Is Bush lying about his lies?

moghrabi

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May 25, 2004
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Is Bush lying about his lies?

November 25, 2005

BY ANDREW GREELEY

Not only did the Bush administration deceive the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, it is now deceiving them about the deceptions. In a burst of political tantrums, the president and the vice president have shouted that it was "irresponsible" to assert that there had been deception and it was unfair to the troops fighting in Iraq.

Is the administration lying about its lies? That many of the arguments in favor of the war were false is beyond question. Nor can there be any serious doubt that the new argument that it is irresponsible to question the old arguments is also false. But if a lie is a conscious effort to deceive, then the charge that the president and the men around him deliberately lied and are now lying again, then that issue must be left to heaven. It is enough to say they spread falsehoods three years because they had made up their minds that there had to be a war and are now spreading falsehoods about the original falsehoods. The president is not a man who likes to admit he was wrong. Therefore, one must cover up the mistakes.

Consider some of the evidence. Vice President Dick Cheney and the president both insisted that Iraq was trying to import "yellowcake" uranium for nuclear weapons. Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and the vice president warned of "mushroom clouds."

Bush says that everyone agreed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He has said in the past that it was not his fault that all the intelligence agencies of the world believed that they did. Therefore, the intelligence agencies of the world were to blame for the mistake, he wasn't. Everyone in Washington, he argues, supported the war.

In truth, many Democratic senators did, not realizing how much the case in favor of the war had been cooked. In the national intelligence estimate issued just before the war, the internal dissent was excluded. The administration had created an atmosphere of fear and deception that indeed won support for the war.

Now we realize that even before Sept. 11, the powerful people in the administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz) wanted a war with Iraq. The day of the attack some of them tried to find evidence that Iraq had attacked us. Now there was certainly going to be a war, and the challenge was to present a case to the American people to win their support for the war.

The search for evidence was essentially a search to make the case, not a search for the truth, much as one prepares a political campaign or support for legislation or drafts a legal brief. One looked for evidence that would justify the war as preventing Rice's mushroom clouds. One took whatever one could find. Even Colin Powell says his sad attempt to be the Adlai Stevenson of his day was the worst experience of his life. The U.N. inspectors found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But that conclusion was dismissed, in effect, as a typical example of U.N. "waffling." No one in the administration, as far as I know, has ever said that the inspectors were right. It would seem such a suggestion is "irresponsible."

The buck stops in the Oval Office. If the president was not deliberately lying to the American people, he nonetheless presided over what was in effect and in truth a massive deception. He would be much wiser to admit his mistake and assume responsibility, but it is apparently not in his character to do so.

Moreover at least three-fifths of the American people now believe that he did in fact deceive them. The question arises as to whether he and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are also deceiving us on the certainty of victory in Iraq. Granting for the sake of an argument that we must train a functioning Iraq army, why will no one in the administration predict how long that will take? Why after several years of that effort is there only one fully capable Iraqi unit (of 750 men)?

James Fallows, in a long and careful article in the Atlantic Monthly, says that it would probably take 10 years, just as anonymous hints from the Pentagon assert. The alternative is set a strict schedule for withdrawal, which Fallows admits would be a loss of honor.

Whose honor? That of the United States or those who fabricated the reasons for the war? What honor do Bush and Cheney have left?

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moghrabi

House Member
May 25, 2004
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RE: Is Bush lying about h

How can he not lie. He never told the truth all his life. He lied to get into university. He lied while in the army. He lied as a governor. And now, the biggest lie of all, as a president, that is killing innocent Iraqis and Americans, and causing more terrorists to pop up everywhere.
 

Ocean Breeze

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Jun 5, 2005
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Of course bush is lying about his lies. He has spun himself into a dangerous web of lies ......and one has to wonder if he even knows what is true anymore. He might even "believe" his own lies now.

suspect that he will start to trip himself up now....as he is not smart enough to maintain without some foot in mouth disease. When he starts to seriously contradict himself..... people might take better notice. .....and start coming to some realizations.
 

Ocean Breeze

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 5, 2005
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Re: RE: Is Bush lying about h

no1important said:
"W" is a compulsive liar and has been for a great part of his life. I doubt he even knows what the truth is anymore.

yep........and the bloke has a lot of nerve to show up at ANY church.... :wink: (last I heard the "church" tends to frown on stuff like that............unless the church is doing the lying :wink:
 

jimmoyer

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Apr 3, 2005
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When I look at a so-called liar, I consider what circumstances forces the liar to lie.

Is that necessary to consider any mitigating circumstances for a liar ?

Maybe not.

But I like to look dispassionately enough at the liar to let my outrage NOT blind me to real truth of the situation.

Again this might not be necessary for you all to do, but I find it helpful in unforseen ways to glean more of the truth.

This method has helped me gain more insight than my outrage would allow.

Hubris on my part ?

Maybe.

But I find out more this way than any other way I know.
I find out more from a liar this way.

Then I learn something.

And I've learned that Bush's lies are of all different kinds and stripes. Again, not that it should matter to you.
But it tells me something more about the matter lied about.
 

moghrabi

House Member
May 25, 2004
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RE: Is Bush lying about h

Jim, Are you a poet of some sort or a linguist. I get dizzy reading your posts at times. No offense to you, but sometimes I have to read them more than once to know what the heck you are talking about, and still don't get it.
 

jimmoyer

jimmoyer
Apr 3, 2005
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Sorry Moghrabi.

I even had to cut that post short before I could fully develop the idea of how to analyze a liar beyond the normal reaction of outrage.

If you want more on this thought, I'd be glad to explore it with you. I'm sure you and everyone else has thought and felt the same things about the psychology and circumstances of a lie.

It's hard to get past the outrage and for most of us the outrage is the final thought we should have on the matter.

The Bush administration has made some lies I find worse than others. Such as it's denial of coercing the top military to say what the Bush administration wants to hear.

I found that Bush saying that he provided the troops his Generals asked for, and not one of them asked for more troops.

But the circumstances of this liar are understandable about having discipline on the plan of the Bush and not having everyone going in ten maverick directions at once.

The lies about scapegoating the lower echelon on the matters of torture and abuse are transparent to all of us.

What I'm learning beyond my own outrage on this coverup of the American gulag and the abuse of prisoners is the debate about the use of torture to provide us defense.

Now beyond the lies we get to the real debate about Torture in a world where a very few or even one individual (be it a President or a Terrorist) can exact great damage on a huge population.

The lies cover up the real debates about our choices.

Nothing new. No new insight here.

I guess I'm just rambling.

Except for some vague idea that we must look past our outrage and keep our heads cool and analyze further what we see beyond the surface.
 

Ocean Breeze

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 5, 2005
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http://pww.org/article/view/8172

US torture dungeons and more LIES.

the layering of the lies that have been told , could take some time to unravel. Not sure the bushcons know what is the truth anymore.

How can anyone in their (sound body and mind) consider believing anything the US regime says now???
 

Ocean Breeze

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 5, 2005
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Re: RE: Is Bush lying about his lies?

zenfisher said:
To be fair OB...Bush is only lying when his mouth is open... :nike:

my goodness. :!: My bad :wink: :lol:

(but he can lie from/in any position.;-)

there otta be a prize for "lier of the year'.........and he would win hands down. Second : is Cheney........and all the way down the line. :;-)

"those that lie together........." ;-)
 

no1important

Time Out
Jan 9, 2003
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Dubya looks like Lyndon Johnson reborn

[teaser]

He read to grade school kids in English and Spanish, extolled the virtues of clearing brush in summer heat, and used a quick wit to puncture everyone's pretensions, starting with his own.

Dubya moved about freely, even in the heart of liberal Seattle. With its instinct for the circular firing squad, our looney left chose to torment Al Gore.

Half a decade later, scenes from a Bush presidency are strikingly different. We're watching a kind of Lyndon Johnson reborn.

Bush travels the country in a bubble, isolated and insulated. As with LBJ when Vietnam went south, uniformed personnel are used as props for speeches. The president lashes out at critics of his stalemated war. [/teaser]

Eerie if you ask me.
 

pastafarian

Electoral Member
Oct 25, 2005
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OK, I'll admit it: we are officialy through the looking glass:

Check THIS out

Pakistan's government is to remove a poem from a school textbook after it emerged the first letters of each line spelt out "President George W Bush".

The anonymous poem, called The Leader, appeared in a recent English-language course book for 16 year-olds.

Critics say it praises Mr Bush. Its rhyming couplets describe someone "solid as steel, strong in his faith".

Whoah!!! Dim the lights and put on some incense, I believe I'm having a flashback!!!! 8O
 

Ocean Breeze

Hall of Fame Member
Jun 5, 2005
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pastafarian said:
OK, I'll admit it: we are officialy through the looking glass:

Check THIS out

Pakistan's government is to remove a poem from a school textbook after it emerged the first letters of each line spelt out "President George W Bush".

The anonymous poem, called The Leader, appeared in a recent English-language course book for 16 year-olds.

Critics say it praises Mr Bush. Its rhyming couplets describe someone "solid as steel, strong in his faith".

Whoah!!! Dim the lights and put on some incense, I believe I'm having a flashback!!!! 8O

or a hot flash :wink: Wonder who took the time to figure this out....;-)
 

moghrabi

House Member
May 25, 2004
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RE: Is Bush lying about h

I would like to see the poem. I have been googling to find it. Not there. Never been there I guess.