That painting of Rice is awesome. Did the artist do any of Clinton shoving a cigar in Monica's twat? Because I've been looking for something to hang over the fireplace.

You could maybe commission something like that.

Brian, you just LOVE to attach the word LIE to anybody to the right of Howard Dean, whether or not it applies.

If by LIE, you mean re-writing history from even just earlier this year, then that title falls more obviously on you than anybody in the administration. The likelihood of some kind of nuclear program was presented only as a secondary issue.

In fact, the administration did NOT push the nuclear angle. This Niger thing was less than two dozen words in an hour plus speech.

There's not even a contradiction between the first two statements you cite. That the CIA said "we cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore" does not at all imply that he had not "sought" any.

Now, you might on this basis accuse Dubya of playing a small bit of, as Hank Hill would put it, "lawyer ball" but that's not LYING. You're just being cheaply partisan, saying what you were going to say anyway regardless of the actual facts.

This whole pre-war intelligence situation bears scrutiny, and congressional hearings. Not having so far found actual WMDs merits some scrutiny of the intelligence. It might be a reasonable political issue to raise against the president in next year's election.

Still, you need to be much more careful about the constant and largely unsupported harsh claims you frequently post about pretty much any and every Republican.

Plus I ought to beat you down for making me defend this half-assed president again. I really don't like him that good. I HATE doing it. Why do you insist on putting me in this position?

We do it, Al, because we're sadistic bastards who love to make you suffer. Did you know that Bush has sex with chimpanzees and that he assasinated the King of Egypt? Come on, Al, prove he didn't!

Al, if you were familiar with the record, I doubt you'd defend him at all.

Clearly, you are not familiar with the record.

The nuclear angle was pushed and pushed hard. To name just two of the most prominent claims (i.e., lies):

1. Bush himself claimed (falsely) that the IAEA had said Saddam was six months away from developing a nuclear weapon.

2. Cheney's August 26, 2002 speech launched the full-scale selling of the war. It stressed nuclear claims.

Plus...

Oh, forget it. The record doesn't matter. Lies don't matter--as long as there are some fig leaves to put over them to make them look less like lies.

Well, at least that's how it works if the lies aren't about blowjobs. ("I did not have sex with that woman" is technically defensible as the "truth." Raise your hand, though, if you would not call that statement a "lie.")

Mike- you say Dubya had sex with chimpanzees as if that were a BAD thing.

WHY THE URANIUM MATTERS.... The fundamental conservative response to Uranium-Gate has been that anti-war partisans are blowing a single sentence out of all proportion. As Condi Rice put it:

It is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa. This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.

She's right, of course, but at the same time she's rather studiously missing the point. The uranium story is important not because it was a linchpin of the administration's argument for war, but simply because it's a smoking gun.

In 1987, with Iran/Contra closing in, Ronald Reagan and his advisors were genuinely afraid of the possibility of impeachment. And why not? After all, no one seriously doubts that Reagan knew what was going on. But in the end, John Poindexter took the fall, no smoking gun was ever found, and the Democratic Congress never brought charges.

Flash forward to 1998. Conservatives had been convinced for years that Bill Clinton lied and abused his position relentlessly. But their furious assaults went nowhere until they found a stained dress. Then, despite the fact that sex with an intern was surely the least of all the charges against him, impeachment became a reality.

In both cases, everyone who was paying attention knew what was going on. Both Reagan and Clinton lied about what they did and didn't know. The only difference was the smoking gun.

Likewise, Bush's problem is not that a single 16-word sentence of dubious provenance made it into his State of the Union address. His problem is that he promised us that Saddam was connected to al-Qaeda, he promised thousands of liters of chemical and biological weapons, he promised that Saddam had a nuclear bomb program, and he promised that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators. But that wasn't all. He also asked us to trust him: he couldn't reveal all his evidence on national TV, but once we invaded Iraq and had unfettered access to the entire country everything would become clear.

But it didn't. We've had control of the country for three months, we've had access to millions of pages of Iraqi records, and we've captured and interrogated dozens of high ranking officials. And it's obvious now that there were no WMDs, no bomb programs of any serious nature, and no al-Qaeda connections.

So while the uranium is only a symbol, it's a powerful one. George Bush says we live in an era of preemptive war, and in such an era -- lacking the plain provocation of an attack -- how else can the citizenry make up its mind except by listening to its leaders? In the end, we went to war because a majority of the population trusted George Bush when he presented his case that Iraq posed an imminent danger to the United States and the world.

Uranium-Gate is a symbol of that misplaced trust. If George Bush's judgment had been vindicated in Iraq, a single sentence in the State of the Union address wouldn't matter. But it hasn't, and he deserves to be held accountable for his poor judgment by everybody who believed him.

And that's why those 16 words matter.

Thanks, Bhaal.

CalPundit also links to this report by Seymour Hersh that deserves another look now:

SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

They call themselves, self-mockingly, the Cabal--a small cluster of policy advisers and analysts now based in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. In the past year, according to former and present Bush Administration officials, their operation, which was conceived by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, has brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community. These advisers and analysts, who began their work in the days after September 11, 2001, have produced a skein of intelligence reviews that have helped to shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq. They relied on data gathered by other intelligence agencies and also on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress, or I.N.C., the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi. By last fall, the operation rivalled both the C.I.A. and the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency, the D.I.A., as President Bush's main source of intelligence regarding IraqÕs possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connection with Al Qaeda. As of last week, no such weapons had been found. And although many people, within the Administration and outside it, profess confidence that something will turn up, the integrity of much of that intelligence is now in question...

Hey, Brian, you quote from the Daily Howler a lot, right? They're backing Bush on the uranium issue. It's funny, I read on the web that Britain is standing behind their uranium story, but hours and hours later there was nothing whatsoever on NPR about that, but I had to sit through 30 minutes of people whining about how Tenet knew X and Bush should have known Y and on and on and on. Kudos to the Howler for at least giving Bush a chance.

We'll eventually learn the truth, but I fear it may take 50 years. How long was it before we learned that McCarthy - though an idiot - was right about the prevalence (though not necessarily the danger) of Communists in America, after all? Or that the Soviets really were trying to have Reagan murdered all those years ago? Or even the details of D-Day? Or any one of a number of other stories that stay secret far longer than they should...

Instead of nitpicking over the Administration's lies--you sound like a Clinton supporter, by the way--why don't you call up this women and explain why you supported this obviously unjust war. Let us know what she says.

http://news.mpr.org/features/2003/07/14_zdechlikm_iraq1/

"His aunt, Mary, says Americans could best honor her nephew by recognizing
the threats U.S. troops continue to face in Iraq.


"We have some issues with the fact that President Bush declared combat over
on May 1. Combat is not over. We don't even know who's firing at us right
now, and all of our soldiers are at great risk of being picked off as Jim
was. And that's a shame. And then President Bush made a comment a week ago,
and he said, 'bring it on.' They brought it on and now my nephew is dead." "

My sympathies are with Tom Tomorrow on this one. The yellowcake story strikes me as an excuse for the media to suddenly notice the raft of lies they graciously declined to noticed a few months ago. Josh Marshall pointed out something similar a while ago.

Wow, someone signed up for military service and was happy to collect a military paycheck and benefits until it meant actually, you know, serving in the military, and now his aunt is upset? Gee, I guess facts and logic and the safety of all Americans and much of the world doesn't mean much when you look at it through those eyes.

I'm not a Clinton supporter - I didn't vote for him, but I don't like seeing people picked on for things they didn't do. I've defended Clinton against claims that he should have been more strong in his response to terrorism, since what he did was reasonable, all things considered. Would we be better off had he acted more aggresively? Sure. Is he to blame for 9/11? Nope.

Is that what you mean? Sticking with logic and facts makes me a Clinton supporter? I'm sorry, I'll try to stick with that dude's Aunt Mary instead.

Actually, my logical mind kicked in when I heard this blurb on NPR last night, and while I wouldn't want Aunt Mary to be bothered (seriously) in her time of grief, I should point out that Bush's ignorant "bring it on" statement came the day after her nephew was already dead, I think. Perhaps I've got the dates wrong, so it's not nearly as important as noting that Aunt Mary stands alone in her criticism of continued military presence in Iraq, while his Uncle and friends all say things like, "He knew the dangers" and "He was doing what he was over there to do" and "He was doing the honorable thing."

All in all, I'm the easy-going guy who believes in giving pretty much everybody the benefit of the doubt as long as is reasonable. You seem to be the one nitpicking the administration and trying to find lies. If you don't agree with the war, fine. If you don't like Bush (or Clinton), fine. But don't nitpick and invent lies where none exist. I can tell you for a fact that Bush has broken promises, but I don't know that he's lied even once (though statistically speaking, I'm sure he must have, as all humans seem to do).

What strikes me about your comment is how cold blooded it is. There's not an ounce of compassion in your message for the kids who are doing your dirty work for you in Iraq, and who are now complaining, bitterly and in droves, along with their families, about the muddled rationales for the war and the evasive answers about when they're going home.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030716_2ndBrigade.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,998778,00.html

Shall we assume that all of them, like the nephew, are whiners more interested in soaking up all those great military benefits than in fighting for their country?

As I mentioned on another thread, yours is the characteristic attitude of prowars: support for our troops in the abstract, indifference or contempt for them as individuals. Disgusting.

Mike what strikes me is how crass your comment is, using the anguish of the deceased's relative as some sort of tenuous causality for what you think is a substitution for an actual argument.

Joe, what strikes me is how verbose your comment is, using mere bloviating as a subsitute for erudition.

Good comeback, I see your 27 minutes at websters.com was well spent.

Mike, my father served in the Navy for more than 20 years. I have nothing but respect for people in the military, both individually and in the abstract. What I resent are people who exploit tenuous relationships to service members to make political point, as this man's aunt has done. As I pointed out, the man died doing what we loved and he gave his life in service of his country. All of the quoted people said the same thing, save one - the only one you quoted.

Don't presume to know what I think or what motivates me, and don't even give me reason to tell you what I think of the blood-sucking leeches on both sides of the aisle who trivialize human life for political gain.

As I mentioned, I listen to NPR, and the same segment that ended with that aunt's quote contained other segments as well. None of the service members interviewed in Iraq complained. None. Back home, that aunt and one man's wife complained bitterly, the aunt that her nephew was dead serving a President she obviously doesn't like, and the wife that her husband wasn't home.

I'm a Navy brat, so I know how these things work. It's tough waiting for Dad or Hubby to come home. My dad was gone for 16 months once - they happened to be the first 14 months of my life. Life sucks in the military, and people know that when they sign up.

Wow, Brian, the Daily Howler is still backing Bush on "yellowcake" and criticizing "the press" (that would include, I presume, people who blindly repeat what "the press" says) for misrepresenting things.

In the meantime, I can't seem to find any other story on NPR, causing me to actually listen to music in my car for a change. Perhaps the deaths of the Hussein boys will add something new to the news rotation - maybe 50% "Bush lied" and 50% "Hussein boys dead"?

Wow, Phillip, you still haven't displayed an ounce of compassion for troops who continue to be killed, even after our great victory against the Hussein boys. "Support the troops, ignore the soldiers" seems to be your motto still.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/23/sprj.irq.main/index.html

Howler:

It's hard to think of a more insulting statement that the one that White House briefer made. Speaking to the nation's press, the "senior official" said that neither President Bush nor Condoleezza Rice read the National Intelligence Estimate which was prepared last October (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 7/21/03). According to the briefer, Rice didn't read the full 90 pages, and so she didnÕt know about StateÕs objections to some of the intelligence on which Bush was working. Amazing, isn't it? Just drink in the depth of that screaming insult, an insult to every American. Soldiers are being killed every day in Iraq, and we're supposed to nod our heads when weÕre told that the National Security Adviser didn't bother finishing a 90-page report. The presidentÑ"not a fact-checker," weÕre toldÑdidn't read it either. Quite correctly, the Washington Post put these startling remarks right at the top of Saturday's front page. And the Washington press corpsÑno great readers themselvesÑhave chosen to ignore them completely. Ignoring the stunning claim about Rice's alleged sloth, they have preferred to keep spinning the facts of their latest semi-embellished mini-scandal. Larger matters are being ignored as we head down that Niger side road.

Mike-
Although Phillip's compassion is somehow pertinent to the discussion, what I'd really like to know is are you more upset because killing the Hussein Boys is an anti-Bush setback or because it may actually help to improve things in Iraq.

(You know what would be real cool? If you posted your response by taking the first sentence of this post and then turning it around sarcistically. I think that is brutally clever!)

Yeah, I can't spell for crap!

Brian (#20): Changing the subject doesn't answer the fact that the reliably liberal Daily Howler sees the "Bush Lied" argument as a press-concocted (or abetted) "Perfect Storm" which will not allow the truth to disrupt it.

Secondary issues like nonsense accusations that I'm cold-hearted (not from you, Brian, I know) or whether or not Condoleeza is doing her job are just that - secondary to the original (and false) claim that "Bush lied."

Besides, I guess I'm missing stuff again, but I didn't hear Ms Rice say she didn't read the document, I heard some briefer say it. Is there a source for your statement that Ms Rice said so?

Never mind. When the facts fall apart I see the same pattern of misdirection and changed subjects and ridiculous personal statements (again, not from you, Brian), so I bore again of this whole meme.

Phillip,

You've got it wrong. Both about the Howler being "reliably liberal" (you know, not every source I quote is "liberal") and about the Howler refuting the notion that "Bush lied."

The Howler has been howling for months about the lack of concern in the press for the obvious, provable lies President Bush has told.

And what he is concerned about now, rightly, is that the press has decided to go equally stupidly the other way, and claim that Bush lied about this particular statement when he is not yet clearly lying about that particular statement.

So far, the White House has managed to avoid lying by claiming, in a less-than-forthcoming manner, that there was apparently some other evidence that Iraq was trying to by uranium from "Africa." The Howler is howling, as always, because the press ISN'T DOING ITS JOB RIGHT. The press should not be claiming the President lied (on THIS particular matter) just yet, because he is still engaging in a game of dodge ball. HE ISN'T LYING YET ABOUT THIS ISSUE--HE'S DODGING.

IF the White House (or Britain) had other evidence about "Africa" (not just Niger), we need to see it. Right now, the press is so busy doing stories about the President's eroding credibility, they aren't pressing on the one issue that is most important here--IS the Administration or it not lying about having "other evidence" about Iraq/Africa/uranium?

We don't know yet. That "other evidence" gambit is simply the latest dodge. The press needs to focus on that and find out the truth, and not ignore the fact that the Administration's main reason for claiming that it didn't lie is that "Africa" did not just mean "Niger."

Help me, Will Robinson... Losing Power... reduced ... to ... absurdity

Brian-
That yellowcake story is soooo last week! Can't you guys moveon.org ^TM? Congrats on your movie premier in NYC, hope it went well (seriously, you liberal scoundrel).

Comment 23: One reason I've been using this "don't care about the troops" rhetorical ploy is that it illustrates a point: When challenged, prowars accuse their opponents of either being apologists for Saddam or of insensitivity to his victims. When this style of arguement is thrown back in their face, they howl like stuck pigs. It's fun to watch.

"When the facts fall apart I see the same pattern of misdirection and changed subjects and ridiculous personal statements"

What an excellent description of the Bush Administration.