Another Bush "mistake"

[Lurker]

In the 2002 SOTU speech, Bush warned of a terrorist threat to the nation, saying the United States had found "diagrams of American nuclear power plants" in Afghanistan.

The White House this week defended the warnings about Islamic extremist intentions, but said the concerns highlighted by Bush were based on intelligence developed before and after the Sept. 11 attacks, and that no plant diagrams were actually found in Afghanistan.

"There's no additional basis for the language in the speech that we have found," a senior administration official said.

How many mistakes must be made before we start calling them lies? This one certainly seems hard to credit as a "mistake". Why did he say we found diagrams when we did not?

1. Aluminum Tubes sold to us as nuclear use only but they were not.
2. Uranium in Niger claims apparently groundless
3. Diagrams of nuclear power plants found in Afghanistan that were not
4. WMD that have not been found
5. Mobile weapons labs that turned out to be weather station related
6. Atta meeting with Iraq officials in Czech which the FBI/CIA both say there is no evidence of.

Everything Bush meets is stretched to fit his view. It is a recurring theme.

Lurker

 

[corplinx]

How many mistakes must be made before we start calling them lies?

I think the question is, a lie is a mistake but a mistake is not necessarily a lie, so why are judging by quantity instead of content?

If the president knew there were no plans in Afghan and he said that there were, that is a lie.

Seems pretty clearcut. Now, do you know if he knew it was untrue when he said it?

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Fair and balanced.

I don't think you're understanding a few things that you're going to need to in order to be able to deal with the results of the next election:

1) Accept that this administration is never really wrong
2) Remember that the ends justify the means
3) Come to grips with the fact that US intel never makes mistakes
4) Saddam/OBL/evildoers. We will prevail. Bring 'em on.

Just lie back. Here comes the drill.
*bZZZzzzzzzzzz BZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

 

[Cleon]

Lies vs. Mistakes--an interesting discussion, one I hope gets off on the right foot without partisan bickering.

You can argue all day and all night about whether Bush technically lied. You can parse his words, try to guess what he really knew or what intelligence he was wrongly fed.

But I think the intent was the same; Bush was trying to make the case for a desired goal (war), IMO, and I don't think he really cared what was accurate and what wasn't. So you could say his intent was to mislead people to believing something that wasn't there. In that sense, in my opinion at any rate, "Bush lied" is a shortened way of saying "he fed the population a combination of half-truths, mistakes, outright falsehoods, and misstatements to make the case for war."

 

[Cain]

Bush is a liar.

If anyone thinks that's controversial, or reduces it to "partisan bickering", then they need their head examined. All presidents lie. It's part of the job.

If you say he didn't know, or was misled by the CIA (the latest White House propaganda), then the situation is much, much worse; it means the president is incompetent.

Many conservatives say Carter was honest but incompetent, so he had to go. I know, I know -- such foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

 

[Cleon]

Bush is a liar.

If anyone thinks that's controversial, or reduces it to "partisan bickering", then they need their head examined. All presidents lie. It's part of the job.

If you say he didn't know, or was misled by the CIA (the latest White House propaganda), then the situation is much, much worse; it means the president is incompetent.

Many conservatives say Carter was honest but incompetent, so he had to go. I know, I know -- such foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

I don't disagree; just the opposite, I agree 100%. When I say I hope this doesn't get boiled down to partisan bickering, I mean that I don't want to see it boiled down to "Bush Good, Kerry Bad, You Left-Wing Irrational Bush-Haters" or the Democratic version thereof. (Not being a Democan or Republicrat, I frankly don't care for either of them.)