Blair is failing. Can Bush keep the lid on intelgate?

empathy...if you truly believe that he lied through his teeth and deceived the nation...then i certainly understand the frustrations of reading polls where americans say, "we don't care."

 

Cool..although, my position is not that I'm convinced that he lied, but that I'm convinced that he decided what he ( or they, to be more fair/accurate) thought was right, probably based on thinking WMD were there, but also with other, less noble reasons, and thereafter both made it known and practiced a sytematic process of conclusion before information prioritization; Info contrary to their preconceptions/not what they wanted to hear was dismissed, ignored, or edited. Word was put around that the information they wanted wasn't of the " What's the case" variety, but of the " Confirm our position." variety. And then that side was presented to the American people, and hen the arguments didn't work, other ones were thrown at us, and critics patriotism was questioned, aliies who disagreed were called corrupt or cowards or traitors...and eventually it worked.


I am not convinced, as some are, that Bush went in knwoing there were no WMDs...nor am I convinced that he was knowingly doing the wrong thing. He probably thinks he did the right thing...but so did Hitler. The system in place is designed to protect us from the abuses of power of well meaning men just as much as those of men with more evil agendas...and when you circumvent that system, for whatever reason, you betray it and us.

The fact that we are saying that betrayal, and the flood gate of that kind of action it opnes is ok because wew on the war and hussein is a bad guy who'se no longer in power frightens the hell out of me. I think that getting ri of mcCartyism was a good thing too, but it still didn't and doesn't justify Ike's bastardization of Exececutive power, and Tail Gunner Joe himself was only able to do what he did because of another short-sighted political precedent. Believe in the system, or acknowledge it's failings and address them head on...otherwise you're no better than a dictator, however benevolent.

 

MacBeth -- good post. i've heard the word impeachment thrown around....if your take on this is right, then it's a far cry from high crimes and misdemeanors. a very far cry. you elect the guy out for making mistakes assuming he was doing the right thing...but there's zero ground for impeachment of someone like that.

 

MM...I'm not entirely sure where I stand on that. It depends...to what degree was the avoidance of contrary intel an active vs. passive process? To what degree did they knowingly distort information, however much they thought the newer, improved version was more accurate? Mens rea only extends so far as the action itslef, not consciousness of the 'wrongness' of the action. It is arguable that Benedict Arnold thought ne was doing the right thing too. It is definitely arguable, hell, probable, the Nixon felt he was reacting to a widespread Liberal conspiracy, and his actions were made consistent with what he believed was in the country's best interests.

In terms of whether he should or should no be impeached...well, I need a lot more information. I haven't seen enough of a case to warrent it so far, that's certain...but then the White house hasn't exactly been forthcoming, nor do I expect it to be. My fears are the following:

1) The American people, in a latter day ' The Trains are on time!" rationale, dismiss the entire external wrong..ie that it involved invading another country, and the the circumvention of the process designed to protect or system, and focus on whether or not Ameicans themselves feel wronged as the only issue...sort of like aming Clinton's perjury about whether or not Americans cared about his having an affair...and Bush gets a second term.

2) That Bush et al will designate a fall guy...say the head of the CIA...and the people will be satisfied, and blame it all on 'bad intel', and avoid the fact that the White House encouraged bad intel, and had good intel but purposefully avoided it.

and lastly, my one real reason for saying impeachment might be a good idea is one I think you'll understand; Not doing it lowers the bar. If we accpet that he abused his power and mislead the people into a war we otherwise would not have gone into...not to mention all the other global consequences...and all he faces is a tougher run at a second term, what message deos that send, even if he loses, to the next guy who thinks he knows better?

I'm not decided on the issue...it's too early...but I am very concerned, obviously.

 

What about Saddam signing the treaty in '91 saying he would submit to UN inspections, and then violating them for 12+ years.

Whether or not he still had WMD is irrelevant to most of us, all we care about is that he was a bad man, and his government had to go.....

Job accomplished.

Now, the real work comes in, we have to get a good government up and running ASAP.

DD

 

Somewhat relevant!?!?!?

Glynch...you know I am by no means a Republican, so this is not a partisan position: Clinton comitted a crime, and it wasn't sex.

He was accused of sexual harassment, which is an exploitation of a position ( especially a politically gained one; ie responsible to the people) to make unwanted use of of someone who worked for him,and part of his defense was that he had never engaged in any such activity with any people who worked for him; that he had too much respect for the office, etc...and thereby attempting to avoid the common thrust of many sexual harassment suits; the claim that the employer may have misinterpreted things, and thought that his advances were, to a degree, well received., but that he was wrong, and ultimately responsible for the victim's suffering.

In defending himself, as in any argument like that, legal or otherwise, his behaviour in similar situations came into question and, when a relevant situation was examined, he lied under oath.

He broke the law...He is the head of a legal system based on testimony, and he commits perjury. It was not about a blowjob...that was Clinton's masterfull spin...

What Clinton did which was politically brilliant was that he sensed the social climate better than his Republican peers. When the scandal broke, the Republicans assumed that, as had always been the case in the past, the sexual element of the scandal would be the cause of outrage, and ultimately lead to Clinton's fall. And feeling this way, they made the mistake of hammering the sexual angle, and reacting will a sense of glee they made little effort to hide.

Clinton saw the way the wind was blowing, and he pounced...he let them make it all about sex, he sidestepped the legal issue in the public's eye to do what master politicans have always done; make the entire thing come down to one issue, and win that issue. He made it about whether the public cared about his sex life and, as it happened, they really didn't. There was also a reaction ot the Republican joy at what would oyherwise be a black mark for the country, and the partisanship seemed too obvious, even for American tastes. SO CLinton winks his way past the sexual issue, avoids the legal issue ( in public) and by the time it came down to the nitty gritty, the Republicans were so dismayed and confused that the sexual ammunition had been a blank, and were so afraid of being painted as arch-conservative, hypocritical, and incredibly partisan that they only gave a half-hearted effort at booting Clinton on the rounds he deserved to be booted; perjury.

It's only about a blowjob in perception...and that's a credit to Clinton's political skill...but that was never the real issue.

But, no, I don't think that the effects or costs of Clinton's wrongdoings are as bad as Bush's...

 

Macbeth,

At least you are consistent. We KNOW that Clinton lied, we are speculating about GWB.

DD

 

DD,

In the interest of consistency, would you be in favor of spending 100 million dollars or so and several months of Congressional hearings to determine whether or not Bush lied? That is, after all, how we got to the bottom of it with Clinton. I know you honor consistency. You've propped me for it in the past, too. So I'm confident you'll join me and others in calling for at least a rudimentary public hearing into the recent allegations. And, while we're there, Clinton was also investigated for various other alleged wrongdoings. So I know, in the interest of consistency, you'll also call for full probes/disclosure on Cheney's energy commission and 9/11 -- both of which having been rigorously avoided by Bush/Cheney.

 

We do know that Bush did lie about the report saying that Iraq was six months from having a nuke. Such a report never ever existed, and yet Bush claimed that he had such a report. That is a lie.

We do know that department of the CIA for agents to complain when they feel that their intel reports are being changed or used for political policy did receive a complaint that the administration was skewing intel reports to fit their policy.

We also know that at that the time Bush made the state of the Union address in which he cites the forged report about Iraq trying to buy nuclear materials from Africa, that members of administration had already concluded that the information was faulty, and yet it still ended up in the speech.

We do know that Condi Rice claimed the aluminium tubing that Iraq bought could really only be used for making a nuclear weapon. It turns out that her statement was completely false.

Is all of this worthy of impeachment? I don't know

Is it worthy of congressional hearings and investigation? I would say without a doubt.

As far as the Clinton thing goes, I agree that he is guilty of perjury, and that perjury it's no trivial matter to lie under oath no matter what the trial is about.

If I'm ranking the offenses though, I would rank lies, and deceptions such Gulf of Tonkin, or possibly the deception around the Iraq war as more serious, because it cost lives, and plenty of them. Depending on exactly what was done, and what laws exist it may not be as prosecutable(if thats a word).

 

"Intelgate"? And glynch attempts to steal back his youth yet again...

Another bogus thread based upon a faulty and unprovable (not really even supported, not even by logic) assumption: that Bush lied about Iraq, lied about WMD, lied about *something*.

As usual, the idea has nothing at all to support it in the way of evidence, proof, or even logic. Just another "Let's spread some suppositions and bash the administrastion" thread. Just as useless and stupid as the others.

 

Oh, and FB:

That report was a IISS report, I believe (a military analysis / think tank). It did in fact exist. Sorry.

 

Bravo.

And while we're at it, let's make sure it lasts for several years.




And after it's over, no matter what the outcome, lets make sure that Bush and whatever "indiscretions" he may or may not have committed comes up in any political conversation on any topic... no matter how faint a thread may be that could remotely make it pertinent to the discussion.

 

Actually it wasn't IISS report. The IISS report wasn't brought in as an excuse until the third attempt to justify what the president said. Immediately after the IAEA said Bush quoted a non-existent report, the Bush team came out and said that Bush made a mistake, and it wasn't a '98 IAEA report they were referring to, but a '91 IAEA report. The IAEA then came out and said that there wasn't any such report in '91 either. Also there was a report from Collin Powell in '91 saying that Iraq was not close to nuclear weapon.

It was only later that the IISS report was brought into the picture. This was all gone over in the John Heath thread. There was also something about the timing of Bush's speech and the IISS report that proves that Bush couldn't have been referring to that one, but I can't remember exactly what it was. It was brought out in the other thread though.

 

Quite frankly, I think you're jumping a bit here - do you think that Bush based his decision that Iraq was indeed pursuing nuclear weapons on a single report from a single alanysis organization / think tank? You need to keep in mind that there are literally dozens of high profile military / proliferation organizations and think tanks who issued reports such as was refered to (actually, come to think of it I think it was a CSIS report, not a IISS report, that they refered to). They all said the same thing: Iraq is still actively pursuing nuclear weapons. Don't try to rewrite history here by forgetting that, or forgetting that Bush almost certainly based his decision on more than one report.

I find it curious though how Colin Powell could have issued a report saying that Iraq was not close top a nuclear weapon in '91 though, as the inspectors who were at that very time dismantling Iraq's pre-Gulf War program were claiming that Iraq was anywhere from one to three months away from having a working nuke. That there sounds an awful lot like a lie...

Didn't catch the "john heath" thread (I am not always here, in case you didn't notice). But it is hardly relevant; the fact remains that in order for Bush to have lied, he must have known that A) such a report was false, and B) that Iraq had no nuclear program. You must understand that both of those things must logically be true in order for your "lie" statement to be correct. Otherwise it is not logically true.

Short version: still got nuttin.

 

Well maybe the story has changed again. In the article posted in the other thread it referred to the IISS report.

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021108.html
The White House shifted gears several weeks later, telling a Washington Post reporter that Bush was "imprecise" and that his statement was based on U.S. intelligence. Then, just two days after that story was published, press secretary Ari Fleischer tried a third approach, claiming that "it was in fact the International Institute for Strategic Studies that issued the report concluding that Iraq could develop nuclear weapons in as few as six months."

But the IISS report Fleischer finally settled on as the president's source was actually released on Sept. 9, 2002, two days after Bush's original statement and years after inspectors were "finally denied access." And if the president was briefed about the report in advance, he would have been told that it does not mention any such six-month estimate. An IISS summary does state that Iraq "could ... assemble nuclear weapons within months if fissile material from foreign sources were obtained," but this conditional assessment of the situation today was certainly not the basis for Bush's claims in his press conference with Blair.


Whether or not Iraq had a program wanted a program etc., doesn't matter for this argument. What does matter is the fact that Bush claimed to have a report which didn't exist. They've now given a number of false explanations to try and cover that lie, but some people won't be fooled.

There is also a huge difference between Iraq wanting a nuke program and Iraq being able to produce a nuke in six months time. That was the claim made by the president, and a claim based on a report that he said he had, despite the fact that it didn't exist. I'm not the one rewriting anything.

It looks like Powell felt in Sept of '91 that Iraq was not a short or medium term nuclear threat.

http://foi.missouri.edu/polinfoprop/soundsfishy.html
The IAEA responded that not only was there no new report, "there's never been a report" asserting that Iraq was six months away from constructing a nuclear weapon -- not in 1998, not in 1991. White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan evidently didn't persue his Nexis search far enough to find Andrew Rosenthal's front-page analysis in the Sept. 26, 1991, New York Times stating that "American officials, including Gen. Colin L. Powell . . . acknowledged . . . that [Iraq's nuclear threat] is not any real threat -- in the short term or even medium term."

Actually I posted all the evidence that was posted in the other thread here. Bush lied about the '98 report, then he lied saying he meant the '91 report, and then he lied claiming it was a IISS report.

Your criteria for lies don't even fit. It's not about whether he knew the report was false, it's about him claiming he had report which never existed. He lied, plain and simple. I've also posted the quote from Powell showing that even back in '91 they knew that Iraq wasn't a real nuclear threat.

 

Careful, FranchiseBlade... Too many facts which don't support treebaby's increasingly extinct agenda and you might get (ouchy) IGNORED!!!! Serious, man. Look out. It happened to me and my feelings are still smarting. Upside is we finally found out why treeman disappears from every single thread he's proven wrong in -- he just turns on ignore (same as he does with newspapers and television stories that report anything he doesn't wanna hear). He must be the most blissful guy in the armed forces.

That's all to say, don't bother. You can't win. Cause soon as you do, he stuffs his face full of army issued earplugs and puts you on ignore. Just like his hero, presidunt Busch.

 

Wow. Talk about irrelevant (and still not proof of deceit). Bush fu*ks up in a speech, misquotes something - gee, that's never happened before. He must be lying!

Virtually every report of that nature before the war said the same thing. Bush had probably heard the reports from about 50 or so such analyses saying the same thing, and he forgets the name of the tank that wrote it? Big deal. Totally irrelevant, since the content *is* what matters.

We still don't know if that is true or not - they may indeed have had that capacity. Just because we have yet to find a robust program does not mean it does not exist. Hell, just this morning we've found new evidence of a program (No Worries really should have thought before he adopted his new sig, much less taken the bet):

...Some of the documents made reference to Iraq (news - web sites)'s nuclear program, including manifests for the delivery of communications equipment to the Iraqi nuclear agency. One letter, dated Feb. 7, 1998, from the National Security Council of Iraq was addressed to the Iraqi Nuclear Organization, with a carbon to the Mukhabarat, the secret intelligence service.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030621/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq&cid=540&ncid=716

I wouldn't be so sure that such a program was nonexistent. And if it was not nonexistent, then of course, Bush could not possibly have been lying...

Oh, what a load of crap. Why don't you go sift through the mountains of UNSCOM documents relating to the destruction of Iraq's pre-1991 nuclear program? Talk about rewriting history.

I think it's more likely that the man just didn't know what the hell he was talking about. This is a man who has problems pronouncing the word "nuclear", and you expect him to be able to differentiate between think tanks writing the same thing on the same subject, that have almost identical names? You guys *automatically* assume that he is lying. I'd assume he's just a dumbass before that - until you had actual proof, not just an assumption.

My criteria for accusing the man of lying are just a little more strict than "Well, the story doesn't add up completely, so he must be lying, it is the only possible explanation"... There is more than one possible explanation, and misquoting/forgetting the name of the tank is just one that is more likely than deceit.

But you guys are going to believe whatever you want to believe, so whatever. Doesn't particularly matter whatr you think, the polls have shown the majority of Americans don't agree and don't care.

You've posted one quote from one story, with no corroborating evidence? And that's "proof" to you? No wonder you're convinced of Bush's dishonesty.

As I said, go to the UN's website and sift through old UNSCOM documents (they are all there). They documented thoroughly all of Iraq's misdeeds of that period, one of which was having a huge nuke program that was advanced enough to worry the crap out of them. I'm not going to bothyer doing so - there are literally thousands of pages on the topic, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to educate you on the subject. If you care, you'll look - it's there.

 

He didn't just make a mistake. If that's true it would have been corrected. When they tried to correct it, they said he was referring to another report which turned out not to exist either. In yet another attempt to correct 'the mistake' they claimed Bush was referring to report which didn't even exist at the time he made the original statement.

The lie isn't that Iraq wanted nukes, and may have had some type of program to build them. The lie was Bush saying that he had a report saying how close(six months) away from a nuke.

He could be lying if he made a statement that he had a report that their program was six months away from having a nuke.

Here's an example set prior to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage:

Suppose I say I know they are going to get married in two months, because my buddy Tom Cruise sent me an invitation to the wedding.

The truth is they are going to be married, but I'm lying through my teeth because I wasn't sent an invitation by Tom Cruise. Such an invitation never existed.

I'm not always clear as I should be so to break the analogy down (wedding = Iraqi nuke in six months. report Bush claimed he had = Invitation from Tom Cruise). I'm not conceding the administration was right about the nuclear program either. I'm just trying to keep the argument to it's narrow original scope, 'Did Bush lie?'

Again if he just made a mistake his first correction would have cleared it up. Instead his first correction was wrong, and his second correction were wrong too. These things were prepared ahead of time, and not just on the fly statements. He lied, and his people lied in covering him up.

I totally believe that Iraq had a nuclear program. They even destroyed the facility. I don't believe that they were within six months of producing a nuke, which is what the president said. He quoted reports which don't exist. I don't think we could ignore that might be a threat to the U.S. But whatever program they had wasn't even close to being that capable and certainly not a threat. You say Bush didn't know what he was saying because he's stupid. You may be right. I don't believe that he wrote that information and that someone else lied when they wrote it. But nevertheless he is the President, he did say it, and he has to take the blame for the lie. He picked the people who wrote the lies into his speeches. The responsibility falls on him.

As far as the Powell quote goes, I posted because you said you had a hard time believing Powell would say that. If you want to disagree with Powell's assessment back in '91 that's fine, but it does show duality within the administration, and Powell's stance back then, and later statements from Powell.

This is the same on administration that on March 30th had the secretary of defense tell us that not only were there WMD but that the U.S. knew where the WMD were. He pointed to areas outside of Tikrit saying they were there. He was wrong. I'm not saying he lied, but I am saying he was wrong. If he'd quoted a non-existent report to back it up he would have been lying. That's what Bush did.