Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

I swear, I think these guys can say this stuff and drink a glass of water at the same time.

That's semi-daily (twice a day).

OK, if calling Bush a liar is "out-of-bounds," is it permissible to call him delusional?

Look, I know this has been done to death, but none of the Bush-bashers have ever confronted it: pleeeeeeeze reconcile these "lying" allegations with all the similar statements which were made by Clinton administration personnel.

Try to do it with just a modicum of intellectual honesty, too.

Not exactly. The Bush regime DID use the Saddam can attack the US in minutes claim before the vote in October 2002. Senator Bill Nelson reported that the Bush administration claimed that Iraq had the means to attack the East Coast cities. Of course, it was easily believable that Saddam's extensive navy off the coast of the US was an imminent threat.

link=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5385.htm

'Since the late 1990s, there have been several reports that Iraq was converting a fleet of Czechoslovakian jet fighters into UAVs, as well as testing smaller drones. And in a speech in Cincinnati last October, Bush mentioned the vehicles. "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," the president said.'

link=http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html

I've archived much of the evidence and claims leading up to the war in this post: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/000408.html

am writes:

"pleeeeeeeze reconcile these "lying" allegations with all the similar statements which were made by Clinton administration personnel"

Well, that's easy: the Clinton administration was lying too. See, eg, the article "A Legacy of Lies: President Bush misled the nation about the threat posed by Iraq. But he wasn't the first to do so" at http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/02/02_402.html

It always amuses me to see conservatives defend Bush by citing statements by Clinton. I guess their reasoning is: well, if BILL CLINTON says something, it's GOT to be true.

"I don't like being lied to." Paul Krugman

Why is the question of W's truthfullness centered on Iraq?

One reason there are people willing to categorize his statements as lies is that before war with Iraq became an issue, W had established a long track record of lying about anything where it was helpful. Thanks to the complaisant press, that was a lot.

For example: his Social Security privatazation arithmetic during the 2000 campaign. Everything he's ever said justifying his tax cuts. Don't get me started about the environment. Anyone interested can consult the Unofficial Krugman site, which archives his columns, for details. Nor are lengthy lists of W lies hard to find on the net.

These statements were lies, not mistakes. The man has an Ivy League MBA and the best advice in the world; not knowing is not an option.

5{ harder to convince people about truths involving math, and because there are a zillion economists willing to say otherwise. And why not? Glenn Hubbard just became dean of the Columbia B-School - it's clear that one's reputation *will* be enhanced by loyal service to the Bush administration. Not 'enhanced' in the 'truthful' sense, but many people don't care.

Also, many people figure that lies involving money are pretty normal, if not desirable. The GOP has been betting on that for a quarter-century, and winning.

Whereas, with war, only (IMHO) 40% of the American people figure that lies are acceptable. And it doesn't take a econ/accounting degree, or knowledge of where to dig up relevant statistics, to see that something's wrong in Iraq.

Could someone update me on what it was that Clinton was supposed to be lying about?

And I hate to have to say it but leave Monica out of it.

"OK, if calling Bush a liar is "out-of-bounds," is it permissible to call him delusional?"
Posted by Mushinronsha at July 3, 2004 09:55 PM

IIRC, that's what Kristoff did (or ignorant/naive, and surrounded by deluded advisors).

Now, IMHO, such a situation is a bad thing, and particularly so in a time of crisis, when the president gets much more political slack than normal.

So I feel comfortable judging Kristoff's honesty by the number and intensity of the columns he writes which criticize the administration, and demand its replacement with Kerry. After all, even if one doesn't like Kerry, he hasn't been proven ignorant, or surrounded by deluded advisors. That right there is a powerful argument.

However, I also confidently predict that Kristoff will be equivocal at the most. Because he is really excusing a liar, by making a hard-to-falsify claim of ignorance.

I would love to hear some examples of Clinton lying on an important matter of public policy, where by "important" I mean: not counting lies about blowjobs etc.

Bush, on the other hand, is a demonstrable pathological liar. There are too many evidence-packed book-length treatments of this question for the burden of proof be on anyone other than the Bush defender to prove that there is some reason why we should not believe that Bush lied to us.

Wild-Eyed Fool,

You should read the article I mentioned above, "Legacy of Lies," at http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/02/02_402.html

As you'll see, Clinton stated that when Saddam Hussein's son-in-law defected in 1995, he had told Unscom and the CIA that "Iraq was continuing to conceal weapons and missiles and the capacity to build many more.”

This was a lie. In fact, Hussein's son-in-law had said Iraq possessed no banned weapons or missiles of any kind.

Or take Clinton's claim in Rwanda in 1998: "All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."

This of course was also a lie. All you needed to "fully appreciate" what was going on was a subscription to the New York Times.

So Clinton (and the Clinton administration) certainly lied. They just didn't do it quite as enthusiastically as the Bush administration.

"lie n.
1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression".

Don't let the administration off the hook so easily. The statements were clearly "meant to deceive or give a wrong impression". They were lies.

Although Kristof has been a critic of Bush, I found his recent column annoying because in the last two months Bush and Cheney have both repeated things that at this late date we know to be false. At no point in Kristof's article did he try to excuse Bush by saying he made an honest mistake. What he said was this:

"Mr. Bush's central problem is not that he was lying about Iraq, but that he was overzealous and self-deluded. He surrounded himself with like-minded ideologues, and they all told one another that Saddam was a mortal threat to us. They deceived themselves along with the public, a more common problem in government than flat-out lying."

I highly recommend reading Kristof's response to Democratic critics of his article in his Kristof Responds segment.

It's important to hold Bush accountable and there's plenty of that to do without getting into stuff that's out on the fringe. There are two issues that Democrats should hammer over and over: that the Bush Administration is incompetent and that the credibility of our government, whatever the reason, is the lowest it's been in years.

am-

The Clinton administration claimed in 1998 that Saddam had weapons because it was true at the time. Then, Clinton bombed Iraq and destroyed them.

As for the not-yet-made claim that many other countries thought Saddam had weapons in 2002 - While the the intelligence agencies of other countries, as well as the CIA, thought that Saddam had some negligible amounts of biological and chemical weapons, the Bush administration went beyond what the CIA believed and into the 'stovepiped' garbage provided by the INC, including but not limited to claims of a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. Bush also lied about the size of the alleged bio and chem stockpiles, and lied that Saddam could conceivably attack the United States or threaten its interests.

EH,

You write: "The Clinton administration claimed in 1998 that Saddam had weapons because it was true at the time. Then, Clinton bombed Iraq and destroyed them."

This is incorrect. We now know Iraq did not have any weapons in 1998. It is also unlikely the Clinton administration believed they did. And at the time they certainly didn't claim that they had eliminated all of Iraq's purported weapons. Again, see the article "Legacy of Lies," at http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2004/02/02_402.html

Furthermore, although Desert Fox did target some dual-use facilities, it was in great measure an attempt to kill Saddam Hussein.

Re: the claim that many countries thought that Saddam had WMD in 2002: how on earth could all of those nations have been so wrong?

http://cjr.org/issues/2004/4/mccollam-list.asp

What do Clinton's lies have to do with anything? Is he running for president this year? Or is his behaviour our new moral yardstick?

I think that people should say what they think and make their case. If they think Bush is a liar, they should say so and make their case. If you have a stronger case than the others who disagree, then eventually people will begin to agree with you.

I think to do otherwise is to unilaterally disarm while the conservatives are waging all out ideological war. Why do that? Why should anyone hold back their honest opinon because of speculation about what the average person will think about whether you are polarizing or polite or what not? Why did some some one like Kristoff who can do real reporting and analysis waste his time with such stuff?

FACT: Iraq had Chemical weapons, and used them against the Kurds
FACT: The UN ordered Saddam's government to a) destroy the weapons and b) document the destruction of said weapons
FACT: Saddam refused to provide the documentation required in b) above (" Deploring the fact that Iraq has not provided an accurate, full, final, and complete disclosure, as required by resolution 687 (1991)" From the text of UN Resolution 1441)

INFERENCE: Iraq retained chemical weapons.

Where's the lie? Or even the flaw in the syllogism? There are some very smart people reading this blog. Please (re)read the text of resolution 1441, and then help me spot the lie.

Thanks.

Illius me paenitet, dux - Sorry about that, chief

Festina lente - Make haste slowly

I have been serving in Iraq for over five months now as a soldier in the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, otherwise known as the "ROCK."

We entered the country at midnight on the 26th of March; one thousand of my fellow soldiers and I parachuted from 10 jumbo jets (known as C-17s) onto a cold, muddy field in Bashur, Northern Iraq. This parachute operation was the U.S. Army's only combat jump of the war and opened up the northern front.

Things have changed tremendously for our battalion since those first cold, wet weeks spent in the mountain city of Bashur. On April 10 our battalion conducted an attack south into the oil-rich town of Kirkuk, the city that has since become our home away from home and the focus of our security and development efforts.

Kirkuk is a hot and dusty city of just over a million people. The majority of the city has welcomed our presence with open arms. After nearly five months here, the people still come running from their homes, in the 110-degree heat, waving to us as our troops drive by on daily patrols of the city. Children smile and run up to shake hands, in their broken English shouting "Thank you, mister."

The people of Kirkuk are all trying to find their way in this new democratic environment. Some major steps have been made in these last three months. A big reason for our steady progress is that our soldiers are living among the people of the city and getting to know their neighbors and the needs of their neighborhoods.

We also have been instrumental in building a new police force. Kirkuk now has 1,700 police officers. The police are now, ethnically, a fair representation of the community as a whole. So far, we have spent more than $500,000 from the former Iraqi regime to repair each of the stations' electricity and plumbing, to paint each station and make it a functional place for the police to work.

The battalion also has assisted in re-establishing Kirkuk's fire department, which is now even more effective than before the war. New water treatment and sewage plants are being constructed and the distribution of oil and gas are steadily improving.

All of these functions were started by our soldiers here in this northern city and are now slowly being turned over to the newly elected city government. Laws are being rewritten to reflect democratic principles and a functioning judicial system was recently established to bridge the gap between law enforcement and the rule of law.

The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored and we are a large part of why that has happened.

The fruits of all our soldiers' efforts are clearly visible in the streets of Kirkuk today. There is very little trash in the streets, there are many more people in the markets and shops and children have returned to school.

This is all evidence that the work we are doing as a battalion and as American soldiers is bettering the lives of Kirkuk's citizens. I am proud of the work we are doing here in Iraq and I hope all of your readers are as well.

Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo

"Die dulci fruimini!"