Whether Bush lied is a settled issue for all but the most hardened idealogues. It's time to move beyond it.
On the whole lying thing, Josh Marshall nails it:
Logically speaking, this should be the column where I sound off about the emerging body of evidence that the Bush White House hyped, manipulated and puffed up evidence and generally bamboozled the American people about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But, if it's all the same, can we just face facts instead?C'mon. There's no "emerging body of evidence."
If you were (a) paying attention to this debate, and (b) not an utterly rabid ideologue, you knew the administration was tossing around all sorts of improbable, unproven or just plain ridiculous stories. All that's changed is that something else truly unexpected happened: We didn't find anything — no chemicals, no biologicals, no nothing — at least not yet. And that fact suddenly made it possible to discuss, or maybe just impossible to ignore, what most of us knew all along.
John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman sensibly move on to the far more important matter of just what these lies mean to our democracy, and what we should do about them. In The New Republic:
Foreign policy is always difficult in a democracy. Democracy requires openness. Yet foreign policy requires a level of secrecy that frees it from oversight and exposes it to abuse. As a result, Republicans and Democrats have long held that the intelligence agencies--the most clandestine of foreign policy institutions--should be insulated from political interference in much the same way as the higher reaches of the judiciary. As the Tower Commission, established to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal, warned in November 1987, "The democratic processes ... are subverted when intelligence is manipulated to affect decisions by elected officials and the public."If anything, this principle has grown even more important since September 11, 2001. The Iraq war presented the United States with a new defense paradigm: preemptive war, waged in response to a prediction of a forthcoming attack against the United States or its allies. This kind of security policy requires the public to base its support or opposition on expert intelligence to which it has no direct access. It is up to the president and his administration--with a deep interest in a given policy outcome--nonetheless to portray the intelligence community's findings honestly. If an administration represents the intelligence unfairly, it effectively forecloses an informed choice about the most important question a nation faces: whether or not to go to war. That is exactly what the Bush administration did when it sought to convince the public and Congress that the United States should go to war with Iraq.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Tom Johnson
Maybe you didn't read the news?
2 - mike
This may be the long-awaited planting of phoney evidence by the U.S. The same Administration that lied about WMD in the first place, and sent young people to die in an imperialist war for oil, domestic politics, and Likkud hegenomy, is perfectly capable of a dirty trick like this. I'm surprised they haven't done it already, since they knew all along they were just making the WMD stuff up.
Either that, or this new "find" is Saddam's secret brothel. He had quite a taste for the Whip, I hear.
3 - Brian Flemming
Tom,
I see you found Entry #357 on the List of Media Stories About "Found" WMD.
Numbers 1-356 of these false stories have helped form this impression.
Which is remarkably similar to this earlier impression.
I never said GWB wasn't GOOD at deception. He and his Administration are quite good at it.
Even if troops do find traces of WMD or documents indicating they existed at one point, Bush has already been proven a liar--he and his Administration stated the WMD were in huge quantities, in certain known locations, and ready to use at a moment's notice. They weren't, and we have no indication that Bush actually had good information indicating they were--in fact, angry, high-level intelligence sources claim he didn't have any such information.
But, of course, idealogues can hardly be expected to remember what the White House actually said.
4 - Sparkey
Not many right-wing bloggers to link to on the issue. They prefer not to talk about it. I suppose because it is impossible to defend the proposition, "George W. Bush didn't lie in the run-up to the war on Iraq." Better to hope the whole matter just goes away.
Either you're an incompetent boob, or a bold faced mother-f**king liar yourself.
The only blind ideologues here are those who peddle the "lie" myth as truth. These snake-oil peddlers choose not to address the fact that everyone agreed with the basic premise of Saddam's WMD. The disagreement was over containment, not WMD. To peddle the idea that Bush & Blair lied you have to address why, if Bush lied, so did France, Russia, Germany, China, Blix, Clinton, Gore, Daschle, Kerry, Albright, Gephardt, Kennedy, ad nauseum.
See here, here, and here for a list of the pertinent quotes.
You also have to address the facts and argument I point to here; however, not one of the idotarians you quote address the fundamentals of two points: if Bush was lying, why did all those Democrats go along with it, and two, why did those who opposed our invasion also agree with the basic proposition that Saddam had WMD.
Josh Marshall is nothing more than and idiot who has no credible, pre-invasion evidence, that Saddam didn't possess WMD. Everyone who had direct knowledge of the subject agreed that Saddam possessed WMD, only those who wish to make political points by passing the Goebbelsesque "big lie" that Bush and Blair lied to start a war make that claim. The French Russian, German, and Chinese Governments who opposed the US led invasion are surprisingly mute on that, eh?
Instapundit is correct, you are "Difficult to take Seriously". Sad that your hatred is so base that you'd lower yourselves to such a degree. Pitiful, actually.
Since you seem incapable of doing a simple google search here's some more WMD linkage: A Tempest In The Media's Teapot, Around and Around and Around..., More on the Wolfowitz and WMD..., More WMD Stuff To Link To, Linkage to Iraqi WMD and Stuff, Blair and Bush Aren't That Stupid, and Credible Deterrence. Those are just MY posts on the subject that I placed on Stryker's website where I link to several other bloggers and articles.
Oh, yeah, there is also this story that relates to reason #3 that Bush outlined as a reason for Invasion.
5 - mike
Sparkey, where's the plug?
Here's Jacob G. Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation, a website for antiwar conservatives and libertarians, on the moral hypocricy of your position:
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0305l.asp
"First the U.S. gives weapons of mass destruction to Saddam [in the 1980s], knowing that he will employ them against his enemies, including the Iranian people.
Then the Americans enforce their cruel and brutal sanctions against Iraq with the goal of squeezing the Iraqi people into violently ousting Saddam Hussein from power.
Then they encourage the Iraqi people to rise up by force of arms against their own government [in 1991] under a false and deceptive promise of help from the president of the United States, knowing full well what Saddam will do to the rebels if their rebellion fails.
Then they stand aside and watch in shock and awe as Saddam?s forces massacre the rebels and place their bodies in mass graves.
And years later, when the primary justification for invading Iraq (?disarming Saddam?) fizzles out, U.S. officials use those mass graves as an ex post facto justification for their invasion ? an invasion that resulted in the deaths and injuries of thousands of more Iraqis.
If that?s not a morally bankrupt foreign policy, I don?t know what is."
6 - Brian Flemming
Sparkey,
I did look for righties on the specific issue I talk about in this post. But all I found were pundits who instantly switched the issue to something more comfortable for them. As you did.
The issue can be summed up in one word: urgency. Bush didn't just say Saddam probably had WMD. He said the matter was so urgent that a) He had to get a vote from Congress just before the 2002 mid-term election, and, later, b) It was impossible to wait "weeks" for the U.N. inspectors to finish their work, per their request, because of the looming threat.
Back then, Bush looked to all the world as if he was afraid the inspectors would actually succeed at their job. So far, the facts seem to support this impression. Nothing has turned up to suggest Bush actually possessed believable information about an urgent threat to the United States--something I know many war supporters, especially on-the-fence war supporters, thought was the case at the time. Here on Blogcritics, more than one pro-warrior made arguments along the lines of "We don't know what the President knows."
Now, I fully expect not to hear any right-wing pundits to attempt to support the following propositions:
1) President Bush was right to insist that going to war was so urgent, because of a looming WMD threat, that it required a vote from Congress just before the mid-term election.
2) President Bush was right to insist that going to war was so urgent, because of a looming WMD threat, that the inspectors could not be given the "weeks" they said they needed to finish their work.
Forbidden right-wing blogger words:
mid-term election
urgency
inspectors
My guess is that many of those who were gung-ho for the war secretly feel that it's okay if Bush fibbed a little, because the war was a good idea, and if a few chicken-hearted Americans had to be tricked into it, well, it all evens out to the positive.
Is that your view?
Mike,
Thanks to the link to that article. Very interesting to see a right-ish position that is principled and acknowledges facts.
7 - Brian Flemming
Washington Post chimes in:
8 - Joe
Brian-
As always, an entertaining read. Would you care to address the "lies" of every other political figure (Dems, UN, et al.) that Sparkey posted? And, please, before you label me as an ideologue, and make me read Noam Chomsky, I'm not asking as some sort of debate point, I really would be interested in hearing your opinion.
9 - Brian Flemming
Joe,
I haven't referred to Noam Chomsky anywhere in this thread. I have referred to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic (which, btw, was for the war), Slate, the Hill and TomPaine.com.
As far as legislators going along with the Bush Administration take on the WMD threat, those legislators do not have their own intelligence agencies, as Bush does. They depended on what they were told--which is to say, they depended on what Bush allowed to filter down to them.
Washington Post:
No question, these legislators are accountable for what decisions they made with the information they had at the time. However, a key element in that information was the credibility of Bush and other executive-branch leaders and bureaucrats. They said, "Trust us." Many legislators, including Democrats, did.
The questions now are, Should they have trusted Bush? Did he and his Administration deliver a reasonable interpretation of the secret information they had?
The answer seems to be "no." It wasn't the job of a Senator to determine that the "aluminum tubes" (two more forbidden right-wing blogger words) were a crock. It wasn't the job of a Congressperson to determine that the scary Niger story was based on a forgery.
They didn't know. The White House most likely did. Congress was tricked just like you and I were tricked.
10 - Joe
Brian-
The Chomsky remark was based upon a previous thread a few months back.
I don't know that your assessment of Bush owning the intelligence agencies is completely accurate. I believe that the Congressional intelligence committees as well as armed forces and foreign relations hold some sway over the intelligence agencies as well. The reason I was asking you was because it just seems like you're too willing to give everyone else a free pass.
My personal opinion is that the invasion would have happened sooner or later anyway. Clinton would have done it himself if he could have gotten the political traction in '98 (I seem to remember Cohen and Albright doing some sort of invasion roadshow that flopped). 911 created enough context to make the invasion politically feasible.
Perhaps my opinions are tainted by a few years experience in the intelligence community. Could they have just been flat wrong? Well, somehow Pakistan and India both managed to hide nuclear test programs from them until they were both successful. Why should additional shortfalls on our part be so hard to swallow?
Lastly, another NYT Article
11 - Brian Flemming
Joe,
Whether the invasion would have happened anyway is a much different question from what we should do about a President who lies to the American people in order to manipulate them into supporting that invasion.
I agree--it's not as if there weren't other reasons to go in there. And there is no guarantee that there would have been no military action had Bush not ended the U.N. inspections.
Nixon probably would have been elected in 1972 even if he and his operatives had not done what they did. But it STILL matters to our nation that he did what he did. He had to be held accountable whether his actions resulted in a much different course or not.
This particular issue isn't about the result--it's about the lies our President told to get it. Even those who agree with the result should be concerned about the lies, because so much in our national security structure depends on Congress and the people being able to trust the President on these secret matters. Intelligence should never be manipulated like this to serve an agenda--intelligence information is the one thing we can't really keep a check on, because it is secret. We have to trust. And that means our President cannot abuse that trust without being held accountable.
12 - Joe
So you don't think Congress had any access to information that wasn't previously vetted by the White House? And do you disagree with me that the intelligence could have just been flat out erroneous?
13 - SparkeY
Forbidden words in idotarian wordls is A) the US public at large doesn't care about WMD...
B) WMD is one of three reasons given for invasion
c) why everyone lied with GWB if he is lying
Hence, the truth is, you are the lyer because you refuse to even address the issues. IF GWB lied why did all those other Democrats and France et al sing the same song. Unless you can address that truth, then you are a snake-oil liar and worth nothing but contempt.
Of course, if you lookedf at my posts you'd already see how morally bankrupt your position is. But the real truth is not of any concern to you is it? You want to believe what you want to believe because you can't admit that you're wrong.
Pitiful, simply pitiful... I'm glad I'm going on vacation for two weeks...
BTW: I remember the midterm elections, you lost...
14 - Phillip Winn
"Whether Bush lied is a settled issue for all but the most hardened idealogues." Gee, somebody should tell that to the NY Times.
15 - Brian Flemming
Phillip,
True, there is still that debate over the proper term for the lies. Deception? Exaggeration? Distortion? Fabrication?
Fact is, any of those kinds of lies with regard to intelligence matters that lead us to war should make anyone concerned. That's why "hardened idealogues" is an appropriate term for those who think these lies don't matter (or who purposefully avoid the subject, thus implying that the lies don't matter). These kinds of lies would matter deeply whether they were told by a Democrat or a Republican.
Joe,
Congress as a whole? I doubt it. Sensitive national security information is (properly) channeled through the appropriate committees, which often meet in closed session. Appearing before those committees are bureaucrats who serve the President.
If the information given in this room is tainted politically, something very anti-democratic happens. In a democracy, we don't want ANYTHING government-related to happen in secret. But if it must (and national security issues must), we need to trust that the President is not jiggering things to suit his agenda--because the secrecy means that he holds most of the cards, and if he wants to act less than honorably, he can.
That's why lies, exaggerations, distortions, deliberate misrepresentations, whatever are so important to punish. Intelligence is one area where politics is not supposed to enter the picture.
It depends on where you locate the error. I disagree that it is likely that the White House was unaware that the Niger story was bogus. It's pretty obvious that they used it because it helped, not because it stood up to rigorous examination. In the case of the aluminum tubes, the Administration simply chose not to hear interpretations it didn't like.
There is no doubt that the only reasonable conclusion to draw in March 2003 was that Saddam Hussein MIGHT have chemical or biological weapons. Nobody could be sure he didn't.
The question is...how dire is the situation? Is it so bad that it requires a swift invasion? Or is the more appropriate course an inspections process backed by force?
Clearly, the situation would have to be dire to justify an immediate invasion while U.N. inspectors were asking for just "weeks" to finish their work. You've gotta be pretty sure that things are very dangerous (i.e., tons of evil shit about to rain down on the U.S. or our allies) to recommend a rush to war. So Bush said the evidence showed there was such a grave danger, to a high degree of certainty. But the evidence he cited showed no such thing, and he knew that.
He lied.
16 - mike
I just notified them. It turns out, however, that the Times is treading lightly around the L word these days, as much of its staff has, er, truth issues of its own.
Prowar apologists remind me of cult members. Before the war, they demonized anyone who doubted WMD claims. (Bill O'Reilly of Fox News practically made a fetish of it.) The evidence that Saddam had WMDs was so overwhelming, they said, that it made Iraq an imminent threat to U.S. security. Doubters like the now-vindicated Scott Ritter were often accused of treason.
As soon as these claims were revealed as false, the prowars turned on a dime and now say, in unison, that WMDs were beside the point. No self doubt, no nuanced reflection, tempers their venom. Debating them is like debating pit bulls on crack.
Maoists have better capacity for independent thought.
17 - Joe
Brian-
Indeed information is channeled through committees, but, additionally, committee members also have access to reporting as necessary and make routine visits to agencies as a part of their oversight capacity. The people that appear before the committees would probably argue that they serve the country.
When committees are briefed, it is not generally a one-way conversation, committee members are free to ask questions and request further information. Do you think that the committees gave a pass in this instance and didn't press further?
The function of intelligence is to provide decision-makers with information. I would imagine that given the previous situations with WMD's in Pakistan and India most folks in the community were less likely to accept risk with regard Iraq. So perhaps the posture now is not based upon being sure that things are very dangerous but rather not giving the benefit of the doubt unless you are sure that there isn't a risk, a subtle but significant difference. I see some parallels to your stated position with regards to the current administration.
Mike-
Once again, insightful and rational comments with great bearing upon the issues being discussed.
18 - Eric Olsen
There is no question this is an important issue. Regardless of other circumstances, it does matter if a leader of a democracy lies. While the lack of evidence of WMD is embarrassing and damaging at this point, I am still waiting for evidence that anyone did anything beyond looking at conflicting opinions and evidence and seeing what they wanted to see. This is not the same thing as "lying": making assertions known to be untrue. Just as there is no clear "smoking gun" yet of WMD, neither is there a smoking gun of anyone in the administration "lying," nor is there evidence that the Jessica Lynch rescue was anything but that. I have listened very carefully to clearly "objective" left-leaning NPR reporters on this, people in Iraq, and while the anchor tries to draw accusations out of them, not one has been willing to even imply the possibility that anything was orchestrated, falsified or that any misinformation - like that Lynch fought like GI Jane - came from the military or administration.
19 - mike
Left leaning NPR reporters????!!!!!! Can I have some of what you're smoking?? Because I would love to live in a world where NPR or any other U.S. network leaned to the left.
Next you'll be saying that The New York Times is liberal. As if!
20 - Brian Flemming
Eric,
This is okay with you? Doesn't "seeing what they wanted to see" at some point become a form of deception?
For example, I have little doubt that Bill Clinton really did draw a distinction between oral sex and "actual sex." So, technically, he was just "seeing what he wanted to see" when he told the American people "I did not have sex with that woman." I still call that a lie.
The weight of the evidence indicates that the Bush Administration did more than look at 1 + 1 and see 3. They looked at 1 + 1 and saw 100. They knowingly relied on biased sources. The Pentagon set up a special unit just to deliver the intelligence conclusions the Administration wanted--because the CIA wasn't giving them what they wanted. And those conclusions--that Saddam had massive stores of WMD ready to deploy and intended to use them--were clearly wrong. Coincidence?
There may not be a smoking gun here, ever. Still, that doesn't mean that our country went to war based on a solid, honest process that we should be proud of. There is enough evidence right now to conclude that at the very least intelligence was politicized--and that's enough to be concerned about.
Hypothetically, let's say you don't support the next war. Will it be okay if the leaders of our country distort intelligence and "see what they want to see" in order to justify it?
Mike,
True, a lot of the opposition to reality here from super-conservatives is cult-like. But, then, it's always like that with this particular (small) group. I think a lot of others simply don't want to believe that a) Their leaders would trick them into supporting a war, and b) They got tricked.
Joe,
If you read the Post article, you'll see that legislators did struggle to get more information--and to get it out to the public--and were often stonewalled. And legislators are now saying that Wolfowitz gave them certain assurances, and they trusted him. Now they want to know why these assurances were given.
21 - Joe
Brian-
Interesting that you picked up on the "seeing what they wanted to see" notion. I read most of your posts and that's usually the impression I'm left with, you've taken an article(s) that parallels your view and use it to amplify your point. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but then surprising that you would condemn others for doing the same thing. Would that make you a liar if the article is later proved to be wrong?
22 - Brian Flemming
Joe,
Major difference: While the articles I quote support my argument, I don't have good reason to believe they are wrong.
This is not the case with the Niger fiasco, the aluminum tubes misrepresentation and many other instances of supposed "self-deception" by the Bush Administration. For example, the Administration had good reason to doubt that the Niger story was real, yet it still insisted on trumpeting it in the State of the Union address. The Administration had no solid reason to believe in a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein--it just WANTED there to be a link. So it stated unequivocally that there was one. That is, quite simply, not honest.
A more sound analogy than the one you offer would be if I had no solid sources to back up my claims but instead sought out some biased, left-wing website with an agenda and hired that website to "interpret" the available information and offer me a "report" with made-to-order conclusions, which I then quoted here as if it were the product of independent, solid research and analysis.
Yeah, if I did that, I'd be a liar.
23 - Brian
Brian-
At the time they were presenting those examples did they have a reason to believe they were wrong? At its core most intelligence should be viewed with skepticism, it is generally more art than science and you never have the 100% solution. The analogy you offer is rather extreme. I don't think, and I'd imagine that you don't truly believe that Josh Marshall, TNR, and Michael Kinsley, et al., are unbiased and that their reporting is not made with their respective audiences in mind.
24 - Thomas
From January-March of 2003, conservatives often justified the war in Iraq by asserting that President Bush deserves the benefit of the doubt because he knows more than the rest of us. Now they are claiming that President Bush deserves to absolved of any wrongdoing because he wasn't aware that much of the intelligence he was pushing was faulty. Well, which is it? Is President Bush all-knowing or is he ignorant? You can't have it both ways.
25 - Eric Olsen
This is a false dichotomy: a president undoubtedly knows more than the rest of us about lots things he is privy to nd we aren't, but that doesn't mean the intelligence he is given can't be wrong; and as has already been stated here, inteligence is open to interpretation, spin, opinion, and as with all such things, those involved will naturally will tend to see what they want to see.