PoliBlog

Note, I really like your blog despite not agreeing with you...

But I'm a little mystified here. What exactly was the "broad" case for war? As a reasonably objective measurement that we can both agree on, perhaps just content analysis of the last two year's news stories in the US media. I'll bet that the "imminent threat from real WMDs (or WMDs to be constructed in *months* not years)" is the number one reason - by an astonishingly huge margin. Yes, you will find mentions of other reasons. After all, in the "war powers" act from congress, it mentions humanitarian reasons for going to war.

But the WMD argument - and it's imminent threat - dwarfed all other reasons.

Why? Well, as y'all on the right keep pointing out, we usually don't like fighting wars for humanitarian reasons. At a minimum we want some patina of a security interest. And that would have taken far greater support. At issue is that the pro-war right used the imminent threat of WMDs to rip and shred international organizations, treaties and alliances. Stuff that a lot of us in the world think is pretty valuable stuff. Not to mention bending the constitution yet again to weaken the separation of powers.

Without the WMD threat, we would have waited 'til the fall to go to war with Iraq. It was the WMD argument that the various anti-war groups and voices were derided and ridiculed with.

It was the pro-war trump card.

And now, without a whiff of WMDs, there isn't anything the pro-war right said about the threat that's been proven to be true. None of it. Not a scrap. Laughably so.

The right clubbed us about the head and shoulders and bullied us on the basis of a lie... We didn't like it one bit and we're going to hold you to your own standards about lying - no matter how trivial the lie or how technically true the statement was. After all, the right set the bar during Clinton's regime.

Without WMDs, with an obvious forgery being used in the SOTU, without a shred of Powell's UNSC allegations shown to be true, etc., etc... Well, it's enough to make someone believe in divine intervention. Old testament, Charlton Heston style retribution. I've still no doubt that the Administration will squeak by in another contested election, but it's going to be fun to see the spinning you're all doing. And we'll have it on tape, too.

Disagreement is part of the fun...

By broad, I mean more than the nuke issue. The current version of the Bush Lied meme is focused exclusively on that 16 word sentence about the uranium.

And yes, the WMD issue itself was a signficance, and indeed key, element of the arguement and I concur that the lack of discovery of those weapons at this time is a problem on a host of levels, as I wrote in one of my columns about a month ago.

However, lying, per se, is a difficult argument to make, as it means willful statements that are known to contradict the truth. Mis-interpreting data, or having the wrong data, is not lying.

Ah. I see.

Well, I think the Nigerian documents were known to be false in October of 2024, so putting in a known false statement constitutes a lie... Willfull, contradicting the truth. It wasn't misinterpretation nor a matter of having the wrong information...

Was BUsh's claim based on the discredited report. Or was his words based on the Brit evidence they say is true? Seems to me the exact quote from his speech was based on the latter.