This is the only time I am going to do this Jake. Just to show the idiocy of your arguments, I’m going to respond to each of these claims. I won’t do it again because anyone can google up a million quotes and make retarded associations with them.
Trying to prove “Bush didn’t lie” is trying to prove a negative and it’s not an argument tactic or even a victory to tell someone to do that.
Rumsfeld said this, not Bush. And he said “to his knowledge.”
Not proof, try again.
You’re purporting to know whether or not Bush believed this? Wow.
Still isn’t a lie, not proof.
Even if he was wrong about this (and he wasn’t, tax rates have been decreased across the board) it wouldn’t mean he lied, it would just mean he couldn’t deliver or execute the plan, that isn’t an act of lying.
Need some more backing for this quote, a quote in a void proves nothing.
And even so, it could easily be a distortion of a report. So it would be the first remotely “untrue” thing you’ve said yet.
But again, the quote is saying Bush said something, not direclty quoting him, need more proof.
Try again.
Quote by Karl Rove, not George Bush.
Show the lie, again, nothing.
Statistical argument, again doesn’t show a direct lie.
Also of cousre it’s the analysis of one person from what I can see.
Colin Powell’s intelligence was wrong, so Bush was lying?
That makes sense.
Yeah because some independent analysis of shitty Soviet satellites = proof.
Seriously? Your rebuttal is “Statistical argument, again doesn’t show a direct lie.” and “Quote by Karl Rove, not George Bush.” and “Yeah because some independent analysis of shitty Soviet satellites = proof”?
I love this one.
Quote: “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
Martin “You’re purporting to know whether or not Bush believed this? Wow.”
Dear Leader can do no wrong! Only his staff… and horribly innaccurate and unconfirmed intelligence… and assumptions… and economic statistics… only that stuff is lies. But Dear Leader is lie-free. Yep.
No, because Hans Blix wasn’t a neutral party and was ardently opposed to U.S. efforts to remove Saddam Hussein, he opposed the war openly right as it began.
Hans Blix had quite some time to do his work in Iraq, and his progress there was hindered on and off throughout the situation. Just because he later said “I received full cooperation” means nothing, I doubt Hans Blix really believes that himself though he may have said it for his own personal reasons.
Right before the war Blix did receive a level of cooperation that was unparalleled over the last few years, but it still wasn’t complete cooperation.
Again YOU ARE PURPORTING TO KNOW WHAT SOMEONE BELIEVED? If I believe the moon is made of cheese and then go to the moon and find it is not that doesn’t make me a liar, it makes me WRONG.
Secondly, Karl Rove is NOT George W. Bush PERIOD. And the issue on tax cuts is a contentious issue on which there is little agreement.
The statistics involved mean nothing because you’ve provided no significant sources with them. I can show you statistics that can be said to mean ANYTHING. If you’ve ever taken a statistics class you learn from day one how statistics can’t be taken at face value.
Again, a Soviet satellite picture doesn’t = U.S. satellite picture, the image quality is probably not as good, and there’s not even any proof the groups involved had access to every square inch of the border, it’d be very easy for amateurs to miss tanks on a satellite photograph, sat photos aren’t like the movies everything isn’t labelled for you.
Saddam was a paper tiger after Gulf War I. He was no threat to the world after that. The WMD were cited by Bush as the compelling reason to go in. Yes, Clinton also thought Saddam had weapons. But the degree of cooperation that Saddam was giving the inspectors then was nowhere near as good as during Bush’s early term. So Clinton bombed Iraq to take out suspected weapons. He didn’t go in. And if he was in Bush’s shoes and Blix was getting the cooperation that he was, he wouldn’t have gone in then either.
You asked me personally was it justification for war, so acutally I guess you forgot the entire context of the thread. The last time I checked you didn’t say “that’s what Bush said to justify the war?” You just said "and that justifies war? Since you directly asked me the question I responded.
As it is Bush actually did talk about the humanitarian issues in Iraq. WMD was again, the evidence needed to get support. Personally I don’t care if Bush did lie to the moronic vox populii, I don’t think he “constantly lied over the last four years” and considering the level of stupidity in the quotes I’ve seen no one can show that.
To me getting Saddam out of power easily justifies propaganda. The public doesn’t have a right to know everything, whatever they may think. And even still Bush hasn’t directly lied, he’s always added qualifiers like “reports show”, “we believe” et cetera.
As for myopic thug, eh who cares. When someone else becomes a superpower they can bitch about it.
Bush, in effect, promised not to invade Iraq if Saddam got rid of his WMDs. When Bush went to the UN, it is quite clear that he had already made up his mind to invade and was just going through the motions. People said, “Give the weapons inspectors time to work”, but the Bushies kept saying “We know he’s got them, they’re just hidden really well”. Well, if you know you don’t know something and you say you know it, that’s a lie. But the whole issue of WMDs was a big fat lie, because that’s not the reason Bush decided to invade Iraq. He did it to pursue the neocon vision of transforming the Middle East by esablishing democracy in Iraq. Bush lied about his reasons for going to war to forstall a national debate on the issue, and instead kept insisting he was “defending America”.
How can one possibly debate such blatant paranoia? Is there anyone whose word you would have taken that Iraq was in fat not the imminent threat it was made out to be?
Jake, thank you for an actual, compiled list of allegations. It sure helps to inform a debate when you back up your OP with facts, rather than hurling epithets at conservatives, or saying that a good liberal like me is in denial because I think that your rhetoric might not be backed up by facts.
I’ve done a quick look at the list, and a couple of things pop to mind. First, that Dick Cheney quote about reconstituting nuclear weapons: it is very clear in my mind that Cheney meant to say “nuclear weapons program,” but he didn’t. Even Tim Russert, who knows how to grill politicians, brought this up in a subsequent interview on 9/13/03:
Now, I have no doubt in my mind that the Administration wanted to scare the pants off of the American people by hyping visions of mushroom clouds. It is dispicable. It is outrageous to me that Condi Rice, who first used that phrase about “the smoking gun shouldn’t be a mushroom cloud,” is up for a promotion to Secretary of State. She, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush should be kicked to the curb for all that they have done wrong.
But the facts indicate that Cheney had been speaking about nuclear weapons programs during that interview. A misstatement in a quote that is taken out of context is not a lie. People sometimes slip up while talking on live TV. Surely you have better evidence of lies relating to pre-war intelligence on Iraq, don’t you?
Second, it appears to me that both sides here are warping what Hans Blix actually said and did. He stated on several occasions in late January and early February 2003 that Iraq was cooperating on process, but not on substance. He repeatedly decried the fact that Iraq was not willing to answer key questions about what happened to their WMD programs, despite the fact that they were opening doors and allowing access. Blix also wanted more time, which he certainly should have had.
There’s no way Bush could have known, unequivocally known, all the things he said he knew about WMDs in Iraq, the threat of Iraq’s regime, and terrorist activities in the region (such as Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, etc.).
Jesus, people. If you want to defend Bush’s lies by saying saying they were necessary for the nation’s security, that might be one thing, but to continue to assert against all evdience that Bush is an honest leader…well…all I can say it that it defies credulity.
Despite Bush’s allegation that Hussein met often with Iraqi scientists:
Do you folks have any idea how many examples of this sort of thing there are?
I could go on for pages and pages, just quoting Bush himself and easily finding refutation of it for a recognized media source.
How do you reconstitute a nuclear weapon? Is it freeze dried? Do you just add water?
This quote only makes sense if what you’re talking about is a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. And this transcript of the Meet the Press interview, placing the quote into context, indicates that that indeed was what was being discussed.
On preview I see that Ravenman has made a similar point.
Now, I could cherrypick some quotes from you on this board and build a case against you if I so chose. That, however, wouldn’t be an honest and truthful thing to do, and we both know it.
By screaming BUSHLIEDBUSHLIEDBUSHLIED!!! so loudly at every mistake, misstatement, ambiguity or policy disagreement, the Left has essentially immunized Bush administration against charges of lying.
When he tells an actual lie (and, make no mistake, all politicians do at some point), and somebody calls him on it, even if they do so in a restrained and civil manner, many (perhaps a majority) will just roll their eyes and think “there they go again”.
Knorf: another good list. I agree with you about the first issue, the plans of nuclear plants. Looks to me like that was, indeed, a fabrication. That’s the first smoking-gun evidence I’ve seen in this thread of rabid hysteria.
On the meetings with nuclear scientists one, it’s clear to me that Bush was wrong. It’s not so clear to me whether the WaPo has evidence that Bush knew at the time that the work was benign, or whether subsequent intelligence discoveries cast that claim in new light. I say needs more evidence before this can be called a lie, but certainly possible.
On the tubes, it’s clear that there was a dispute among experts about their use, and some experts were wrong. If Rice indeed claimed that the only possible use of the tubes was for a nuke program (I vaguely recall such allegations, but it’s not quoted in your post, and my memory may be faulty), then she was either misinformed or lying. I don’t think there’s enough evidence to decide that one.
Same thing on the drones. There was a dispute, and some experts were wrong. That makes Bush wrong. There is nothing to prove that Bush KNEW that there were no UAVs, but said there were, anyway.
All of this is kind of beside the point for me, anyway. Bush and his crew have been wrong on so many things that they should be ashamed of themselves, and the American people would have been wiser to send him packing for his obscene lack of judgment and his constrant record of being wrong. This obsession with calling Bush a liar is an ad hominem distraction from his record of running the most bumbling, error-prone Administration in many decades.
On preview, I see that BrotherCadfael has made this point better than I.
Ding! There’s the answer in a nutshell. Among contributors to this thread alone, I can’t even keep track anymore of which people routinely and blithely compare the President of the United States to a chimpanzee, to Hitler, or to the genocidal dictator of North Korea. On the national level, too, the New York Times continues to run idiots like Krugman and Dowd and the former Vice President of the United States refers to Bush supporters on the internet as “digital brownshirts.” No sane person is going to take seriously anything such a person has to say on any subject. Persons who are sane and who have differences with the president, whether on a policy matter or on his truthfullness on this issue or that, are oftentimes drowned out by the clutter. It’s a pity, really, that those sane people don’t tell their alleged fellow travellers to STFU much more often.
I’d like to see the quote about him getting “cooperation at every turn”. Not that I think you’re lying, but my memory is differnent from yours. What I remember was Blix saying that S.H. was NOT fully cooperative, but that he his cooperation had improved enough (once the US up’ed the ante for war, btw) so that his team could get the job done if they were given more time.
Anyway, that’s about as much as I’m willing to wade into this morass. Show us the quote about “cooperating at every turn” if there is one. I’m genuinely curious.
From my own perspective, I think speculation about “lying” is pointless. We’ll never what was in Bush’s head. The point is that he made a huge blunder by going into Iraq, and that cost him my vote in November. Why so many seem bent on pursuing this “lying” issue is beyond me. Is it because Clinton was impeached for lying under oath, and now the other side wants retribution? Well, Bush isn’t going to be impeached.
I have no report (nor did I claim any) of Hans Blix literally uttering the words “co-operation at every turn”, no John. But he maintains that no instance of US claims of misdirection or concealment occurred. The best direct
Is it that mysterious? Ever hear of hypocrisy? It’s about helping the hypocrites realize their hypocrisy, learn from it, and become better and more responsible citizens and humans for it. It would be nice, sure, if their claims to moral superiority were backed by any sort of evidence at all, in fact the reverse is true. It would even be nice if more than a few were able to say “I guess we got carried away with partisanship in trying to get Clinton for something”, but we can’t expect that. The hypocrisies were clear at the time, too, but had no more effect then than now.
You know damn well why Bush won’t be impeached, and that his lies and the deaths they have caused are irrelevant to that decision.
Or are you asserting that it *just doesn’t matter * if the President who works for us habitually lies to us? I hope you don’t mean that.