Pardon me while I… :::::::::yaaaaawn:::::::::::…there, feel much better.
Hmmm…where was I? Oh yeah, about to compose a reply to yet another Bush apologist. No, no, on second thought, no need, for I see that 'luc’s already given you a Reader’s Digest version of the deceitful way BushCo attempted to tie Zarqawi -----> AQ ------> Iraq ------> Saddam -------> 9/11 ------> TWAT. Sad to see that not only did so many of you buy it then, but that you’re still clinging to said fantasies now.
However, since we apparently agree that facts do indeed speak for themselves, it’s abundantly clear that all you’ve done in your haste to ‘debunk’ what was presented as such, is get yourself even deeper into the Apologia Seas.
So your explanation boils down to “cognitive dissonance”. That is hardly news. The more patiently someone explains to you that you’re wrong, the harder you’ll believe you’re right.
It is interesting that CBS justifiably took heat, and rolled some heads, for publishing alleged facts without sufficiently verifying and authenticating such alleged facts, but that the Bush Administration is held to a different standard than the news media. The Bush Administration gets to go to war based on insufficiently verified and unauthenticated alleged facts. Dan Rather lost face and will have to step down, whereas GWB won another 4 year term.
He actively refused to find out, didn’t he? He was so desperate to get his war started that he refused to wait another 2 fucking weeks for the UN inspectors to confirm what had already become clear. The *very best * spin you can apply to him, even theoretically, is that he didn’t *care * what the truth was - but is that really any different from lying?
There are 1300 dead Americans, something like 6000 more wounded, many for life, because of that - and some tens of thousands (his administration refused to release estimates) of dead Iraqis because of that decision - and you’re looking for hairsplitting ways to say “Well, he didn’t technically lie”. Go explain that to a grieving family. zamboniracer, yup, if Rather and Mapes had been Administration officials, they’d get the Presidential Medal of Freedom, our highest civilian honor, for it, and might even get Cabinet nominations for it.
So what you’re saying is that your president is just too lazy, stupid and gullible that he would accept the word of defectors [who were known to have lied before] and torture victims [who could be brought to the point where they’d say anything, rather than wait for the weapons inspectors to finish their work - and come to the conclusion they’ve had to admit to now - that there were no WMD, and no valid reason to invade Iraq. There was a lot of information out there about Iraq before the invasion - Bush’n Blair just weren’t listening.
I’m not happy that our government aided and abetted Bush in this criminal action.
After so many soldiers and civilians have died for this lie - can you honestly say that Americans feel safer after the war in Iraq? They haven’t brought freedom to those people - they have brought torture and death. Do you feel proud of your government’s actions? I don’t!
There you go again. You automatically leap from lazy, stupid and gullible to LIE. I the word lie can be a synonym for anything as long as everyone comes to the same conclusion…yours.
It’s comparable to saying that every perosn killed in Iraq by the coalition forces were murdered and all of the coalition troops are murderers. DOes that sound familiar? People argue that constantly and they use the same logic as you guys. “Don’t get technical with me. I feel what they are doing as wrong and can call it what I want despite evidence to the contrary.”
Being ignorant isn’t the same as being a liar. And I’m not trying to spin this in favor of Bush, because I can’t stand him at all. I hate hate hate hate hate him. But I’m not willing to say that he spread lies about Iraq if: (a) there’s no strong evidence that he knew one thing, but said the opposite; or (b) it seems likely that he and others – many, many others, on all sides of the political spectrum – were simply wrong, as opposed to making things from whole cloth. That doesn’t strike me as hairsplitting at all.
And as far as the grieving families go, I’m sure they are very thrilled to hear your explaination that their son or daughter died for a lie. I think they died in service to their country, with dedication to those who were fighting beside them, in a war that never should have been started. Neither the American soldiers nor the Iraqi victims asked to be sent into that meatgrinder. That’s Bush’s fault, and he should be condemned for it. But I just don’t see evidence that Bush knew one thing, but said another. It’s a matter of reason and evidence for me, not simply outrage at the terrible, bloody blunders he has committed.
It could very well be that Colin Powell or George Tenet or someone will publish their memoirs in a few years and reveal that they knew full well that Saddam had completely disarmed, but decided to manufacture and plant evidence that he still retained WMD. If that’s the case, then I’ll gladly admit that I was wrong in defending Bush against the charge of lying to get us into a war that I always opposed. And should that scenario come to pass, as I admit my mistake, I’ll be wondering if some of this crowd in this thread will be calling me a liar for ever defending Bush on this one issue.
I don’t think anyone is claiming that Bush knew there WERN’T any WMDs in Iraq. The claim is that he said he knew there WERE when in fact he didn’t know 100% for sure, and that he fudged the data to make it look more likely that Iraq did have WMDs. Those are different positions.
To me, it just looks like sloppiness-- they assumed the WMDs were there and figured the case didn’t need to made strongly enough. They just assumed that everyone thought Iraq had WMDs (which was true) and that a strong case didn’t need to be made (which wasn’t true). Besides, we might as well banish the word “know” from the English language if someone is going to be called a liar because they said they knew “x was true” and it turned out later that “x” was not true.
The other issue that causes some confusion is this whole idea of “imminent threat”. Bush never said Iraq was an imminent threat. although his administration did an absolutely horrendous job of making sure people didn’t interpret things that way. The Bush doctrine is that we can’t wait until they become an imminent threat because that’s too late. I hate this type of phrasing, but there’s really no other way to say it better: In a “post 9/11 world”, we can’t afford to let countries like Iraq become an imminent threat. (Note: I don’t believe this myself, I’m just explaining the Bush doctrine.)
On this subject, I think people are confusing there disagreement with the Bush policy and the idea that Bush must have lied about an “imminent threat”.
Oh, another point here. You’re overstating the certainty that existed at that time.
In Hans Blix’s book, Disarming Iraq, he recounts a meeting with Tony Blair on February 20, 2003. He writes:
Blix also goes into considerable detail at many points in the book that he had his doubts about the specific intelligence reports – especially the allegations of mobile BW factories – and yet he still thought that there were probably WMD to be found. This might be a quibble, but I think that Blix did an excellent job under the circumstances, and was approaching the matter in a far better and rigorous way than Bush et al. were. But if Blix had seen so much intelligence that he doubted, and still retained a gut feeling that he might find something, then I find it reasonable that Bush, who didn’t question the intelligence nearly as intently as Blix, would be even more convinced that WMD were still in Iraq.
Fox News is not a good source to cite because they have, on many occasions, reported pure fiction as fact with the obvious intention of benefiting conservatives, and they rarely bother to offer corrections and apologies when they get caught doing so. If you can prove that Capital Hill Blues does the same on a regular basis, then I will stop considering them credible. Until that time, I will continue to view them as one of the best watchdogs of Congressional action. But if you’re going to say that any source not alligned with your political beliefs is not “credible”, then I think this debate is at a standstill.
Your Washington Post says that Shrub shared the true budget figures with “select” members of Congress. But that still leaves us with the unfortunate fact that a report which would have told all of Congress the definite, true budget figures was withheld by threat of firing an employee. As for your claim that Bush “never knew” the true figures, the WaPo article states that the White House released the true figures, which they had earlier lied about, a mere two months after the bill passed. And we’re still left with Pub Senators saying “Bush lied through his teeth”, which is a mighty odd thing to say about your party leader if he was actually infallibly honest.
Yes. Do so. You may come across the following quote from a news conference in Cairo, Feb. 2001. Colin Powell speaking:
.
Seems rather a disconnect, no?
So merely a fool and a dupe? Swell. That must be an enormous comfort to you.
Feel is definitely the operative word.
Dunno. Don’t you?
So, boiled down, your defense is: the President is not a liar, he is merely a chump and a dupe who relies on his feelings and intuition when making a decision that will result in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. And this is good enough for you. And secondarily, liberals are liars too, so that makes it a wash.
Perhaps. How about “*nearly * become clear”, then?
He was using the appropriate attitude under the circumstances. Somebody looking for something will be more thorough, and be seen as more thorough, if he’s convinced it’s there somewhere. Yes, he certainly did do an excellent job under the circumstances. Far from the “Inspections are a joke” and “Blix is blind” crap we heard from the warhawks.
Then why not let him finish the job and be sure? Two more fucking weeks, that’s all it would have taken. If the shit was there and was a threat, that would have gotten the UN behind the operation. But we both know Bush was going to have his war even before 9/11, on whatever pretext became available.
Not what I said. Ignorance is not knowing the facts. Bush actively *refused * to find out, and even started a war when the risk of the facts being revealed became too great. Yes, you’re hairsplitting.
Fleischer incorrectly described the administration position. And it’s easy to understand why-- the position was confusing and poorly communicated, and IMO wrong.
See, John? That was easy. Much easier, in fact, than wading through all the pages of thread cites that this board’s Search function comes up with. I do hope you read, and considered, *all * of that link.
Why, btw, are you concerned only with those specific words in that combination, and not with the very meaning that you try to blur by calling it “badly communicated”? The Administration policy was to go to war in Iraq no matter what the facts were, including the imminence or significance of any threat. That even took priority over hunting down Osama (and would you demand a cite for Bush saying “Wanted, dead or alive”, while we’re at it?).
No, as your own link says, the Bush policy is that a threat doesn’t even *need * to be imminent to justify a war. The bar was much lower than that, to the point where the facts are simply not needed at all. Seems to me that’s even worse, doesn’t it? We hanged people for that at Nuremberg and Tokyo.
Darn it - I’d just written a long reply to this post when my dog lay down on my computer cable, pulled out the plug, and my post was lost for ever. I can’t sit at the computer for long enough to write it all again so here are a few points.
Bush/Blairco, the media, the CIA and British Intelligence knew before the invasion that some of their information was false - but they repeated the same lies and went ahead anyway. Other countries in the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ withdrew their troops when they found out they’d been duped. Repeating information you have good reason to believe is false is telling lies, isn’t it??? http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0730-06.htm
And, after the experience in GW1 with intelligence from expatriates - it was extremely lazy, stupid and gullible to accept anything from people with their own agenda as fact without checking it carefully - does no-one else remember the lies about Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators to die. http://members.tripod.com/iraqbabies/babies.htm
Bush preferred to believe what he knew were lies than to believe the truth. Logic has nothing to do with your argument - there’s tons of evidence out there that Bush knew the facts - but you’d just prefer to stick your fingers into your ears, close your eyes to the truth and say ‘Yah Boo, I can’t hear you’.
Yeah, with all the tighty-righty bloggers with time and intense motivation to find tu quoque’s around, you’d think there’d be one, wouldn’t you? How about you start, then - what are some of your favorites?
It’s spelled “hypocrisy”, btw - “hypocracy”, if it were a word, would mean “government by the lowest”. That might have some rhetorical value after all, though, ya know.
OK, this is the last time I go to a “cite” that has obvious agendas. How about an unbiased link or at least something you have devoted your own time to corroborate?
If my fingers are anywhere, they are on my throbbing temples because I have to go through this crap. And if you decided to believe at face value what Common Dreams decides to tout as fact than you are either extremely lazy, stupid and gullible to accept anything from people with their own agenda as fact without checking it carefully, or a liar under your own paradigm right?
No thanks. I have better things to do with my time, like lurn to spell.