Proof that Bush lied!

[TillEulenspiegel]

First I would like to know who this nebulous "We" are and second ( in true Bush fashion ) the goalpost has gone from "prove he lied" to "prove he intended to deceive" to "show us an impeachable offense".

I knew the difference between a lie and the truth before kindergarten.


...the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/eveningnews/main560449.shtml

Appearing on Meet the Press, Powell acknowledged--finally!--that he and the Bush administration misled the nation about the WMD threat posed by Iraq before the war. Specifically, he said that he was wrong when he appeared before the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003, and alleged that Iraq had developed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons. That was one of the more dramatic claims he and the administration used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
http://www.bodydharma.org/choices/Bush/corn2.html

Lie #1--They Attacked Us: Iraq Supported Al Qaeda. Astonishingly, President Bush, in a rare moment of candor, finally admitted half a year after the invasion that there was no evidence Saddam Hussein's Iraq had any links to the 9/11 attacks, undermining eighteen months of implying the exact opposite

Lies #2 and #3--Imminent Threats: Iraq's Bio-Chem and Nuclear Weapons Programs. A year after using his 2003 State of the Union address to paint Iraq's allegedly vast arsenal of WMD as a grave threat to the United States and the world, Bush wisely avoided mentioning anything about uranium there--though he did spend a great deal of his latest SOTU defending the war on the grounds that "had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day."

Lie #5--The Moral Justification: Iraq as a Democratic Model. As the other lies upon which this war were based have been crumbling, this one has moved to the forefront. For war apologists such as the New York Time's Thomas Friedman, if we can "bring democracy to Iraq,"
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040329&s=scheer

In July, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report blaming the CIA for the mess. The panel conveniently refuses to evaluate what the White House did with the information it was given or how the White House set up its own special team of Pentagon political appointees (called the Office of Special Plans) to circumvent well-established intelligence channels. And Vice President Dick Chaney continues to say without a shred of proof that there is “overwhelming evidence” justifying the administration’s pre-war charges...

There are tens more examples of the exact path of obsfucation the white house took, from reputable sources that I have showcased in previous posts ( Washington Post, N.Y. Times , etc. ) this is just a first page google search.

He was warned intel was bad, he kept insisting that it was concrete, he used his "concrete evidence" to prosecute a war before exhausting the search for WMD- which didn't exist '. Period.

Many say Kerry lost, get over it , well Bush lied get over it. As far as impeachment the statutory guidelines are " for high crimes and misdemeanors", so under the law it is possible to remove a sitting President for jaywalking.


Edit: construction

 

[peptoabysmal]

A lie that costs over 1000 American lives, over 10000 Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of dollars is NOT an impeachable offense, but a lie about a BJ that costs nothing IS an impeachable offense? You Republicans sure have some strange standards....

I agree, a BJ is not an impeachable offense. Clinton made a laughing stock of the highest office in this land by his actions and that's the part I don't like about that incident.

Perjury before a Grand Jury and Obstruction of Justice are impeachable offenses. The impeachment succeeded in the House and failed in the Senate. It is my understanding that the House and Senate contain both parties. Show me where this was a strictly Republican action.

 

[peptoabysmal]

According to the book by that watergate guy, (forget his name now), the war was already going to happen, he just wanted someone to tell him that there were WMD as a reasonable sounding excuse. Tenet let him know it was a 'slam dunk', meaning that of course they could whip up a case for him. The whole WMD was just post hoc, and had no actual part in the reason for the war. As it was, if you look at the CBS story in my previous links, the agents that do the real work, and copped the blame for the 'intelligence failure' never believed for a minute the crap that Powell was spouting at the UN.

Again, I see nothing in that story which incriminates Bush.

Are you accusing Powell of lying about WMD? If it were true, how does this prove "Bush lied"?

 

[peptoabysmal]

A dual use component is exactly what it says it is, so it cannot be used as evidence for the existence of WMD. Blix took note of them, told everybody about them and searched a bit further. He had the job of looking for evidence of WMD, dual use components are not evidence of WMD. So what did you expect him to do about them?

Show me one single civilian use for HDX.

Remember that at that time he was not a weapons inspector. He was an inspector for the IAEA. He didn't find a secret nuclear program, because he wasn't looking for secret nuclear programs. In fact at that time, no one was looking for secret programs because in the political climate of the day allowing international inspectors to search through a country's secret facilities was considered an acceptable breach of national sovereignty.By stating it like that, all you do is show how poorly developed the concept of political responsibility is in the US. In most other democratic countries high government officials or even entire cabinets would have been impeached or thrown out of office merely for being as wrong as the Bush administration was. It is usually considered completely irrelevant whether they lie delibrately or presented information they should have known to be inaccurate.

And the IAEA does what? What else would he have been looking for, a good bagel shop? As to the second part of your statement, that's what I'm getting at here, an impeachable offense.

It is notoriously difficult to prove any untruth was a deliberate lie, because it is often impossible to know exactly what knowledge people had in the past and how they intended their actions. But it shouldn't matter.

I completely accept the statement "I feel that Bush lied".

I personally believe that Hans Blix gives us the simplest explanation: the Bush administration really, really, honestly believed there were WMD in Iraq. It means that there is something very wrong going on somewhere in the US government making it possible that they could be so profoundly wrong. It also appears that little is done to find out what went wrong or to correct it.

Show me where Mr. Blix gives this explanation. You read Blix's words and process with your own filter, I'm afraid. You may suffer from a bad case of AUP.

 

[peptoabysmal]

Been following the thread with interest, and there is I think a valid point made by pepto in earlier posts. If we are talking about lying as involving intent to deceive, then we cannot now and likely never will be able to definitively say that Bush lied; he can always claim (truthfully or not) that he really believed in the presence of WMD's, and unless someone has developed psychic powers or we find a diary entry that owns up to it, we are in no position to say any different.

It could come out from someone who was close to him. It has for other presidents who lied.

I'd like to note to pepto, though, that in the above message you are engaging in exactly the same behavior you accuse others of. There is no evidence in the article linked to that Kerry intended to deceive anyone. He may simply have a poor memory or was mistaken in his location. You may find that unlikely, but you cannot condemn others for their means of attacking a politician you approve of and then use those same tactics to attack those you don't and expect to have your argument taken seriously.

Kerry's direct quote:

I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared--seared--in me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27211-2004Aug23.html

If this isn't a lie, what is?

While we may not be able to say that Bush lied based on an "intent test," I believe that enough evidence has been presented in this thread to argue that he did mislead the world, in that his statements did not accurately convey the uncertainty inherent in the information the administration possessed.

This is stretching the definition of mislead to its furthest elasticity.
You can say he was wrong, I don't have a problem with that. The common definition of mislead requires malice.

 

[a_unique_person]

Again, I see nothing in that story which incriminates Bush.

Are you accusing Powell of lying about WMD? If it were true, how does this prove "Bush lied"?

Powell was just obeying orders.

 

[Earthborn]

Show me one single civilian use for HDX.

Oh, you mean the stuff that was behind IAEA lock and seal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qa'qaa_high_explosives_controversy

I hear they are sometimes used in demolition and in mining. Obviously with the stuff locked away and sealed, Iraq couldn't have used it for that.

And the IAEA does what?

Inspect nuclear facilities. During that time they didn't look for secret nuclear facilities. Only after they were found did people start to realize that someone should be doing that.

I completely accept the statement "I feel that Bush lied".

Do you? I get a feeling thatthey don't.

Show me where Mr. Blix gives this explanation.

I read it in here.

You read Blix's words and process with your own filter, I'm afraid.

Could be. The guy is not a great writer so his words sometimes need some interpretation. I'm pretty sure that he argued that the US administration believed its own faulty intelligence though.

 

[C.J.]

It could come out from someone who was close to him. It has for other presidents who lied.

A good point.

Kerry's direct quote:
I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by the Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I have that memory which is seared--seared--in me.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...-2004Aug23.html
If this isn't a lie, what is?

It's an indicator that people have terrible memories, even ones that are seared--seared into them. People can feel quite confident that they have genuine memories of things that, when subject to objective scrutiny, never happened. A well-regarded cognitive psychologist (Ulrich Neisser) "remembers" having a baseball game on the radio interrupted to announce the bombing of Pearl Harbor when, of corse, the season was well over. During his time in office, former President Reagan "remembered" being with the liberators of death camps in WWII, something he had only seen in film footage. The thing is, both really believed what they "remembered" to be true. If lying requires intent to decieve, as you contend, you wouldn't consider either of these people liars. You want to call Kerry one, however, even though his behavior can be explained the same way. Why? Because of his certainty? It's no different than anyone else who is "crystal clear" about remembering things that didn't happen. Please don't let it be about politics.

I maintain that you cannot reasonably call Kerry a liar unless you prove he intended to deceive, and the quote provided does not do so.

This is stretching the definition of mislead to its furthest elasticity.
You can say he was wrong, I don't have a problem with that. The common definition of mislead requires malice.

To the contrary. Mislead, according to two definitions and one very quick search:

American Heritage Dictionary (http://dictionary.com)
mis·lead
1) To lead in the wrong direction.
2) To lead into error of thought or action, especially by intentionally deceiving.

So intention to deceive is helpful but not necessary

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law (http://dictionary.com)
Main Entry: mis·lead
transitive verb : to lead into a mistaken action or belief : to cause to have a false impression
intransitive verb : to create a false impression

Given that the information on the presence of WMD's in Iraq was equivocal and The President presented it to the American public as certain, it can easily and accurately be said that he mislead us.

 

[clk]

Kerry's direct quote:

If this isn't a lie, what is?

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/cheney.htm
In accepting the Republican nomination for vice president, Cheney closed his speech with a moving description of the helicopter ride he used to take from Andrews Air Force Base to the Pentagon when he was Secretary of Defense.

He described the power of the various monuments of Washington in the order the chopper passes them, ending with the famous military cemetery that abuts the Pentagon.

"Just before you settle down on the landing pad, you look upon Arlington National Cemetery...its gentle slopes and crosses row on row," Cheney said. "I never once made that trip without being reminded how enormously fortunate we all are to be Americans, and what a terrible price thousands have paid so that all of us...and millions more around the world...might live in freedom."

But Cheney's memory is slightly off. The graves in Arlington are marked with white headstones, rounded at the top.

Was Cheney lying?

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/bushlie.html

CNN transcript of a Bush interview:

QUESTION: One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country, and another thing is that how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack?

BUSH: Well... (APPLAUSE)

Thank you, Jordan (ph).

Well, Jordan (ph), you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my chief of staff, Andy Card -- actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident."

But I was whisked off there -- I didn't have much time to think about it, and I was sitting in the classroom, and Andy Card, my chief who was sitting over here walked in and said, "A second plane has hit the tower. America's under attack."

There is a problem with the above statement. There was no live video coverage of the first plane hitting the tower. There couldn't be. Video of that first plane hitting the tower did not surface until AFTER the second plane had hit.

Was Bush lying?


I don't think Kerry or Cheney or Bush were lying in the incidents we are talking about. Your memory can play tricks on you, especially if you are trying to remember something from a long time ago where you were in a chaotic environment (like war).

 

[peptoabysmal]

Oh, you mean the stuff that was behind IAEA lock and seal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qa'qaa_high_explosives_controversy

Yes.

I hear they are sometimes used in demolition and in mining. Obviously with the stuff locked away and sealed, Iraq couldn't have used it for that.Inspect nuclear facilities.

Nope. That's RDX and there are better civilian alternatives that don't involve risk of nerve damage of the user. HDX is used to make explosive lenses for thermonuclear weapons and it takes a lot of heat and pressure provided by other explosives to set it off.

During that time they didn't look for secret nuclear facilities. Only after they were found did people start to realize that someone should be doing that.Do you? I get a feeling thatthey don't.I read it in here.Could be. The guy is not a great writer so his words sometimes need some interpretation. I'm pretty sure that he argued that the US administration believed its own faulty intelligence though.

So, at that time, the IAEA's job was to look for good bagel shops?

 

[peptoabysmal]

Was Cheney lying?

Was Bush lying?

I don't think Kerry or Cheney or Bush were lying in the incidents we are talking about. Your memory can play tricks on you, especially if you are trying to remember something from a long time ago where you were in a chaotic environment (like war).

I'll buy the argument in the Cheney case. He could have seen crosses in his mind... who gives a ◊◊◊◊?

In Bush's case, Bush did not state that he saw the first plane hit. You are assuming that he was not observing the second plane hit. He only states that he was told about the second plane hitting.

 

[clk]

I'll buy the argument in the Cheney case. He could have seen crosses in his mind... who gives a ◊◊◊◊?

Who gives a ◊◊◊◊ whether Kerry was in Cambodia in January instead of December?

In Bush's case, Bush did not state that he saw the first plane hit. You are assuming that he was not observing the second plane hit. He only states that he was told about the second plane hitting.

Bush said:

actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident."

Where did he say he was told about the plane hitting? From what he said, it sounds like he remembers seeing the plane hit the tower on television.