Where is the evidence that Bush "lied"?

Great Debates
121

Bush avoided the term imminent as if it were the plague.
His term of choice was “grave and gathering danger”.
By happy coincidence his choice of a sloppy and ill defined phraseology allowed him to skate around the stricter requirements for something to be defined as imminent, while still working the gullible right into a terror frenzy.

Of course there are those of us who think Bush’s phrasing was part of a calculated strategery on Bush’s part. A strategery calculated to mislead Americans, just as the emphasis on questionable intelligence as stone cold truth was calculated to mislead.

122

If you re going to call Bush a liar, I think you have to go with what HE actually said. Fleischer was in a press briefing asking questions. The Questioner tried to characterize the President’s position as something other than what it was, and Fleischer gave an inaccurate/loose/lazy/too-quick answer. We know this because we have Bush’s own words. In ascertaining if someone is lying, wouldn’t you say that their own words are the primary things to be evaluated? If we did have him commenting on imminence directly, I’d be more apt to agree with your assessment.

123

Really? The Downing Street memo? Bush’s use of the yellow cake report he already knew was false? These don’t qualify as evidence to you? A quick review of this thread provides plenty of cited evidence. Now if you continue to simply dismiss what’s here out of hand without anything to back it up, then I’m clearly not the one who needs to try again.

124

I don’t know about that. Since the press secretary is acting as the voice of the administration, I think it’s fair to hold him accountable. This is one context in which it’s difficult to say “but it’s only one man.”

Even granting what you say, we’ve still got Bush going, “Well, it’s not imminent, but that just means we must act immediately, before it becomes imminent.” I’m just not seeing much difference there.

125

Ok…(bolding mine):

Now, are you going to say he didn’t use the word “imminent”? Because despite that the language is clearly warning of an imminent threat even without using that word.

Yep…the shoe fits nicely.

126

It’s the same thing as the nitpicking over what constitutes a “lie”. As if showing that Bush never used the exact word “imminent” or the statements he and his adminstration weren’t REAL lies makes a real difference.

127

I think we’ve covered everything, so we can just let it go. You’re article just describes the last effort to get a clear authorization for war from the UN, which I referred too. It also describes the President saying we could attack in self-defense without UN authorization, which I also referred too.

All I’m saying is it’s currently the view of the United States that the resolution in 1991 gave us the authorization to invade Iraq in 2003 because it never expired (the same reasoning we used for Operation Desert Fox in 1998).

And domestically, the Congress authorized the war and kept funding it, and is still funding it.

I’m not sure what you mean that the “UN Constitution is the supreme law of the land in US.” Did you mean the US Constitution?

128

With a side order of “mushroom cloud”. Can’t leave that out.

129

Not really.

To be fair the MSM was parroting whatever the White House told them. I strongly encourage you to watch Buying the War on Bill Moyer’s Journal. It explores the failure of the MSM to call bullshit when there was bullshit. Indeed some few were waving the red flag in the MSM but they were shunted to the side and barely given credence if published at all.

Heck, the New York Times even issued an apology (sort of) for its coverage leading up to the war in Iraq.

As such it is not surprising that many Americans were all gung-ho on the war. Their president said so, the MSM was saying so. How else were they to get information showing otherwise? Some was out there yes but required a concerted effort to dig up and was swamped by the deluge of White House water carriers.

130

The memo referenced the assessment of the British Intel head that this was being done, but he doesn’t say (to my knowledge) that this was being done by Bush. In addition, the participants in that same meeting assumed as a matter of fact that Iraq had WMD (they considered Iraq’s use of these as one possible outcome of an attack). So what this guy was saying was that things were being shaded around the edges.

Apparently he didn’t know it was false and relied on the CIA.

131

One would have to have pretty strong filters to pretend there were no dissenting or questioning voices, as our friend’s use of the word “universal” implies. One would not have had to resort to the MSM exclusively not to at the very least be aware that there had to be some actual targets of all that coward/traitor/Dixie-Chick-fan invective.

But yes, the failure of the reporting “profession” was comprehensive.

132

One thing that argues strongly against the “Bush lied” or even “Bush cherrypicked” idea is that the assessment of the Iraqi danger of the Bush people does not seem to have been substantially different from that of the Clinton people.

133

Except for the minor detail of Clinton not using it as a pretext for war.

134

True. It’s a minor detail, in the context of this discussion. But to the extent that it has a bearing, it argues that Bush did not lie.

Because if Clinton and his security people - who were not looking for a pretext for war - nonetheless made the same assessment as the Bush people, then it’s likely that pretext for war was not the basis for this assessment when Bush did it.

135

As Elvis pointed out, Clinton didn’t invade Iraq. He saw the evidence that Iraq had WMD programs in the past and knew that Iraq would almost certainly try to revive those programs if it could. So he maintained pressure on Iraq throughout his administration.

And we can now see this worked. Iraq was unable to revive its WMD programs and produce any WMDs between 1991 and 2003. Clinton’s policies did the job.

Then Bush was elected and decided they hadn’t been working. Bush claimed that Iraq had been able to revive his WMD programs in secret and make WMDs. Bush then used this as the main justification for invading Iraq. And Bush was wrong.

Clinton and Bush saw the same problem. Clinton handled it. Bush failed.

136

That’s not what those quotes say. He (& fellow Democrats) believed that Iraq currently had WMD and was continuing work on WMD programs.

That’s not what we’re talking about in this thread.

137

If Bush didn’t lie then he was cirtminally careless in incompetent. When you are the Commander in Chief and you want to expnd thousands of soldiers lives, tens of thousands of civilian lives and billions of dollars of treasure, you better be 10,000% sure.

138

That was the point of the phraseology. To trigger all sorts of horrible scenarios in people’s heads without also triggering a requirement for the due diligence that calling something an “imminent threat” would have brought on.
Instead of going to war in the real world, we went for it with a “pre-emptive strike” in the Tom Clancy zone.

139

Maybe the Clinton admin’s claims were true in 1998. What does that have to do with Bush five years later? Why are the intelligence reports from 2002 and 2003, the ones that describe the US’s claims as ‘garbage’, not relevant? As for comments made during the Bush Administration, where did the quoted politicians get their information? From the Bush Administration. Were they basing their comments on what they thought had been true years previously or just repeating what the Bush War and Torture people told them?

I see no strong argument here.

140

You could call it the Pearl Harbor zone too.

Sure it is. What, you want Bush’s actions to be considered in isolation from any context or relevant comparison? Why, pray tell?