Why it matters that Bush lied - Comments Page 2

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• 26 - Brian Flemming

  Jun 24, 2003 at 1:15 pm

  There is an excellent article in Slate, by Timothy Noah (who annoyingly calls himself "Chatterbox"), that explores this "Was he ignorant or did he lie?" issue.
  
  Noah's conclusion: Why can't he be both ignorant and a liar?
  
  

  Is President Bush a liar? The New York Times' David Rosenbaum examined this question with a surfeit of post-Howell-Raines fair-mindedness in the June 22 "Week in Review" section. His bottom line: "[A] review of the president's public statements found little that could lead to a conclusion that the president actually lied" in two particular instances. The first was when Bush claimed he knew Saddam Hussein to possess large quantities of nuclear and biological weapons. The second was when Bush claimed that his tax cut would provide tax relief for everyone who pays income taxes. In both instances, Chatterbox is baffled by Rosenbaum's doubt.

  Let's address Bush's tax claim first. Its falsity is not in dispute. Chatterbox has written elsewhere that Bush lied when he said, "My jobs and growth plan would reduce tax rates for everyone who pays income tax." (The Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center found 8.1 million people who pay taxes but will receive no tax cuts.) Rosenbaum recognized that Bush's statement was untrue but expressed doubt that Bush knew it to be untrue. Can a false statement be a lie if the speaker is unaware it is a lie?

  That leads us immediately to a second question, one that Rosenbaum dared not address: Why is the speaker unaware that his statement is a lie? In Bush's case, the answer is painfully obvious. It's because Bush is a functionally not-bright man. As Chatterbox has explained elsewhere, it's impossible to tell"and, ultimately, of little interest"whether Bush lacks the necessary mental equipment, or whether he's simply incurious. The end result is the same. Even Bush's allies concede that Bush is strikingly ignorant. In the July Vanity Fair, Sam Tanenhaus quoted Richard Perle as saying that when he first met Bush, it was "clear" that "he didn't know very much." Perle went on to argue (with what he failed to recognize as condescension) that Bush is an eager pupil. But there isn't much evidence to support even that.

  It's often said that Bush has the virtue of self-awareness, that he knows what he doesn't know. That's probably true. But if it is true, then Bush really oughtn't to go around making sweeping statements that he hasn't made any effort to verify. When these statements turn out to be untrue, Bush's feigned certainty alone justifies calling these statements lies. They may not be the sort of lies a clever person (say, Bill Clinton) would tell. Indeed, many left-of-center commentators (Paul Krugman and Eric Alterman come to mind) refuse to admit that Bush is dumb, presumably because they fear that would make it impossible to hold him accountable for terrible things that he and his administration do. (Many felt the same way about Reagan.) But there's no reason Bush can't be thought of as both stupid and a liar. As Slate's Michael Kinsley has noted, Bush's lies are typically lies of laziness: "If telling the truth was less bother, [he'd] try that too."

  Saying that Bush lacks much on the ball does not mean that he never lies the way clever people do. Surely, for instance, Bush is aware on some level that it has yet to be proved that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons stashed away prior to the war. In addressing this question, Rosenbaum let Bush off the hook by focusing on what he said before the war began, e.g., "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Like Rosenbaum, Chatterbox is eager to cut Bush some slack on this, if only because Chatterbox, too, was convinced prior to the war that the presence of biological and chemical weapons had been proved. (Click here and here to read two columns Chatterbox now wishes he'd never written.) But Rosenbaum never considered what Bush said on Polish television after the war ended:

  We've found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They're illegal. They're against the United Nations' resolutions and we've so far discovered two. And we'll find more weapons as time goes on.
  

  In fact, it has yet to be proved that the two mobile labs were used (or even designed to be used) to build biological weapons. It isn't possible that Bush fails to grasp that. So, why did he say something so obviously untrue? Chatterbox posed the question to The Nation's David Corn, who has written extensively on the question of Bush's veracity. In Corn's view, the key to Bush's lies isn't necessarily that he doesn't know any better, but that he doesn't care. "He mischaracterizes situations to fit his pattern of thinking," Corn explained. "Does he believe he's lying? I don't know." But "he still should be held accountable, whether he made a mistake of this nature in good faith or in bad faith." Amen.

• 27 - Joe

  Jun 24, 2003 at 2:20 pm

  Brian-
  Other than firmly establishing how remarkably low your bar is set for the concept of journalistic excellence, your point is what? That you can find several other people on the internet that feel exactly the way you do?
  
  Curses! Once again, I've been tricked into thinking you had a serious point to make!
  

• 28 - Phillip Winn

  Jun 24, 2003 at 2:42 pm

  Joe - every time I see a post like this (meaning "another anti-Bush screed from Bryan Flemming" or maybe just "a post in which the very first statement is clearly a lie"), I hope nobody will respond. This time it took only ten hours, and the BAM! Hook, line, sinker, pole, fisherman, boots, etc. Ah well.
  
  I spent a little time looking into the initial Bush tax proposal, and I still can't figure out where people keep coming with the idea that people who pay income taxes aren't getting a cut. I saw the chart, but no explanation. As I concluded in my above-linked article, "Unless you're a single person earning $10,800 or less, it's better."
  
  But I guess I'm a liar, too, because there's this pretty chart with no explanataion, see?

• 29 - Brian Flemming

  Jun 24, 2003 at 3:00 pm

  Interesting column today by Bob Somerby in his Daily Howler.
  
  He gets into the tricky area of what "lying" means. As he shows, if the President's defenders want to defend him, as Eric has, along the "he just saw what he wanted to see" lines, that pretty much gives the President carte blanche to deceive us however much he wants.
  
  The Howler:
  
  

  In fact, few major Dems have said that Bush “lied”"in part, because presidents rarely have to. Lying is rarely needed in public life; professional communicators can completely mislead an audience without making a single false statement. How do they do it? By “exaggeration” and “over-emphasis”"by putting certain facts out on the table, and keeping other facts hidden from view.
  more

  
  
  That pretty much sums it up. If this is okay, then lying is okay. It means the following scenario is okay:
  
  1) Fact: intelligence agencies agree that Saddam probably doesn't have a nuclear weapons program and may not have a WMD program of any kind that is a threat--maybe, maybe not.
  
  2) The President finds this fact inconvenient. He knows "maybe" means inspections, while "certain danger" means support for an invasion.
  
  3) So the Pentagon orders a "special team" of intelligence analysts to be put together with the goal of finding interpretations that sound more scary than the current, nonpolitical consensus from intelligence agencies.
  
  4) This special team finds discredited evidence of an attempt by Saddam to buy nuclear weapons material, of an attempt by Saddam to purchase aluminum tubes (consensus from experts: the tubes were not used in a nuclear weapons program), and of a discredited rumor that an al Qaeda agent once met with the Iraqi government. All of these pieces of evidence were known to the CIA and other intelligence agencies--and all agree they are without merit, or at least highly questionable.
  
  5) Knowing the status of these pieces of "evidence," the President cites them to the American people as if they are credible proof of a WMD danger in Iraq.
  
  If that's okay, then lying is okay. You're basically saying, it's okay if the President lies, as long as he goes through a rigmarole on the way to telling the lie.

• 30 - Joe

  Jun 24, 2003 at 3:18 pm

  Brian-
  An impressive demonstration of your fertile imagination or lack of understanding of how intelligence works. Which is it?

• 31 - Thomas

  Jun 24, 2003 at 6:22 pm

  I don’t remember Republicans equivocating about the reality of military intelligence before the war. Back then, the pro-war folks exalted Bush Administration propaganda as if it were irrefutable proof. Now they twist and contort themselves to defend President Bush. Why not just hold him to account? I mean, he’s not a deity. (Technically, he’s just a civil servant.)

• 32 - Hillary Lied Too..

  Dec 16, 2003 at 2:00 am

  "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. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that 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. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002