a little disingenuous to blame the demise of that law on Clinton supporters.

65

I wonder if the white house, or the CIA, knew about MI6’s disinformation campaign on Iraqi weapons?

British spies ‘misled’ media on Iraq

In light of our special relationship with the Brits, this seems like the sort of information that would be shared. In turn, that’d put the president’s claims about the threat of Iraqi WMD’s in a whole new light.

66

Why even limit it to statements by Bush? I would include even statements by lower level administration officials, if they were part of a campaign approved of by Bush. (But OTOH, I would only include statements that actually influenced US policy - as oppose to one or two obscure statements out there.)

IOW, if it can be shown that the Bush administration deliberately set out to make statements that they knew to be false in an attempt to influence public opinion to build support for the war then Bush should definitely be impeached.

OTOH, I doubt if this is true, let alone provable.

As for incompetence, I think the general principle is that it is very hard to know what is going on in other countries. The idea that intelligence can be expected to be held to any particular level of accuracy is baseless, as far as I can see. I imagine that people within the intelligence community can assess whether in a given instance a better job might have been done, but looking at it from the outside, I don’t see how any meaningful assessment can be made.

67

The Bush administration is one of two things: guilty, or stupid. Neither case is very comforting. Actually, they could be both, given the quality of their justification for the war, e.g. Colin Powell’s report to the UNSC, in which, citing one good example, some of the “evidence” of WMD in Iraq consisted of information plagiarized from an academic paper (the MERIA article by Ibrahim al-Marashi) which was written about pre-Gulf War I (GWI) Iraq. That means, not only stolen intellectual property, but (heh) obsolete stolen intellectual property. Quite plainly, our “intelligence” was equal parts specious, sloppy, outdated, or simply fake. Boy do these guys ever look stupid.

However, with the exception of the president himself, I am rather impressed with the intellects of the Bush cabinet. Powell himself is a very smart man, and a critical thinker. I can only guess that his loyalties compelled him to do what he did.

It’s fairly clear from some pre-9/11 rhetoric that some members of the Bush admin. had it out for Saddam long before we all knew about al Quaeda, or considered Islamist terrorists a serious threat. There are lots of plausible reasons for why they had their sights firmly fixed on Saddam. One is simple vengeance, as Saddam did try to have Bush Sr. killed, which made the neocons hopping mad. Another is dissatisfaction with an “unfinished job” left after GWI: Saddam has been a pain in the ass ever since, and maybe it would have been better to have killed him then when we had the chance. Also, keeping an eye on Saddam all the time (patroling no-fly zones, etc.) was really, really expensive. Given that Saddam’s likely successor, one or other of his sons, was bound to be at least as big a nutcase as Saddam himself, it would have been reasonable to speculate that Iraq might stay a “rogue state” for decades more, requiring constant, costly surveillance. What a quandry: If we pull out, Saddam and the armies of evil win; if we stay, it’s an endless financial nightmare. The latter reason may have been the most compelling (if not, in the minds of some, the primary) motivator for getting rid of the Baathists once and for all. Let’s face it, they wanted Saddam out when Bush was campaigning. But I’m sure they knew getting rid of him was not at all an easy political goal pre-9/11. Post 9/11, though, things get much easier. Americans are, by and large, pretty ignorant about the Middle East and environs. They tend to associate Arabs with terrorists. The fact that the 9/11 hijackers were Arab terrorists really helps reinforce this association. So, you’ve got Saddam, who’s an Ay-rab fanatic. You got Osama, another Ay-rab fanatic. Mohammed Atta? Ay-rab fanatic! Mullah Omar? Why, another Ay-rab fanatic! Holy shit, there’s scads of 'em! And these guys stick together, see…these Muslim’s, they’re all religious extremists, unified by their faith. Well shoot, if Saddam’s got WMDs, and he gives some to Osama, Jesus H Christ!, they might drop an atom bomb on one of our cities! By George, we’ve got to put a stop to this!

I mean, 9/11 handed Bush Saddam’s ass on a platter, as far as the majority of the American public is concerned. No matter that Osama and Saddam were actually deadly rivals, and that al Quaeda had virtually no presence in Iraq while Saddam was in power. Americans don’t need to know that. Really, they don’t seem to want to know that. We’ve been hit, and damned if we’re gonna be hit again. Go after the terrorists. Kill them all before they strike. Kill Saddam.

As for the rest of the world, they have no power over the US. No matter how they loathed the idea of another Gulf War, what could they do about it? The options were clear: Join fully in the Coalition Against Terrorism, or the righteous US would go it alone. Who wants to be seen as being on the side of the terrorists? And even if your country can live with the spite of American directed against you (e.g. Germany, France), what can you do to reign in the military might of America? Nothing.

Here’s what seems most likely to me: The Bush admin. is guilty, and they’re betting on the US population being stupid. Judging by the paltry defenses given for Bush et al.'s actions leading up to this war, presented both here and elsewhere, it’s not a bad bet.

68

The intent of a lie has a great deal of impact with respect to how the public perceives it. For the sake of argument, presume that Bush knowingly misrepresented the facts on Iraq’s WMD programs.

Why lie about it? Why bring us to war with Iraq? What is the intent of that lie? Most people will believe that the intent was to protect us. Even if he was wrong to lie about it, he was doing it because he was trying to help protect the people. This is certainly debatable, but you will likely need very good evidence to prove otherwise.

Clinton, OTOH, lied under oath to protect his philandering ass from embarassment. This is not debatable, we all know it to be true.

One lied for personal gain, the other to protect the security of our borders, it’s no surprise that many people would still think Clinton’s lie to be worse.

69

DSeid:

Definitely sounds like he considers it iron-clad. He’s also saying where his info comes from. Obviously the sources could have been wrong, but he considers them reliable enough to depend upon. If they later turn out to have been false, that doesn’t prove that Bush knew that from the get-go.

No, I’m not. The fact that Republicans - including Bush Sr. - didn’t like it wasn’t enough to keep Congress from re-authorizing it. Congress enjoyed having it as a tool while an opposition party President was in power and it didn’t trust that President’s Justice Department to be impartial. It was the Clinton spin machine that so managed to paint Ken Starr as some sort of partisan prurient peeping tom that it gave Congress and the public a distaste for that law as a tool. And those of you who bought into that spin…I’ll state for the record that I didn’t, remembering its Nixon-prompted origins as I did…are now stuck with Ashcroft investigating Bush.

Chaim Mattis Keller

70

Christ, it’s worse than I thought.

Why lie about it? Well, I gave three plausible reasons above in my last post, so you might consider those. None of those reasons have anything to do with immediate threats, or distant threats, to the US, aside from increases in oil prices. Saddam was always and only a regional security problem. He was a worldwide economic problem, and a clear economic hassle to the US, as we were footing much of the bill for enforcing UN sanctions, etc.; but as GWI and the subsequent watch clearly demonstrated, his threat was one that could be contained and swiftly dealt with, should the need arise. Terrorism was, prior to 9/11, never the issue. I fail to see how 9/11 changed that in any fundamental way.

Clinton lied under oath to cover up the fact he got blowjobs from an intern. Bush’s lies have sent thousands of American soldiers to Iraq to die or be wounded, ostensibly for the purpose of homeland security. I would say if the intent to start a war in Iraq had ANY other purpose than the one stated by the Bush administration, it’s a hell of a lot worse a crime than sticking one’s dick in the wrong mouth. And if Bush and his cronies continue to lie about it (as they surely will), they only compound their guilt. How anyone can put lying about hummers over lying that brings about the wrongful DEATH of American soldiers is so far beyond my comprehension I’m not even going to try.

Go ahead, vote for Bush again. You deserve him. May your children serve in his army.

71

Loopy, your ‘plausible’ reasons need evidence before people will believe them. Just because you can imagine a reason, doesn’t make it so. Provide a single shred of actual evidence to prove your reasoning, something other than the musings of a pundit.

Try this as a thought experiment. Adam works at a retail store. He is fixing a display and accidentily drops a $500 camcorder, damaging it beyond repair. His coworker Eve is seen pocketing $20 from the till. Which one of them has a job the next day?

This is why people still think Clinton’s lie was unacceptable, even though Bush’s presumed lie had much more impact.

72

Both Adam and Eve might be out of a job, one for being a thief, the other a fuckup. Which one is Bush?

It’s interesting that, when one considers the available evidence, finds the stated reasons for action lacking all credibility due to the pathetic quality of the evidence, and then, using known historical facts, forms an alternate hypothesis, this is seen as the mere “musings of a pundit”. The fact that Bush hasn’t a shred of evidence to support that Saddam was a clear and present danger to the US doesn’t bother you? All the Bush admin. ever did was speculate. And lie. To give them the benefit of the doubt, to actually believe that they somehow could not have known how weak the evidence was…again, do you see anything redeemable in this situation? I mean, again, we’re left with only two options: Bush, et al. are complete morons who start entire wars for no tenable reason, or they knew damn well there was no tenable reason but did it anyway.

The stated purpose for going to war was Iraq, and its WMDs, were a clear and present danger to the US. They then set about heaving a load of horseshit on anyone who would or had to listen as a means of justifying a preemtive attack on Iraq, despite the fact that the putative WMDs could not be found. Oh, they’ll turn up when we attack, don’t worry. Well, the intelligence sucked, the UN inspectors were right, and not a SINGLE WMD (or even the ingredients of one) has turned up since, despite the fact our armed forces have been turning the place upside down to look for them. The current head of the search for WMDs, David Kay, is said to be quitting his post, probably in January, because he finds the the hunt to be pointless: The weapons don’t exist.

All leading up to the war, you couldn’t turn on the TV or open a newspaper without hearing seeing Bush pound the lectern over WMDs. From the moment the war started, WMDs have pretty much fallen off the administration’s radar. He barely talks about them, claims they’re not important in the big picture, all the while insisting he acted in good faith when he made them THE issue.

I ask you, why is catching Saddam so important? Really, what has it to do with anything? Why did it become the focus? Why is trying him for war crimes suddenly priority #1? Was Saddam responsible for the post-invasion insurgency? Hardly. Was he building WMDs in his spider hole? I kinda doubt it. Hey, there’s a whole slew of murderous despots out there who deserve to be tried on crimes agains humanity. Why aren’t we going after them? Well, Bush might argue, they’re not an immediate threat to the United States. But neither was Saddam, you might reply. “Well, I didn’t know that before we invaded” is the best defense he can come up with.

You call my rant the idle speculation of a partisan? Jesus Christ, are all you people BLIND? Do you enjoy being misled? Do you actually trust this jackass, George W. Bush, when he tells you it all must have been a big misunderstanding? Do you really consider this more plausible than the realpolitik rationalizations I provided above? Are you THAT credulous?

73

This’s the crux of the biscuit.
The “lie” IS that the invasion of Iraq somehow "protect[ed] the security of our borders.
The “lie” was that we needed to invade Iraq as a means of protecting us.
Since this is the gist of what has been termed misleading, it doesn’t seem that it can also be taken as the intent of the lie.
Since the “lie” was that we needed to invade for our protection, if the intent was that we should be protected from the threat presented by Iraq, then it could not be a lie even if it were not true. If the intent was that we needed to be protected from an Iraqi threat, then saying that we need to be protected from an Iraq threat is not a lie. At worst, if it were untrue, it wold be an example of incompetence.

If, ftsoa, the threat to the US from Iraq is a “lie”, then the intent of the lie must be something other than threat to the US from Iraq, (otherwise it’d be true). Therefore, the “intent” of the lie would remain unknown.

People will judge the intent based on the fruits. If banned weapons and evidence of intent to arm al Qaeda are found, then there will be no consideration of a “lie”. Less than this will leave many people unsatisfied. If neither banned weapons nor evidence of intent to arm al Qaeda et al & etc are found, then the conclusion will be that the case for invasion was predicated on a prevarication. The “intent” of the prevarication need not be conclusively drawn for the deception to be realized.

74

No, we do not agree. Three speeches:

  1. Speech to the United Nations General Assembly, September 2002.

[Those missiles were in fact found — and destroyed — by U.N. inspectors in 2003.]

  1. State of the Union Address, January 2003.
  1. Television address to the nation, March 2003.
75

As SimonX pointed out in this current thread, Vice President Cheney made unambiguous statements regarding WMDs in Iraq. For example, here is a statement in a speech from August 26, 2002, as quoted on the official White House website:

Note that he did not say that Saddam likely has WMDs and that he there is some possibility he might use it against our friends, allies, or us. He said there is no doubt (not even a smidgeon?!?) that he has WMDs and that he is amassing them to use against our firends, against our allies, and against us. That sounds pretty unambiguous to me (unless you interpret the phrase “simply stated” to mean “stated with great oversimplification and exageration, one might say that…”). Whether it constitutes a lie or simply a grossly inept misreading of imperfect intelligence is admittedly unclear. But, personally I do not want to be led by people who have delusions about what they do or do not know with certainty. Do you?

76

That remains to be seen. Right now, Bush is the fuckup and keeps his job. All I’m saying is why people feel differently about Clinton’s lie vs. Bush’s presumed lie. You may think it’s silly, but people do give a lot of credit to people who do wrong while trying to do the right thing as opposed to people who do wrong to help themselves.

Please don’t put words in my mouth. Of course it bothers me, and it better damn well bother anybody who supported the war. But… if you want to accuse someone of starting a war that killed thousands, and put our own men and women at risk, you had better damn well have evidence to prove it. Saying that your alternate hypothesis is possible is a worthless argument, it’s ‘possible’ that aliens are controlling Bush’s thoughts with a mind control device. Yeeehaw, that explains everything!

Which UN inspector was it that said Iraq had no WMD? I don’t recall Blix saying anything of the sort before the war. If you don’t mind refreshing my obviously failing memory with a quote, I’d very much appreciate being educated on this.

77

And golly, if those were the only things the lying sonofabitch ever said about Iraq’s supposed WMDs, maybe you’d have a point. But he did, and you don’t. Observe:

“Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.” (From the U.N. speech. Completely and totally unsupported by the evidence. Completely false.)

“Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.” (From the 2003 State of the Union. Again, no support in the evidence. Another falsehood.)

“We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons – the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.” (Feb. 8, 2003 radio address. False.)

“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” (March 17, 2003 speech to the nation. Certain people are bound to weasel on this one, given the lack of specificity. Anyone capable of reading for context should quickly recognize this as another falsehood about WMDs.)

“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.” (Interview, April 24, 2003. Where are the motherfucking WMDs, Mr. President?)

“We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.” (May 3, 2003. Found 'em yet, Georgie Boy?)

“I’m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein – because he had a weapons program.” (May 6, 2003. These are not the WMDs you are looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.)

And of course, the assertions of Bush’s spokesmen, representatives, and underlings that Saddam was up to his eyeballs in Bad Shit were NEVER contradicted or clarified by the Fabricator in Chief. In my book, that’s every bit as much fraudulent as the direct lies of Cheney/Rummy/Condi/Ari/et al.
Bush quotes cribbed from here: http://billmon.org.v.sabren.com/archives/000172.html

78

Actually, a number of these below are examples of “not-lies”* Carefully examine the sentence structures.

*Not-Lie
The most recent newspeak word that embodies the glorious principles of doubelspeak is “not-lie” and “not-a-lie.”
The “technically correct” defense.
As in Rumsfeld did “not-lie.”

Not-lying, the new, newspeak buzzword. Remember you heard it here first.

Try it with your friends and family. Kids use it with your parents. Hilarity ensues.

79

Oops, I see that one of the quotes was repeated. The one for May 3, 2003 should read “We’ll find them. It’ll be a matter of time to do so.” Mohammed Chalabi told me Bush said it twice.

80

Every single report prior to the war said they found no evidence of WMDs. Blix never ruled out the possibility that some weapons existed, but that’s the same quality of evidence that you have berated me for using.

To be fair, Blix did criticize the Iraqis for their recalcitrance, and said it gave the impression they were hiding something. However, that still leaves at least two options: One, the Iraqis are hiding weapons; or Two, they’re engaging in gamesmanship and passive resitance.

Given Saddam’s behavior in general (insane), either option would be plausible. Saying something like “well, any sane person would just come completely clean and avoid a war” doesn’t work with a Saddam Hussein, as anyone could plainly see. There was never any certainty of the presence of WMDs (as Blix was at pains to reiterate on many an occasion), and Blix came clean shortly after the war started and confessed he suspected the WMDs were never there to begin with. He also complained about American efforts to defame him when he couldn’t deliver the goods, i.e. certainty (real or fabricated) of WMDs. I think one ought to require REAL certainty before invading another country, killing thousands of people, completely removing the government of a sovereign state, and then taking on the cost in lives and money to rebuild the nation you previously destroyed. Don’t you?

We never had it. Ever.