Bush did not lie on Iraq

[Gamblor]

Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying (http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html)

[jokerswild]

Naive spin. Grow up.

[andyfox]

Phew! That'a a relief.

[ThaSaltCracka]

isn't factcheck.org the site Cheney cited?

[Cyrus]

"Bush did not lie on Iraq."

Yeah, Bush did not lie down on Iraq, more than a thousand American soldiers lied down dead. I assume this is what you meant, right?

No, seriously, spare us the pro-Bush rhetoric. The man has done your job alright, no need to ram the point harder at our ribs.

The only thing, virtually the only good thing that has come out of Iraq's invasion was that the United States neutralized an enemy of Israel. That's all.

As far as the United States interests are concerned, there is simply no gain. As a matter of fact, the US interests have been hurt. As to national security, well, the less said the better. Suffice to mention that there are now more terrorists in Iraq then ever before.

So, be thankful, but also be humble. Don't rub it in.

[wacki]

[ QUOTE ]
Naive spin. Grow up.

[/ QUOTE ]

You obviously don't watch CSPAN.

[Gamblor]

But he didn't lie, as claimed by nearly all of you, and all of the US media.

I am a lifelong Democrat supporter, but I can't get behind John Kerry. I said it before, Clinton was the epitome of the Presidency. And until I see someone like him (scandals and all) I'm a Republican.

[pokerjo22]

This seems to overlook the original reason we went to war in Iraq - that Saddam was behind 9/11. When that didn't stick, Bush changed it to Saddam had WMDs. And when that didnt stick it got changed to 'time for a regime change'.

[tanda]

Of course Bush did not lie.

When it became clear that WMDs (spring-summer of 2003) would not be found, I commented to a friend that I did not think Bush could be re-elected. My thought was that the Dems would say "Mr. President, were you a liar or a fool?"

Less perjoratively, "Mr. President, your belief that Iraq had WMDs was not accurate. Was your publicly expressed belief in that accuracy genuine, in which case it is an issue of competency, or not genuine, in which case it is a question of honesty?"

Since Bush expressed an opinion shared by Reps, Dems, Kerry, Kennedy, Clinton, Powell, Chirac, and the intelligence services of USA, GB, France, Russia and Israel, it seems clear that he genuinely believed what everybody else believed. Thus, he did not lie. A lie requires that he knew when the statement was made that it was false. How would he have known this? What evidence is there that he knew this?

So, the answer to "Were you a liar of a fool?" is clearly not the former. It may be the latter.

The Bush criticism may be well-founded on the issue of competency (relying on inaccurate information, not determining that it was inaccurate) and the excuse that he made the same mistake as others may not be acceptable since, unlike those others, he went to war on that information.

But the fact that his critics have a good basis to criticize him on competency does not excuse the clearly false defamatory comments about his honesty.

[tolbiny]

Both Condi Rice and Colin Powell made statements at some point before the war that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. "everybody" in the world did not agree that he still had them, two high ranking members in his administration said they no longer existed.
Weather or not he intentionally ignored whatever evidence they had, or felt that other evidence outweighed what Powell and Rice had, we will never know.
But i wil say thi- IF he intentionally ignored, or made light of, evidenne that was contrary to his opinion, then i consider that a lie.
If he felt that the information Rice and powell were using was inaccurate then a mistake was made- weather it was his or the intelligence communities, or those briefing him, someone made a mistake, and he bears some responsibility for it.

[andyfox]

Let's assume, for the sake of discussion, that he didn't lie when he put these sixteen words into his speech. Colin Powell had admitted that, considering the flimsiness of the evidence, those words should not have been in the speech. We went to war because we didn't want to see a mushroom cloud here in the U.S. But Hussein didn't have a "reconstituted" nuclear program. We went to war because he had WMDs. But he didn't have WMDs. We went to war because he posed a threat to us and his neighbors. But both Powell and Rice said that he was not a threat that he was contained and weak. We went to war deliberately ignoring the CIA and other government and nongovernmental agencies who were giving advice on the proper way to do things in the aftermath of the war. Thus the messes associated with looting and the disbanding of the Iraqi army and police. And we went to war under an administration whose key players had, long before 9/11, been calling for an invasion of Iraq, cherry-picking intelligence to show what proved to be false, associating our safety in a post-9/11 world with an invasion of Iraq.

They fired the manager of the Boston Red Sox last year for leaving in his starting pitcher one batter too long.

[NotReady]

Yes. Cheney misspoke and called it factcheck.com, which I've heard is a George Soros anti-Bush site. Factcheck.org is great, I've been on their email list most of this year and as far as I can tell, they are truly objective, sparing no one who gets their facts wrong. Very refreshing.

[NotReady]

http://www.jrwhipple.com/war/wmd.html

Tip of the iceberg.

[andyfox]

If they had been president and led us into this war, I would fire them too.

[NotReady]

I would fire Bush if there was someone decent to hire.

[tolbiny]

Let me put it this way- If i was going to replace a guy who had done a bad job- i would rather replace him with a guy i "thought" would do a bad job, verses a guy who i "knew" had already done a poor job.
Not to mention that Kerry will have to be more accountable because he has to get re-elcted in 4 more years.
Bush on the other hand doesn't. chaney may run for office in 4 years, he may not, but the majority of the administration (rumsfeld, powell) seem to be nearing the end of their political careers, so they will not have some of the constraints that a first term admin would.

[Diplomat]

Truth or not, the question still remains: is the war legal when considering international law and norms?

-Diplomat

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
and all of the US media

[/ QUOTE ]
Of course Bush lied, just you're lying now. Your source consists of preposterous interpretations of and phony quotes from the Senate Intelligence Committee report.

Anyway, find me any source that says "all of the US media" claimed that Bush lied about Iraqi WMD (which you've idiotically limited to one of the bigger lies, about Nigerian uranium).

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
A lie requires that he knew when the statement was made that it was false.

[/ QUOTE ]
So if I go around accusing you of molesting children, I can't be lying, can I, because I not "know" whether that statement is false? Don't be stupid. Whether one uses the words decieve, defraud, or lie, the criminal malfeasance of the Bush administration is unarguable: Bush and his subordinates deliberately fabricated a war-justifying threat that never existed, and as a result the U.S. waged an unlawful war of aggression, is the most hated country in the world, tens of thousands of people are dead, and the U.S. is threatened by terrorists as never before.

[Cyrus]

Your list of "Democrats who were sure WMDs existed in Iraq" is a red herring (or red donkey, whatever).

The important question is, having assumed that Saddam had WMDs at a certain time, what was then the proper course to follow?

The UN sanctions were working; the threat from Saddam was not "clear and present" (viz. inter alia Zbignew Brzezinsky); the occupation would create a lot of problems that, if unchecked, would cause chaos and possibly affect adversely the US geopolitical balance of security (viz. the American military planners and the US Army chief of staff, who was dismissed for arguing that more troops were needed); etc.

With the same data about the probability of WMDs existing, turns out that those who opposed arm and tooth the hasty, ill-planned and tremendously costly invasion were absolutely, goddamn right -- both those inside and those outside the United States. Face it.

[Cyrus]

"The question still remains: is the war [against Iraq] legal when considering international law and norms?"

Kofi said no, it's not.

[Gamblor]

Even the great and all-powerful Kofi Annan is not impartial and has personal biases that might affect his assessment of the situation.