Here’s a site that lists Bush’s lies pretty comprehensively including the factual information rebutting it.
Should keep you busy awhile.
And therein lies the genius. Their astronomic incompetence leaves room for this explanation in a reasonable person.
Slight hijack…
Let’s say the President has evidence of plans to fly planes into the buildings in 2000. The evidence consists of “chatter” among known terrorists. The President acts on this evidence in May 2001 and invades Afghanistan, destroys terrorists camps, ect. Nothing happens to America; we are stuck in a nation-bulding effort for years in a foreign country and American lives pile up.
Same response to the President about a lack of evidence? Clearly there was.
What is actionable evidence? How much is enough? Is it the the lack of evidence, or massive response. Do you have to have a Pearl Harbor/9-11 incident to trigger an acceptable use of force? Probably so.
[I’m deliberately leaving out how you take “evidence” and use it to convince the public to get on board; just focusing on a personal decision to act on the above evidence]
This hypothetical differs because you assume they had evidence and acted upon it even if it was not “perfect” evidence.
I think we all understand that in such things there are no 100%, you know absolutely for sure guarantees.
Bush differed because he had no evidence, indeed ignored evidence that repeatedly suggested no WMDs yet he drove forward on the basis there were WMDs.
This is precisely what I came in here to say. There simply was no credible evidence that Iraq was a threat to the US such that an invasion was wise or necessary.
The other thing to consider is that Bush thought it would be a cakewalk and that once they had defeated Saddam the Iraqi people would welcome the Americans and institute a democracy. If Bush knew what a quagmire this would be I don’t think he would have gone in. Of course he should have known (or at least considered it).
Which of those most clearly show that Bush knew there were no WMD in Iraq?
That makes the third time we agree this decade.
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&complete_911_timeline_key_events=complete_911_timeline_key_warnings
The 911 timeline is a compilation of newspaper reports, magazines and other sources from many countries. Bush was warned repeatedly and given everything but the exact time. They did nothing. When Bush and Rice said who could have imagined they would fly jets into the towers he was lying. He was told many times. They got a lot of messages telling them it could happen.
Bush lied when he and Cheney and Rice connected 911 and Iraq. He lied when he brought up the yellow cake. He was told it was not true. He knew better but political expediency won out.
In that case, THAT’S a lie.
None of that has anything to do with lying. Predicting an outcome inaccurately isn’t a lie.
I think I became totally sure when they shifted from nukes to non-specific but absolutely terrifying “weapons of mass destruction”. Of which, of course, nukes are one but only one! There are many, just because he doesn’t have nukes, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction.
This happened, you will recall, as the case for Saddam’s nukes had turned to dog shit before our very eyes, the aluminum tubes weren’t for reactors, he had no superspeed centrifuges, he wasn’t trying to buy yellowcake…no nukes.
But when that fell apart, they simply claimed to have been talking about weapons of mass destruction all along. But they said nukes, they said mushroom clouds, they said enriching uranium…
They were holding the dome in place while they built the cathedral beneath it. Worked about as well as one might expect.
Yes, Clinton lied.
How many people do you imagine have lied about an illicit affair when they’re caught out on it? Uh, pretty much 100% of anyone who’s ever had an illicit affair, I’d say. Or awful close. It’s one of those things you lie about.
To continue to compare that to a lie that caused–is still causing–the deaths of thousands of people, and whose consequences as to the safety of this nation will not be certain for generations–now THAT is sophistry.
I know for a fact that tomorrow, I will wake up and have telekinetic powers that will let me destroy buildings using the power of my mind.
:dubious:
Sometimes, predicting an outcome inaccurately is, in fact, a lie.
I would like to believe I am fair, so I will try to be fair to Bush on this.
Saddam was playing a game with the Iranians pretending he had weapons. He didn’t but he really believed the real threat to his survival was Iran, not the US. It was a bluff to keep the Iranians on their side of the border. So he would tell the US he had no weapons but still posture that he did. Most of the rest of the world believed he had something. I don’t believe that anyone thought what he had was any threat to any but his own people and Iran.
That all said, I really think the lie is the question that isn’t answered. What the hell did we go in for?
- WMD-Even assuming he actually had them, whatever he had left was likely to be out of date and oozing so many chemicals that they were likely to cause more damage to the people handling them than they did to their targets.
2)Saddam was a really bad guy… Well yes, but the world is full of bad guys. There are even several who are more threat to the United States and oil. We could vote on bad guys from Burma to Zimbabwe, or even North Korea who are a bigger threat.
- We want an ally in the Middle East.-Possibility here as long as you never ever read any history of the area.
I didn’t read the intervening posts, but in this particular case, it wasn’t a lie. The US knew they had WMD’s because the US sold them yellowcake uranium in the past. The old joke was:
How does the US know there’s WMD’s in Iraq?
They have the receipt.
The lie actually was that we were going to Iraq to stop terrorism. Actually, we were going there to enrich Halliburton shareholders.
Isn’t that basically what lead to the Vietnam War? “Uh, sir, I think they fired a torpedo at us.”
In response directly to your hypothetical, I would argue that invading the country on a pre-emptive basis would be the wrong course of action. If you have enough evidence to invade, then surely you have enough evidence to disrupt the terrorist organization (at least the part outside Afghanistan) and stop the attacks. You would THEN have credible evidence to put forth towards that offending country.
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.
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? Whatever your definition of those terms may be?
Scylla, what changed your mind, and when?
Well no, I didn’t say it was. I was being charitable and saying that he lied to get us into a quick war with minimal suffering on all sides. I don’t think even W would have lied into this war if he knew what a clusterfuck it would turn out to be,