Are you implying Bush had no motivation to lie? That is absurd. He had the biggest possible motivation: he planned and started an unpopular and unnecessary war, and he had to justify it!! Bush and his advisors (Rove, Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, Perle, etc.) were determined to invade Iraq even before 9/11 (the news reports on this are readily available, feel free to ask for examples).
Tell me this: why are you so eager to excuse the president from his duty to weigh the evidence? You seem to be saying that it was OK for him to just accept the CIA's conclusions, when the weakness of the evidence was readily apparent. You pretend that since the CIA is also responsible for weighing the evidence, the president need not bother to do it. This makes no sense at all; it seems to me you are just covering up for Bush's mistakes.
Yes..I am.
You are apparently saying that Bush deliberatly lied because he "he planned and started an unpopular and unnecessary war". Knowing he lied, it is clear he must have known it would be unlikely to find WMD. So he assumed the dems & the media would just ignor this? Give him a pass. Bush lied but thats OK it was a meaningless war. Wait thats what Kerry and the liberal media have been saying all along. I can only believe you think Bush wanted to be a one termer?
Why would Bush knowingly lie about WMDs when he knew he would look bad later, when the WMDs weren't found? He didn't. Bush (like all of us) did not know whether there were actually WMDs in Iraq, so he couldn't have lied about that. But he did lie about the EVIDENCE for WMDs. I think he felt "in his gut" that we would find WMDs. He believed the WMDs were there, even though he knew the evidence was weak. So he was not lying when he said he believed we would find WMDs. He lied about something else: the strength and reliability of the evidence he had seen. And he allowed his subordinates (Cheney, Tenet, etc.) to lie too, when they unforgivably overstated the case for WMDs.
Originally posted by Dan Nixon:"Determined to invade Iraq"...OF COURSE there were plans to invade. OLD PLANS, NEW PLANS, MANY PLANS for different senerios. Since 1998 Clinton made regime change the policy for Iraq. Military contingency plans seems a good idea. hey, since Gulf war, 1991..and Saddam failed to comply..Military contingency plans seems a good idea here too. I think sec defense would be NEGLIGENT not to have plans. I hope they have invasion plans on the table for Iran, Syria, N.Korea, etc. etc...but I hope we don't need em..
Dan, I was not talking about Pentagon war plans, which I suppose they have for every country on Earth (updated annually, too!). I was talking about the POLICY in favor of unilateral invasion of Iraq, which was created and nurtured in the neo-con think-tanks mentioned earlier. Let me know if you want the background info on Perle, Wolfowitz, Rice etc., and their prior careers as developers of these neo-con Iraq war policies in the 1990s.
Originally posted by Dan Nixon:I am just not sure what I can say...CIA, MI-5, Putin, Massad all saying the same. You cannot understand how one could have looked at the intell, post 9/11, and not concluded a threat may exist.
Dan, nobody is doubting that a "threat may [have] existed" in Iraq. We all agree with that. But what most Americans are now doubting is whether that threat was sufficient (and sufficently imminent) to justify a bloody and hugely expensive war.
Originally posted by Dan Nixon:Was "slam dunk" overstated..probably, but Tennant is the one who overstated to the Pres. Tennant is gone, as he should be. But I must conclude that to accuse Bush of deliberately lying is intellectually dishonast.
Ouch, Dan. I have made every effort here to lay out a rational explanation for my position. I have shown every step in my logic. And you have not pointed out a flaw in it. But then you call me intellectually dishonest? Dan, I usually reserve that for people who are obviously falsifying facts or using demonstrably faulty logic. It is not an appropriate accusation for someone who simply has a different point of view.
