IS BUSH A LIAR? REVISITED: INTENT

I took a glance in the thread you are referring to but decided to pass it knowing in advance the way it would unfold. Not sure it would be any different here but at least you have claified what people mean when the say Bush (or any of those in the administration or those speak for them lied.)



http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_7708.shtml

Another source of misleading statements about Iraq form the administration

http://www.bushoniraq.com/

Please note the weasle words. "Could be," "suitable for," etc. They never stated "intended for." Thus, they can claim that their statements were factually true, while in fact they were intended to deceive.

Al Franken's Peabody Award Winning Game Show Wait, Wait Don't Lie to Me focues each Friday on the mistruths of the administration and other liars like Druggie Limbaugh and BOR. They play an audio of a statement and ask the contestant to define as a lie, the truth or weasel words. If you listen to this award winning show, you realize that most things are not black and white. Is it a lie or a weasel or even the truth. Many times a statement is technically true but it is obvious that the speaker's intent is to decieve.

Most sentient human beings recognize now that this administration is intent on misleading and deceiving the public. I mean does anyone really believe that the Swift Boat Liars Campaign, for instance, was not orchestrated by the administration?

Without using past presidents as examples, of course Bush has had to deceive the public about somethings.

Terrorists and other enemies of the US read newspapers, have access to the internet and watch TV.

The US has many secrets and those secrets must be kept to ensure the security of our nation. When secret programs are exposed, it weakens our ability to use those programs against our enemies.

I expect a certain amount of dishonesty from politicians. It's the nature of the job.

Other situations, like the lead up to the war in Iraq, the President and his staff had access to intelligence that led them in the direction they did. NO amount of hindsight, reports, or commissions will change what happened, nor will it change the intelligence they used.

I approve of the results of the Iraq war, but too many mistakes have been made trying to rebuild the country. I do not think Bush lied about the intelligence provided to him by the various global agencies. I do not believe he intended to deceive the country or the world into going to war against Iraq.

Your belief flies in the face of evidence that proves otherwise of which I already posted but a small portion. If Bush or someone in the administration had intelligence or a report that suggest something contrary to what they are saying (or were saying) to us, then they set out to deceive by not mentioning the disqualifiers, dissenting intelligence or just newer updated intelligence which contradicts the statements they are (were) putting out to the public.

So do I, which is why I'm always surprised at the indignation that meets the suggestion that the president was less than truthful. Who really believes that we would elect an honest man to our highest office?

I disagree with you on whether they intentionally misled the public in the run up to the war in Iraq. There were enough doubts and enough conflicting intelligence reports to make invading Iraq an unnecessary risk for a cautious government. When you put it all together, the picture is one of someone trying to build a case, which implies that had a desire to do it and they relied on every paper thin shred of evidence that favored their predisposition, and ignored anything that didn't. That's just my perception, mind you, but I don't think I'm alone in it.

I suppose the dozen or so people that listen to Frankin applaud loudly when he goes through such antics.

The alternative was to allow the UN to lift sanctions, and to allow Saddam to have free access to what ever WMD's he had, and to continue whatever programs he had planned or already started. That alternative is unacceptable to me. I have provided enough evidence that WMD's have been moved to place doubt on whether or not he had them. Continuing forward with Saddam at the helm of Iraq was an unacceptable risk to American interests.

According to the Wikipedia article on Air America:



So, although their number of listeners may not equal Rush Lamebrain and company, your remark about a dozen or so listeners constitutes a knowing misrepresentation--which is to say, a lie.

This is false. The Bush administration was not faced with a choice of the lifiting of sanctions, or an invasion. The inspections regime was proceeding and the sanctions were in place. The United States has a veto at the the United Nations, it was simplicity itself to assure that the sanctions were not lifted.

Set beat me to it. Lifting sanctions was not the only alternative to invasion. And clearly there was not enough reliable information to even enable an estimation of the risk, making the action even less reasonable.

I finally found a quote I'd been looking for since I first saw it reported in the Boston Globe in 2003, and I found it repeated in the following article. The quote is by Paul Wolfowitz, along with Cheney, Rumsfled, and Perle, the primary architects of the rush to invade Iraq. Essentially he says WMDs was never their primary reason for the invasion, it was just the one point they agreed on (and of course the one that's proven to be complete nmonsense). He also confirms what many critics of the Bush administration have maintained all along was one oof the main reasons for the invasion, and the righties have poo-pooed (also wrongly, as it appears); in a word, oil.

The article is by John Dean, a man who has had quite possibly had more direct experience with presidents lying than anyone else still livingIt's long, but worth it for the chronology of quotes and the light it sheds on incompetence.
----
Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction:
Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?
By JOHN W. DEAN
----
Friday, Jun. 06, 2003

President George W. Bush has got a very serious problem. Before asking Congress for a Joint Resolution authorizing the use of American military forces in Iraq, he made a number of unequivocal statements about the reason the United States needed to pursue the most radical actions any nation can undertake - acts of war against another nation.

Now it is clear that many of his statements appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White House has been very good at sweeping ugly issues like this under the carpet, and out of sight. But it is not clear that they will be able to make the question of what happened to Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start another war.

That seems unlikely. Until the questions surrounding the Iraqi war are answered, Congress and the public may strongly resist more of President Bush's warmaking.

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it. President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down from reelection. President Richard Nixon's false statements about Watergate forced his resignation.

Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it is not too early to explore the relevant issues.

President Bush's Statements On Iraq's Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

Bush's statements, in chronological order, were:

United Nations Address
September 12, 2002

"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons."

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

Radio Address
October 5, 2002

"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons."

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas."

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States."

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons."

Cincinnati, Ohio Speech
October 7, 2002

"Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent."

State of the Union Address
January 28, 2003

"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."

Address to the Nation
March 17, 2003

Should The President Get The Benefit Of The Doubt?

As Bush's veracity was being debated at the United Nations, it was also being debated on campuses - including those where I happened to be lecturing at the time.

On several occasions, students asked me the following question: Should they believe the President of the United States? My answer was that they should give the President the benefit of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from the usual procedures that have operated in every modern White House and that, I assumed, had to be operating in the Bush White House, too.

First, I assured the students that these statements had all been carefully considered and crafted. Presidential statements are the result of a process, not a moment's thought. White House speechwriters process raw information, and their statements are passed on to senior aides who have both substantive knowledge and political insights. And this all occurs before the statement ever reaches the President for his own review and possible revision.

Second, I explained that - at least in every White House and administration with which I was familiar, from Truman to Clinton - statements with national security implications were the most carefully considered of all. The White House is aware that, in making these statements, the President is speaking not only to the nation, but also to the world.

Third, I pointed out to the students, these statements are typically corrected rapidly if they are later found to be false. And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs - and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

Finally, I explained to the students that the political risk was so great that, to me, it was inconceivable that Bush would make these statements if he didn't have damn solid intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not stick their necks out only to have them chopped off by political opponents on an issue as important as this, and if there was any doubt, I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush had not done so.

So what are we now to conclude if Bush's statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly inaccurate as they currently appear to have been?

After all, no weapons of mass destruction have been found, and given Bush's statements, they should not have been very hard to find - for they existed in large quantities, "thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone. Moreover, according to the statements, telltale facilities, groups of scientists who could testify, and production equipment also existed.

There are two main possibilities. One that something is seriously wrong within the Bush White House's national security operations. That seems difficult to believe. The other is that the President has deliberately misled the nation, and the world.

A Desperate Search For WMDs Has So Far Yielded Little, If Any, Fruit

Even before formally declaring war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the President had dispatched American military special forces into Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction, which he knew would provide the primary justification for Operation Freedom. None were found.

Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for WMDs continued. None were found.

As the coalition forces gained control of Iraqi cities and countryside, special search teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None were found.

During the past two and a half months, according to reliable news reports, military patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited weapons were found there.

British and American Press Reaction to the Missing WMDs

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also under serious attack in England, which he dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are being treated as scandalous; so far, the reaction in the U.S. has been milder.

New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it is "long past time for this administration to be held accountable." "The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he continued, "the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history - worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra." But most media outlets have reserved judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq continues.

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, while offering no new evidence, assured Congress that WMDs will indeed be found. And he advised that a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group, composed of some 1400 experts and technicians from around the world, is being deployed to assist in the searching.

But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are running out. According to Time, the Marine general in charge explained that "[w]e've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."

Perhaps most troubling, the President has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe?

The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies.

Investigating The Iraqi War Intelligence Reports

Even now, while the jury is still out as to whether intentional misconduct occurred, the President has a serious credibility problem. Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If America has entered a new age of pre-emption --when it must strike first because it cannot afford to find out later if terrorists possess nuclear or biological weapons--exact intelligence is critical. How will the United States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure where they are? And how will Bush be able to maintain support at home and abroad?"

In an apparent attempt to bolster the President's credibility, and his own, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense Department investigation into what went wrong with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's killer. But there may be a difference: Unless the members of Administration can find someone else to blame - informants, surveillance technology, lower-level personnel, you name it - they may not escape fault themselves.

Congressional committees are also looking into the pre-war intelligence collection and evaluation. Senator John Warner (R-VA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said his committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee would jointly investigate the situation. And the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence plans an investigation.

These investigations are certainly appropriate, for there is potent evidence of either a colossal intelligence failure or misconduct - and either would be a serious problem. When the best case scenario seems to be mere incompetence, investigations certainly need to be made.

One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all possibilities, because now the very thing that we were trying to avoid, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, could be in the hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had bad intelligence. Or third, that the intelligence was satisfactory but that it was manipulated, so as just to present to the American people and to the world those things that made the case for the necessity of war against Iraq.

Senator Graham seems to believe there is a serious chance that it is the final scenario that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN "there's been a pattern of manipulation by this administration."

Graham has good reason to complain. According to the New York Times, he was one of the few members of the Senate who saw the national intelligence estimate that was the basis for Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator Graham requested that the Bush Administration declassify the information before the Senate voted on the Administration's resolution requesting use of the military in Iraq.

But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet merely sent Graham a letter discussing the findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's letter only addressed "findings that supported the administration's position on Iraq," and ignored information that raised questions about intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that the Administration, by cherrypicking only evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the information to support its conclusion.

Recent statements by one of the high-level officials privy to the decisionmaking process that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine, said: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason." More recently, Wolfowitz added what most have believed all along, that the reason we went after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a sea of oil."

Worse than Watergate? A Potential Huge Scandal If WMDs Are Still Missing

Krugman is right to suggest a possible comparison to Watergate. In the three decades since Watergate, this is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration intentionally manipulated or misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, military action to take control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous misdeed.

As I remarked in an earlier column, this Administration may be due for a scandal. While Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron, it was not, in any event, his doing. But the war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is appropriate that he be held accountable.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

What Do You Think? Message Boards


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John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former Counsel to the President of the United States.

Although it appears that you have provided the article in toto, Username, could you provide a link for that article? If, as it appears, it is at Findlaw-dot-com, that is a reputable source, and it will enhance your position to provide a link.

I realized I hadn't and was in the process of getting it as you posted, indeed it's findlaw:

http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html

Anyone who took "curveball" seriously in the run-up to the preemptive strike needs meds.

half lie = to or < than a lie?

it goes to intentions.

1. did the person stating a half-lie know that telling it would have a different impact upon or sway a listener as telling the whole thuth?

2. was there a legitimate effort made to find out the truth?

in the case of the bushevik administration the answers are

to # 1, is yes,

to #2 is no.

the half lie was every bit as bad as a direct lie because it resulted in the same impression as a direct lie.


"Prejudice always obsures the truth."

Henry Fonda "Twelve Angry Men"

Revel,
In effect what you are saying is that the President was getting conflicting information,from sources that he trusted.
He had to choose which source to believe,and he did.

If you have two people that you trust,and one of them is telling you the sky is blue and the other one is telling you the sky is green,what do you do?

You have no way to PERSONALLY confirm what you are being told,you must take the word of one of your 2 sources.
Are you guilty of lying if you believe the one saying the sky is green?

Gee, mystery, I think I'd look at the sky.

Bush ignored anything he didn't want to hear. Daddy Bush vetted conflicting intelligence claims. Baby Bush just chose what he wanted to hear and ignored anything else.

You didnt read my post,did you?
I said that you have no way to PERSONALLY VERIFY.
That means that you cant look at the sky.

Now what do you do?