Bush and the lying liars

[willy]

From townhall.com



'Bush lied' and the lying liars who perpetuate it
Jonah Goldberg


January 16, 2004


Sen. Ted Kennedy gave another one of his angry speeches this week. With all the gravitas he could muster, he recycled his standard complaint: that the Iraq war was never really about WMDs or the war on terror. It was a "political product" from "Day 1" of the president's administration.

This echoes Kennedy's earlier diatribes, like last fall when he said, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie."

Personally, I think Kennedy's an embarrassment to his party. But that doesn't change the fact that he's taken seriously or that he speaks for a large constituency. So let's try to deal with the "Kennedy School's" view of the Iraq war.

First let me admit that I think the failure to find significant evidence of weapons of mass destruction easily constitutes one of the greatest intelligence blunders since Pearl Harbor. There's still a chance we'll find something. But if we do, it will probably be too little, too late to change this basic assessment.

Critics of the Bush Administration are probably cheering, "Finally! Goldberg's stopped drinking the White House's Kool-Aid!"

But hold on. To argue that this was a huge intelligence blunder is to largely let George Bush off the hook for the even-more-popular Bush critique: that he lied to the American people about Iraq.

For Bush to have lied, he had to have known that there were no WMDs, right? It's not a lie unless you know the truth. If you say something you think is true that later turns out to be false, we don't call that a "lie," we call that a "mistake."

You could look it up.

This vital distinction seems to be lost on many smart people. For example, the online magazine Slate has been hosting an interesting discussion among the most respected and prominent liberals who supported the Iraq war. The question before them, more or less, is whether they regret it. Some do. Some don't. Most hold positions awash in shades of gray.

One of those is Kenneth Pollack, the former Clinton NSC staffer and author of the hugely influential book, "The Threatening Storm." Pollack's book was the most coherent and sustained case for the war from any quarter. Slate's round-robin is timed to coincide with a must-read cover story in the current issue of The Atlantic in which Pollack tries to figure out where he - and we - went wrong on WMDs.

Anyway, Pollack tells Slate, "If I had to write 'The Threatening Storm' over again I certainly would not have been so unequivocal that war was going to be a necessity."

In response, George Packer, a prominent liberal hawk, says, "Ken Pollack should be congratulated: How many leading voices on this issue have subjected themselves to such honest criticism? What he got wrong he got wrong because the intelligence was mistaken. What the administration got wrong it got wrong because it didn't care about the intelligence."

This encapsulates pretty much everything that's wrong with even the White House's most respected critics: a nearly total inability to consider the possibility that this administration operated in good faith.

Packer says Pollack's mistake was based on the best intelligence available; however, Bush & Co are a bunch of bloodthirsty ideologues or greedy liars or both.

Unfortunately, there are too many anti-Bush slanders out there to count, let alone debunk, but they are all premised on the "fact" that Bush lied.

But nobody has made a remotely persuasive case that Bush lied. The German, Russian, French, Israeli, British, Chinese and U.S. governments all agreed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The German assessment was even more dire than our own. They were convinced Saddam would have a nuclear weapon by 2005.

Bill Clinton and his entire administration believed Saddam had WMDs. In 2002 Robert Einhorn, Clinton's point man on WMDs, testified to Congress, "Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missile attacks with chemical or biological weapons against its neighbors" including our 100,000 troops in Saudi Arabia.

The threat - chemical, biological and nuclear - against U.S. territory proper was only a few years away, according to Einhorn. Dick Gephardt, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder: all of these people believed Iraq had major stockpiles of WMDs.

Were they all "liars" like President Bush? No? Why not?

You can't have it both ways. You can't say Bush lied while others who said the same thing were being honest. The White House was operating with fundamentally identical information to that of Clinton, Pollack and Einhorn. What was different was that this White House needed to deal with the post-9/11 world.

Maybe that clouded Bush's judgment - or opened his eyes. Let's have that argument. I certainly believe mistakes were made (though I still believe the war was right and just). But if you start from Kennedy's premise that the WMD thing was made up, I can't take you seriously.

[BFrank]

[patricia]

Originally posted by willy
From townhall.com



'Bush lied' and the lying liars who perpetuate it
Jonah Goldberg


January 16, 2004


Sen. Ted Kennedy gave another one of his angry speeches this week. With all the gravitas he could muster, he recycled his standard complaint: that the Iraq war was never really about WMDs or the war on terror. It was a "political product" from "Day 1" of the president's administration.

This echoes Kennedy's earlier diatribes, like last fall when he said, "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie."

Personally, I think Kennedy's an embarrassment to his party. But that doesn't change the fact that he's taken seriously or that he speaks for a large constituency. So let's try to deal with the "Kennedy School's" view of the Iraq war.

First let me admit that I think the failure to find significant evidence of weapons of mass destruction easily constitutes one of the greatest intelligence blunders since Pearl Harbor. There's still a chance we'll find something. But if we do, it will probably be too little, too late to change this basic assessment.

Critics of the Bush Administration are probably cheering, "Finally! Goldberg's stopped drinking the White House's Kool-Aid!"

But hold on. To argue that this was a huge intelligence blunder is to largely let George Bush off the hook for the even-more-popular Bush critique: that he lied to the American people about Iraq.

For Bush to have lied, he had to have known that there were no WMDs, right? It's not a lie unless you know the truth. If you say something you think is true that later turns out to be false, we don't call that a "lie," we call that a "mistake."

You could look it up.

This vital distinction seems to be lost on many smart people. For example, the online magazine Slate has been hosting an interesting discussion among the most respected and prominent liberals who supported the Iraq war. The question before them, more or less, is whether they regret it. Some do. Some don't. Most hold positions awash in shades of gray.

One of those is Kenneth Pollack, the former Clinton NSC staffer and author of the hugely influential book, "The Threatening Storm." Pollack's book was the most coherent and sustained case for the war from any quarter. Slate's round-robin is timed to coincide with a must-read cover story in the current issue of The Atlantic in which Pollack tries to figure out where he - and we - went wrong on WMDs.

Anyway, Pollack tells Slate, "If I had to write 'The Threatening Storm' over again I certainly would not have been so unequivocal that war was going to be a necessity."

In response, George Packer, a prominent liberal hawk, says, "Ken Pollack should be congratulated: How many leading voices on this issue have subjected themselves to such honest criticism? What he got wrong he got wrong because the intelligence was mistaken. What the administration got wrong it got wrong because it didn't care about the intelligence."

This encapsulates pretty much everything that's wrong with even the White House's most respected critics: a nearly total inability to consider the possibility that this administration operated in good faith.

Packer says Pollack's mistake was based on the best intelligence available; however, Bush & Co are a bunch of bloodthirsty ideologues or greedy liars or both.

Unfortunately, there are too many anti-Bush slanders out there to count, let alone debunk, but they are all premised on the "fact" that Bush lied.

But nobody has made a remotely persuasive case that Bush lied. The German, Russian, French, Israeli, British, Chinese and U.S. governments all agreed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. The German assessment was even more dire than our own. They were convinced Saddam would have a nuclear weapon by 2005.

Bill Clinton and his entire administration believed Saddam had WMDs. In 2002 Robert Einhorn, Clinton's point man on WMDs, testified to Congress, "Today, or at most within a few months, Iraq could launch missile attacks with chemical or biological weapons against its neighbors" including our 100,000 troops in Saudi Arabia.

The threat - chemical, biological and nuclear - against U.S. territory proper was only a few years away, according to Einhorn. Dick Gephardt, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder: all of these people believed Iraq had major stockpiles of WMDs.

Were they all "liars" like President Bush? No? Why not?

You can't have it both ways. You can't say Bush lied while others who said the same thing were being honest. The White House was operating with fundamentally identical information to that of Clinton, Pollack and Einhorn. What was different was that this White House needed to deal with the post-9/11 world.

Maybe that clouded Bush's judgment - or opened his eyes. Let's have that argument. I certainly believe mistakes were made (though I still believe the war was right and just). But if you start from Kennedy's premise that the WMD thing was made up, I can't take you seriously.

BUT, isn't that the same tack that Ronald Reagan took, when confronted by the Iran/Contra scandal? Underlings were blamed for either not keeping him in the loop, or simply going off on their own.
This falls into my theory that Mr. Bush is not at all up to speed, but is simply trusting those around him to assure him that the intelligence on which he is making decisions are valid.
When it comes to declaring a state of war, it seems to me that the intelligence should be uncontrovertable. "Probably has...", "has every intention of ..", "has made clear that he is intent on acquiring...." is not evidence of imminent threat.
It seems to me that as Commander in Chief, Mr Bush's responsibility to the American people, indeed the world is more than just listening to dubious intelligence and deciding to follow the course he has, which will cause more death and destruction with no upside, besides monetary gains for contracters.
Clearly, lies were told and those who lied's heads should roll. If Mr. Bush chose to ignore dissenting views and go ahead anyway, then he is also culpable, IMO.

[crawjo]

BUT, isn't that the same tack that Ronald Reagan took, when confronted by the Iran/Contra scandal? Underlings were blamed for either not keeping him in the loop, or simply going off on their own.
This falls into my theory that Mr. Bush is not at all up to speed, but is simply trusting those around him to assure him that the intelligence on which he is making decisions are valid.
When it comes to declaring a state of war, it seems to me that the intelligence should be uncontrovertable. "Probably has...", "has every intention of ..", "has made clear that he is intent on acquiring...." is not evidence of imminent threat.
It seems to me that as Commander in Chief, Mr Bush's responsibility to the American people, indeed the world is more than just listening to dubious intelligence and deciding to follow the course he has, which will cause more death and destruction with no upside, besides monetary gains for contracters.
Clearly, lies were told and those who lied's heads should roll. If Mr. Bush chose to ignore dissenting views and go ahead anyway, then he is also culpable, IMO.

I don't think it is at all yet clear that anyone was lying, other than Saddam Hussein. Mistakes were made, but again, that's NOT THE SAME THING AS LYING. Why is this so hard to understand?

And if Bush is "not at all up to speed" then neither were Tony Blair, the U.N., Jacques Chirac, Hans Blix, Gerhard Schroeder, and just about every other intelligence agency on the planet. What is becoming increasingly clear to me is not that Bush is somehow unique in his deceptiveness, but rather that Hussein was unique in his duplicity and ability to fool the collective intelligence agencies of a dozen or more nations.

[willy]

This is an election year, crawjo, and Bush has to go. Therefore, only he and/or his administration lied about Saddam having weapons, and the rest of the free world, who came to the same conclusion, merely got it wrong.


Also, I have a hard time believing that Hussein could fool the entire free world. Every intelligence agency in the free world got this one wrong? Anything is possible, but this isn't very likely.

Also, if we are to believe what David Kay has said about there being no signs of weapons in Iraq at the moment then we must also believe him when he says that Saddam was an even greater threat than originally anticipated.

[hglord]

Mistakes have consequences. If your mistake is to glance right when you should have glanced left so that a traffic accident occurs, you may be deemed to be negligent and, in fact, culpable of a crime. Yes, a crime! If someone died in that traffic accident, you could be found guilty of manslaughter - and go to prison.

Does that seem unfair when all that happened was that you made a mistake?

If you believe that Bush made a mistake, then it's a mistake that has cost about 500 American lives and unknown thousands of Iraqi lives. So far. Do those who argue that Bush and Company made a "mistake" also feel that they're guilty of manslaughter?

As far as I can tell, this "mistake" argument seems to imply that because it's a mistake, it's OK.

News flash: it's not OK.

[willy]

Making a mistake, however, if far different than Patricia's claim that "clearly, lies were told..." It's going to be hard to convince the American people that Bush and Co. purposely lied, while the rest of the world, who came to the same conclusions about Iraq, were merely wrong.

And if you think the American voter will forget all these wildly false accusations about Bush, which are partisan in nature, before the election this year then I have a bridge to sell you.

[graypencil]

Originally posted by willy
This is an election year, crawjo, and Bush has to go. Therefore, only he and/or his administration lied about Saddam having weapons, and the rest of the free world, who came to the same conclusion, merely got it wrong.

" Rest of the free world" ??

au contraire ..I didnt see Germany, Russia,or France ..OR the UN lining up behind
oberstrumfuhrer DUBBya and his "preemptive war" ..that we now see was based on either
lies, deceit, bad data or just plain stupidity ..

DUBBya and his gauleiters are the most serious threat to this country, bar none ..and must be removed.

impeachment is useless, because then you'd just have Dr StrangeCheney ..

( besides , impeachment is saved for* really bad *offenses.. like lying over blow jobs! )

"And if you think the American voter will forget all these wildly false accusations about Bush, which are partisan in nature, before the election this year then I have a bridge to sell you."

• Willy, what planet do you live on? If the American voter is going to remember anything about Bush and his mob, it's how they lied to get us into a war that has already killed over 500 young American soldiers and sent over 1000 to hospitals, a war that has divided the country ("I am a uniter" may have been his first certifiable lie, but he's been lying all the way to the bank for over 3 years now--ever since he was appointed), drained our economy, made millions jobless, etc.
  
  Hey, you need a very serious reality check, Willy. Put that NY Post and your Ann Coulter books aside and check out what's really happening around you!

[Uli]

Originally posted by willy
while the rest of the world, who came to the same conclusions about Iraq

Whether this is a lie or a mistake, I don't know. But it *IS NOT* true. Pretty much the bigger part of the rest of the world, based on Blix' last reports came to the conclusion that Iraq may not have the WMDs .

[crawjo]

Originally posted by graypencil
" Rest of the free world" ??

au contraire ..I didnt see Germany, Russia,or France ..OR the UN lining up behind
oberstrumfuhrer DUBBya and his "preemptive war" ..that we now see was based on either
lies, deceit, bad data or just plain stupidity ..

DUBBya and his gauleiters are the most serious threat to this country, bar none ..and must be removed.

impeachment is useless, because then you'd just have Dr StrangeCheney ..

( besides , impeachment is saved for* really bad *offenses.. like lying over blow jobs! )

Sigh. Are you people really so dim as to not understand what is a lie and what isn't? And do you have even basic reading skills? Willy was saying that Germany, Russia, and France agreed that Saddam Hussein had not accounted for his WMD program. The *disagreement* was over how to best handle that problem. And since we now know where Saddam's money was going, it's no surprise what conclusion they ultimately arrived at.

[Uli]

Originally posted by crawjo
And since we now know where Saddam's money was going, it's no surprise what conclusion they ultimately arrived at.

Those who are trying to look at things objectively only know some allegations. China, probably the most important power who also was against the unilatoral invasion is conspiciously absent in your bribery theory.

[BFrank]

There’s just so much to say about this new bubbling-up of the WMD controversy. And I plan to say a lot of it. But, for the moment, let’s see if there’s any way to get the media and various other members of the capital's elect to avoid another round of self-administered bamboozlement.

For months we have known with increasing degrees of certainty that there were, contrary to expectations, no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Yet the fact that David Kay has now stated this baldly has suddenly put this reality at the center of the national debate in a way it wasn’t only a couple weeks ago.

He has also said two other things.

First, he’s said that the CIA was not pressured to reach its erroneous conclusions. Second, he has said that rather than the president owing an explanation or apology to the American people, the CIA owes an explanation or apology to the president.

As to the first point, how would he know?

To the best of my knowledge, Kay wasn’t involved in any of the relevant inter-agency processes and he hasn’t investigated this question after the fact. So how would he know? I think the answer is clear: he doesn't.

The second point is a classic example of that phenomenon we’ve become so familiar with in the Bush years: up-is-downism.

Let me explain.

First, a stipulation. There’s no question that it was widely believed within the US intelligence community that Iraq had on-going weapons of mass destruction efforts and probably had at least a chemical and probably a biological weapons capacity.

Clearly, that assumption was wrong.

There is a subsidiary issue here. Intelligence assessments like this often include worst case scenario or pessimistic case scenario judgments based on incomplete evidence. And a lot of the misjudgments seem to have been of that sort --- a point which we need to get further into. But for the moment let’s stipulate that the US intelligence community got some major facts wrong and that we need to find out why and make improvements.

Having said that, let’s outline the ridiculousness of Kay’s judgment.

We didn’t go to war because Iraq had mustard gas or nerve gas or even anthrax. The threat, as presented by the White House, went far beyond that. All WMD are not created equal. Indeed, the catch-all phrase ‘weapons of mass destruction’ obscures much more than it clarifies. It groups together things like mustard gas, which is really a battlefield weapon, with nuclear weapons, which really are weapons of mass destruction.

The White House was well aware of this. And for that reason it repeatedly pressed the argument that Iraq was close to creating nuclear warheads --- a point over which there was very real disagreement within the Intelligence Community. The other component of the argument for war was Iraq’s supposed ties with international terrorist organizations like al Qaida. It was this nexus between illicit weapons and connections to non-deterrable terrorist organizations that was the essence of the White House’s case for war.

On the question of ties to al Qaida one can’t say there was a great deal of disagreement within the Intelligence Community, because the White House had real difficulty finding any intelligence professionals who believed that this was true. This, after all, is why administration officials at the Pentagon set up their own intelligence analysis shop --- because most people in the Intelligence Community didn't buy their argument about the connections between the Iraqi regime and al Qaida.

Now, Kay is saying, in essence, that the CIA sold the president a bill of goods. And they owe him an explanation.

But let’s review what we know.

We know that after 9/11 there were intense battles pitting the Intelligence Community against political appointees in the administration and that those battles were over almost every aspect of the Iraqi threat: nuclear weapons capacity, ties to terrorism, whether Saddam would use his arsenal against the United States, degrees of certainty about the state of Saddam’s chemical and biological programs, everything.

To the best of my knowledge there is not one single instance we know of in which any portion of the Intelligence Community pressed for a more ominous view of the threat in the face of skepticism from the political appointees at DOD, the Office of the Vice President, the White House or anywhere else in the administration. Not one.

We know of many points of controversy. And, to the best of my knowledge, every last one involved administration politicals pressing for more extreme and ominous interpretations of the Iraqi threat against skeptical members of the Intelligence Community. Every last one.

This is hardly even a controversial point. The hawks themselves made the same argument endlessly. They only stopped when the evidence came in and they were shown to have been wrong in almost every particular.

An internal review at the CIA conducted by Richard J. Kerr, a retired senior CIA official, has now also concluded that there is no evidence the CIA shaded its estimates to support the administration's case for war. But even if we grant the accuracy of that judgment it really doesn't get at the true question.

Why? Because we know that there were numerous cases in which people in the Intelligence Community tried to stop the White House from making various hyperbolic or unsubstantiated claims, precisely because they were not supported by the Intelligence Community's consensus estimates.

What we have here is a serious intelligence failure, but one that in itself would almost certainly not have led to war, at least not on the grounds of there being an imminent threat to the United States. Recognizing that it was an insufficient casus belli the White House then hyped it up with all manner of unsubstantiated mumbo-jumbo.

And for this the Intelligence Community owes the president an apology?

Just as the president did last summer when he forced an apology from George Tenet over the Niger-uranium claims and then tried to put the matter to rest without firing Tenet or asking for any kind of investigation, he now wants to pocket the blame being heaped on the Agency (because it absolves him politically) without having any sort of investigation to get to the heart of what happened.

Why? Simple. Because any truly independent investigation of how this all unfolded would expose the administration's systematic exaggeration of what we knew about the threat Iraq posed and, almost certainly, its willful deception of the American people.

-- Josh Marshall

[walto]

"For Bush to have lied, he had to have known that there were no WMDs, right? It's not a lie unless you know the truth."

Talk about sophistry. Let me type this slowly for those who don't get it.

It was a lie for Bush to say they had WMD's if he had no knowledge that they did. He didn't have to know they didn't have them.

How incredibly stupid.

[crawjo]

Originally posted by Uli
Those who are trying to look at things objectively only know some allegations. China, probably the most important power who also was against the unilatoral invasion is conspiciously absent in your bribery theory.

"My" bribery theory? The story is out, man. It's not a theory...it's an allegation. And I'm not the one doing the alleging.

Also, when did we start judging our foreign policy according to what a nation like China, of all places, happens to think?

[crawjo]

Originally posted by walto
"For Bush to have lied, he had to have known that there were no WMDs, right? It's not a lie unless you know the truth."

Talk about sophistry. Let me type this slowly for those who don't get it.

It was a lie for Bush to say they had WMD's if he had no knowledge that they did. He didn't have to know they didn't have them.

How incredibly stupid.

Uhm, no. It's only a lie if you know what you are saying is not true. If I say "I know that dinosaurs never existed because they aren't in the Bible" that is not a lie. That is me stating an assertion based on a belief backed by specific evidence. It is up to the individual to determine how competent I am in making my statement and assessing the evidence. But it is not a lie unless I know that dinosaurs did in fact exist but say otherwise.

[crawjo]

For the record, Bush did not say anything untrue when it came to the Niger claim (which was hardly a central point of the administration's case, but anyway.) What Bush said in his SOTU speech was that "British intelligence has learned...." And that was true. That was what British intelligence was saying.

[walto]

Uhm bullshit. If one acts as if one knows when really one has no fucking idea what one is talking about, that's not making a mistake. That's lying.

By the way, I'm sure there's candy on the moon.

[Uli]

Originally posted by crawjo
"My" bribery theory? The story is out, man. It's not a theory...it's an allegation. And I'm not the one doing the alleging.

Also, when did we start judging our foreign policy according to what a nation like China, of all places, happens to think?

The allegation is, that some people and organisations recieved money. The theory is that this was the reason for some countries' position aginst the war.

First, China, imho, is a nation to be seriously considered in international politics. Second, China is a member of the Security Counsel of the UN, the international organisation whose charters and agreements Bush's invasion violated.

If money, oil, or whatever was paid to the people cited, it does not follow that their countries therefore chose not to join the Bush war on Iraq. There are many compelling reasons for not hopping aboard the Bush war wagon, but what you Bush lock steppers don't seem to understand is that there really are people--indeed, nations--who see frivolous pre-emptive attacks on other countries as wrong.

If you want to talk about bribery, how about the money Bush and his thuggish regime waved in front of the Poles and the Turks, and others, I guess, in order to buy their participation in what turned out to be a rather pathetic "coalition"? We don't hear you people whine about that, do we? You keep harping on something that is conjecture (i,e, that bribes kept France out of Bush's Iraq attack) but you refuse to deal with something that is etched-in-stone fact (the Bush attempt to buy Turkey's participation). Amazing!

As the Bush tissue of lies continues to unfurl, you guys are going to be very busy thinking up new spins and imaginative theories.

[BFrank]

They either lied or are incompetent.
Both are grounds for dismissal.

[Bill Ashline]

Originally posted by BFrank
They either lied or are incompetent.
Both are grounds for dismissal.

They also had UN inspectors in the country searching for weapons and the lead inspector asking for patience and time, the very things they now ask for in completing their own inspections. In any case, war must always be the last resort, not the first. The urgency by which this administration pushed for war, the way they handled dissenters like Joseph Wilson, who debunked the claim about uranium in Niger, their sweetheart deals with Hallliburton, are legitimate grounds for impeachment. These people made decisions that led to the deaths of over ten thousand people. Clinton gets impeached for lying about a blow job. if anyone needs any evidence about the moral bankruptcy of the right, they only need to look at this administration and its defenders.

[walto]

Let me be a little clearer than I was in my wrath above. You don't have to know that there are no WMDs in Iraq for "We know that there are WMD's in Iraq" to be a lie. All that has to be the case is that you know that it's not true that you KNOW there are WMDs in Iraq. If Bush didn't realize that neither he nor his admin. actually knew this, but that they were all just speculating out loud and propagandizing, then he's stupider than I've ever given him credit for.

Goldberg's claim that not-P has to be known before the assertion that P can be a lie, is, as I said above, sophistry, pure and simple.

[crawjo]

Originally posted by walto
Let me be a little clearer than I was in my wrath above. You don't have to know that there are no WMDs in Iraq for "We know that there are WMD's in Iraq" to be a lie. All that has to be the case is that you know that it's not true that you KNOW there are WMDs in Iraq. If Bush didn't realize that neither he nor his admin. actually knew this, but that they were all just speculating out loud and propagandizing, then he's stupider than I've ever given him credit for.

Goldberg's claim that not-P has to be known before the assertion that P can be a lie, is, as I said above, sophistry, pure and simple.

Except that this doesn't take into account the way politics works. Politicians get nowhere by equivocating. Nobody can make a case for a war by saying "Well, on the one hand we have this, on the other we have this..." What you have to do is state your convictions, and then go with it.

If I say, "I know that human beings evolved over millions of years" am I lying? How do I "know" that?

The answer is, I don't. All knowledge is a belief based upon an interpretation of evidence. So should we just accuse everyone who claims to have knowledge of anything to be liars? What constitutes proof that someone really does KNOW something? It can't be that we later discover it to be true. After all, you could not know that there is candy on the moon, but if we go up to the Moon and find a Snickers bar, you would have been proven right, even though you "lied."

It seems to me that the only people accusing Bush of lying are the people who opposed the war in the first place. According to the polls, most Americans still support the war. I think this "lying" or "misleading" business has just become a way for Democratic politicians who supported the war to hedge on it in order to win over some votes from the angry Left.

[crawjo]

And furthermore, by your own definition above, why aren't you a liar for stating that Bush is a liar when you don't really KNOW whether he lied or whether he did not lie?

Lying is about the intention to deceive. Intention is a very hard thing to prove. All you are doing is stating your opinion.

[walto]

"If I say, "I know that human beings evolved over millions of years" am I lying? How do I "know" that?

The answer is, I don't. "

Maybe you don't, but a lot of people do. Ignoring defeasibility problems, knowledge is justified true belief. Learn a bit more science and you could know it too. The fact that it's possible that something turn out to be false doesn't prevent people from knowing something. If it did, nobody could know anything. That's not how English speakers understand this word. Lots of people know lots of things.

"What constitutes proof that someone really does KNOW something? It can't be that we later discover it to be true. "

You need a little more philosophy work (as well as science study), my friend. You know it just in case you believe it, it's true and you're justified in your belief. Nobody has to PROVE that anybody knows anything. This is philosophy 101.


"After all, you could not know that there is candy on the moon, but if we go up to the Moon and find a Snickers bar, you would have been proven right, even though you "lied."


If I said I knew there was candy on the moon and I didn't really know this -- not because I had good justification but it turned out to be false anyway, but because I really never had the justification I claimed to have--then I lied. It doesn't matter at all whether anybody ever finds a Snickers bar on the moon. It's completely irrelevant to fact that I LIED when I said I knew there was candy there. I had to have justification to make this claim.

This stuff really isn't that complicated if one isn't interested in making fog for the sole purpose of denying any culpability on the part of his darling president.

[walto]

"And furthermore, by your own definition above, why aren't you a liar for stating that Bush is a liar when you don't really KNOW whether he lied or whether he did not lie?"

My "definition" (I actually didn't provide a definition, but whatever) was that if somebody says they know something when they don't have justification for the claim, they're lying. & what I actually said was that the claim that one must know that not X is true in order for it to be possible for the claim "I know X" to be a lie was sophistry. That's the case (and, I think, pretty obvious) despite your protestations to the contrary.


"Intention is a very hard thing to prove."

I agree, but I don't have to prove anything about intentions for this to be true: Bush said his administration knew that there were WMD's in IRAQ. Given the case that the administration had no justification for this assertion, Bush's claim was either a lie or evidence of his having no idea of what claims his adminstration had warrant for. If you prefer that, OK.

[crawjo]

Originally posted by walto
"And furthermore, by your own definition above, why aren't you a liar for stating that Bush is a liar when you don't really KNOW whether he lied or whether he did not lie?"

My "definition" (I actually didn't provide a definition, but whatever) was that if somebody says they know something when they don't have justification for the claim, they're lying. & what I actually said was that the claim that one must know that not X is true in order for it to be possible for the claim "I know X" to be a lie was sophistry. That's the case (and, I think, pretty obvious) despite your protestations to the contrary.


"Intention is a very hard thing to prove."

I agree, but I don't have to prove anything about intentions for this to be true: Bush said his administration knew that there were WMD's in IRAQ. Given the case that the administration had no justification for this assertion, Bush's claim was either a lie or evidence of his having no idea of what claims his adminstration had warrant for. If you prefer that, OK.

No justification for the assertion? Okay, how about the fact that they'd used WMDs in the past, and that they had not accounted for their WMDs as per their signed agreements? None of that suggests to you an ongoing WMD program? All the reports from the U.N. and intelligence sources don't mean anything?

So do you consider Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to be liars as well?

[crawjo]

Originally posted by walto

Maybe you don't, but a lot of people do. Ignoring defeasibility problems, knowledge is justified true belief. Learn a bit more science and you could know it too. The fact that it's possible that something turn out to be false doesn't prevent people from knowing something. If it did, nobody could know anything.

So what is the difference between this and the situation facing the Bush administration? You don't believe they had justification for their belief in Iraq's WMD programs? If "the fact that it' possible that something could turn out to be be false doesn't prevent people from knowing something" then why isn't this same courtesy granted in Bush's case? Is it just because you don't like him and would like to see him kicked out of office? Bush's administration, after all, reached exactly the same conclusions as numerous other governments around the world, and yet when these conclusions turn out to be erroneous in some respect, you insist that it was Bush that "lied." Tell me how Bush was unjustified in believing in Iraq's WMD program prior to the war.