I heard about this on NPR (yeah IIIII'm a liberal ;-)) and the way I heard it was this. There were many, many differing opinions in Washington on whether or not there were WMDs. And for Bush to come out and unequivocally say that there are without a doubt WMD's may not be a lie of commission it is IMO a lie of omission.

Oh and I don't think anyone needs a study to know that Clinton lied. I voted for the man and the first go around was a big supporter. I still think he was a better president than Bush and he was definitely a better liar.

I'm not sure I understand your last question. If someone (Person A) tells that police officer that it is without a doubt a real gun and the police shoots that person (Person B) with the toy and the person (Person A) that told the police officer that it was a real gun had reasonable doubt that it wasn't then that person (Person A) is accountable. Does that make sense?

"and he was definitely a better liar"

If I were Bush I'd consider that a compliment.

I think Bush has consistently put forward a persona that demonstrates his eagerness for black-and-white truths and his impatience with subtlety.

I think declaring "there are WMD's in Iraq" on the base of highly equivocal evidence is perfectly in character with that persona.

I'm not sure if we can ever know much more than the persona a president puts on, but I think the persona itself is important--it's the face we show the world as a nation.

On the other hand, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and various other leading Democrats said the exact same thing, and just as firmly. How come no one in the '04 campaign accused Kerry of being a liar?

It's funny how for 8 years during the Clinton admin, newspapers were constantly printing stories about how Saddam was using WMD against the people of his country. It was a known fact for years that he had them. It was reported all over the world. When I visited Jordan in 2004, they would talk about how the US news was crazy for questioning if the weapons were there. They all saw it as a fact.

We broad casted that we were going to invade for months before we did. Saddam knew that we were going to win. Everyone in the Middle East had been begging the US to come and take care of Saddam because they all knew we could. I know, because I was in UAE in 1997 and someone asked me to ask the president to come do something about Saddam before he destroyed their country. I tried to explain that democracy doesn't mean that anyone can just go up to the White House and chat with the president, but he didn't understand. Crazy.

Saddam was no fool. He knew that if he got rid of any evidence that he was doing anything wrong, eventually he would get his revenge on Bush. We gave him plenty of time to destroy that evidence. So, he cleans up his trail pretty well before the invasion, and a few years later we are looking at the lack of evidence as proof that he didn't have WMD. Despite the fact that some very well-known Bush-haters in the UN have come forward and said that they did find rock-solid evidence of WMD. Really crazy.

All of this was floating around before Bush made the final call to invade. For him to say that there were WMD is not a lie of any kind, depending on who he believed. If one advisor is sitting there saying "yep, without a doubt, there are WMD, here is my evidence" and th eother says "well, I'm not so sure if that evidence is so good, here is why", it's not a lie of omission to pick one view and go with it. He probably has to do that daily.

Bush had made plenty of mistakes, but I think it shows how biased the media is to label mistakes as a lie.

Most of the funding for the groups conducting this 'study' comes from George Soros. A billionaire who so dislikes Bush he pumped a couple hundred million dollars of his own money into the 2004 election to try and defeat him. So I would hardly call it an 'unbiased' study.

As for whether or not Bush lied, it obviously goes to what he knew or believed was true. My guess (and all it can be is a guess) is that he thought Iraq did have WMD's but was wrong.

What I find interesting is that people that say 'So how could Bush say that Iraq had WMD's without knowing it for sure?' somehow have no problem themselves 'knowing for sure' that Bush intentionally 'lied' despite not being privy to all his briefings or in his thoughts.

I'm not so sure that there weren't WMDs in Iraq when GWB said there were. It was 6 months later before we actually went in. That was plenty of time for them to be secreted away.

No, I don't think he lied. He might have been wrong, but that's not a lie. And as I said above, I'm not convinced he was even wrong.

I don't think he lied. Our government was not the only government that thought Saddam had WMD - most of Europe and the Middle East also thought he had WMD. He had used WMD on his own people in the past - this is documented fact. Like TheCalvinator said, we didn't invade Iraq for a long time after we started to seriously threaten it, plenty of time to get whatever WMD were still in Iraq out of Iraq.

He didn't knowingly lie. The people who loathe this President will believe he lied no matter what kind of truth is right in front of them.

"I heard about this on NPR (yeah IIIII'm a liberal ;-)) and the way I heard it was this. There were many, many differing opinions in Washington on whether or not there were WMDs."

I think this is a bit of revisionist history :-)- the broad consensus of the Clinton administration was that Saddam had them. That's why Clinton pushed congress for the resolution calling for "regime change" in Iraq.

Actually, it's beyond dispute that Saddam "had" WMDs, because he used them on the Kurds in the late 80s. That being said, it is also true that the Bush administration believed that we would find them in Iraq following the invasion, and in that sense they were wrong.

One of my friends at work (no Bush supporter) at the time of the invasion claimed that WMDs would be found because Bush would plant them. This points to one of the biggest problems with the "Bush knowingly lied" argument. If Bush really knew there weren't WMDs, and went into Iraq with no plan to secretly plant them or otherwise make his lie look like the truth . . . well, that was pretty poor planning. ("See?", people will say, "He's both a liar AND an idiot!" :-)

Personal opinion: Saddam had a WMD program, but it was much smaller than even he knew. And they either hid them, sold them, or smuggled them out of the country.

It amazes me that this "Bush lied" crap usuallly comes from the same people who have been yelling for years that there are no moral absolutes, and "who are we to judge"? Now, they are making moral judgments--based on what?

Scott,
Glad to have you here on the blog. I checked yours out. I saw the Star Trek Trailer thanks to you!!!! Hey, how did you get a hold of that email from J.J. Abrams? That was just cool! What was your source?

Anyway, back to the subject, you said:
I'm not sure I understand your last question. If someone (Person A) tells that police officer that it is without a doubt a real gun and the police shoots that person (Person B) with the toy and the person (Person A) that told the police officer that it was a real gun had reasonable doubt that it wasn't then that person (Person A) is accountable. Does that make sense?

Yes, that makes sense. But how do you PROVE that person A had reasonable doubt, or any doubt at all. Even if he said, "he has a gun" 11 times, and really believed it, you can't do a "study" and say he lied 11 times. A study of this sort can't prove someone knowingly, intentionally gave false information. There's a difference between lying and being wrong. And there's a difference between just one person being wrong and the whole world being wrong, we're just picking on "person A" when there was a whole crowd behind him saying, "It's a gun, It's a gun" And the gun holder acting like it was a real gun, and the gun holder is someone who had shot people before, AND there's a possibility someone switched the toy gun for the real gun after the fact.

I think it's real hard to say that you know for sure that person A was lying in those circumstances.

Hi Scott. Did you actually read the report? Or did you do that knee-jerk Christian conservative thing?

Here are the human beings who foisted this steaming pile of yoyo upon the unsuspecting masses: http://www.publicintegrity.org/about/about.aspx?act=directors

No integrity to be found in any of these low-lifes, I'm sure. Their families should be ashamed of them.

When you actually deal with the information contained in the report, like any objective person would do, then come back and whine. But, please, enough with the pre-judgments and conservative assumption and unwillingness to deal with something like this rationally. It gives Christians a bad name.

Philip, here's the link with JJ's email http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/news/index.html. It's the blog of the professor in question.

I would imagine in a court of law you could proove something like that. I've no doubt that there are court cases that have proven that very sort of thing. I'm not advocating that we impeach the president, I mean what would the point be really. Still it's worth asking the question, what did Bush know beyond a shadow of a doubt and when did he know it.

Regarding WMDs pre-invasion, I'm sure there were some there. I'd think that if there were enough to be a threat to us (as it was painted) it would have been difficult to hide that well given the time frame. Not impossible mind you espcially given Saddam's allies. What we were led to believe was that the WMDs they had was a direct threat to our country. That they could have nuclear capability within a year. That they were tied directly to Al-qaeda. And that these were the reasons to go to war. None of that is born out in the evidence I've seen. If I'm wrong, please tell me.

What I find when I look at the things that the current administration has said over the last 7 years, is that they say whatever they feel they need to say to get whatever they want. They wanted to fight a war in Iraq. They said what they needed to say to incite us to that war. Now I'm not saying that the Bish administration is the first political body to do that. Presidents, kings, general throughout the ages have used whatever lies and dirty tricks they needed to. Dealing with the here and now these particular lies or if you prefer, incorrect beliefs, have cost the lives of soldiers, money we don't have, and it looks like we're going to be there for a decade or more. That's something that I've been afraid of since 9/11. I heard this morning about a treaty that we're setting up with Iraq to protect them from enemies from within and without. My understanding is that the President has no power to make such treaties (whether or not they use that word) without the Congress' support. Regardless of what the Democratic nominees are saying we're not getting out of there any time soon.

Okay, getting off my soapbox now.

Peter, are you talking to me? I'm not a conservative, I'm not whining, and I'm not judging anyone (except maybe Bush).

Peter,
I don't know what "side" you are on, or where you are coming from, but chill out. We have dialogue here, and your little rant doesn't fit here. If you want to disagree, fine, but please do it agreeably.

Scott and I obviously have different opinions, but we seem to be able to have a civil conversation. You need to do the same.

Scott,
I think you and I have two different perspectives. But I appreciate your sharing yours.

There is another line of thought "justifying" the Iraq war, that either people don't get or just disagree with. And here it is - post-9/11 you can't ignore saber rattlers anymore. We thought we were safe and ignored people who wanted to kill us. Whatever your thoughts about whether or not we were justified to invade Iraq, 9/11 changed how we think about our enemies. Or at least it should. Now the media hears that kind of reasoning from Bush and says, "He's blaming Saddam for 9/11. He's lying. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

They are missing the point. Back to our policeman analogy. It's like a police force that ignored the gangsters waving their guns around saying, "we're going to shoot people". And then one day, they did it. Some of them shot a lot of people. So the next time a gangster waves a gun around and says "we're going to shoot people", the threat is going to be taken a lot more seriously, even if it is a different gangster.

And you know, whether or not my analagy above holds water to a person, is probably a good indicator of whether or not they believe we should be in Iraqu. It's a different perspective.

With love and respect,
Phil
P.S. If Peter attacks you like that again, just ignore him.

I don't think Peter was directing his ire at Scott - I think he just got confused about who wrote what.

And, yes, Scott's a great example of someone who can disagree civilly. May his tribe increase.

Milly was a good girl in this.
WOW!

Vote MoonPiest!

Yes!

Have a (virtual) moon pie on the house, Milly.

It's best heated, with ice cream on top. Mmmmmm . . .

Actually, there's pretty good evidence from Syria that that's where Saddam's WMDs are.

AM, how do you know this? What's your source?

And how come the media isn't talking about it? Oh wait, I already know the answer to the last question. :)

MEMRI. The Syrian government came down very hard on a dissident who was trying to get the story out, and there was some corroboration. I think I still have the link (my old computer died, so I'm not certain), and I'll try to dig it up once I get home; I'll also try looking on the MEMRI website, but their search function doesn't work very well.

As for the Western media, they don't speak Arabic, and they don't monitor MEMRI, so I doubt they were ever aware of the story.

On another note, here's this, from a publication run by Uday Hussein:

Supported by the UN, the Iraqis have been trying hard in the last few days to unveil their biological weapons production program, which is the most clandestine episode in their serial efforts to arm [themselves]... On Sunday evening, the UN experts and Iraqi officials responsible for the armament program met to ensure the destruction of large quantities of anthrax and VX nerve gas... An international expert in this area, who asked to remain anonymous, commented that the results of the Iraqi biological armament program were outstanding...

Thanks Phil and Bill.

Yeah I think we have different perspectives. I don't think that we need to be solely the world's police force. But I do agree that we can't ignore saber rattlers. I don't have a problem with war per se. I do have a problem with how we handled Iraq, John Wayne style. And as far as Saddam being our enemy, don't forget who set him up. If we are going to be police we shouldn't help set up the gangsters.

And as for my tribe increasing, we have three. We're done. ;)

John Wayne goes hard! :-)

Thank You Bill I shall.
MoonPiest Love The Duke!

All the supposedly false statments in the Bush administration about WMDs and Iraq actually came from the director of the CIA who was a Clinton appointee.

Sometimes you just gotta laugh at the spin put on by the liberal media.