The Dangerous Lie That ‘Bush Lied’

By Laurence H. Silberman
Feb. 8, 2015

In recent weeks, I have heard former Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier on Fox News twice asserting, quite offhandedly, that President George W. Bush “lied us into war in Iraq.”

I found this shocking. I took a leave of absence from the bench in 2004-05 to serve as co-chairman of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction—a bipartisan body, sometimes referred to as the Robb-Silberman Commission. It was directed in 2004 to evaluate the intelligence community’s determination that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD—I am, therefore, keenly aware of both the intelligence provided to President Bush and his reliance on that intelligence as his primary casus belli. It is astonishing to see the “Bush lied” allegation evolve from antiwar slogan to journalistic fact.

The intelligence community’s 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction—a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.

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(Excerpt)

Read more:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/laurence-h-silberman-the-dangerous-lie-that-bush-lied-1423437950

If for example Bush lied about Saddam and WMD in Iraq, Why is it that William Jefferson Clinton is not also included in beginning and perpetrating the lie from 1992 until he left office January 21, 2001.

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998-Truth!

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998-

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998-

"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and Laws, to take necessary actions, (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction
programs."
Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998-

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002-Truth!

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002-​

Were all these Democrats lying about Iraq and Saddam's supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction before they claimed that Bush lied?

 

They wanted a war.......and the PNAC wanted a war..

 

The left have to lie because it is the ONLY way in which they can cover for all the democrats who supported the War. Everyone knows that Bush was given intelligence and one way or another, had to make a decision about what to do.

You make the best choice you can under those circumstances and the fact that we had just been nailed by a massive terrorist attack was probably a pretty good motivator also.

Anyone saying Bush lied about it is just being asinine. It is not his fault the intelligence community was wrong.

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Hold on, let me grab my tin foil hat for the, "Bush blew up the towers with explosives" argument.

 

the "lie" was in the expressions of absolute certainty of the existence of stockpiles of WMD's (not 90%, but "there is NO doubt") AND the continued assertions of meetings between Iraqi officials and 9/11 hijackers in the months prior to 9/11.

If it were true that there was NO DOUBT that Saddam had stockpiles, and if it were true that Saddam was somehow "in" on 9/11 and had a cooperative relationship with AL Qaeda, then the case for immediate invasion was tougher to deny. Neither of those things were true. And Team Bush knew that neither were true and continued to sell them to the US public. There was NEVER absolute certainty about WMD's and there NEVER was any way that Saddam was going to be buddy buddy with a group whose PRIMARY raison d'être was the elimination of secular arab nation states just like Saddam's. To continue to knowingly suggest otherwise on both points were lies.

 

http://www.academia.edu/4445078/The...ush_s_Rhetoric_of_Weapons_of_Mass_Destruction

lengthy, but on point.

 

You can't run a foreign policy based on "absolute certainty" because you'll never get it.

 

Bush rejected any intelligence that didn't support his scenario.. and marginalized all who disagreed with him.. His father was never such a fool as Dubya.

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Operation Mass Appeal was launched in the UK in the spring of 2001 to sell the war on Iraq. See Sir Derek Plumbly.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/w...nd-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons.html?_r=0

Liberals construct their scenarios with lies and stick to it.

 

The CIA is lying years after the fact.. They won't say who they bought these WMDs from or how much they paid for them.. but Operation Mass Appeal is a fact not in question.

 

Mark my words, had Bush decided not to invade Iraq and Saddam killed thousands of people with WMD, Liberals would be outraged and whining about that too!

 

I always felt, and still do, that Iraq was on GWB's to-do list from day one of his election. All he needed was an excuse to do it. That excuse came on Sept 11th, 2001. IMO, the issue of Iraq was not brought to GWB, it was handed down from GWB to search for and find some... any... plausible justification to topple Saddam Hussein.

 

"mark your words"?

with what? slathers of bull feces? Mark my words, if pigs had wings, we'd see them flying all over the place!

Mark my words, if Saddam had actually turned out to be a space alien from a highly evolved civilization in another galaxy, he would have repelled our attacks with strange alien death rays and boy, would THAT have made conservatives furious!

"Mark my words"

what a (*)(*)(*)(*)ing joke.

 

I'm "absolutely certain" that the U.S. has no coherent foreign policy at this time.

 

we KNEW he had rusty old canisters from the Iran-Iraq war... I think Rummy sold them to him and obviously kept the sales receipts. THOSE are not weapons of mass destruction anymore.... they are dangerous, but the "casualties" from them come from people handling them and don't fall into the "mass" category.... unless, I suppose, a bunch of catholics decided to tinker with them on Saturday evening at church.

 

Bush Lied.

Bush lied about Saddam having WMDs. The only thing found in Iraq were old, useless chemical weapons that were intended for Iran but never used.

Bush's lie cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars and around 400,000 deaths of innocent Iraqi citizens.

Bush lied to Congress, and they voted for his war.

We should never forget how important it is to not be swayed into war.

 

then don't SAY you have it. If you claim to have it, don't have it, and know you don't have it, that's a lie, then, isn't it?

 

What in the world made you think that? Was Bush talking about Saddam before 9/11 or something?

Something had to give you that indication so provide us with some quotes that made you think that.

Or are you just making this up?

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He was going off of information that he was given, what exactly did he lie about?

In fact, he shared that exact same information with the democrats and other nations and they all concurred with him. So where is the lie exactly?

 

OMG, do you mean that those persons quoted above wanted war? Guess that would include Kerry, Hillary and every Democrat that voted Aye! in 2003.

 

You're right, just as Madeline Albright, Dachle, Leven, Kerry, both Clinton's, Gore and Pelosi all were sure that there were WMD in Iraq.

 

It isn't a lie to make your case with absolutely certainty.

 

He said that there were WMDs in Iraq. He lied. But at least he got his war.

 

if team Bush had said, "there is little doubt", or "we have no doubts", that would have been stretching the truth, but it would not have been a lie. To say, "there is no doubt", when they were well aware that levels of doubt did, in fact, exist, was a lie.

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most of them were PRETTY sure. To my knowledge, only Gore stated that there was NO doubt that Saddam had stockpiles of WMD's... and he said that long after he was no longer in any official governmental capacity.

 

and again... it wasn't just the lying about the absolute certainty of stockpiles, it was the concatenated story of Saddam's boys meeting with Muhammed Atta in the months PRECEDING 9/11 that gave urgency to the whole story.

Within days of 9/11, everyone in America knew that a man named Osama bin Laden had been responsible for the attacks. A year and a half later, the majority of Americans thought that Saddam was responsible. I suppose the Bush brown nosers and Faux News lovers on here think that just happened by MAGIC.

 

That's funny. They found nothing but old chemical weapons.

I noticed that people seem to ignore the weapons sent to Syria that were used on the Syrian peop,e.

 

and you know for a fact that those came from Iraq?