Re: What If...

Ray, on the point of "lie" for the one assessment:

"Our intelligence sources tell us that [Saddam] has attempted to
purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons
production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these
activities."
- George W. Bush, State Of The Union Address, Jan. 28, 2003


Most people I think take "lie" in the sense 1. of the Merriam-Webster
definition below. If Bush did believe in the aluminum tubes assessment
substantively, I don't think the statement he made meets 1.'s critera
even if Bush knew good people thought it was flawed. That is, failure
to fully represent the context of the assertion does not turn that
assertion into a lie of type 1. if Bush believed in the substance of
the assertion. Maybe, maybe 2 (Ben Franklin's definition), if he was
aware of the controversy surrounding the tubes.

lie:

1 : to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
2 : to create a false or misleading impression

In contrast, if, as reported, Bush assured his listeners in a public
forum that the Patriot Act did not change the requirement for warrants
(after the NSA warrantless domestic intercepts were authorized), then I
could say he was lying in that speech, even if in some technical sense
it was "true" (he was going around the Patriot Act, FISA etc.; the
Patriot Act did not itself change the requirement).

The reason I keep coming back to the probability that a WMD threat in
some form was assumed for Iraq by the Administration's war proponents
is that this baseline correlation between public talking point and
private belief gives us one limit as to what was lied about in
reference to the mantra "Bush lied, people died," a mantra whose most
acute corollary is that the Iraq war was entirely bogus, whose true
objectives were never publicly enunciated and whose public objectives
were all sham.

.

Relevant Pages

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