President Bush: Is He a Liar?

Yes, Username, that is the Italgato/Massagato/Mortkat/Bernard we all know and love.

Ginger, amazing no? Not surprising to those of us who confront the right here every day, though.

Finding WMDs

BUSH: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. [Bush on Polish TV, 5/29/03]

THE FACTS

The Washington Post reported an explosive story that a secret, fact-finding team of scientists and engineers sponsored by the Pentagon determined in May 2003 that two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops were not evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program. The nine-member team "transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003."

Despite having authoritative evidence that the biological laboratories claim was false, the administration continued to peddle the myth over the next four months.

Stick around - if you think that's revealing, wait'll you see the real knee-deep denial of the Bushophiles.


...and welcome to A2K

Bush lies on Gitmo.
Guantanamo Detainees

These are people picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan. They weren't wearing uniforms . . . but were there to kill. (President Bush 06/20/05)


THE FACTS
Defense Department Data. Counsel for the detainees released a report based entirely on the Defense Department's own data which found:

1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies.
2. Only 8% of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection with al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation with either al Qaeda or the Taliban.
3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large number of groups that in fact, are not on the Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed "fighters for;" 30% considered "members of;" a large majority - 60% -- are detained merely because they are "associated with" a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of the prisoners their nexus to any terrorist group is unidentified.
4. Only 5% of the detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time in which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.
5. Finally, the population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants - mostly Uighers - are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.



National Journal Review of Defense Department Filings in Habeas Petitions. National Journal reviewed the transcripts for 314 Gitmo prisoners and found the following:

1. A high percentage, perhaps the majority, of the 500-odd men now held at Guantanamo were not captured on any battlefield, let alone on "the battlefield in Afghanistan" (as Bush asserted) while "trying to kill American forces" (as McClellan claimed).
2. Fewer than 20 percent of the Guantanamo detainees, the best available evidence suggests, have ever been Qaeda members.
3. Many scores, and perhaps hundreds, of the detainees were not even Taliban foot soldiers, let alone Qaeda terrorists. They were innocent, wrongly seized noncombatants with no intention of joining the Qaeda campaign to murder Americans.
4. The majority were not captured by U.S. forces but rather handed over by reward-seeking Pakistanis and Afghan warlords and by villagers of highly doubtful reliability.
5. Seventy-five of the 132 men, or more than half the group, are -- like -- not accused of taking part in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. (The 75 include 10 detainees whom the U.S. government "no longer" considers enemy combatants, although at least eight of the 10 are still being held at Guantanamo.) Typically, documents describe these men as "associated" with the Taliban or with Al Qaeda -- sometimes directly so, and sometimes through only weak or distant connections. Several men worked for charities that had some ties to Al Qaeda; one detainee lived in a house associated with the Taliban.
6. Some of the "associated" men are said to have attended jihadist training camps before September 11, an accusation admitted by some and denied by others. The U.S. government says that some of the suspected jihadists trained in Afghanistan, even though other records show that they had not yet entered the country at the time of the training camps. Just 57 of the 132 men, or 43 percent, are accused of being on a battlefield in post-9/11 Afghanistan.
7. The government's documents tie only eight of the 132 men directly to plans for terrorist attacks outside of Afghanistan.
8. At least eight prisoners at Guantanamo are there even though they are no longer designated as enemy combatants. One perplexed attorney, whose client does not want public attention, learned that the man was no longer considered an enemy combatant only by reading a footnote in a Justice Department motion asking a federal judge to put a slew of habeas corpus cases on hold. The attorney doesn't know why the man is still in Cuba.

Impeachable offenses have never been clearly defined. Even the simpletons should be able to understand that an impeachable offense is whatever the House decides that it is. Impeachmnet is a political act.

Bush Lies on Domestic Spying

During the 2004 campaign, Bush claimed "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." See video.
The Bush administration has offered the following justifications for its spying on U.S. citizens:

No Time for Warrants It could not wait to get a warrant because it needed "to move quickly to detect" plotting of terrorism between people in the United States and abroad. (President Bush 12/19/05)

Congress Gave Authority: "authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes . . . authorization. . . to engage in this kind of signals intelligence. (Attorney General Gonzales 12/19/05)

Eavesdropping Key To Thwarting Terrorist Attacks: "This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists," Bush said in December. "It is critical to saving American lives." Vice President Cheney claimed wiretapping Americans had "saved thousands of lives." "It is, I'm convinced, one of the reasons we haven't been attacked in the past four years," he added.

- A Program "Very Limited In Nature": The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers, called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people," Bush has said. "[O]bviously I had to make the difficult decision between balancing civil liberties and, on a limited basis -- and I mean limited basis -- try to find out the intention of the enemy." "It is very limited in nature," Scott McClellan claimed.


THE FACTS
Campaign Statement: Bush's statement is false, since he was conducting wiretaps without warrants.

No Time for Warrants: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the President to seek a warrant up to 3 days AFTER initiating the wiretap. The President never sought any such authority after the fact for this program.

Congress Gave Authority: The administration requested the ability to conduct warrantless searches as part of the September 11th resolution, but Congress rejected this. In fact, Gonzales admitted that he was told by "certain members of Congress" that "that would be difficult if not impossible."

Eavesdropping Key To Thwarting Terrorist Attacks. A New York Times report debunks the administration's claim that the program is vital to America's national security. In fact, the flood of "unfiltered information" from the NSA program "was swamping [FBI] investigators" in the months after 9/11. "There were no imminent plots - not inside the United States," a former F.B.I. official said. "The information was so thin," one prosecutor said, "and the connections were so remote, that they never led to anything, and I never heard any follow-up." Additionally, "some F.B.I. officials and prosecutors also thought the checks, which sometimes involved interviews by agents, were pointless intrusions on Americans' privacy."

A Program "Very Limited In Nature. "The truth is that after 9/11, the "stream" of information from the NSA to the FBI "soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month." Investigators were overwhelmed by the amount of information pouring into their offices. "After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration," said one former FBI official. Today's revelations support a previous New York Times report that found the "volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged." NSA whistleblower Russell Tice recently told ABC News "the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions."

Well, Ginger212, perhaps you have proof that Bush is a liar. If so,please provide the proof but be forewarned that some of us go to the legal definition of Lie as found in "Black's Law Dictionary" which defines Lie as

"A falsehood uttered for the purpose of deception"

I hope that you are aware that a legal finding that someone lied must explore that definition completely. It must be established that the alleged "lie" was uttered for the purposes of deception.

If you can't do that, you cannot declare in a court of law that a person is a liar.

But, outside of a court of law?

Of course,anyone can allege anything they wish to allege. You know, of course, that it was alleged that FDR knew specifically of the strike on Pearl Harbor before it occured but did not act since it was allegedly to his political benefit not to act.

THAT HAS NEVER BEEN PROVEN.

If we go to the allegation that President Bush knew that Iraq did not have WMD's but said it anyway, we are faced with explaining the following:

l. That the Intelligence Agencies of Britain, Germany and France( yes, France) had reported the likelihood that Iraq possessed WMD's

2. That the most intelligent policy wonk and brilliant President, William Jefferson Clinton, who ordered that Iraq be bombed on December 18th( an order not authorized by Congress as Bush's incursion against Iraq was) said in his speech:
"Without a strong inspection system, Iraq would be free to retain and begin to rebuild its chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs in months, not years"

You do know what 'RETAIN" means, don't you, Ginger 212?

If President Bush read that speech,and I am sure that he did, don't you think he would consider the words of the most intelligent policy wonk of the last fifty years?

BD still doesn't get it! What a waste of a human brain.

I have not seen any links to the many "cut & pastes" recently provided by c.i., nor any criticism from those that would carp on BernardR for doing the same.

Hey C.I. and Bernard!! Stop cutting and pasting without citing your sources!!!!!!!

As I indicated previously, I will be happy to provide links or titles and exact page numbers to anything I quote from as long as everybody else will do so.

Thank you, Ticomaya.

Can you, like, get anything right? Ever? I was referring to the Act of Impeachment. It is without any doubt whatever the House decides it is. I thought even thee most mindless simpleton could understand this. But I guess not!

Article 1, Section 2



If the members of the House want to impeach a president for jaywalking, they have the sole discretion to do so....and if the people decide that their representatives acted imprudentlyin so doing, we have the sole discretion to vote them out of office. Politics.

C.I. never cites his sources. Maybe he forgets what they were after clipping the long quotes.

Roxxanne,
Here are your words...



So,there are laws about how it is done,arent there.
Yes,politics are involved,but there must be a law broken that the house deems serious enough to impeach.
It is the LEGAL punishment of the President.

So,there is LAW involved,not just politics.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors are left undefined in the Constitution. There are no laws, nor any compulsion of the House to assert criminality.

Yes, and you think that the House of Representative would impeach someone for JAywalking. Apparently,you are not aware that the Senate of the United States, even before the trial of Bill Clinton began, decided that the charge made by the House was not serious enough to impeach President Clinton.

The impeachment of Clinton made it even more difficult for the Democrats.
It is noteable that the Democrats NOW oppose the independent counsel law and supported Presidential military action which they had sought bny the War Powers Resolution to curb.

It is clear that the impeachment of Clinton made it more difficult for impeachement actions to be started, not more easy..In which case,the point about jaywalking is ridiculous!!!

This idea that impeachment is a political act is not exactly a new or unique concept. As much as I wish I could take credit for the observation, it is not an original concept, it is a view held by many legal scholars and pundits.

The case for impeachment is there but it won't happen as far as I can see. Bush has the devine right of the king.

It states that a monarch owed his rule to the will of God, not to the will of his subjects, parliament, the aristocracy or any other competing authority. This doctrine continued with the claim that any attempt to depose a monarch or to restrict his powers ran contrary to the will of God. (cut & pasted)

BTW I might interject here that I ignore trolls, thanks, carry on.

This is a classic strawman. You have no reason to make this assertion, nor is there any evidence that i have asserted such a case as this. Therefore, your sneers about what i "apparently" believe are just so much wasted bandwidth.