Why do people forgive Bush's lies?

[Jake_the_Plumber]

@Brutus

I am in a very kind and benevolent mood today, so I will just politely request better cites than that. Come on, you didn’t really expect those hack partisan cites to float, did you?

Why not? You do.

Hey, you guys remember back when that roadside bomb that contained 0.000000000001% sarin gas went off (killing no one), and they were all like, “OMG WMDs IN YOUR FACE!”… yea, that was pretty funny.

[ElvisL1ves]

Well, jeez, you asked for cites. They’re filled with direct, independently-confirmable quotes. On what basis, other than a foolishly-strong sense of denial, can you describe them as hack partisan? I doubt you’ve even looked.

[Banquet_Bear]

“Let me just say, these were illegal combatants. They were picked up off the battlefield aiding and abetting the Taliban” President Bush July 2003

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/07/17/bush.blair.presser.transcript/

…well, we know that this isn’t true. Prisoners were taken out of beds in Pakistan, off flights into Gambia, from the courts in Bosnia, some were locked up as Taliban prisoners, others were taken from thier taxis and delivered to US troops for bounty payments…

Many Held at Guantanamo Not Likely Terrorists

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/panorama/transcripts/insideguantanamo.txt

So either President Bush lied, or he’s incompetent. Which is it Brutus?

[Jake_the_Plumber]

Maybe he wants a published and edited source

… or maybe he’ll just brush that off as “partisan”

So, what, only a Republican can say that Bush* lied with any validity?

• It should be noted that when we say “Bush” we generally mean “The Bush Administration”. Many of the Bush lies were indirect and scattered through other outlets.

[Ravenman]

Christ, now I’m going to feel like a right-winger again.

I simply don’t believe that Bush lied about WMD. Exaggerated, yes. Obfuscated, yes. Bullied, spun, and demagoged, yes. But lie, no.

If one makes the case that Bush lied about WMD, I think it would stand to reason that he was saying something that he knew was false; i.e., he knew that there were no WMD in Iraq, but he said that there were anyway. That’s a damn hard case to make.

We on the left have sorely misunderestimated Bush. I am convinced that he is the Republican version of Harry Truman: dumb as a rock, shoots from the hip, but also tough and uncompromising. The main difference is that Truman made our country more secure by uniting the Free World against a common threat, and Bush has aggrivated the common threat and divided the Free World. But that doesn’t make him a liar, either.

[Martin_Hyde]

@SentientMeat

Howbout this: Bolding mine. He said he knew they had WMD, and the entire war was predicated on their existence. Are you, like in the thread referencing US Army regulations, going to put on your dancing shoes and opine that Bush was talking only about the “dangerous weapons” found in the arsenal of every army in the world?

All indications are to his knowledge he knew there were WMD, he didn’t directly see said weapons so he had to rely on the reports of the intelligence service. Some of those reports were overestimated.

But Saddam did have missiles that he fired during the invasion that travelled farther than ones he was legally allowed to posess, and Saddam himself was violating U.N. resolutions by refusing to allow completely open inspections.

If a known drug smuggler refuses to let police search his home, and prevents them from doing so with a gun, then everyone is going to assume he has drugs in the house.

That’s the situation we had with Saddam. On top of that Bush did have intelligence reports saying Saddam had WMD, so Bush was wrong in believing them so completely (or maybe not, we’ll never know if Saddam got rid of said WMD during the invasion) but that doesn’t make him a liar.

And it certainly doesn’t mean he’s “done nothing but lie” for the last four years.

This thread is just a mindless ad hominem and it reflects poorly on the Straight Dope everytime the leftists here delude themselves to almost a sickening level.

We have so many intelligent posters on this forum who decide to throw out logic and reason because they are mad they have ended up on the losing side of the political spectrum. What is doubly sad is most of us should know better than to be caught up in such feelings as politics in America is always a two party game and the Republicans won’t rule forever.

[Martin_Hyde]

I think the fact that Jake produced a quote calling Bush a homicidal dictator should be enough to discredit his entire argument. Obviously no logical or reasonable human being would make such a claim. Only a completely deceived, duped, mentally insufficient, and quite simply intellectually challenged person would make such a claim.

I think Jake has a sickness and we should all not allow him to soak in his delusions as it is harmful to his mental health.

Again, there’s no proof that Bush lied about WMD, it’s just that simple. And we have found some small number of WMD in Iraq.

[BobLibDem]

@Brutus

They did bomb it.

And what was the cost of Clinton’s Iraq attacks? Compare in any measure the cost of Clinton’s foreign policy vs. Bush. In dollars. In American soldiers killed. In innocent civilians killed. In terrorist plots foiled (recall Clinton foiled the Millenium Plot, while Bush failed to foil 9/11) In international support. In human rights. For that matter, name any measure at all in which Bush outperforms Clinton.

[Martin_Hyde]

Yes Bob because as the world’s lone superpower we should only consider successful things that are not hard.

[SentientMeat]

All indications are to his knowledge he knew there were WMD, he didn’t directly see said weapons so he had to rely on the reports of the intelligence service. Some of those reports were overestimated.

At whose behest? What if the intelligence reports were manipulated by some in his administration?

[ElvisL1ves]

Martin, you’re whooshing us, right?

[Captain_Amazing]

@Brutus

They did bomb it.

Indeed. And if you look at the rhetoric they used when they did… Here’s President Clinton’s speech announcing Desert Fox:

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/12/16/transcripts/clinton.html

[SentientMeat]

Saddam himself was violating U.N. resolutions by refusing to allow completely open inspections.

Hans Blix encountered co-operation at every turn, if you remember correctly - that’s why he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t given the extra few months to finish the job. Surely the slightly long-ranged missiles did not predicate a war?

[Martin_Hyde]

Yeah, Hans Blix was getting cooperation at every turn.

It’s amazing how you rewrite history.

Right before the war Hans blix asked for key documents, Iraq responded by bombarding him with a massive amount of paper, all of which Blix said “was not what he was asking for.”

This was just typical of the “cooperation” Saddam was giving throughout the entire thing.

He lead inspections teams around by the nose for 12 years, would give them a little then throw tantrums like a little child every few months.

If Saddam Hussein was cooperating then David Koresh peacefully surrendered to the FBI.

[Jake_the_Plumber]

@Ravenman

I simply don’t believe that Bush lied about WMD. Exaggerated, yes. Obfuscated, yes. Bullied, spun, and demagoged, yes. But lie, no.

Bush’s lies aren’t limited to WMDs. That’s just the biggest one. Check my Slate link for a direct WMD lie.

“I don’t believe anyone that I know in the administration ever said that Iraq had nuclear weapons.”
—Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, at a hearing of the Senate’s appropriations subcommittee on defense, May 14, 2003

“We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
—Vice President Dick Cheney on NBC’s Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

On April 26, President Bush said in his weekly radio address, “My jobs and growth plan would reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax.”

That turned out not to be true. According to the nonprofit Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, an unspecified number of low- and middle-income families received no tax cut at all because they’d been excluded from an expansion of the child-care tax. --Timothy Noah, 06.03.03

“There was only one problem with President George W. Bush’s claim Thursday that the nation’s top economists forecast substantial economic growth if Congress passed the president’s tax cut: The forecast with that conclusion doesn’t exist.Bush and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer went out of their way Thursday to cite a new survey by “Blue-Chip economists” that the economy would grow 3.3 percent this year if the president’s tax cut proposal becomes law. That was news to the editor who assembles the economic forecast. “I don’t know what he was citing,” said Randell E. Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip Economic Forecast, a newsletter that surveys 53 of the nation’s top economists each month. “I was a little upset,” said Moore, who said he complained to the White House. ‘It sounded like the Blue Chip Economic Forecast had endorsed the president’s plan. That’s simply not the case.’” 2.24.03

“Mr. Bush’s other foreign aid initiative, announced in his State of the Union address, is $10 billion in new money to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean over five years. But his budget falls short of that promise. He is proposing only a $550 million increase over the global AIDS money in this year’s spending bill now in Congress. Since the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria would be an effective channel for the aid, there is no excuse for the initiative’s leisurely start. Mr. Bush’s 2004 budget for the Global Fund, $200 million, actually cuts in half what Congress is likely to do in 2003. Mr. Bush has also found part of the money for his AIDS programs by cutting nearly $500 million from child health, including vaccine programs. Child survival is the biggest loser in the foreign aid budget — a scandalous way to finance AIDS initiatives. With the budget dominated by defense spending and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, the White House should not be forcing the babies of Africa to pay for their parents’ AIDS drugs.” 2.17.03

“45 percent of all of the dividend income goes to people with $50,000-or-less incomes, family incomes. Nearly three-quarters of it goes to families with $100,000 or less family income.”

—White House senior adviser Karl Rove, discussing the Bush tax proposal in a meeting with reporters, as reported by Dana Milbank in the Jan. 28 Washington Post.

"Not exactly. It is true that 43.8 percent of tax returns with dividend income are from households with less than $50,000 in income and 73.8 percent of such returns are from households with less than $100,000. But that doesn’t mean the little guy earning less than $50,000 gets ‘45 percent of all the income’ or that the Main Street earners below $100,000 get ‘three-quarters’ of dividend income.

“In fact, those earning less than $50,000 get 14.7 percent of dividend income, and those earning less than $100,000 get 32.7 percent, according to a Brookings Institution/Urban Institute analysis. The former would get 6.8 percent of the benefit of Bush’s dividend plan, while the latter would get 20.9 percent.”

—Milbank, in the Jan. 28 Washington Post.

Blix again denied an allegation by Secretary of State Colin Powell that inspectors knew of cases in which Iraq had moved banned items around before inspectors arrived on the scene. “I am sure that Colin Powell speaks on the basis of notes given to him, but this is not correct. Our inspectors have not seen that the Iraqis were moving anything away from the sites that we are visiting,” he said. --Reuters.

When George H. W. Bush ordered American forces to the Persian Gulf – to reverse Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait – part of the administration case was that an Iraqi juggernaut was also threatening to roll into Saudi Arabia.

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid–September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border – just empty desert.

yawn Whatever. So I guess the answer to my question is “denial”

[Martin_Hyde]

@SentientMeat

Hans Blix encountered co-operation at every turn, if you remember correctly - that’s why he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t given the extra few months to finish the job. Surely the slightly long-ranged missiles did not predicate a war?

Certainly not but I don’t think WMD in general meant a thing. Saddam Hussein was a destabilizing force who sat on a lot of oil which meant he could perpetuate his reign ad infinitum.

I participated in Gulf War I and I wanted Saddam knocked out then. I wanted Saddam taken down in 1998 as well, and I wanted him knocked out in 2003 as well. WMD was seen as a smoking gun and a requirement for invasion by many, I don’t get why. This guy was a huge threat to global security and America has long upheld the burden of being the global policeman.

[Jake_the_Plumber]

@Martin Hyde

I think the fact that Jake produced a quote calling Bush a homicidal dictator should be enough to discredit his entire argument. Obviously no logical or reasonable human being would make such a claim. Only a completely deceived, duped, mentally insufficient, and quite simply intellectually challenged person would make such a claim.

I think Jake has a sickness and we should all not allow him to soak in his delusions as it is harmful to his mental health.

Maybe you should check your mental health as well, maybe looking for a sense of humor. :rolleyes:

[SentientMeat]

Yeah, Hans Blix was getting cooperation at every turn.

It’s amazing how you rewrite history.

If I could find a quote from the man himself regarding the levels of access and co-operation he encountered, would you retract your accusation of revisionism on my part?

[Jake_the_Plumber]

Ooh, I almost forgot. How many times have there been “credible threats to national security” or “terrorist plans to strike at _______” and raising the uber terrorist alert level?

I’d like to see their credibility.

[SentientMeat]

Certainly not but I don’t think WMD in general meant a thing.

It was the administration which forwarded this justification time and again. Time and again, they shied away from setting the precedent of ‘humanitarian regime change’. The reasons you think it right is not what they actually said, and is rather a non-sequitur here.

This guy was a huge threat to global security and America has long upheld the burden of being the global policeman.

Or “myopic thug”, as many Americans and the rest of the industrialised democratic world might say.