Did Trump Walk Back on "Bush Lied"?

RUSH: Now, remember when that happened in the Saturday night debate, a lot of people were shocked watching this. I immediately evolved a theory to explain it. Here you have the Republican front-runner -- and let's review. The Republican front-runner defended Planned Parenthood. "A great organization that does great things for women's health." It's almost a cliche!

The lion's share of their so-called "funding," their income, comes from performing abortion. They don't do mammograms, for example. The idea that Planned Parenthood is involved in women's health is largely a PR smokescreen to cover up the fact that they're an abortion factory. Well, Mr. Trump came out and said, "Planned Parenthood, they do great things," and that he didn't want to defund them because they do "great things for women's health." That's the Republican front-runner. I sat up when I heard this.

I said, "Whoa! Not even Romney said that. McCain hasn't even said that. What's this?" Then, as the debate went on, Mr. Trump accused Bush of lying about Iraq. They knew there weren't any WMD in there, and they still went to war anyway. "They knew," Trump said. "They knew." Trump said that he opposed the war in Iraq and that Bush was lying about that and lying about 9/11, that Bush didn't keep us safe, that the Twin Towers fell when Bush was in the White House. And he did that while assaulting Jeb, going after Jeb.

But, nevertheless, I said, "What is this? This is the first time I've heard any of this," and then it hit me. Well, it's an open primary, and in South Carolina, Democrats and independents can cross over and vote. I theorized what Trump was trying to get here was get some of those votes, because we had reports that Cruz was gaining ground. Internal polling data showed Cruz was two points behind. If that internal polling existed in the Bush campaign, Trump campaign knew it, too. So it was one of two things... Either Donald wanted to go get these additional voters one of two reasons.

Either to stave off what was happening with Cruz, or to just amass more and more votes to just hammer that final nail in the coffin and just be done with this and just win with a slam dunk. And then commentators on TV took me to task. They said, "No, Rush! Trump's not that diabolical, he speaks from the heart." I said, "There's nothing 'diabolical' about it. It's political strategy. All I'm saying is Trump is not surrounded by idiots. He's got some political pros in his organization and it could be well they strategized to do this."

Because it's not often that you hear the Republican front-runner anywhere defend Planned Parenthood and destroy a revered former Republican president. Bush is revered in South Carolina with 83% approval. You just don't hear that. So there had to be a reason. And then Trump yesterday -- or maybe two nights ago -- now when he's on MSNBC during that town hall, admitted he's going to get crossover votes. He was going to get Democrats and independents. I said, "A ha! My theory was right on the money! That's exactly what they were doing. That's why Trump said that."

Then there were a couple of additional things, such as Trump saying that he's going to rewrite the electoral map because of so many people -- so many crossovers in other states -- are gonna end up supporting him that Wisconsin is going to be in play, Pennsylvania is going to be in play, Michigan is going to be in play. And then last night, Donald Trump... Well, let me just read to you from the Wall Street Journal: "Donald Trump on Thursday appeared to try to walk back his claims that the administration of former President George W. Bush lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war.

"During a town hall-style event hosted by CNN, when the Republican front-runner was asked about the comments he made during last weekend's GOP debate, Mr. Trump said: 'I'm not talking about lying, I'm not talking about not lying. Nobody really knows why we went into Iraq.' He added. 'Bottom line: there were no weapons of mass destruction. ... Whether he lied or not, he went into Iraq,' Mr. Trump said. 'It was a horrible decision.'" And so the Wall Street Journal and others in the Drive-By Media are now trying to say that Trump is walking it back.

Now, if Trump is walking it back, there goes my theory. Why walk it back if you're trying to attract Democrat crossover votes tomorrow in the South Carolina primary? Maybe you think you've already done it and you've succeeded. You got your message out. You can make a show and play at walking it back here to maintain your Republican vote. I still could be right about this, is the bottom line. Now, they think they have caught Trump in another... I don't know what you'd call it. Flip-flop?

Because apparently Mr. Trump is saying (and you probably heard it) that he opposed the war in Iraq always forever, and people in the media said, "That's great, but we can't find any quotes. We can't find any evidence of you saying that." Trump said, "That's okay, you shouldn't. I wasn't in politics back then. I was in business. I'm a businessman back then. I wasn't being quoted for things I said as a businessman. Of course you wouldn't. But I just want to tell you: I opposed the Iraq war." But somebody found a tape of Trump on Howard Stern back in 2002.

Stern said to Trump, "Are you in favor of invading Iraq?" and Trump said, "Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly." Which is an excellent point, by the way. If... do you heard what happened in Gulf War One? We won that war in 2-1/2 days. That was the Arnold Schwarzenegger -- I'm sorry, the Norman Schwarzkopf victory. You remember what happened with that? We had the Iraqi Army on the run. They were in full retreat. The Republican Guard and the "elite" troops, they were on their way back to Baghdad.

Schwarzkopf wanted to wipe them out. He just wanted to end it. Go all the way back to Baghdad, get Saddam, and be done with Iraq. Colin Powell said, "No. No, no, Mr. President, Mr. Bush. Don't do it! You will look like you are using excessive force, unnecessary force. The war is over.

The war is won and besides," said General Powell, "Look, the UN mandate authorizing the use of force does not include getting Saddam. It just says get Iraq out of Kuwait and recapture the oil wells for Kuwait that Saddam took," and eventually set on fire.

The United Nations resolution that George H.W. Bush put together did not include regime change in Iraq, did not include taking Saddam out. But Schwarzkopf said, a la Patton, "What the hell are we stopping for? Let's just keep going! Rroot the guy out and let's be done with this forever." Colin Powell said, 'Nope, nope. The optics won't look good." And they weren't. The optics were the Iraqi Army were on the run, surrendering every day on TV, weaving white flags. They were shoeless, they were shirtless and they were on the road back to Baghdad and Colin Powell said, "You can't continue this!

"You have to just end this and let them get back home," and that's what we did. And Saddam survived to once again start threatening and bellowing about weapons of mass destruction and gave us reason to go back in. Ancient history. But nevertheless, Trump is right when he says, "I wish the first time it was done correctly." What he means by that is that we'd just kept going and taken Saddam out. But the point is that in 2002 he did say he was for invading Iraq. So there's... I don't know if it's a flip-flop, but people found evidence contrary to what he's been saying.

I agree that Bush was looking for an excuse to go after Saddam because Iraq was the world's leading sponsor of terrorism at the time. The neo-cons thought this was a good idea for the larger war on terrorism (as did the rest of the so-called coalition of the willing).

But your phrase lied in terms of misrepresentation is flagrantly inappropriate. Everyone in the world intelligence community actually believed that Saddam had WMDs. And as I pointed out, we have pretty good evidence from the Senate testimony of the second-highest general in the Iraqi Air Force that Saddam did have WMDs but that he got the WMDs out of Iraq just before we invaded (fully preparing to get hit by chemical or biological weapons, by the way).

So, you really ought to leave off the completely unsupported accusation--one of the lying Dems' favorite talking points!-- against President Bush.

By the same token, Trump owes President Bush an apology. It will not be forthcoming from that Alinskyite, of course.

Again, you fail to distinguish between usable WMD’s being in Iraq once upon a time which no one really disputes, and the known status of WMD’s in Iraq at the time Bush announced the invasion - BIG dispute about that.

Bush’s own Treasury Secretary has said that one of Bush’s first orders of business in 2001 as the new President was to invade Iraq and get Saddam. According to this staffer, Bush told his staff to find a rationale to invade.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/10/oneill.bush/

Doesn’t look like good faith to me. When GW did it, I thought he wanted to kill Saddam his own reasons. I felt like Iraq was GW’s personal war. Later I found out Saddam tried to take out his dad a few years before in Kuwait. So maybe that. I don’t give a sh*t what the Left thinks. If GW handed the Left something on a silver platter to attack him with, that’s GW’s fault.

Again, you fail to distinguish between usable WMDâ€™s being in Iraq once upon a time which no one really disputes, and the known status of WMDâ€™s in Iraq at the time Bush announced the invasion - BIG dispute about that.

"Again"? No. That's an inoperative word in this context--certainly not a sure sign that you are a patient, reasonable guy (grin!). You have gone on to declare that I am "fail[ing] to distinguish" between having indisputably correct intelligence and having false or perhaps imperfect intelligence.

No, that is an inoperative accusation against me. Gosh, Jim, you are the one who is not facing the reality to which you are alluding. The problem is that you are again (or perhaps still?) refusing to repent of your worse-case "spin," by which spin you have quickly and simplistically leaped (with Trump's politically bloodthirsty encouragement at this time, perhaps?) to the vicious, flatfooted accusation that Bush was lying.

That is an extraordinarily serious accusation that you cannot even begin to support. In short, you are not on ethical ground, friend FReeper. You are angry but not properly thoughtful. You have become ethically unhinged by your anger at the political status quo.

Are you a Trumpster? You sound like you are. Your insinuation that Bush knew that Saddam did not have WMDs in Iraq at the time is not supported by any credible source whatsoever. It is a leftist innuendo against Bush--nothing more, nothing less.

Again, as I was careful to point out in my post, a very high-ranking Iraqi general testified that he believed that Saddam did have WMDs in Iraq merely days before our invasion. The shipments were so secret that even he was not permitted to know what was in the dozens of planeloads of materials that went to Damascus just before the invasion.

Did you even know about that post-war testimony when you "concluded" that Bush had been lying all along? And did you know that our troops did find 1.4 million pounds of yellow cake uranium (that Saddam wasn't supposed to have!) when we invaded Iraq? I'll bet you didn't know that, either.

Why do I suspect that you didn't know these things? It's because you are not clearly very well-connected with the truth. You were even ignorant of the fact that Saddam had tried to assassinate Bush 41--until someone revealed that historical fact much later in your manifestly naive experience of important history.

Learning this only late, as you did, it seemed (to you) to be confirmation of your suspicion that the whole Iraqi mess was GWBs "personal war." Unfortunately, it didn't fully dawn on you that the assassination attempt was actually just another piece of evidence that Saddam needed killin', as we would say in Texas. Any good POTUS would say the same thing, not just the POTUS son of a former POTUS who had been targeted.

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Jim, I am afraid that Trump has struck a responsive note with people who have little more moral integrity than he has--which, in his bizarre case, is practical none at all. Trump's exaggerations, which unfortunately quickly morph into false accusations against anyone who stands in his political way. Trump's vicious ad hominem attacks against Carson even got him a serious reprimand from Michael Savage--who is, let's say, not exactly the world's nicest, most thoughtful guy (even if he is sometimes right on specific matters in the Body Politic).

I believe Rush was correct when he opined that Trump deliberately/knowingly used a false accusation against President Bush to try to win crossover votes from Dems in SC open primary--which was likely his only hope of winning the primary in evangelical territory. You might think this was a shrewed, noble strategy for building his momentum, but I think Trump is the biggest liar by far (Rubio is clearly #2) left in the race.

You still haven't addressed the evidence that Bush WASN'T lying. You have just reasserted your long-standing views by reasserting like "I thought, I believed, I felt." This underscores the fact that you never had any real evidence for your suspicions.

(Heck, Bush had more evidence for WMDs than you have had to the effect that Bush was surely lying through the whole run-up to the war. The fact that you didn't agree with the war is beside the point.)

Anyway, I am glad you are not goofy enough to be a Trumpster. And I am delighted to have had this overall discussion to keep this important thread alive.

I intend to go record--as often as possible--with the fact of my dismay at so many FReepers who think Trump is a great candidate. He is not an honest man. Oddly enough, Bush was a surprisingly honest POTUS who is now being trashed by a dishonest man.

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