I didn't say he lied about going there, I just used what tonyi said. He lied about the troops being there for only 18 months...I admit I'm taking tonyi's word on that too, but it isn't hard to believe.

 

It still is a lie that involves the use of the armed forces, even if to a lesser scale.

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Its to a massively massively massively lesser scale and is pretty much incomprarable. Yeah maybe he screwed up in a prediction. But a false prediction is not a lie. I dont expect much of an uproar since we havent lost too many troops because of that and we have troops all over the world anyway. If a large percentage of the population needed to be convinced based on how long we would be there, then maybe there is a point. But with Bush, a large percentage of the population needed to be convinced based on the link to 9-11 and WMDs. Hell people still believe that link. And so they took his word on it and were willing to lose the troops based on that.

 

Look at it this way..if people knew at the time the so called lie was said what the truth really was, which liar would face worse results? Bush would have a lost a lot of support for the invasion. I doubt anybody would care if our troops were in Bosnia longer if didnt lose 1000+.

 

 

I know a lot of people who supported the war and were pissed afterwards that the foundation for it turned out to be false...and they were democrats.

 

edit: they werent democrats.

edit: Don't get so defensive, I'm not trying to attack your hero Clinton here. All I am saying is that it makes no sense to not like a politician because he lied to you because all politicians lie. You can say that you do not like him because he lied to you about a specific thing and lies about that specific thing anger you, that would be different.

 

 

Clinton is not my hero.

 

 

In real life, not all lies are the same. Of course people lie all the time. But some lies are much worse than others. If somebody says "I hate liars" its usually not referring to people who make minor lies or false predictions.

Since everyone seemed to ignore some blatant facts let me reiterate them. First, clinton lied under oath, it was proven by his own confession. Thats ILLEGAL. I didnt really care but just poitned that out. Second and more importantly, prove to me using official documents that there is a preponderance of the evidence leaning towards the fact that bush KNEW that the intelligence was faulty but decided to go ahead anyway. In my opinion Bush looked at faulty intelligence and went with the intelligence. The mistake was not Bush's and Bush did not lie. A good criticism of Bush was that the decision may have been made too quickyl, and they didnt continue to research intelligence. But there is no proof that he knowingly deceived us and that he knew the inteligence about WMD's was faulty. Thats like if all of a sudden my most trusted friend tells me that paul lo duca was traded to the indians, and then i go and post it on this board. Im not lying about a lo duca trade I'm MISTAKEN about it. Bush made a huge mistake shun him for that, but he didnt lie. (about the war)

Thankfully the consequences of Clinton diddling around weren't going to war. I mean I know he caused the total decline of U.S. civilization and morality and all that, & now every adulterer or sexually active teen points to Clinton & says "it's okay, the Prez did it" and all their parents say "damn you Clinton if it weren't for you our kids would grow up right!" etc, etc. I think what he did was despicable. I do NOT excuse it. I just think some of us are willing to face that a lot of things occur in an administration that are unpleasant and troubling and even frightening, and focusing on the leader of the free world fibbing about philandering is a waste of time, money, resources, and focus. Bush's actions carried much more consequence. Or should have at least.

 

It's easy enough to say "you're either lying or telling the truth", but there's a lot of gray area. Clinton certainly lied, but I don't believe that what Bush does is particulary forthright & honest either.

 

Part of the beauty of Bush's team is that he's set up as to never blatantly lie. They suggest. They dance around issues without ever stating it as hard fact. They faint & duck, punch & move, drop bombshells and then retract them. It's politics, I understand as much as anyone. Most of them do it but that doesn't make it right.

 

All the talk about mushroom clouds. Were they lies? Fabrications? No, there's always the possibility of them.

 

Budget estimates. Are they lies? No, they're just estimates so that allows them to be waaay off.

 

Did he heed intel that refuted reports of Iraq trying to buy nuclear materials from Niger? Nope, continued to make the claim in speeches. Was it a lie? Well no, there was no proof, only intel.

 

First social security was a crisis and Bush's privatization plan was going to save the day. Later after people started looking at the numbers, they backed off the crisis talk & the estimated year of trouble got pushed further back. Then they admit it's not a crisis, nor does privatization solve the problem. Was it a lie? Well no, it's not a statement of fact, it's an opinion & a case they're trying to make.

 

Memos allowing for the possible use of torture? Written by a White House counsel, but easily brushed aside when cornered on the matter. "No of course we'd never condone torture!"

 

These are not exceptions with this administration, it's the rule.

You couldn't have said it any better, Hotcorner.

 

Nobody can defend the fact that both Bush and Cheney traveled around the country before the Iraq war, speaking about the possibility of "Mushroom clouds over Manhattan" if we didn't invade them. Let's face it, they had to have known that they didn't have nuclear weapons. I have a feeling that their intel suggested that they still had both chemical and biological weapons, but nothing as hard to develop as a nuke.

 

You know they were fearmongering in order to scare people into supporting a war that didn't make any sense. Why else would people support it? Because their leaders told them the United States was in imminent danger of a nuclear attack against U.S. soil.

 

I need to find a tape of Cheney or Rice from that part of 2002.

Here's an interview in September of 2002, where Cheney talks about Iraq:

 

Cheney Interview

 

Important excerpt from that interview:

 

JIM LEHRER: What do you say to those who say - okay, we've got this war against al-Qaida and it's not finished - we're still trying to find out about Osama bin Laden, why are we talking about starting a new war with Iraq?

 

VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Well, Iraq is a related, but obviously somewhat different proposition, and the situation in Iraq is the culmination of many years of effort. Saddam Hussein signed up at the end of the Gulf War to certain UN Security Council Resolutions to get rid of all of his weapons of mass destruction and to allow inspectors to come in and verify that. He has complied with virtually none of the resolutions that have been applied to him.

 

Between 1996 and 1998 on six separate occasions, the Security Council took up decisions and found him to be in flagrant violation and demanded that he grant access - unfettered access to inspectors to come in and prove that he's complied with these resolutions and he absolutely thumbed his nose at the United Nations - never complied. That was '96 through '98. Now, since '98 there haven't been any inspectors in there at all.

 

We know based on primarily intelligence reporting, as well as some of the earlier work done by inspectors as well as defectors who've come out and told us what's going on - we know he is continuing to expand and improve his biological weapons capability both in terms of production and delivery systems. We know he is working once again on a nuclear program. The nuclear weapons program was much further along than we thought at the time of Desert Storm before we actually did the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.

 

I was told, as were most of our senior officials, that it was some years away from a nuclear weapon. We found after the war, once we got people in there on the ground that he was probably within a year of actually having a usable nuclear weapon - that was '91 - 10 years ago. No inspectors have been in there since '98. We know again that he has the weapons design; we know he has the technicians who know how to build a nuclear weapon, that what he lacks -- fissile material - not enriched uranium or plutonium that he could use for a weapon -- and we know that he has re-energized, if you will, his efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon.

 

We know he continues to work on his chemical weapons capabilities, different capability obviously than the B.W. [biological weapons] or the nukes-- but that activity is underway; it's ongoing. We know he's sitting on top of 10 percent of the world's oil reserves. As he takes that wealth that is generated off of that, he's earning a lot of money now on the side, outside the oil for food program- money that goes into his pocket to be used for whatever purpose he wants- that he is going to continue to ignore the United Nations and to build these deadly capabilities.

 

If he had nuclear weapons- we don't know when he'll get them- there are various estimates on timing but we don't know everything we'd like to know about his program. Once he's got a nuclear weapon, I think it'll be virtually impossible to put together an international coalition to deal with this problem.

 

In the bolded sentence, he talks about defectors telling the U.S. that he was working on biological weapons programs. We know that those defectors just wanted Saddam out of power, and would tell us anything we wanted to hear in order for us to liberate them (i.e. Ahmed Chalabi).

I'm not refuting the claim that 'fearmongering' occured to sell the war. I'm rebutting the claim that Bush knew there were no WMDs in Iraq and still said there were. i think everyone in the world believed that Saddam had WMDs. Remember biological and chemical count as WMDs, we didnt invade thme b/c they had nukes, we invaded b/c they had WMDs. Bush saw the intel and went with what he saw, that isnt lying.

Thankfully the consequences of Clinton diddling around weren't going to war. I mean I know he caused the total decline of U.S. civilization and morality and all that, & now every adulterer or sexually active teen points to Clinton & says "it's okay, the Prez did it" and all their parents say "damn you Clinton if it weren't for you our kids would grow up right!" etc, etc. I think what he did was despicable. I do NOT excuse it. I just think some of us are willing to face that a lot of things occur in an administration that are unpleasant and troubling and even frightening, and focusing on the leader of the free world fibbing about philandering is a waste of time, money, resources, and focus. Bush's actions carried much more consequence. Or should have at least.

 

It's easy enough to say "you're either lying or telling the truth", but there's a lot of gray area. Clinton certainly lied, but I don't believe that what Bush does is particulary forthright & honest either.

 

Part of the beauty of Bush's team is that he's set up as to never blatantly lie. They suggest. They dance around issues without ever stating it as hard fact. They faint & duck, punch & move, drop bombshells and then retract them. It's politics, I understand as much as anyone. Most of them do it but that doesn't make it right.

 

All the talk about mushroom clouds. Were they lies? Fabrications? No, there's always the possibility of them.

 

Budget estimates. Are they lies? No, they're just estimates so that allows them to be waaay off.

 

Did he heed intel that refuted reports of Iraq trying to buy nuclear materials from Niger? Nope, continued to make the claim in speeches. Was it a lie? Well no, there was no proof, only intel.

 

First social security was a crisis and Bush's privatization plan was going to save the day. Later after people started looking at the numbers, they backed off the crisis talk & the estimated year of trouble got pushed further back. Then they admit it's not a crisis, nor does privatization solve the problem. Was it a lie? Well no, it's not a statement of fact, it's an opinion & a case they're trying to make.

 

Memos allowing for the possible use of torture? Written by a White House counsel, but easily brushed aside when cornered on the matter. "No of course we'd never condone torture!"

 

These are not exceptions with this administration, it's the rule.

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Perfect dead on post.

You couldn't have said it any better, Hotcorner.

 

Nobody can defend the fact that both Bush and Cheney traveled around the country before the Iraq war, speaking about the possibility of "Mushroom clouds over Manhattan" if we didn't invade them. Let's face it, they had to have known that they didn't have nuclear weapons. I have a feeling that their intel suggested that they still had both chemical and biological weapons, but nothing as hard to develop as a nuke.

 

Didn't we remove a few tons of enriched uranium from Iraq? (the answer is yes)

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If what you say is true, then show me the evidence.

This is the first I have heard about this, if you had posted it before, I would have noticed it.

 

I am not on the far left, despite the claims that you might make. You would just like me to be, because it would make things a lot easier for you.

 

If this story is true, then why hasn't it reached any national news agency by now? Not even Fox News talked about this.

I'm sorry, but until you stop accusing me of being a Michael Moore supporter I have no reason to listen to your incoherent ramblings.