There’s a nice summary of the Iraq issues on Cold Fury:
Okay, look, I?ll put this as simply as I can:
1) Condi didn?t lie to anybody, and neither did Dubya. Lying implies both knowledge and intent, and neither has been remotely established, nor will they be, because they do not exist. We know that Saddam at one time had WMD?s; there is simply no argument possible on this. The fact of their existence was unquestioned by anybody, including the UN, after the first Gulf War, and we know he actually used them on more than one occasion. What we don?t know is where they all went, and if you on the Left were truly concerned about American security in the age of global terrorism you?d be a lot more worried about that than you are. You are not serious about defending this country. You are dead wrong, and you do not deserve to be taken seriously.
2) Bush acted on the best intelligence available in making the decision to remove Saddam from power; the same intelligence led President Clinton to make regime change the official goal of the USG back in ?98. You on the Left did not denounce that policy change when Clinton made it; your interest in the matter begins and ends with your hatred of your fellow Americans who happen to be Republicans. You on the Left are not seriously concerned about the security of this nation. You are dead wrong, and you do not deserve to be taken seriously.
3) WMDs were by no means the only reason to remove Saddam. Saddam was an avowed enemy of this country. He called for our destruction many, many times. He aided and abetted Islamic terrorists of every warp and woof…
Go see the rest of it.
Wanta know a secret?
We on the left really did think Clinton was wagging the dog on Iraq…
Unfortunately we don’t have a word for deliberately suppressing or avoiding knowledge that relates to the truth of a statement. It’s true that such behavior is technically not a lie, but that sort of legalistic weasel-wording is a hallmark of this administration and very much a part of the problem. The claims about Iraq might not have been lies, but the case for war in Iraq was also based on claims about those claims – e.g. that we had used the best and most complete information, and were certain of our conclusions. Those meta-claims were and remain lies in their own right, and the effect is just as damning as though the claims about Iraq had been.
Unfortunately, the trail of confusion & deception is easy to follow if you take the time. Eliot Weinberger has taken the time, & he puts it into perspective using the administration’s own words. So to go straight to the horse’s mouth, read his “What I Heard About Iraq”. It’s on the web. A lot of water has passed under the bridge & Weinberger has condensed it into about 20 pages. The “weaseling” Jeff Darcy refers to is obvious. Plus an underscore of incompetence, if not worse.
Lying implies both knowledge and intent…
Remember, if you start to justify your own sincerity, you’ll only wind up being more insincere…
The term “WMD” is a slippery one: do we mean strategic weapons? Tactical weapons?
The Bush regime had always implied it was the former, and all the evidence we’d ever seen was of the latter.
Hiding behind Clinton’s skirts won’t impress anyone: nobody on the right believes Clinton because an intern fellated him, and nobody on the left believes him because he he had a mentally damaged guy executed to get a bump in the polls.
I’d wish the Iraqi people the best, but that’s probably treason in today’s USA…