Bush and Uranium

[John Ho]

Any comments on the White House admitting his SOTU speech was wrong about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa?

The nation deserves an explanation from Bush himself...not his damn aides.

[andyfox]

Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson revealed last weekend that he was the person that the CIA sent to Niger to investigate the document that showed Iraw was trying to get uranium, under pressure from Cheny. The coument was a forgery and Wilson says that the CIA, the State Dept., the National Secuirty Countil and CHeney's office were all informed that the Niger-Iraq conneciton was phony.

So Bush must have lied about the connection in his SOTU speech.

BTW, Wilson had been praised by Bush 41 when he confronted Saddam Hussein face-to-face after the invasion of Kuwait. Said Regular Bush, "What you are doing day in and day out under the most trying conditions is truly inspring. Keep fighting the good fight."

It's not, of course, unusual that presidents lie. Johnson and Nixon perfected it to an art form, and passed the technique down to Clinton. But let's at least admit the evident truth: the justification for the Iraq attack was hooey. We have come to expect no less, and no more, from our leaders.

[MMMMMM]

While what you say may be true, andy, there appear to be two rather large holes in your stated reasoning.

The first is that since Wilson said something, Bush was necessarily lying. Mightn't just one possible explanation be that Wilson is lying, or at least exagerrating? Mightn't another be that Bush's top aides didn't tell him everything?

The problem with your other conclusion--that the evidence for the Iraq attack was hooey--is that even if some of the evidence is invalid, that doesn't mean all the evidence is invalid. Heck, even German intelligence, as far back as around 1999, if I recall, was saying that Iraq would have nuclear weapons by 2004 or 2005 at the latest. I think there are lots of reasons the CIA, German intelligence, British intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and Australian intelligence all reached a similar conclusion: that Saddam had a WMD program. Also, they reached this conclusion not just immediately before the war.

It also appears to me that it takes a helluva lot larger leap of faith to presume that Saddam didn't have any WMD programs that that he did. So while some of the evidence may not have existed, I think it's highly dubious to suggest that none existed at all, or that all five intelligence services were either all wet or in conspiracy over all these years.

So, perhaps Bush lied and took the easy way out, but rest assured, Saddam had not unilaterally, completely and secretly discontinued his known WMD programs from the 90's. If he had, why wouldn't he have brayed it to the world, and shown at least a smidgen of evidence, to get those terrible sanctions lifted? It defies all reason to think that this was the case. And apparently the world's major intelligence services didn't think so for a minute, either, not even back in the late 90's. So I submit that you are holding to an unsupportable and rather irrational point of view regarding the WMD programs, although I could certainly sympathize with any feelings of outrage or disappointment if we should find out that Bush actually lied.

[Dr Wogga]

...very logical. Also, let us not forget that the Iraqis themselves had made many declarations of their weapons program to the UN weapons inspectors and the internat'l atomic energy organization. There is no reason to believe that everyone was wrong; that everyone was lying. Wasn't Tony Blair just exonerated? by a parliament that was bent on 'kicking him in the slats'?? If so, the "hooey" comment is officially shot down by the good Dr's Scuttlebutt and Innuendo Pipeline Committee. C'mon Andy. You can do better than that!

[andyfox]

"Mightn't just one possible explanation be that Wilson is lying, or at least exagerrating? Mightn't another be that Bush's top aides didn't tell him everything?"

Bush has a proven track record of lying. American presidents have a proven track record of lying. Cheney knew the report was false. You think he kept this info. from Bush?

I have said all along I think Saddam had weapons. The point is not whether or not he had them but whether he posed a threat sufficient to justify our preemptive war. The administration certainly exaggerated that threat and it appears they used "evidence" they knew was tainted. Again, this should not be surprising. It is a staple of American foreign policy; it would not be surprising to find it a staple of foregin policy of most countries.

"even if some of the evidence is invalid, that doesn't mean all the evidence is invalid."

The main reason given by the adminstration for the war was that Saddam had WMDs and was a danger to us and others. One piece of the evidence was this report. The CIA knew the report was hogwash; so did the NSC; so did Cheney. Doesn't this give one pause about the rest of the evidence?

Again, I have no doubt Saddam had WMDS. But I have doubts about the supposed connection he had with Bin Laden and Al Qaeda and with the threat that he posed to us and others. I will not be outraged or disappointed if we find out Bush misled us, anyone who would be surprised by this development is ignorant of the mindset of the hardliners who are running the administration and the way government works.

Unsupportable and irrational are adjectives I would apply to the administration's justifications for the preemptive war.

[Jimbo]

Bush has a proven track record of lying.

Do you mind providing a few proven examples Andy?

[Dr Wogga]

....oops, wrong president. My bad. [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]

Of course Jimbo you realize you are pushing the plate with a request for facts. [img]/forums/images/icons/ooo.gif[/img]

[andyfox]

http://www.bushwatch.com/bushlies.htm is a good place to start.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that the administration decided to use military force in Iraq because the information about the threat of Saddam's regime was seen with a different perspective after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder," Rumsfeld said. "We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11."

It was thus necessary to connect Saddam Hussein with 9/11, despite the lack of evidence.

Note too that Ari Fleischer said that "this type of information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech." It wasn't just a presidential speech. It was the State of the Union speech outlining an upconming war. In that speech Bush said there was evidence of Hussein's pursuit of nuclear capability through purchases in Africa. Rumsfeld now says that was not the reason for the war. Which is it?

C'mon Jimbo. This is not a left-right issue. Every president within my lifetime (and I'm an old fart) has lied about military adventures. When the Russians shot the U-2 down, Eisenhower said we didn't have spy planes over Russia, it couldn't be so. We had nothing to do, according to Ike, with the "revolutions" in Guatemala in 1954 and Iran in 1953, both of which were CIA coups. Truman exaggerated the Communist threat in Greece to get Congress to go along. I think we can agree that Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton were recidivistic liars. Reagan lied about Nicaragua and Iran-Contra. It's old news.

[andyfox]

Those of us who deal in facts have no problem recognizing that Clinton was a pathological liar. The fact that my politics may be similar to his does not preclude me from seeing those facts.

BTW, my favorite part of that famous statement was when he added, "Ms. Lewinsky" at the end. Otherwise, it would certainly be hard to determine to which woman he was referring, there being so many "incidents" from which to choose. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[Jimbo]

Interesting site Andy, not a left/right issue huh? This website seems to be slanted so far that all the lies I found were the authors. It seems he transposes purported lies by some of those in Bush's administration directly onto Bush, very tricky however innefective to an unbiased observer. In another move he quotes a lie told by Gordon Livingston and uses that to "prove" president Bush was lying. Again very smooth but still inefffective. My favorite is the lie by Noah Smith which is so sweet I must quote it in this text. 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

Now the last time I looked the tax rates went down by 2% across the board. If you pay taxes at all they were cut, it is difficult to cut taxes for someone who pays none to begin with.

I agree Andy that Presidents lie, they lie to their wives, they lie to our enemies they even lie in the case of National Security. You seem to imply that Bush lies just for it's own sake. Using your reference material I cannot find laudable proof of even one lie he knowingly told. Of course a site named Bushlies.com would be pretty useless unless it did some lying of it's own.

What I was asking for Andy was not someones perception of a Bush lie but some published quotes which can be verified showing direct contradictions. To qualify this properly if the circumstances changed between two statements or if additional information had been revealed to Bush (such as during the campaign vs after election) then this might naturally lead to a contradiction but not necessarily a lie.

Anyway good attempt at fulfulling my request, Thanks.