Why this Bush Lie? (Slate alert!)

Slate ^ | 7/15 | Timothy Noah

[Charlie OK]

Chatterbox is gratified that the country has come to share his enthusiasm for dissecting the lies uttered by or on behalf of President Bush. Or rather, for dissecting one lie: Bush's assertion, in this year's State of the Union address, that Saddam had "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This information, the Bushies now concede, was based almost entirely on documents that the CIA and the White House knew to be false. (Pedants' corner: Bush actually said that British intelligence had "learned" about Saddam's yellowcake safari, but the attribution amounted to a lie because you can't "learn" something that isn't true.)

But what makes the yellowcake lie so special? That it was a justification for going to war? Then what about Bush's comic insistence in May that "We've found the weapons of mass destruction"? That lie was arguably worse than the yellowcake lie, because it was retrospective rather than speculative, and more demonstrably untrue. What about the cost of the war, which the Bush administration insisted couldn't be estimated in advance? Larry Lindsey reportedly lost his job as chairman of the National Economic Council for blabbing to the Wall Street Journal that the war would cost between $100 billion and $200 billion. Mitch Daniels, then White House budget director, scoffed at Lindsey's estimate and said the cost would be more like $50 billion or $60 billion. But now the Washington Post is estimating the cost of the war and its aftermath at … $100 billion.

[Charlie OK]

I had someone on another board use this article as a source to prove that President Bush lies as bad as President Clinton[mmmmkay]. I did a search and hadnt seen it posted here yet. Have at it!

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[Publius6961]

MORON ALERT!!

[Always Right]

MORON ALERT!!

Duly noted.

[stuartcr]

I like to believe that it is better to have a president that will lie to my face for reasons he thinks best..... than to have a president that doesn't know if his intelligence is valid or not, and tell the world, and invade a country.

[Reagan Man]

>>>I like to believe that it is better to have a president that will lie to my face for reasons he thinks best..... than to have a president that doesn't know if his intelligence is valid or not, and tell the world, and invade a country.

Looks like you've been baited by the liberal propaganda, or may be you're a liberal at heart. Either way, your warmth for liberals would be better appreciated somewhere else. FreeRepublic is definitely not for you.

[MizSterious]

But the real lie is that President Bush lied. He didn't. Read the SOTU speech, please read it before insinuating he lied for any reason, even good ones. You've been taken in by the media liars--or else you have a reason for repeating their lies.

...mutter mumble grumble...don't know why people don't bother with looking up the facts...mutter grumble...

[stuartcr]

I've been baited by no one....either he lied, or he didn't know his intelligence was faulty. I happen to believe lying is inherent to all politicians, I also believe that Mr. Bush is too smart to have made such statements to the world, and invaded a country, without validating what he said. I believe Freerepublic is exactly for me....and anyone else.

[Mind-numbed Robot]

This is all part of Bush's effort at bipartisanship. He knows Democrats can only identify with liars so he is cozying up to them.

For the record, Bush doesn't lie and Democrats only tell the truth by mistake. They thought they lied but, as fate would have it, it turned out to be the truth.

[Hunble]

What lie?

[cyncooper]

The question is why the media lies about the president lying.

How can documents that weren't discovered to be false until March 2003 have contributed to "knowledge" by the president or anyone in January 2003, when the speech was delivered, that the story was false?

I'll wait.

[PhiKapMom]

Now that was one dumb statement to make!

What about Clinton and the pill factory his intelligence told him was Bin Laden's? Did you forget that little detail? But then that was a major foulup!

We invaded Iraq because Saddam posed a threat to his people and the World but you seem to have forgetten that little detail! Saddam brutalized and terrorized his own people but according to you we only invaded because of the Niger Intelligence.

Liberals aka RATs will never cease to amaze with their spin -- doesn't work on FR!

[kevkrom]

either he lied, or he didn't know his intelligence was faulty

Or possibly neither.

The Brits still stand by their claim, saying that the forged document does not discredit the other evidence they have collected. Bush's statement was true at the time, and even though it no longer matters, it could be repeated again verbatim (minus the bit about "recently", of course) because British intelligence still maintains that it is true.

[cyncooper]

It was before the UN meeting on March 7, 2003 that el Baradei said the documents appear to be false. He didn't trumpet it at the start of his report, but mentioned it in passing in the middle of his report.

And here's more:

CIA didn't get disputed documents until February 2003 after Bush claim

Note: SOTU speech delivered in January 2003.

[cyncooper]

And let me add: The story has not been proven false, just those documents.

And if anybody over in liberal land is yammering about Joseph Wilson, we've got documentation aplenty on his timeline and actual actions, too, as opposed to his representations in the New York Times.

[GunRunner]

It wasn't HIS intelligence. As he stated, the information came from MI6, who were bound to agreement not to release the documents to back up the claim because the French (who originally passed it on to Britiain) wouldn't give their permission to give their intelligence to the US. Niger’s uranium operations are under the eye of the French Atomic Energy Commission.

[cinFLA]

I've been baited by no one....either he lied, or he didn't know his intelligence was faulty.

There is another option. He told the truth about intelligence that was NOT faulty.

[MizSterious]

Ok, I'm just going to quit giving you the benefit of the doubt. You're either an idiot or a liberal shill. Otherwise, you'd know that Bush never said that Iraq was pursuing uranium from Niger. Number 1, he said (if only people would either listen or learn to read) that the Brits had reported this intelligence--and, in fact, they did. Number 2, the statement never mentioned Niger. Only Africa. Please read. Please listen. Then you won't look like another flying monkey from D.U.

[CMAC51]

> I like to believe that it is better to have a president that will lie to my face for reasons he thinks best..... than to have a president that doesn't know if his intelligence is valid or not, and tell the world, and invade a country. <

When Colin Powell reported twice to the UN Security Council, which was widely covered by National Media, were you in a coma?

When George Bush addressed the Nation specifically concerning the Iraq situation were you mentally indisposed.

It appears you place great weight on a statement that probably took less than 3 seconds to deliver than to in depth expositions which took collectively nearly an hour to deliver.

I doubt that you would even be aware of the the "uranium statement", if you were not blasted with it by the media attempting to hype it into something significant. The statement by the way continues today to be NOT a lie per Tony Blair who actually has access to the source of the intelligence.

I prefer a president who does not feel the need to lie and is not afraid to make me aware of things he might know because of a hostile media storm that may follow.

[MizSterious]

"It appears you place great weight on a statement that probably took less than 3 seconds to deliver than to in depth expositions which took collectively nearly an hour to deliver."

Maybe paid attention to what the media reported about the statement, but certainly not to the contents of the actual statement. If only people would read what the President actually said before firing off some ludicrous comment about it.