barry2952 said:
In my opinion GWB reacted to things that proved to not be "facts", so that negates your statement that that is a Liberal trait. Did he have plain, unbiased facts to work with? Why do you hold GWB's detractors to a different standard than you hold him or any of his supporters?
I do not, but his detractors make outrageous claims that have little or no factual basis for support. I'm all for responsible criticism, but when you have Ted Kennedy saying publically that the war was a fraud cooked up in Crawford, or that it was retribution for the assassination attempt on GW's dad, or that its all for oil, those statements are simply rhetoric designed to enrage the political opposition. I disregard such statements because they are not backed up by any evidence, but many of the critics take it as gospel without a second though.
Here's my thinking on this.
There has been much from the President's critics that he lied about intelligence in order to take the country to war with Iraq. However, if you believe that the President lied, you must believe that it was done deliberately and intentionally -- there must be an intent to deceive. These elements are necessary for a lie (e.g., knowing the truth but deliberately telling someone something else). But I've seen no evidence to suggest that the president made any deliberate deception of any kind. Without evidence of a deliberate and intentional deception, I find it hard to accept that he lied about the intelligence.
Assuming you agree with all that, how does one resolve the issue that no stockpiles of WMD were found despite intelligence saying they were there? From all the facts and evidence I've seen, what happened was that the intelligence was flawed, but no one knew it at the time it was used to make policy decisions about going to war with Iraq. Remember, the intelligence we used was the same intelligence that a variety of foreign intelligence services saw, the UN saw, and the Clinton administration saw. And everyone agreed that Saddam had stockpiles of WMD. Since this evidence was widely accepted as true, it was used by the adminstration (after the events of 9/11) as one justification (among many) for invading Iraq. No one knew at the time that this intelligence was flawed -- not the President, not George Tenent, not Dick Cheney, not Don Rumsfeld, not Colin Powell, not Tony Blair, not Kofi Annan. Everyone thought it was correct. When it turned out to be incorrect, the President's critics say he lied about intelligence. But that conclusion doesn't follow. He didn't lie. He used false intelligence information about one aspect of Saddam's situation to honestly formulate one aspect of a larger policy decision. Since the President honestly believed the intelligence that was presented to him and his administration was correct, I cannot conclude he lied when stockpiles of WMD were not found.
The president's critics, on the other hand, do not accept this. They say there is something more nefarious going on, but they cannot provide any evidence for it. This is why I say most of the critics (who happen to be largely liberal) are basing their conclusions on "a feeling" than on hard evidence. I say present the credible evidence to me and I will consider it and adjust my beliefs accoridngly.
The real question we should be asking, regardless whether you are conservative, liberal, Democrat or Republican, is what can be done to make sure the intelligence our country collects, analyzes, and uses is accurate. That's the root problem here. The whole business about the president lying is more rhetoric than anything else and distracts from the true problem that needs to be fixed.
