No.

First of all, I'm not sure all these people hate Bush. Right there you're showing ignorance. Some may simply disapprove of his job performance, like me. I'm not sure if you're a person who hates, and thus are transferring, or what your deal here is, but IMO it's does not reflect well on you to say such things which may very well may not be true...

Secondly, I'm saying this:

The more I think about it, the more this thread is pointless. We have an administration who outright admitted that WMDs weren't found....on numerous occassions, stated no WMDs were found....to our face....and there are still people here who are claiming WMDs were found. So honestly, if Bush himself looked square into the camera and say "I lied" do you honestly think these people would believe it?

It's called denial.

Right, that's what I said:


"Yea, well you guys suck anyways"

:)

No, not suck. Denial. When the admin goes on record numerous times publically stating there were no WMDs found, and you have people here saying..oh yes, there was WMDs found...what else do you call that?

It's National Journal, ask around. It's not in any sense a "questionable source," nor is it partisan. The "link" you saw to MoveOn.org was a story on MoveOn's new ad campaign, not an ad or a link.

So I find it interesting how quickly you dismiss a 20,000 word article. I expect that from the daddy, but one would have thought there would be something in there that piqued your interest.

But I guess the ground rules for this game are:

1. Post a PDF of a classified document (no problem!)
2. Put that document in the president's hands (again no prob!), and then
3. Post a quote directly contrary to that classified document that we can prove with certainty the president read.

Someone should have said that on page one. If the Repubs in Congress can't get the documents, I highly doubt Messers. Bush and Cheney will give them to me. Maybe CC can get them :)

<sigh> so the defence against whether Bush lied about saying he "went to war" is (essentially) to say that Kiss is a liar. Oh well...

I just think Bush was stupid for saying it - I actually believe by "been to war" he meant Afghanistan. You know, 'cause he's commander in chief.

http://www.monkeytime.org/Site%20Images/bush_badass.jpg

I also think he was stupid, but not lying, when he said the stuff about not caring where Bin Laden was.

Rodeo, if you read my response again you will see I did not "dismiss" your article. I said it was very interesting and if what it ALLEGES turns out to be true then YES, you would have proof that Bush lied when he said they had proof of ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. But, unfortunately those documents have not been produced so there is no proof, hence this is all hearsay and not testable.

So I guess, you are correct in that the rules of the game are that you have to put forward a documented statement by Bush that has been proven to be false and Bush lied about it. The article is an interesting read, but has no facts in it...just allegations.

And to piggyback onto CC's thought, I too think the thread is pointless, but for another reason...

I haven't seen or heard one Democratic politician come out and use the word "lie" to describe Bush's behavior. I've heard lots of "mislead" and "exagerrated" but I haven't heard LIE. In fact, when I have seen Democratic officials directly asked whether they think Bush LIED they either duck the question or say no they don't think he lied, but they think he exagerrated or distorted the truth.

Don't you think if there was a concrete example that proved Bush LIED to the American people to take us to war the Democrats would be trumpeting it from the rooftops? That would be the most quoted soundbite ever known to man, the graphic would be all over the news.

So you guys are trying to defend a position even your leaders won't take (who have lots and lots of people trying to pin down a specific lie I'm sure), hence your difficulties.

But it's fun anyhow...

as usual, it comes down to semantics.

lie

misleading

bad intel

confused

stupid

sloppy

Do any of the above apply to anything Bush has said?

The truth of the matter is, without an outright admission or a conviction within a court of law of purgury, none will accept it.

I personally think he had to have intentionally lied, either that or his staff hid all kinds of stuff from him, or he's the dumbest person on the planet (I don't think the latter two are possible, I for one don't think he's that dumb and I don't think info was hidden from him) but without an admission or conviction, it's unprovable what he specifically was told regarding the mountains of contradictory evidence, knowledge of the details of the downing street meetings, etc., and thus lied (this is regarding Iraq). And even if that happened (conviction or admission), you'd still have some people here denying it.....

That is really a stretch!
I believe Kiss. I believe President Bush told the joke exactly as Kiss described. As I posted in response to this earlier, it is just a variation of an old military joke....that has been told by US GIs for at least the last 30 years (at least in the AF). Usually it compares kids or marriage to war...During the Cold War, military duty was referred to as "war," or "the war." Live-fire exercises, etc... were referred to the same way.

It is just another example of the long-standing principle of presidential privilege. Just because the president refuses to share personal (classified) communications with the press makes him a liar? LOL! If the President shares communications such as these, soon he will only get the politically correct version of everything.

I just saw a pretty interesting program on the military channel dealing with this topic. That is a history of military-political misteping due to the difficulty involved in aquiring good intelligence and then reacting appropriately. One example was the imminent German invasion of the Soviet Union and Stalins' squelching of this information. He was so vehemently in denial of the possibilty of German invasion that he executed intelligence officials who dared to warn him. Other maybe less dramatic examples were the Russian invasion of Czheckloslavakia, the US's mishandling of the situation of the Shaw's Iran, just to name a few of many incidents all bungled because of poor or incomplete intelligence. The point is, is that our current situation is not without precedence. Furthermore, the point this program was trying to present, is that leaders will tend to interpret intelligence or data in a way to suit their own political agenda. I personally believe that the answer may lay somewhere in this context. I mean, whether or not Saddam had the WMD in his posession at that time is almost impossibe to infer, especially due to the difficulty of trying access information given the severe penalty for any Iraqi national trying to get that information out, and outside of the UN trying to access information, forget about planting American operatives. What is known for certain however, is that Saddam had a history of having WMD and no compunction about using it against his own people. Now whether or not he had WMD in his possession at the time of the US invasion I beleive to be a moot point. That is because, Hussien as a leader of an oil rich country and a nation state, had a tremendous potential to aquire WMD. After all think of the economic condition of the former Soviet Union and the surplus of nuclear weapons in that region. How much financial incentive would it have taken to entice some disgruntled former keeper of that gate. So I think the issue sould be more, did he have to means and the motivation to obtain WMD. I think the prevailing opion was yes, and premptive military political action was set accordingly.

"Furthermore, the point this program was trying to present, is that leaders will tend to interpret intelligence or data in a way to suit their own political agenda. I personally believe that the answer may lay somewhere in this context."

I agree with this, and to a large extent how you feel about the question of lying relates back to your overall view of this administration.

I think the intelligence was viewed with the same casualness, lack of curiosity, and arrogance that is the hallmark of the Bush administration. Whether it's staffing FEMA, processing intelligence, planning for the peace, or preparing a budget, this administration has little interest beyond broad, sweeping measures. The details are for little people, and people that do not receive their direction directly from the lord.

So you receive intelligence that is, at best, 50/50 on the issue of WMDs or an Iraq/Al Queda connection, and you read it in that mindset. You forget the 50% that opposes your viewpoint, and exaggerate the remaining 50%.

Unless you’re Dick Cheney. He’s too smart for that, he’s a detail guy, and he knew exactly what he was doing.

I think I agree with many of the above posters that this thread is dead and cannot really go anywhere. Therefore, I bid you all good day, until the next interesting thread appears. Have a good Thanksgiving! SmileWavy