President Bush: Is He a Liar?

Just curious, can any of you name any successful politician who hasn't lied? A lie isn't simply saying something that isn't true, it requires knowledge that the statement is false and the intent to deceive. Having perfect knowledge of what is and what is not "true" and "factual" in politics is far less common than educated guesses. Politicians typically cover themselves by making almost every public comment conditional, and vague. Mistakes, errors and mis-spoken statements are unavoidable no matter how brilliant, insightful, or ethical the politician might be.

Parsing ones word's, or spinning, is a technique used by all Parties, and political operatives. The audience is left to draw whatever conclusion they wish, though that might be very far indeed from the facts.

Now, the President isn't exactly a candidate for the most brilliant mind, nor is he known for his ability to deliver forceful, moving oratory. We've all come to expect that often his meaning is unclear, or seems to mean something quite different than what was obviously intended. If you folks want to crucify the man for being a poor speaker, I suppose thats fair. On the other hand to accuse him of being an inveterate liar should require some pretty substantial proof that he has knowingly and intentionally said something that is false, and that his clear intent was to deceive. Even then, there are times when we should expect and even approve of outright lies. For instance, a reporter asks "have you made up your mind whether military action against Iran's nuclear weapons program yet?" Even if the President has made up his mind, one way or the other, it would be very irresponsible to answer with the absolute, unvarnished truth.

Anyway, I'd like to see who you might name as a successful, but perfectly truthful politician. BTW, though I think the world of Jimmy Carter I neither believe he was a successful President, nor that he never told a lie while in office.

Asherman makes some very good points, it will be impossible to pin point each and every lie. Clinton got caught, because he was careless, Bush is smarter than we think. The only way to catch Bush red handed, would be to frame him. Just like how they framed Clinton.

Politics is a cruel game. Unfortunately Asherman is right, politicians do lie.

We need to get Condi to do a Lewinsky and tape it, than spread the video on YouTube.

All posters who accuse someone of lying or other wrongdoing are obligated to provide evidence to support their contentions, at least if challenged. You have not challenged me to support any contention I have made. You've challenged to me to answer questions of yours, which I am under no obligation whatever to answer, and to support assertions I have not made.

Brandon wrote:

All posters who accuse someone of lying or other wrongdoing are obligated to provide evidence to support their contentions, at least if challenged. You have not challenged me to support any contention I have made. You've challenged to me to answer questions of yours, which I am under no obligation whatever to answer, and to support assertions I have not made.

end of quote

and I will replicate the article from John Podhoretz which has the title_ Who is lying about Iraq? It was not George W. Bush.

quote



COMMENTARY

December 2005

Who Is Lying About Iraq?

Norman Podhoretz

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.

Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.




The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us and/or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.

This entire scenario of purported deceit has been given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war."

Now, as it happens, Libby was not charged with having outed Plame but only with having lied about when and from whom he first learned that she worked for the CIA. Moreover, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who brought the indictment against him, made a point of emphasizing that

[t]his indictment is not about the war. This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

This is simply an indictment that says, in a national-security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person?-a person, Mr. Libby?-lied or not.

No matter. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting that

[t]his case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the President.

Yet even stipulating?-which I do only for the sake of argument?-that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.

How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that

Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.

The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and?-yes?-France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix?-who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past?-lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:

The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.

Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.




So, once again, did the British, the French, and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the UN in the period leading up to the invasion. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as Secretary of State. But Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:

I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits, and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the UN on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP?-Ammunition Supply Point?-with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate.

Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was convinced:

People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios.

In explaining its dissent on Iraq's nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about

Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program.

But, according to Wilkerson,

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by God, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, "the consensus of the intelligence community," as Wilkerson puts it, "was overwhelming" in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.

Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. "In the late spring of 2002," Pollack has written,

I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).

No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with "high confidence" was that

Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.1


end of quote

Now, because most of the left wing is brain-dead, they cannot counter such evidence.

Brandon merely keeps asking the question_

PROVIDE PROOF THAT ANYONE LIED

No one has done so!!! PROOF!!! PROOF!!!!




Up to the time that Clinton's DNA was found on Monica's dress, there was no real PROOF of his encounters with her!

DNA is proof. Suppositions are not proof!!

Definition

Black's Law Dictionary--

Lie-A falsehood uttered for the purposes of deception.


Anyone familiar with the law is aware that there is the necessity to PROVE intent. How can that be done?

Was the statement known to be a falsehood?

How can that be PROVEN?

Was the statement uttered for the purposes of deception?

How can that be PROVEN?

Bush is a liar. We know this truth to be self-evident.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Definition

Black's Law Dictionary--

Lie-A falsehood uttered for the purposes of deception.


Anyone familiar with the law is aware that there is the necessity to PROVE intent. How can that be done?

Was the statement known to be a falsehood?

How can that be PROVEN?

Was the statement uttered for the purposes of deception?

How can that be PROVEN?

Bush is a liar. We know this truth to be self-evident.


It's as clear as the nose on my face. (But not nearly as pretty)

Asherman wrote:


Just curious, can any of you name any successful politician who hasn't lied? A lie isn't simply saying something that isn't true, it requires knowledge that the statement is false and the intent to deceive. Having perfect knowledge of what is and what is not "true" and "factual" in politics is far less common than educated guesses. Politicians typically cover themselves by making almost every public comment conditional, and vague. Mistakes, errors and mis-spoken statements are unavoidable no matter how brilliant, insightful, or ethical the politician might be.

Parsing ones word's, or spinning, is a technique used by all Parties, and political operatives. The audience is left to draw whatever conclusion they wish, though that might be very far indeed from the facts.

Now, the President isn't exactly a candidate for the most brilliant mind, nor is he known for his ability to deliver forceful, moving oratory. We've all come to expect that often his meaning is unclear, or seems to mean something quite different than what was obviously intended. If you folks want to crucify the man for being a poor speaker, I suppose thats fair. On the other hand to accuse him of being an inveterate liar should require some pretty substantial proof that he has knowingly and intentionally said something that is false, and that his clear intent was to deceive. Even then, there are times when we should expect and even approve of outright lies. For instance, a reporter asks "have you made up your mind whether military action against Iran's nuclear weapons program yet?" Even if the President has made up his mind, one way or the other, it would be very irresponsible to answer with the absolute, unvarnished truth.

Anyway, I'd like to see who you might name as a successful, but perfectly truthful politician. BTW, though I think the world of Jimmy Carter I neither believe he was a successful President, nor that he never told a lie while in office.

So Possum, by reposting Asherman's post you agree that George W Bush has lied to the american people.

Such "obligation" is to intellectual integrity, yes? And such intellectual integrity is held worthwhile and necessary as the means by which we will better avoid holding/accepting ideas which don't accurately reflect the real world. We'll be better off if we get it right and worse off if we get it wrong.

"Nicotine has no carcinogins" and "Nicotine has significant carcinogins" are truth claims for which evidence and reasoning ought to be provided because if we get it wrong, either an industry will likely be injustly penalized or, on the other hand, a lot of people will die unnecessarily.

Establishing which of those two statements is true and which false - or as is commonly the case in scientific investigations, which is more probable and has the greater weight of evidence to support it - is a scientific endeavor. We bring the mature and well-developed methodologies of scientific procedure to the matter. In doing so, we end up with tentative conclusions - tentative "knowledge".

Courtrooms are different, and for good reason. Where potential penalties might be levied, including incarceration or even tying someone down to the dancing volts in the fritterizer chair, the criteria for establishing proofs and probabilities re innocence/guilt and truth/falsity are often more acute. We set high bars for establishing "proof" (though lower if they happen to be driving cab in Anbar province). Again, we have in our jurisprudence, a mature methodology for proceding in our pursuit for truth and in our pursuit towards justice/fairness. But even here, we acknowledge the tentative or probablistic nature of our conclusions. OJ Simpson.

What about the sphere of political debate? What "proof" criteria apply or ought to apply? What constitutes necessary/sufficient evidence for a claim? "Liberals are weak on defence", for example. Or for the assertion that "George Bush is the worst President ever"? And why bother even caring? Are these things important in the manner of whether tobacco is a carcinogin or whether Joe Schmidlapp really put a bullet through his uncle Jim's kneecap? If we are here debating politics on a2k, we probably do think this stuff is important. We want to get it right because we think we'll be better off if we do and worse off if we don't, as a society.

You and I and most everyone else would agree that similar methodologies apply here too in order to get closer to the truth of things. We agree that someone who makes a claim or assertion in debate that X is true or false ought to support that claim or assertion with evidence or reasoning that upholds or verifies or lends credence to the claim/assertion.

The problem with the little game you are playing here, brandon, is that your goal isn't trying to get at the truth of things - or the probable truth of things. Your goal is defending George Bush with whatever means might come to hand. And that shows up in the "methodology" you insist applies here. For example, we cannot say Bush has lied unless we can duplicate the internal contents of Bush's mind and intentions. We don't KNOW, you'll insist, that Bush lied because none of us was in that room at that moment. Etc.

And that's why you won't take up the challenge to your methodology I proposed (as, of course, a scientific investigator would be intellectually obliged to do). It's functionally useless because you've designed it exactly that way, whether you realize it or not.

You're trying to read my mind, and you're not good at it. It's simply absurd to tell me what's in my mind, since you can't possibly know. This is an utterly valueless accusation.


I have never said any such thing at all. I said that something is not a lie if the speaker believes it to be true. This is simply the most reasonable definition of a lie. I never said that you can't make a perfectly reasonable case that someone is lying without proving what's in his mind. People prove perjury beyond a reasonable doubt in courtrooms every day without mind reading. You are arguing against a position I have not taken.


So, every scientific investigator is obliged to play your game or else has base motives. Nonsense. All I am obligated to do is what the other posters are obligated to do which is to provide evidence for, or at least be prepared upon challenge to provide evidence, for assertions I post, especially when such assertions are accusations of wrongdoing.

blatham, I knew he wouldn't get it. You nailed it exactly and he won't accept it as he does not accept any reality when it comes to his georgie-porgie.

How might you or anyone know that the speaker believes his statement to be true?

If posters are obligated to do anything, it is merely to state their opinions.

And Bush is still a liar.

I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that there would be a number of ways. If, for instance, someone said that he didn't go to a meeting, but other witnesses attest that he did, that would be strong evidence of a lie. Another example would be if someone said that a = b, but it can be shown that it had already been proven to him that a does not equal b. Whether I can list every method of doing this is irrelevant. A person cannot be said to be lying who believes that he is telling the truth, yet proving perjury, libel, slander, or informal lying to a sufficient degree of confidence does not require mind reading.

finally, Brandon gets something right.

Your sole techinque of arguing anything, even the most serious accusations against public officials, is name calling. Pathetic.

Your obsession with defending a war criminal is what's pathetic.

Well, I'd ask you for a single specific action of the president's that qualifies him as a war criminal, but I know that you'd retreat into insults and distractions, rather than giving me a simple answer. Please continue making serious accusations that you have no intention of supporting with evidence.