# Where is the evidence that Bush "lied"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 21, 2009, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983 "2009-09-21T19:39:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![yojimbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yojimbo/32/232_2.png) [@yojimbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yojimbo)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/41 "2009-09-22T14:18:30Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > **Scylla** , what changed your mind, and when? Didn’t he do the whole “If they don’t find them by x(date) I’ll agree it was a lie” thing years ago? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/42 "2009-09-22T14:20:34Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Even being as charitable as possible toward Bush about defining what he did, is there anyone, anyone at all, who’d like to claim that a reckless disregard for the truth is less serious than actual lying? I have said many times that I do not find any compelling evidence for Bush actually knowing the truth and then saying something else. I’m sure there will be more additions to the historical record that could change my mind, but what I see now is that Bush has “merely” been proven wrong. While I wouldn’t agree with the phrase “reckless disregard for the truth,” since that implies that he knew that he was saying something wrong, I think that a reckless and haphazard process of misjudgment and extreme prejudice against evidence that didn’t confirm one’s bias is an equally damnable offense. In other words, why does the bad guy always have to be a liar? Isn’t being a fool condemnation enough? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/43 "2009-09-22T14:33:08Z")
> [@](#): > > There’s another option: Bush was negligent, or even reckless, about how he developed the facts he relied upon. > > Imagine that there were 40 CIA analysts working on interpreting the data. 38 of them conclude there’s no credible evidence of WMDs, and two conclude that there are. If Bush chose to accept the reports of those two, without any other reason to distinguish the quality of the report, then he may well have legitimately sure that there were WMDs, but his assurance would have been objectively unreliable. Isn’t there a point when a belief based on the reckless disregard for the lack of evidence becomes willful lying? George Bush did not plan the 9/11 attacks. But suppose I said that George Bush personally planned the 9/11 attacks and when I was pressed on the point I said that I had read a website that said Bush was guilty and I choose to believe this website is correct. Does that mean I’m not lying because I’m just repeating somebody else’s lie? Wouldn’t that mean that there is no such thing as objective truth? ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/44 "2009-09-22T14:40:22Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Which of those most clearly show that Bush knew there were no WMD in Iraq? Not hard to find… > [@](#): > > STATEMENT: _“[T]he Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations. Had we failed to act, the dictator’s weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.”_ > > REBUTTAL: No WMDs have been after ten months. David Kay reported that there is no evidence that Iraq had an active nuclear or biological weapons program and Iraq did not have an “ongoing centrally controlled chemical weapons program.” (88) > > STATEMENT: “And when David Kay goes in and says we haven’t found stockpiles yet, and there’s theories as to where the weapons went. They could have been destroyed during the war. . . They could be hidden. They could have been transported to another country, and we’ll find out." > > REBUTTAL: Kay didn’t attribute the absences of stockpiles to their destruction or transportation to another country, Kay found that they were never produced and hadn’t been produced since 1991. (83) > > STATEMENT: On May 29, 2003, during a visit to Poland, President Bush declared that the U.S. had “found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. . . . They’re illegal. They’re against the United Nations resolutions, and we’ve so far discovered two.” > > On June 1, 2003, Bush proclaimed that “we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited.” > > REBUTTAL: A review by US and UK experts has found this claim to be false. The mobile trailers at issue were facilities to fill weather balloons. (21) > > STATEMENT: \*n his address to the nation Bush said the intelligence “leaves no doubt that . . . Iraq . . . continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” > > Vice President Cheney also was part of the chorus and declared that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” > > REBUTTAL: Poland’s President, a strong U.S. ally with 2,400 troops in Iraq, stated that Poland “was misled with the information on weapons of mass destruction.” > Former Treasury Secretary O’Neil, who was a member of the National Security Council, indicated that “\*n the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterize as evidence of weapons of mass destruction.” (71) > After ten-months of searching for WMDs, investigators have found no support for the claim that Iraq possessed nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. In January, the Bush administration quietly pulled its 400 man weapons inspection team out of Iraq “because its works was essentially done”. (64) > David Kay, the chief weapons inspector, concluded “I don’t think they existed.” “What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the [1991] Gulf War and I don’t think there was a large-scale production program in the Nineties.”(76) > This is consistent with David Kay’s interim report that concluded that Iraq’ capacity to produce new chemical munitions “was reduced - - if not entirely destroyed” during the 1990 Gulf War, 1998 bombings and 13 years of sanctions and inspections. (52) > Even Donald Rumsfeld Defense Secretary Rumsfeld confirmed “I don’t think we’ll discover anything.”(17) > In January 2004, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on WMDS in Iraq concluded that the evidence prior to the war indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program had been dismantled and its chemical weapons had lost most of their lethality. In addition, the report concluded that the administration “systematically misrepresented the threat from Iraq’s WMD and ballistic missile programs”. (70) > This is consistent with other pre-war reports. For example, in September 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency concluded “there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has – or will – establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.” (17) > A Canadian military analyst also disputes that chemical weapons are WMDs, explaining that “biological and chemical weapons are akin to weapons of mass terror. They are military ineffective.” (24) The Carnegie report shared this view, explaining that the “conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose, distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war.” (70) > > University of Michigan disarmament expert noted that “[t]his could be the first war in history that was justified largely by an illusion.” > > SOURCE: [http://www.bushlies.net/iraqlies.html](http://www.bushlies.net/iraqlies.html) “No doubt”? Err…I’d say there was a helluva lot of doubt. “No doubt” is a flat out lie. If there was no doubt then we would have found them right? Because they “knew” Iraq had WMDs. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/45 "2009-09-22T14:42:22Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > In other words, why does the bad guy always have to be a liar? Isn’t being a fool condemnation enough? It certainly should be. But I’ve seen calls, even on this board, about how Bush should be tried in the Hague. “Bush Lied, They Died” “Clinton lied about a blow job, but Bush’s lies got people killed” etc. etc. I was just wondering what the evidence was of him actually lying. It seems as if most people in this thread would say that he did not lie, but was incompetent. If this were true then why: 1. Did the rest of the world think he had WMDs? Even Germany and France who didn’t help us in the war believed that he had these weapons, just that a diplomatic solution would be preferable. 2. What were those pictures that Powell was showing the U.N.? I remember one picture that showed weapons manufacturing tools and the next day before the inspectors arrived, they were all dismantled. A hide and seek game; I thought Powell had the smoking gun on them? What did he really have? 3. What did happen to all of the chemical weapons that Saddam had? We know he had them. Even if he destroyed them, there has to be a massive amount of spent canisters somewhere. 4. Was Saddam that foolish? Why didn’t he come clean before the war? Surely he knew that we could take him out; we’d done it once before. 5. Finally why hasn’t there been a massive, massive investigation as to what in the hell happened that caused us to go to war over incorrect information? (Lies or otherwise) More Americans have died in Iraq than on 9/11 for a mistake. That seriously needs to be corrected. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/46 "2009-09-22T15:20:32Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Isn’t there a point when a belief based on the reckless disregard for the lack of evidence becomes willful lying? That’s the Costanza Defense: “Remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it.” > [@jtgain](#): > > I’ve seen calls, even on this board, about how Bush should be tried in the Hague…I was just wondering what the evidence was of him actually lying. The calls you’ve seen, and heard, are about war crimes other than starting a war of aggression too, remember. One doesn’t even have to get into that to discuss torture. There’s a lot of cherished, repeated misinformation among the defend-the-Republican crowd too, for instance: > [@](#): > > Even Germany and France who didn’t help us in the war believed that he had these weapons They, like the rest of the reality-based community, properly thought it was _possible_, and that’s what the inspectors were for. But they were just about to report that there weren’t, showing Bush’s claims to be false, when he coincidentally “couldn’t wait any longer”, and \*had \*to start the war. > [@](#): > > I remember one picture that showed weapons manufacturing tools and the next day before the inspectors arrived, they were all dismantled. Cite for the “weapons manufacturing tools”, or anything else WMD-related? Even the Bush people themselves dropped that stuff long ago; why do you still think there’s a factual basis for it? > [@](#): > > What did happen to all of the chemical weapons that Saddam had? Either outdated or destroyed. What, do you believe the truck convoy to Syria story? > [@](#): > > Was Saddam that foolish? Why didn’t he come clean before the war? Not foolish, just grandiose and power lustful. He needed to keep up the pretense to keep people fearing him. Same kinda shit any dictator pulls. As to coming clean, remember those inspectors? The ones he let in, who went everywhere and found jack shit? Is that coming clean enough for you? > [@](#): > > Finally why hasn’t there been a massive, massive investigation as to what in the hell happened that caused us to go to war over incorrect information? You won’t find many people on this board who disagree with that, at least. The best answer may be that the people who’d do it would be shown to have been fooled by the falsehoods themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/47 "2009-09-22T15:25:21Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I know that this will turn into a GD, but here goes. We went to war in Iraq looking for WMDs and we didn’t find any. There could be 2 reasons for this: > > 1. Bush was mistaken. > 2. Bush lied. > > Where is the evidence that Bush knew for a fact that there were no WMDs in Iraq, but said so anyways to justify an invasion? I’m not looking for anyone’s gut feeling just because they don’t like Bush or Cheney; I would like specific cites to credible evidence that Bush deliberately misled Americans and the rest of the world about the Iraqi WMD program. Technically he didn’t lie, he hid behind the intelligence which he said showed Saddam was a threat. But they made the intel up or exaggerated it or whatever. The CIA kept sending the White House assesments saying they had no evidence of anything, the White House kept telling them to look harder. Cheney personally visited CIA HQ a number of times. Eventually the CIA gave them what they wanted, a load of bs intel. So let’s not call it lies, let’s call it bs. George W Bush bullshitted the country into an illegal war. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/48 "2009-09-22T15:29:26Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I was just wondering what the evidence was of him actually lying. It seems as if most people in this thread would say that he did not lie, but was incompetent. > > If this were true then why: > > 1. Did the rest of the world think he had WMDs? Even Germany and France who didn’t help us in the war believed that he had these weapons, just that a diplomatic solution would be preferable. What is your evidence that **anyone** believed there were WMDs in Iraq? [Here’s Robin Cook addressing the UK Parliament on the eve of the war:](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2859431.stm) “Iraq probably has no weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood sense of the term - namely a credible device capable of being delivered against a strategic city target. It probably still has biological toxins and battlefield chemical munitions, but it has had them since the 1980s when US companies sold Saddam anthrax agents and the then British Government approved chemical and munitions factories. Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create? Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?” > [@jtgain](#): > > 1. Finally why hasn’t there been a massive, massive investigation as to what in the hell happened that caused us to go to war over incorrect information? (Lies or otherwise) More Americans have died in Iraq than on 9/11 for a mistake. That seriously needs to be corrected. There’s been suggestions over here that Blair should be tried as a war criminal: - [the prime minister is a war criminal](http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/apr/26/election2005.labour1) - [Think of what we did to the place. We blitzed Iraq with our bunker-buster bombs. We flattened their housing blocks, we crippled their infrastructure. We sparked a murderous civil war in which hundreds of thousands have died - and all for the sake of a lie, or a series of lies. We were told that Saddam had lethal long-range weapons with which to threaten his neighbours, and perhaps even British bases in Cyprus. We were told that the Pentagon had a plan for his speedy and efficient removal. We were going to usher in a new era of peace, democracy and human rights. Things did not, to put it mildly, turn out that way, and the worst of it is that no one has so far been arrested. Despite all the manifold acts of deception and incompetence, there is not a single politician, on either side of the Atlantic, who has been put on trial or even had his collar felt](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/3559801/How-Boris-Johnson-became-a-war-criminal.html) - [The Brussels War Crimes Tribunal and the newly established Blair War Crimes Foundation are building a case for the former British prime minister’s prosecution … In a separate indictment, a former judge of the New Zealand Supreme Court, E W Thomas, wrote: “My predisposition was to believe that Mr Blair was deluded, but sincere in his belief. After considerable reading and much reflection, however, my final conclusion is that Mr Blair deliberately and repeatedly misled cabinet, the British Labour Party and the people in a number of respects. It is not possible to hold that he was simply deluded but sincere: a victim of his own self-deception. His deception was deliberate.”](http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/war-crimes-blair-pilger-iraq) Of course Bush will escape in any War Crimes tribunal by pleading ‘diminished responsibility’. There’s plenty of evidence of that. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/49 "2009-09-22T15:49:27Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > I don’t think even W would have lied into this war if he knew what a clusterfuck it would turn out to be, Of course, that’s part of the problem: he just kind of assumed we’d be able to either get out easily, or easily turn Iraq into a pacified client state where we’d leave some troops to be handy for the next episode of George and Dick’s Excellent Mideast Adventure, or whatever. No one could have foreseen that the Sunnis and Shi’ites might not get along, or that there might be some conflict between the Arabs and the Kurds, or that rival Shi’ite groups might have some scores to settle, or that the big winner from a weakened Iraq would be Iran, or any one of a number of other things that would have been obvious from even a sketchy knowledge of the history of Iraq and its immediate neighborhood. God_damn_, we had a stupid Preznit. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/50 "2009-09-22T15:55:05Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > To me, the most damning evidence that Bush lied about his motivations for going into Iraq has been the apparent lack of any extraordinary measures…in fact, the lack of even ordinary measures…to secure possible WMD sites and thus prevent the supposed WMDs from falling into the hands of terrorists. (Contrast this to the extraordinary measures that apparently were taken to secure the oil fields.) I mean, if your goal is to keep such weapons out of the hands of terrorists and you have the CIA telling you it is unlikely that Saddam would give / sell them to terrorists anyway, why would you go in and overrun the place and then leave the weapons sites virtually unguarded so that they can be looted and the weapons sold by desperate people on the black market? Figured I’d toss in a link to [Barton Gellman’s reporting on this subject](http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines03/0511-01.htm), just so there’s a good cite for this. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/51 "2009-09-22T16:26:24Z")
> [@glee](#): > > There’s been suggestions over here that Blair should be tried as a war criminal: Let’s not forget the Dodgy Dossier. Support for the war was crumbling worldwide as America couldn’t provide any actual proof that Iraq was building WMDs. Suddenly Blair appeared at a press conference, did his steely jaw-clenching thing as he talked about the onerous responsibilities he was under protecting Britain from the threat of Iraq and terrorism in general and announced to the world new information about Saddam’s WMD programs, information that he announced as “new, comprehensive, and compelling”. The information was released to the press and zipped around the world’s news cycles. Then a couple of days later some interepid journalist googled a couple of the claims and found the whole dossier had been lifted from a 1991 American student thesis on Saddam’s early 90s possible WMD options. It later transpired that Blair’s poitical office had googled this crap up and sent it to the British version of the CIA who somehow managed to turn it into a supposedly fact-based dossier. Now I’m sure Blair didn’t technically lie in whatever he said publicly about the dossier but I’d love to know why his office dug the crap up and how it ended up becoming an intelligence report. Luckily Britain is a democracy and in democracies we have mechanisms to require accountability from our leaders. I’m sure an inquiry will be starting anytime now. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/52 "2009-09-22T16:49:45Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > God_damn_, we had a stupid Preznit. Not stupid as such. Lazy. Incurious. Gullible. Contemptuous of those who aren’t. But the results are the same. ---
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/53 "2009-09-22T16:56:03Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > Figured I’d toss in a link to [Barton Gellman’s reporting on this subject](http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines03/0511-01.htm), just so there’s a good cite for this. Thanks … And, more to the point of our not securing a weapons site known to contain sensitive materials (high grade explosives that could at least potential be used in nuclear weapons and had been sealed off by UN weapons inspectors), [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qa%27qaa_high_explosives_controversy) is the Wikipedia page about the Al Qa’qaa high explosives controversy. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/54 "2009-09-22T16:57:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Where is the evidence that Bush “lied”? His mouth was moving? -XT ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/55 "2009-09-22T17:02:52Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Said was sure. Was not sure. Lie. I had no idea we had Rorschach on the board 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/56 "2009-09-22T17:18:15Z")
> [@glee](#): > > Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create? > Why is it necessary to resort to war this week, while Saddam’s ambition to complete his weapons programme is blocked by the presence of UN inspectors?" This is where the “lie” became mighty important. It wasn’t just that Saddam was a threat, he was a nutjob dictator with persecution complex and a history of using biological and chemical weapons; it was that he was an IMMINENT threat and we had to go to war RIGHT NOW or he would KILL US ALL!!! The statements he and his administration made had their intended effect, of overstating the threat Saddam posed, while ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. But in addition to that, the statements made it imperative that we ACT NOW and that rationale and in depth analysis of the intelligence and the inspections, could wait. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/57 "2009-09-22T17:29:00Z")
> [@](#): > > This is where the “lie” became mighty important. It wasn’t just that Saddam was a threat, he was a nutjob dictator with persecution complex and a history of using biological and chemical weapons; it was that he was an IMMINENT threat and we had to go to war RIGHT NOW or he would KILL US ALL!!! The statements he and his administration made had their intended effect, of overstating the threat Saddam posed, while ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. But in addition to that, the statements made it imperative that we ACT NOW and that rationale and in depth analysis of the intelligence and the inspections, could wait. In retrospect, it’s suspicious how many of the analyses of Iraq’s WMD programs back in 2003 refered to their ongoing history over the last fifteen or twenty years without mentioning the major changes that occurred in Iraq in 1991. It’s like describing Germany in 1955 as an ongoing major threat to world peace based on their history over the last fifteen years. I have little doubts that Iraq had active WMD programs in the eighties. But it is now clear that the UN sanctions had worked and his WMD capacity was shut down after 1991. Iraq was not an imminent threat in 2003. ---
**Author:** ![CoolHandCox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coolhandcox/32/16233_2.png) [@CoolHandCox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoolHandCox)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/58 "2009-09-22T17:54:20Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Now, if you have a situation like North Korea, and you have intel that they are about to launch a missile at Seattle, then there is justification for invasion. You go in, topple the government AND secure the launch site–like every video game I have ever played. Problem is, once you get in there, you had sure as hell find a launch site with a big map of the world and an X over Seattle. Absent of that you totally screwed the pooch and are in line for the guillotine. Assuming the intel turns out to be credible (from the CIA no less, whom we all love and trust)…after you’ve invaded the nation. Doesn’t justification then turn on hindsight? My point is, these things are tricky judgment calls on evidence that might not be “evidence” at all. What if the leader of NK is intentionally deceiving you so you believe he has Nuclear Weapons. Is that evidence? It’s extremely suspicious behavior at the least. I hope this all leads to an err of caution to not invade on nil evidence. Wait 50 years, US is attacked because we did not act on “some” intelligence. Repeat process. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/59 "2009-09-22T18:03:14Z")
> [@CoolHandCox](#): > > My point is, these things are tricky judgment calls on evidence that might not be “evidence” at all. What if the leader of NK is intentionally deceiving you so you believe he has Nuclear Weapons. Is that evidence? It’s extremely suspicious behavior at the least. Well, North Korea has actually tested a nuclear bomb the effects of which were detected by other countries. Now, NK may not have any more but we know they _can_ build one and blow it up. To my mind that makes the case for pre-empting NK more compelling. Crazy regime + nukes + belligerent to the West = Good case being built to get them first. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983/60 "2009-09-22T18:04:19Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Not tu quoque at all. 🙂 > > For me, I think he started out with a belief, and he cherry-picked evidence that sustained that belief. When data came across his desk that contradicted his belief, it was subject to intense scrutiny and near-impossible demands for standards. When information came along that confirmed his belief, it was readily accepted with no skepticism or scrutiny at all. > > This makes it an exercise in intellectual dishonesty… but not really actual, lying-type dishonesty. You’ve described the careful fabrication of a fraud, with willful suppression of the evidence that would have proved it false. Calling the intentional fraud of a warmonger “intellectual dishonesty” is really rather insulting and unfair to the intellectually dishonest, such as Ward Churchill. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-is-the-evidence-that-bush-lied/510983.md?page=4)