Bush Lied Revisited

What is a lie? A lie is an “assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue: a deliberate misrepresentation of fact with intent to deceive (Webster’s Third).” Was President Bush lying when he said that he believed that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction? Let’s put the question another way: did President Bush not really believe that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq possessed WMDs? For that is what those who accuse the president of lying on this subject are saying.

So let’s play a little game. Just for giggles, let’s assume the president was lying when he said he believed that Hussein had WMDs. Does the president have enemies, honorable adversaries, those who respectfully disagree with his policies, those who hate his guts and the horse he rode in on? Yes. Are there people who have kept the deeds and misdeeds of Hussein’s regime in their sights far longer than the president has? Definitely. Are there individuals, international entities, intelligence services, foreign heads of state, Iraq experts, Iraqis themselves, who have been studying, reporting and spying on Iraq who could have definitively refuted the president’s belief that Iraq had WMDs? Of course there are. But outside of one Scott Ritter, they did not do so.

Could President Bush’s predecessor, having access to the same information, have refuted this belief? Of course he could have. So why did former President Clinton make this speech and why does he keep corroborating President Bush’s statements on the subject (and proving my assertion in the comments of this post that even a person of low character can sometimes tell the truth)?

Or maybe both presidents were/are lying? Maybe the UN, Jacques Chirac, MI5 and the rest are all lying and this whole matter is merely one big conspiracy: the UN and the French sit back and pretend to oppose the actions of the US, the UK and the rest of the Coalition of the Willing, while all the time absolutely none of them ever believed that Hussein possessed WMDs!

Maybe President Clinton knew that George W. Bush would be elected in 2000 and they cooked up this whole scheme together back in 1998. Or maybe the two, along with President G.H.W. Bush cooked it up back in 1989! /crazy tin-foil hat donning sufferer of BDS

Not only do the chains of logic unravel, they melt down to cause the Mother of All Migraines. But that's what happens when facts are reshaped to suit one's beliefs rather than the other way around.

Faced with such disparate sources of information with conflicting agendas--President Clinton, Jacques Chirac, the CIA and the UN, et al.--telling him that Hussein has WMDs, it would have defied all reason for President Bush to not have believed it to be true.

However, the question remains: if they existed, where are they? If they are never uncovered, does that mean that the president lied about believing that they existed? Only in a world in which anything that one’s enemy says is a lie, no matter if a friend says the exact same thing.

People that use such methods to denigrate the words and actions of an opponent will say and, likely, do anything. Laugh at them, sure, but definitely keep both eyes on them.

(Thanks to Instapundit)

Comments

[Vik Rubenfeld]

Excellent post. I found it via Patterico.

I've started Forum4Bloggers.com, where bloggers meet and talk about subjects of mutual interest. It's already been recognized by Geekpress. It's free, of course. Please check it out and join in the conversation.

-Vik
www.forum4bloggers.com
www.luxeword.com

[jayr]

If GW Bush lied about WMDs, so did the UN in order to justify continued sanctions and the "Oil for Food" program that supplied the EU with cheap oil to subsidize a decaying socialized system, unlimited construction contracts with convenient political contacts, and the money for all this handled by a corrupt UN that has yet to account for the program.

I don't think that GW Bush lied. If the UN and the EU were "fooled," so were we.

[Lester Spence]

I believe Bush purposely used bad information in order to garner support for war. In one way this is worse than a lie in that it indicates a religious fervor about an idea in the face of strong rational evidence against it. To continue to talk that bad information up as if it were legitimate is wrong. To engage in war on the basis of gamed information should be criminal.

[Arnold]

I believe Bush purposely used bad information
Really? And what "good" information was he supposed to use instead?

strong rational evidence against it
Where was this evidence against it? Can you please cite it?

The only indication that the WMDs were not there was that the UN inspectors had not yet found them. These were the same inspectors who did not find any WMDs in the 90s until they received specific intelligence from Saddam's sons-in-law* who had defected to Jordan.

What we did have was UN reports that said a lot of his WMDs were still unaccounted for, and only Saddam's word that he had destroyed them. I guess the word of Saddam Hussein is "good" information. Strange that the only country on the security council that believed him (or claimed to believe him) was Syria.

Sorry, but your argument is just a slight variation on "Bush lied" and fails for the exact same reasons Juliette cites in her post.

* or is the plural "son-in-laws"? I never get that straight.

[Rosemary Esmay]

Arnold,

Excellent. You had it right first, it's sons in law.

[Lester Spence]

For Juliette to be on point there would either have to be no sources, or no credible sources saying the following:

* The weapons weren't there because the sanctions worked.

* There are no credible ties that we can find between Iraq and Al-Queda.

* The weapons inspectors should be given time to do their work...but as of now they have not found anything.

* The proof you've given up to date is wrong.

For the purposes of rhetoric it may be useful to say things like "everyone agreed" or "the UN agreed." But this neatly covers up real variance. There were a number of people who believed (rightly) that there were no weapons...and they SAID this. There were a number of ELITES who believed the information was false. They SAID this.

Bush chose to believe bad information because it fit his preconceived notions. And went to war based on this. There are a number of ways to defend the position he took here. I don't find any of these defenses rational.

[Arnold]

Lester,

Let me make sure I understand your reasoning. Regardless of how much intel we have concerning WMDs, we should ignore it if at least one credible source says any of the following:

* The weapons weren't there because the sanctions worked.

* There are no credible ties that we can find between Iraq and Al-Queda.

* The weapons inspectors should be given time to do their work...but as of now they have not found anything.

* The proof you've given up to date is wrong.

Is this really your position, or am I misinterpreting what you said?

[Arnold]

Thanks Rosemary.

For my next trick I'll attempt to construct the plural possessive form of son-in-law:

sons-in-law's?

;)

[Lester Spence]

what intel? would information about the uranium tubes constitute "intel"? i'm not being facetious here.

so one possible answer would be:

"the intel that the un community and the president before bush had."

ok. what intel was that?

[aaron]

Whether they were there or not is irrelevant. The burden of proof was on Saddam. The only case that would make this argument invalid is if: we had overwhelming credible intelligence or absolute proof that Saddam did not have WMD or support international terrorism, and we could share this information with the countries affected by Saddam's threatening posturing, and we and they could believe it. If there are no WMD in Iraq, that would prove that our intelligence was not comprehensive and says nothing about the reasons for going to war.

[baldilocks]

Lester,

The short answer: UNSCOM reports, Signals Intelligence, Human Intelligence (such as the Hussein sons-in-law). I have provided the above links for any in-depth answers to your questions. For example, on the UN page, there's a section on the right sidebar labeled "Iraq."

[Lester Spence]

Juliette thank you for pointing me to the report. It is very helpful. What I've read so far (the most important section for me begins at p. 11) doesn't cause me to jettison my belief--that Bush believed he was telling the truth, but that this truth was based upon very bad information. While the UN report notes that Iraq compliance is problematic in some areas, they note clearly in several places that they have found no proof of weapons at all. They DID have reports...but all unverified right?

So take all of the statements Bush had made when he believed the weapons existed (as of today he's backing off from the claim). Where in this report does he get those statements from?

[aaron]

Have fun with this too: It's all about the OIL!

[Breaker]

I think that the mentality behind the "Bush lied" crowd is an effort to equate President Bush to President Clinton. Mr. Clinton was exposed as a serial liar. The left needs to find moral equivalency to numb the stinging embarrassment caused by Mr. Clinton's lying. The left can't stand the left's perception of being knocked off the moral high ground. The left never held that high ground but they thought they did.

[Lester Spence]

Breaker, even if what you say is totally accurate, that doesn't necessarily get us anywhere given the fact that Bush started and sent people off to war for a stated cause that was wrong. Well it DOES get us somewhere...our country becomes more divided and less trusting of one another, and we become less able to adjudicate truth claims.

[Breaker]

Lester: When you start your comment with a leading statement that is disagreeable, you immediately discredit your point for the person that you are addressing. If anything, your comment, addressed to me, is directed to winning debating points with those that think like you. One of the seminal characteristics of those on the left is to assume an orthodoxy that is conclusionary, beyond debate and assumptive of a litmus test that implies that anyone disagreeing is flawed.

Well I believe the orthodoxy of the left to be wrong. But we cannot have a debate, because you assume conclusionary statements as true such as this one from your comment: ". . . given the fact that Bush started and sent people off to war for a stated cause that was wrong." I have no doubt that you believe this to be a true statement, but having seen nothing to validate your belief and plenty to invalidate your belief, this just validates my conclusion that the left is delusional. Just to show how it is an inflammatory and wrong statement, the prior administration believed the same "stated cause" to be true. Other than Scott Ritter, the pre-war debate never denied the existence of WMD's - the debate was what to do about it. The prior administration believed in sanctions and the current administration, after 9/11, chose force.

As far as whether the “stated cause” was wrong or not, I think the jury of history is still out. No stockpiles of WMD have been found, but the evidence strongly suggests an intention and ability to produce WMD’s as soon as sanctions were lifted – something the left conveniently ignores. France, the obstructionists, violated the sanctions regularly and pushed to have the sanctions lifted. Saddam used dead babies to attempt to turn the tide against sanctions. The miscalculation of Saddam was to fail make elimination of stockpiles and production facilities for WMD’s transparent. Was there sufficient cause for war? I still think so based on WMD intentions and abilities as well as the other known abuses of the regime.

If you care to bring the debate together, then get the chip off your shoulder and let’s see if we can agree on precepts to start with a debate. I doubt it, but I am willing to try.

[aaron]

Think back to just before the war. When were the weapons the only reason? I don't remember that. When were we told that Saddam certainly had stockpiles of WMD at present? I don't remember that. When did we say that there certainly were WMD in the locations we believed them to be? I don't remeber that. If that happened, there would have been almost no opposition to the war.

[Lester Spence]

Breaker, I have several chips on my shoulder....but none related to this discussion. I'll try again.

Why "the left" believes that Bush lied is unimportant. Focusing on what "the left" thinks about Bush neatly dodges the central issue. Bush sent troops to war, received approval from Congress, based on a statement that was false. There do not appear to be any weapons, and it does not appear as if Iraq was even a minor threat.

Focusing on Clinton, and the left ignores this...and makes it difficult for those interested in truth, to figure out what went wrong.

[aaron]

Lester, you're circling back to a dead issue.

I don't know what the false statement is that you're talking about.

Iraq was never a minor threat.

Iraq may not have been a direct major threat to us, but it was to the mid-east, and therefore a major burden on the ROW

[Lester Spence]

Why do you think this issue is "dead?"

How do you operationalize the concept of "major threat?"

[Lester Spence]

My brother-in-law got back from Iraq right before xmas...and he's still not ok. My friend has had to raise his brother in law's child (almost from birth)...and we still don't know when his brother-in-law is coming back. Why do you think this issue is "dead?"

How do you operationalize the concept of "major threat?"

[JimM]

I believe the Republicans said Clinton lied about sex. But Clinton believed he was telling the truth - his legacy is mainstreaming the legal definition of sex, which doesn't include "blow jobs."

One poster said that no one came forward. Well, when you work on a team, you tell the leader about your doubts, you don't go public. No it is leaking out. Bush had more information than we did, and a great deal of it pointed to no WMD. If he wasn't bound and determined to get Iraq for Halliburton he would of waited for the inspections to be completed and put up with a little more BS from Saddam.

Last, but not least, make sure you read Clinton's speach. Who do you want in the Whitehouse? Bush or someone who can speak English? [Sorry - cheap shot.] Clinton had more international support. Bush had little - leading to alienation of our on-again-off-again allies.