Posted on 11/07/2013 6:21:01 AM PST by Kaslin
When the weapons hunters failed to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so began one of the greatest slanders on a president in history: "Bush lied, people died."
Never mind that, in building the case for war in Iraq, President George W. Bush relied on the unanimous opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.
Never mind that the bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission examined the intelligence on which Bush relied, and unanimously found that "the Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure. ... We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments."
Never mind that Bush retained the same CIA director, George Tenet, who served under Bill Clinton. Tenet gave Bush the same intelligence assessment: that Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, possessed WMD is a "slam dunk." Indeed, according to The Washington Post's Bob Woodward, Bush was initially skeptical of the intelligence that reached that conclusion. When, on December 21, 2002, Tenet laid out the intelligence purportedly showing the existence of WMD stockpiles, Bush said, "This is the best we've got?"
Never mind that former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then a New York senator, was particularly adamant about the threat posed by Saddam: "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program. ... If left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Finally, never mind about then-President Bill Clinton's Persian Gulf expert on the National Security Council, Kenneth Pollack. While he opposed the war's timing, Pollack said "no one doubted" Saddam's stockpiles of WMD: "The intelligence community convinced me and the rest of the Clinton Administration that Saddam had reconstituted his WMD programs following the withdrawal of the U.N. inspectors, in 1998, and was only a matter of years away from having a nuclear weapon. ... Other nations' intelligence services were similarly aligned with U.S. views. ... Germany ... Israel, Russia, Britain, China and even France held positions similar to that of the United States. ... In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction."
"Bush lied, people died" -- or some version of it -- was uttered at the highest levels in the opposition party. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called W. a "loser" and a "liar." He later apologized -- for the "loser" part. Liar stands. The so-called Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, bellowed, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie."
If Bush is a "liar," having relied in good faith on the unanimous opinion of the U.S. intelligence agencies, what do you call President Barack Obama? In building the case for Obamacare, Obama promised: "No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what."
Did Obama "lie"?
Obama's health care team, according to NBC News, knew that more than half of the people who buy their plans on the individual market would lose their plan: "Millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years."
NBC News' sources estimated that 50 to 80 percent of Americans who buy individual insurance will find their policies cancelled, because those existing policies don't meet Obamacare standards. And for many of those -- now forced to buy new policies -- the price tag will give them "sticker shock."
The Affordable Care Act stated that an insurance policy in effect before March 23, 2010, was to be grandfathered in -- provided insurance companies have made no "significant change" to the plan. But if the plan, say, had a change to the deductible, co-pay or benefits, the plan was no longer eligible to be grandfathered, and the policyholder would have to purchase a new plan.
Obamacare's July 2010 regulations included an estimate that "40 to 67 percent" of customers wouldn't be able to keep their policy because of normal annual turnover in the individual insurance market. And, because many policies will have been changed since the March 23, 2010, date, "the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range." Yet Obama continued to tell Americans that no one would lose their plan or doctor, a promise without which Obamacare would never have passed.
For his part, Obama now says: "What we said was, you can keep it if it hasn't changed since the law passed." A lie is an untruth told with intent to deceive.
Bush didn't "lie."
They both lied. Thanks for asking.
Think Obama's words will get vindicated in time?
The difference is what, exactly?
The difference is Bush kept the promise twice and then on the third time he gave in and signed the third tax increase that the democrat congress sent him (after kicking back the first two).
That arrogant, lazy, lying pos of the Spite House was not forced by anyone to change his mind. It was he and the rats who forced the unaffordable healthcare down our throats. Also remember the comment of Piglosi. "We must pass the healthcare so we know what's in it.
Excellent point
You said it
So don't come with that typical liberal lame excuse that they both lied. Which is the same lame excuse the rats use when they say "everyone does it"
Nice spin here is what H W said
"My opponent won't rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, ‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’"
It’s not a big leap to trust the agencies on Iraq’s possession of chemical and other proscribed weapons when Iraq had a history of using chemical weapons, declared stocks, were definitively caught hiding further stocks on a roughly annual basis which were tagged, inventoried, sampled, and in large amounts turned over for destruction. The only question was what happened to the stocks which weren’t turned over for destruction and were declared ‘lost or destroyed’ by Iraq itself...in an environment where they were not only not allowing coherent inspections, but in some cases deconstructing and removing entire suspected compounds and the buildings in them.
What kind of idiot assumes they were then complying and did indeed *secretly* destroy the materials they were under under violation of ceasefire supposed to have turned over?
Bump
” and that he would wait till late 2006 to demand a surge (~ 4 years after invasion)”
You act like that was an example of incompetence for a President not to do so, when the surge was against the advice of his military advisors and generals. He turned out to be right.
“”Read my lips, no new taxes!”
“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan!”
The difference is what, exactly?
Well, for starters, GHWBush didn’t propose the tax increases, but only acceded to them later under a Dem threat (they controlled both houses of Congress at the time), to cut funding for troops in the field in Desert Shield. He also extracted limits to budget growth, which caused Dem conniptions for years.
Obama on the other hand was being false from the beginning, with solid plans to get private plans cancelled.
Generals ????, he was the CinC. It was him who sent his administration out to sell the invasion, so it was his job to make it work.
You posted like Obama talks, that Bush waltzed in late 2006 as a trouble shooter from the outside.
Obama has lots of excuses too:Its all the GOPs fault the website doesnt work
Its all the insurance companies fault that policies are canceled.
Each party (loyalists) LOVES their own excuses and scoffs at the others.
Obamacare is Obama
Bush was warned :"If you break it then you will own it"
Hitler always blamed his generals for his mistakes.
its weak.
You’re blaming Bush for being successful.
The difference is that I remember last Thursday.
At what?
All those lost and ruined lives and our $$$ wasted and Iraq is a mess regardless. We didnt even get a land base out of it.
I never want another ‘success’ like that disaster again.
“Generals ????, he was the CinC.”
Perhaps you don’t understand what the President’s job is there. It is usually a bad thing when the President gets involved in tactics....as you note with Hitler, while clearly not understanding what you are saying.
RE :”You’re blaming Bush for being successful.”
At what?
You know...the subject of this line of conversation: the surge.
You just claimed that him doing it was good, now you say its bad.
Tactics??? the country went into a civil war thanks to him. It was a disaster
He was warned :”If you break it then you will own it”
\
Obama acts like everyday was his first day as POTUS too
“I will clean up this mess, I dont know how it got like this as I wasnt paying attention, but now I will fix it”
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