Bush never lied to us

[there buster]

It is intellectually justifiable for erstwhile Iraq war supporters to say -- given the way it's turned out -- that they don't think the effort has been worth it. But predicating such a reversal on the unsubstantiated allegation that one was lied to is cowardly and dishonest.

LOS ANGELES TIMES

June 16, 2008

Bush never lied to us about Iraq

The administration simply got bad intelligence. Critics are wrong to assert deception.

By James Kirchick

Touring Vietnam in 1965, Michigan Gov. George Romney proclaimed American involvement there "morally right and necessary." Two years later, however, Romney -- then seeking the Republican presidential nomination -- not only recanted his support for the war but claimed that he had been hoodwinked.

"When I came back from Vietnam, I had just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get," Romney told a Detroit TV reporter who asked the candidate how he reconciled his shifting views.

Romney (father of Mitt) had visited Vietnam with nine other governors, all of whom denied that they had been duped by their government. With this one remark, his presidential hopes were dashed.

The memory of this gaffe reverberates in the contemporary rhetoric of many Democrats, who, when attacking the Bush administration's case for war against Saddam Hussein, employ essentially the same argument. In 2006, John F. Kerry explained the Senate's 77-23 passage of the Iraq war resolution this way: "We were misled. We were given evidence that was not true." On the campaign trail, Hillary Rodham Clinton dodged blame for her pro-war vote by claiming that "the mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress."

Nearly every prominent Democrat in the country has repeated some version of this charge, and the notion that the Bush administration deceived the American people has become the accepted narrative of how we went to war.

Yet in spite of all the accusations of White House "manipulation" -- that it pressured intelligence analysts into connecting Hussein and Al Qaeda and concocted evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- administration critics continually demonstrate an inability to distinguish making claims based on flawed intelligence from knowingly propagating falsehoods.

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: "Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses."

Yet Rockefeller's highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that "top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11." Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were "substantiated by intelligence information." The same goes for claims about Hussein's possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

In 2003, top Senate Democrats -- not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others -- sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month's report, titled "Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information," includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees -- who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors -- many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.

This may sound like ancient history, but it matters. After Sept. 11, President Bush did not want to risk allowing Hussein, who had twice invaded neighboring nations, murdered more than 1 million Iraqis and stood in violation of 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions, to remain in possession of what he believed were stocks of chemical and biological warheads and a nuclear weapons program. By glossing over this history, the Democrats' lies-led-to-war narrative provides false comfort in a world of significant dangers.

"I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop communist aggression in Southeast Asia," Romney elaborated in that infamous 1967 interview. That was an intellectually justifiable view then, just as it is intellectually justifiable for erstwhile Iraq war supporters to say -- given the way it's turned out -- that they don't think the effort has been worth it. But predicating such a reversal on the unsubstantiated allegation that one was lied to is cowardly and dishonest.

A journalist who accompanied Romney on his 1965 foray to Vietnam remarked that if the governor had indeed been brainwashed, it was not because of American propaganda but because he had "brought so light a load to the laundromat." Given the similarity between Romney's explanation and the protestations of Democrats 40 years later, one wonders why the news media aren't saying the same thing today.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor of the New Republic.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick16-2008jun16,0,5015496,print.story

[carolaa]

Tell ya what. Do a search for Iraq war timeline, choose a timeline, and see what Bush knew and when he knew it, what he did and when he did it. He did lie, distort, and manipulate - time and time again. He purposely distracted the country towards Iraq rather than Al-Quaida.

[Dr. Shane]

Obviously if Bush lied a lot of leading Democrats were lying along with him. Time and time again investigations have shown that Bush didn't lie nor did the leading Democrats. They had bad intelligence. They acted responsibly by taking action in Iraq. However the war was executed terribly.

[Bravus]

I'm completely happy to go along with the idea that Bush did not lie. I think that's a fair account of the situation. However to some extent I also think it's true that the administration (a) had an existing plan to attack Iraq before 9/11, ( cherry-picked the intelligence it liked and downplayed intelligence it didn't and that © Cheney went into the CIA and created a special office to bring down the 'right' intelligence. I believe Bush was completely sincere in his beliefs about Iraq, but I believe those beliefs were fed to him by a cabal of neocons who either knew they were false or else were themselves deluded. So Bush never lied... I'm sure that's a great comfort to the families of 100,000 dead Iraqis and as many more refugees.

[Dr. Shane]

There is no question that Saddam did lie and it was Saddam's lie that led to the mess we are now in over there. President Putin was hardly a neocon and his warning to President Bush that Saddam was going to use terrorists to attack the US on US soil using WMDs was one of the factors that led to the US invasion of Iraq.

There was a lot of bad intelligence out there and Saddam was to blame for a lot of it. He was telling the UN one thing and then sending out "defectors" who would then "leak" intelligence saying another thing. Saddam was not a straight shooter. We found over 500 WMDs in Iraq that he had pre-1991 and had claimed to have destroyed. Those same WMDs are what UN inspectors had been trying to verify had been destroyed. There is only one man that could have prevented the Iraq invasion and that is Saddam Hussein. If we want to point the finger at someone, he is the man.

[Stan]

Does the US have any WMD?

[Bravus]

Even if all the WMD claims were true, the US still had no business invading Iraq.

[John317]

Can you imagine any conditions under which the US would have a "right" to invade a country which does possess WMD?

[Bravus]

Let's leave aside the US as an exceptional country and turn that around: "Can you imagine any conditions under which a country would have a "right" to invade a country which does possess WMD?"

'A country' would include China, Russia or whoever. What say you?

[Dr. Shane]

If after the US tried to assassinate the head of state of China, it become known and the US population re-elected the same government with the same policies which continued to plan how to attack China using WMDs, then yes, I would say China would be justified in attacking or invading the US in order to protect themselves from an attack.

However the US has not assassinated the head of state of another nation. The US has not planned to destroy another nation with WMDs. The US has in fact entered into treaties with other nations to reduce the number of WMDs that we have. The only time the US used a WMD during on another nation was during time of war and after warning the other nation ahead of time and giving it a chance to surrender prior to the use of the WMDs.

The possession of WMDs by peaceful nations is not a threat to world peace.

[Stan]

GWB threatened to use them on Iraq and North Korea..

Saddam's sons were assassinated, correct?

[Bravus]

I didn't mention the US as the target of the invasion. Would you be comfortable with China invading India, for example, which is right on its doorstep and has nuclear weapons? Or Pakistan, which is in a similar situation but incredibly unstable?

[John317]

Obama is saying that the US should kill or assassinate Osama but that if we caught Osama, he should have access to the US court system. Does that make sense?

[John317]

..Saddam's sons were assassinated, correct?

I think what actually happened is that they were told to surrender and they refused to lay down their weapons. They would have been given a fair trial like their dad, but they evidently preferred to die in a shoot-out.

Is this the way you understand it happened?

[LifeHiscost]

Does the US have any WMD?

Seems like a more important question might be, Does the US expect to use them on their own people if the situation should require it, in their eyes.

[LifeHiscost]

Even if all the WMD claims were true, the US still had no business invading Iraq.

That's easy to say if a person has lots of WTC to expend on the attitude of, 'Let's wait and see what they'll do next'.

[Bravus]

One more time: Iraq had nothing to do with that attack, nothing. Pretending it did at this point can't be reduced to simple ignorance and must be considered deliberate distortion of the truth.

[LifeHiscost]

GWB threatened to use them on Iraq and North Korea..

Saddam's sons were assassinated, correct?

Pre-emptive attacks are never cut and dried solutions to the problems of national security. However after losing WW2, would you have enjoyed the occupation of Japanese or German troops after the world had lost some 60,000,000 to it's ravages.

The wwii Casualties by country

Axis ww2 casualties

Country Military casualties Civilian casualties

Germany 3.250.000 3.810.000

Austria 230.000 80.000

Italy 330.000 85.000

Rumania 200.000 465.000

Hungary 120.000 280.000

Bulgaria 10.000 7.000

Finland 90.000 n/a

Japan 1.700.000 360.000

Allied ww2 casualties

Country Military casualties Civilian casualties

British Empire and Commonwealth 452.000 60.000

France 250.000 360.000

USA 295.000 ---

Soviet Union 13.600.000 7.700.000

Belgium 10.000 90.000

Holland 10.000 190.000

Norway 10.000 n/a

Poland 120.000 5.300.000

Greece 20.000 80.000

Yugoslavia 300.000 1.300.000

Checoslovaquia 20.000 330.000

China 3.500.000 10.000.000

Another source of figures:

Axis Forces

Country Pop. Killed/Mising Wounded Total(Military) Civilian (deaths)

Germany 78m 3.5 million 4.6 million 8.1 million 2million

Italy 44m 330,000 ? 70,000

Japan 72m 1.75 million ? 350,000

Rumania 20m 500,000 300,000 800,000 400,000

Bulgaria 6m 10,000 ? 50,000

Hungary 10m 120,000 250,000 370,000 200,000

Finland 4m 100,000 45,000 145,000 4,000

Country Pop. Killed/Mising Wounded Total(Military) Civilian (deaths)

Allied Forces (in order of entry into the war)

Country Pop. Killed/Missing Wounded Total(Military) Civilian (deaths)

China 450m 1.3 million 1.8 million 3.1 million 9 million

Poland 35m 130,000 200,000 330,000 2.5million

U.K. 48m 400,000 300,000 700,000 60,000

France 42m 250,000 350,000 600,000 270,000

Australia 7m 30,000 40,000 70,000 --

India 360m 36,000 64,000 100,000 --

New Zealand 2m 10,000 20,000 30,000 --

So. Africa 10m 9,000 14,000 23,000 --

Canada 11m 42,000 50,000 92,000 --

Denmark 4m 2,000 ? ? 1,000

Norway 3m 10,000 ? ? 6,000

Belgium 8m 12,000 16,000 28,000 100,000

Holland 9m 14,000 7,000 21,000 250,000

Greece 7m 90,000 ? ? 400,000

Yugoslavia 15m 320,000 ? ? 1.3million

U.S.S.R. 194m 9 million 18 million 27 million 19 million

U.S.A. 129m 300,000 300,000 600,000 --

[D. Allan]

If G.W.Bush never lied to us, he certainly lied to himself. He should not have. Its dangerous.

Here is what he said recently in Britian:

Quote:

Asked by The Observer reporter about W.M.D. in Iraq, W. replied: “Still looking for them,” sparking a strange moment of levity. Mr. Bush continued: “We didn’t realize, nor did anybody else, that Saddam Hussein felt like he needed to play like he had weapons of mass destruction. It may have been, however, that in his mind all this was just a bluff.”

?!?!?!

Read the rest of the report at: Bush Pleads Guilty to Hopeless Idealism

/dAb

[Bravus]

WW2 is the final argument of the boosters of the Iraq war. The difference is that Saddam was not actively expansionary and invading other countries, and hadn't been for a decade, whereas both Hitler and Tojo were actively invading other countries. Hence the Iraq war was pre-emptive and WW2 was not. False parallels make bad arguments.

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

GWB threatened to use them on Iraq and North Korea..

Not that I am aware of. However had he used them and the American people then re-elected him to office we would be to a position to comparing the US with Iraq.

Quote:

Saddam's sons were assassinated, correct?

No. They were not killed by an assassin's bullet and they were not heads of state. In fact, I believe when a head of state is killed during time of war, regardless of the circumstance, it is not considered an assassination.

[Dr. Shane]

Quote:

Saddam was not actively expansionary and invading other countries, and hadn't been for a decade

Isn't that like giving the thief in prison for a decade credit for not stealing in 10 years? Saddam hadn't been invading other countries for over a decade because of the no-fly zones in the north and south. He had, however, been shooting down planes in the no-fly zones. He was bribing UN members to get sanctions lifted and was planning to resume his WMD programs after the sanctions were lifted. If the US had not invaded no one would have discovered the UN Oil-for-Food Scandal, Saddam would have gotten sanctions lifted and resumed his WMD programs. The world is a safer place without him.

[Bravus]

It's like executing the thief at the end of his 10 year prison term in case he offends again.

[carolaa]

Obviously if Bush lied a lot of leading Democrats were lying along with him. Time and time again investigations have shown that Bush didn't lie nor did the leading Democrats. They had bad intelligence. They acted responsibly by taking action in Iraq. However the war was executed terribly.

I don't think you bothered to read a timeline.

[carolaa]

I'm completely happy to go along with the idea that Bush did not lie. I think that's a fair account of the situation. However to some extent I also think it's true that the administration (a) had an existing plan to attack Iraq before 9/11, ( cherry-picked the intelligence it liked and downplayed intelligence it didn't and that © Cheney went into the CIA and created a special office to bring down the 'right' intelligence. I believe Bush was completely sincere in his beliefs about Iraq, but I believe those beliefs were fed to him by a cabal of neocons who either knew they were false or else were themselves deluded. So Bush never lied... I'm sure that's a great comfort to the families of 100,000 dead Iraqis and as many more refugees.

You are too kind. 911 was a convenient way for Bush to manipulate the facts to suit his agenda.