Putin: Hussein Was Preparing Attacks Inside the United Stat

Re: au 1929

Here's what I have to say to au1929. Rather than give any kind of simple example of a statement the administration made, and the proof it's a lie, in your own words, something that I could investigate reasonably easily, you tend to post long, long articles that cover many, many things, and that would take a huge amount of time to investigate. I suspect, that if I or anyone else you do this to objects and says, "This is too long. I don't have a lifetime to devote to it," you will merely claim victory.

This is what I want. Give me something specific enough that I can investigate it. Let's talk about one lie at a time. Pick your favorite lie. Pick it from your article above, if you want. Tell me the statement, who made it, and why you think it's a lie. It's just that simple. This isn't asking for much from you. Or, if you prefer, just sit back and wait while I investigate the list of ten lies that BillW gave me earlier in this thread, which should take a few days. I promise that I will post a response to that article sometime this week.

Brandon
Do us both a big favor and fugetabotit. If it makes you happy you can live in darkness and continue to believe what the whole world does not that Bush is an honest and forthright individual and his administration is squeaky clean.

The only level on which this or any debate can take place intelligently is by making assertions together with evidence to back them up, and allowing people who disagree to analyze that evidence. All the rest is irrelevant fluff or misdirection. I refuse to argue like a child, with arguments meandering from point to point, never really establishing anything, and personal attacks that are completely off the logic of the debate.

BillW has provided a list of alleged lies. I will examine it and present an analysis.

I would reply to AU1929's post by suggesting the events of 9/11 changed whatever Bush would have done to keep his campaign promises. You don't come out of an event like that the same way you go into it. Money had to go to more important things like defense and the war effort. So Bush hasn't kept his campaign promises. You guys want to count that as a lie? Pretty petty if you ask me.

When Bill Clinton said that he did not have sexual relations with that woman, technically according to him and Monica Lewinsky and a definition given at the Paula Jones case, he did not actually have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky so he did not actually lie. Oral sex was not included in definition of sexual relations. However, everyone knew that Bill Clinton was lying by deceiving and misleading. Bill Clinton later admitted that he mislead the public about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He said that he had inappropriate relations with Monica Lewinsky then. So he never actually legally lied at any time and the only reason he didn't fight that stupid judge who fined him in contempt of court was just to make the whole thing die down, which it finally did.

Likewise, Bush is guilty of the same kind of technical misleading truths. One such example is when he said that (something like) "British intelligence has reported that Saddam Hussein has sought uranium in Africa ..." that was a true statement but misleading in it's intent to use that discredited information to try and bolster his reasons to go to war with Iraq to the American public. His lies were not about sex but about life and death issues and that is the difference.

As for as the war causing him to not to keep his promises, I guess people can believe what they like, but I for one never believed he had any intention to spend money on education, health care or any other program like that because most die hard republicans believe those things to be "best left to the private sector" or individual states" IMO he was just appeasing the moderates of the republican party who do believe in those domestic issues.

I think his strategy was to outspend any money so that all is left is money for security and the military. I think he underfunded the no child left act so that schools that do not make the grade are left in the dust leaving the way clear for private schools and eventually cutting out public schools. However, I agree that is one of those things where it is hard to prove because it is just gut feelings.

OP-ED article from todays newspaper.

Ideology blinded Cheney

I believe Dick Cheney. I believe the vice president when he claims that there was a link of some sort between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda - and by intended implication with the events of 9/11. I believe, that is, that he is not necessarily lying, not making things up. I believe, in other words, that Cheney's - and President Bush's - insistence on this association is just more evidence that the two of them are blinkered by ideology and seeing precisely what they want.I'll tell you a story. There was a man who went to see a psychiatrist. First, the shrink showed him a picture of crossed sticks and then one of hundreds of little dots. "What's that?" the shrink asked. The man said snakes and ants having sex. The shrink told the man he was obsessed with sex. "What do you expect," the patient replied, "when you keep showing me dirty pictures?"

In life as in jokes, you see what you want. Cheney and Bush always saw a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. That link was tenuous at best, but it was supported by this or that meeting or sighting. Aficionados of the Mafia will recognize the telltale signs. This person is linked to this person who is associated with that person who is married to yet another person who was once in business with the brother-in-law of yet another person. Once you have that mindset, the Mafia is everywhere. It is the same with intelligence. Very little of it is definitive. We have learned that the hard way. Even the mobile chemical labs in Iraq precisely identified by spy satellites turned out to be something else.

Were there contacts? Maybe. It's not inconceivable that someone in Saddam's regime wanted to keep an ear open. Were those contacts nefarious? Who knows? Did they lead in some way to the events of 9/11? It appears not. No evidence suggests that's the case, and the lack of such evidence is not proof of anything.

It's not surprising, though, that an administration already bent on war would interpret every dot as evidence that Saddam and Bin Laden were in cahoots. This made sense to Bush and Cheney since, as we have found out, they cannot distinguish between one kind of evil and another. Every possible suggestion of cooperation somehow became proof. This was particularly the case with Cheney, when it came to weapons of mass destruction. He seized on the most murky of reports to proclaim that Iraq had "reconstituted" its nuclear weapons program, which, lo, these many months later, has yet to be found. So deluded were our top guys that they invaded Iraq expecting that the major problem would be how to clean up after all the victory parades.

Was Cheney lying or was he merely so driven by ideological or intellectual conviction that to him the occasional tree became a forest? It's hard to say. As my colleague Al Kamen reports, the vice president did indeed say it was "pretty well confirmed" that one of the 9/11 terrorists, Mohamed Atta, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official. Actually, that meeting has never been confirmed and Cheney, for obvious reasons, has recently unconfirmed his statement, insisting he was never so definitive. Kamen confirmed he was.

But just as Cheney and Bush missed the forest for the trees, so do those who defend them and insist that the 9/11 commission overstated the case by reporting (in a draft) that "no collaborative" relationship existed. The fact remains that Saddam's fingerprints are not on 9/11 and that the U.S. went to war for stated reasons that have simply evaporated. This brings me not to a joke but to the wisdom of the late Don Quixote, who says something to remember when this or that intelligence report is trumpeted by Cheney or Bush in justification for an unjustified war: "Facts are the enemy of truth."

First you say:



indicating a belief that Bush is a willful liar, then you post an article that suggests Bush and Cheney saw what they wanted to see in the facts and possibly believed it. It is unclear to me which of these alternatives you do believe.

(Just for the record, I think that they're honest men and that they were correct that the invasion of Iraq was necessary, although I do not want to get into yet another argument about the latter issue.)

Well, I'm still wondering a bit:

Source: Pravda.

That was written by a supporter of many of Bush's positions. As for why I posted it, why not. I thought it was an interesting perspective even though I do not agree.

Alright.

Top Ten Lies

10. "I have been very candid about my past."

Admitting he has substance abuse problems in his past is fairly candid.

Being candid about one's past doesn't mean issuing a list of each and every transgression in one's life.

If he had been asked if he had ever been arrested for any offense and replied "No," that would have been a lie.

Corn relies on terms like "seemed to be" and "apparent," neither which are usually employed to describe something that is certain. If he cannot be certain about his own take on a particular issue, then it is intellectually dishonest to assert that anyone voicing an opposite take is lying.

Choosing to emphasize the cuts in a tax plan is not a lie. If he had been asked if his plan included tax increases and he replied, "No," that would have been a lie.

If he had attempted to hide the fact that his plan included increases while accusing his opponents of raising taxes, that would be a sign of questionable character but, not a lie. However, Corn doesn't provide us with anywhere near enough context to determine if Bush was merely emphasizing the cuts or deliberately misleading the public.

9. "I'm a uniter not a divider."

One could easily provide a list of actions that supported the notion that he is a "uniter." Holding any politician to an absolute accounting for this sort of campaign rhetoric is foolish, and whether or not each of the actions listed represent the intentional acts of a "divider," is merely a matter of opinion.

Note as well that the accusations against Bush vis a vis campaign dirty tricks are not direct. There is no proof that Bush knew of and endorsed these tactics, and he would not be the first candidate (among both Republicans and Democrats) to claim that members of his campaign organization got carried away without his knowledge or approval.

8. "My plan unlocks the door to the middle class of millions of hard-working Americans."

I suspect we could easily come across an analysis of the tax plan by some well credentialed expert that would support Bush's claim, but even assuming that all of Corn's analysis is accurate, it doesn't reveal the claim to have been a lie.

Since Bush is thought to be such an idiot among his critics, perhaps he actually thought the plan would be a boon to the poor and middle class (and this, again, ignores rational arguments that it was).

Puffery is not legally actionable and does not constitute a lie.

7. "This allows us to explore the promise and potential of stem cell research."

This one comes closest to actually describing a lie - if the assertion about the number of lines is correct, and that is by, no means, assured.

LINK

6. "We must uncover every detail and learn every lesson of September the 11th."

And yet again we are presented with an essentially partisan view of events that can, and probably has been countered by opposing partisan observers. There is nothing here that supports the accusation of liar.

In any case, the 9/11 comission Report is due to be released fairly soon and it should address the issue a lot more impartially than this screed has.

5. "[We are] taking every possible step to protect our country from danger."

And yet again.

Because Warren Rudman believes that not enough has been done to improve the abilities of first responders doesn't make it so. Because the administration has provided $300 million instead of the $1 billion requested by the nation's ports doesn't mean that $300 million is not the right number.

When Bush has made this statement it is clear to every reasonable person that it is not intended to be interpreted literally. One possible step to protect the country would be to deport every single middle easterner or muslim in the country. Another possible step would be to enact martial law. Clearly neither of these steps are going to be even discussed, but they are possible. The advisability of steps not already taken is a matter of debate, and because the administration has not taken a step recommended by even a reasonable party like Rudman doesn't mean that the Bush statement is a lie.

4. "I first got to know Ken [Lay in 1994]."

Corn has also written: "The Enron-George W. Bush connection goes back further than the President has suggested. But does that mean the relationship between the younger Bush and Lay stretches to the mid-1980s? The deal could have happened without contact between Lay and Bush."

Of course Corn believes a relationship between Lay and W predates 1994 based on the existence of business deals, but even he has to admit it is not conclusive evidence of same.

3. "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." And, "[Saddam Hussein is] a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda."

This is an old and (obviously) unsettled issue which is, by no means, as black & white as Corn would have us believe. That there were errors and misinformation in the intelligence is clear, but its unreliability at the time these decisions were made is not.

The Bush Administration was not the only national government to believe that Saddam retained WMDs, and, as unlikely as it now appears that any will be found, the search is not over.

Construing the term "no doubt" to constitute a lie is really stretching things on Corn's part. If the decision to go to war was based on a reasonable belief (which is a subject of debate but not a certainty either way) then the rhetorical build up is hardly going to express uncertainty or doubts. There is always room for doubts, but to not acknowledge same is not a lie.

Bush did not claim there was an Iraqi connection to 9/11 (although he might have hope one could be found) and the 9/11 Comission has indicated that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam. No lies on that score.

2. "We found the weapons of mass destruction."

It may not have been solid enough to support a "we found them" declaration, but that doesn't make the declaration a lie. A premature expression of wish fulfillment perhaps, but certainly not a lie.

1. "It's time to restore honor and dignity to the White House." Bush said that many a time during the 2000 presidential campaign, and in at least one ad pledged to "return honor and integrity" to the Oval Office.

This is, perhaps, the most obvious evidence of the totally partisan nature of Corn's screed.

Is Corn claiming that it was a lie to state that there was a need to restore honor and dignity to the White House? I know Corn trivializes Oval Office blow jobs but surely he can acknowledge that some reasonable people might think the practice to be undignified.

And was pledging to return honesty and dignity to the Oval Office a lie? Even if we assume that all of Corn's other allegations are accurate, for this pledge to have been a lie, rather than simply a hollow promise, Bush would have had to have intended to bring dishonor to the office.

Corn bitterly opposes the Bush adminstrations policies. That much is clear. But being wrong or wrongheaded about policy is not lying.

Is Bush a Galahad of politics? Of course not.

Has he practiced the all too familiar art of political spin? Of course he has.

Is it reasonable to oppose his policies and wish for his defeat in November 2004? Of course it is.

Is it reasonable to demonize him and fabricate a laundry list of supposed lies? Nope.

A significant portion of the Democrat's hatred of Bush lies in their bitter disappointment in Clinton.

They are desperate to prove that Bush (and this would be true of any Republican president who followed Clinton) is a liar, because it is so undeniable that Clinton was one. As a result they have been working overtime, since Bush's election, to try and make the liar label stick.

If only Bush would give them a scent of sexual scandal, then they would be as dogs to red meat.

The fact of the matter is that critics of Clinton need only play the tape of his infamous interview with Jim Lehrer (" I did not have sex with that woman...Ms Lewinsky") to display an irrefutable Clinton lie, while Bush critics need to write lengthy and inconclusive diatribes which offer far more in the way of opinion than fact.

And if you want a real example of someone who was challenged by truth telling you need only play the tape of Clinton's deposition in the Paul Jones case wherein he has the temerity to answer "It all depends on what your definition of "is" is."
Ironically Corn makes the following concession (apparently to stake a claim for fairmindedness)

"(By the way, I am not placing on this list Bush's claim that he is a "compassionate conservative." That's a rather relative term more suitable for judgment than truth-based evaluation.)"

Applying truth-based evaluation to relative terms more suitable for judgment is precisely what Corn has done with this list.