A list of the Bush Admin's 237 misleading statements on Iraq.

I like this one from MoveOn showing Rumsfeld with his hand in the cookie jar.

link to video

 

oh man, that is simply classic.

 

Rummy: You and a few other critics are the only people I have heard use the phrase "immediate threat", I didn't, the President didn't, and uh its become kind of folklore, that that's what has happened...

Reporter: You're saying that nobody in the admin said that? The VP didn't say that?

Rummy: I can't speak for ... everybody. If you have any citations I'd like to see them."

Reporter (quoting) "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent, that Saddam is at least five to seven years away from having nuclear weapons. I would not be so certain" - Rumsfeld, September 18, 2002

Rummy: and, and, uh, well uh, I, I tried to be precise and I've tried to be accurate -"

Reporter (quoting) "No terror state poses a greater or more IMMEDIATE THREAT to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." Rumsfeld, Septemder 18, 2002

Rummy: uh... eh, eh, eh, my view of the situation was that he.. he had... we believe the best intelligence...


All those people that were screaming about the definition of "is" and "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" should be way more outraged about this.

 

They won't! My sister in law made this comment last night. I nearly dropped the phone.

"Well I'd rather pay for a war than a blowjob."

 

Haha...hilarious.

 

Oh man, the Rumsfeld video is awesome.

"Uhm...um.um.. My view of the situation was that... he had.. we..we..we believed that...the best instelligence...."

 

Your sister in law rules.

So true.

 

I think the more telling thread would be 237 misleading comments by glynch about conservatives.

 

We have 237 documented lies spread by the administration and the best the conservatives can do to refute them is to attack the messenger

Oh wait, that's the entire basis of the Bush 2000/2004 team...

 

Nice try. The point of my post is that there have been dozens of posts by the originator of this thread that accuse officers of our government of everything from broad based lies (without proof) to plotting the ink pen in your briefcase spilling ink everywhere.

It is a simple case of the glynch who cried wolf.

 

Refman:

I totally disagree with you about glynch, but that's beside the point. He didn't compile the statements. He just posted the link. Does it really not bother you at all that the president may have misled the nation about something as serious as war? Have you looked at the statements and concluded there's nothing to them? I'm sincerely asking. Leaving glynch out, leaving out my feelings toward Bush or the feelings of others on this board, especially since none of us here compiled the statements, what's your reaction to the accusation?

 

Then I cry wolf as well. Only problem with your post is that there really is a wolf.

Bat... hit me on my cell tomorrow if you can do lunch. Otherwise, I'll bite the bullet and do a business meal with colleagues... yecch.

 

rocker: well put.

I mailed you yesterday to say I couldn't make it today, but to let me know next time you're in town. Hope you got the mail, but if not, there it is. I'll be here another month or so.

 

Anybody who says that they'd rather pay for a war than a blowjob is a moron. Besides the fact that even a Clinton blowjob costs less than 87 Billion, a blow job doesn't get hundreds of American soldiers killed.

This, like everything else perpetuated by this administration, is going to conveniently go away.

 

The problem with any lists like the one in question is that the person compiling the list can make a case that anything is untrue. Only the simplest of situations can be said that it is 100% truth. ie the sky is blue. Are you SURE that they were lies rather than poor intel, etc? In order for something to be a lie you have to know the truth and say something different.

If the administration is lying, it bothers me.

But politicians lying...there's something new, and party affiliation only changes the lies that are told.

 

Yoou should be bothered. From the report...
________________


The Iraq on the Record database contains statements from the five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on the Iraq war: President George Bush; Vice President Richard Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; Secretary of State Colin Powell; and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

The statements in the database are drawn from 125 public statements or appearances in which the five officials discussed the threat posed by Iraq. The sources of the statements are 40 speeches, 26 press conferences and briefings, 53 interviews, 4 written statements or articles, and 2 appearances before congressional committees. Quotes from the officials in newspaper articles or other similar secondary sources were not included in the database because of the difficulty of discerning the context of such quotes and ensuring their accuracy. Statements made by the officials before March 2002, one year before the commencement of hostilities in Iraq, were also not included.

The database contains statements about Iraq from the five officials that were misleading based on what was known to the Administration at the time the statements were made. In compiling the database, the Special Investigations Division did not assess whether “subjectively” the officials believed a specific statement to be misleading. Instead, the investigators used an “objective” standard. For purposes of the database, a statement is considered “misleading” if it conflicted with what intelligence officials knew at the time or involved the selective use of intelligence or the failure to include essential qualifiers or caveats.

The database does not include statements that appear mistaken only in hindsight. If a statement was an accurate reflection of U.S. intelligence at the time it was made, the statement is excluded from the database even if it now appears erroneous.

To determine whether a statement was misleading, the Special Investigations Division examined the statement in light of intelligence known to the Administration at the time of the statement. The primary sources for determining the intelligence available to the Administration were (1) the portions of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that have been released to the public, (2) the February 5, 2004, statement by Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet entitled Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction, (3) the recent report of the nonpartisan Carnegie Endowment for International Peace entitled WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications, and (4) news and other reports quoting U.S. officials regarding the intelligence available to the Administration on Iraq.

In general, hypothetical and implied statements about threats posed by Iraq were not included in the database of misleading statements. A few such statements were included, however, where they implied a threat in evocative and frightening language. These statements were misleading because the effect was to instill in the public the perception that the threat actually existed.

To be conservative, the Special Investigations Division excluded hundreds of statements by the five officials that many observers would consider misleading. For example, the five officials made numerous claims that Iraq “had” stockpiles of chemical weapons. Many of these statements were misleading in that they implied that Iraq possessed these stockpiles currently and did not acknowledge the doubts of intelligence experts. Nevertheless, these statements were not included in the database when they were expressed in the past tense because Iraq did possess chemical weapons at least as late as the early 1990s and used them during the 1980s.[1]

Investigators also excluded scores of statements of certainty that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” prior to the war. To many observers, these statements would be misleading because they implied that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons without acknowledging the divisions among intelligence officials about whether this was the case. The Special Investigations Division excluded these general “weapons of mass destruction” assertions, however, because of the ambiguity inherent in the phrase.

The Special Investigations Division asked two leading independent experts to peer review this report for fairness and accuracy. These two independent experts are: Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Greg Thielmann, former acting director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. These experts judged that this report is a fair and accurate depiction of the Administration’s statements.

[1] United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, Unresolved Disarmament Issues: Iraq’s Proscribed Weapons Programmes, UNMOVIC Working Document (Mar. 6, 2003).

 

By the way, here's a better link...

http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/

 

Just because it may happen frequently doesn't mean we should accept the lies... regardless of party, by allowing the bastards to get away with it, we are all complicit in the decline of our country.