Challenge for Sam Harris

[_richardMdBorn]

You wrote

Where were you when our last president was lying out of his butt so that he could take a Saddam trophy home to daddy?

Please support this statement. I recommend that you review the definition of lie before responding.

[_Sam Harris]

Richard, I'm sorry your candidate didn't win. I'm even more sorry that the current president isn't palatable to you (and others) on many a level. Nit-picking with his every word however, isn't going to change things.

Bush stated that Sadaam was responsible for 9/11. Now, I'm sure you can find some website that states he didn't say that. That is fine honey. Good for you.

But remember that the September 11th report said Iraq had nothing to do with that.

Also, Bush stated that there were WMD in Iraq. Where are they? Because the last time I checked, they hadn't been found.

I'm sorry, but due to recent developments on this forum with regards to the abuse of another, I don't want to post here anymore. So you win this one. Politics, like religion is one area where I do not need to win a debate to believe what I do. Be blessed dear, and pray that Obama doesn't have another term in office. I know it's killing you.

[_krose]

I don't know who wrote Bush's Saddam statements in the build-up to the invasion, but they were pretty cleverly crafted. He would never come right out and say that Hussein was behind the 11Sept plot. It was always an insinuation, made by using the terms in close proximity, often in the same sentence.

Most listeners got the underlying message (Saddam = al Qaeda) loud and clear without him having to actually say it directly, evidenced by the fact that a high percentage of Americans actually believed that Hussein was behind the attacks. It was very cunning.

Some of his biggest outright falsehoods were the line about yellow cake in the State of the Union address, the claim about aluminum tubes that can only be used for enriching uranium, and the claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members to make bombs and chemical weapons.

[_richardMdBorn]

Also, Bush stated that there were WMD in Iraq. Where are they? Because the last time I checked, they hadn't been found.

Guess what, being wrong about something is not lying. I suggest that you not accuse a person of lying when you don't know the definition of the word.

[_richardMdBorn]

I don't know who wrote Bush's Saddam statements in the build-up to the invasion, but they were pretty cleverly crafted. He would never come right out and say that Hussein was behind the 11Sept plot. It was always an insinuation, made by using the terms in close proximity, often in the same sentence.

Most listeners got the underlying message (Saddam = al Qaeda) loud and clear without him having to actually say it directly, evidenced by the fact that a high percentage of Americans actually believed that Hussein was behind the attacks. It was very cunning.

So he didn't lie

Some of his biggest outright falsehoods were the line about yellow cake in the State of the Union address

You’re wrong

The famous “16 words” in President Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address turn out to have a basis in fact after all, according to two recently released investigations in the US and Britain.
Bush said then, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .” Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.
• A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush’s 16 words “well founded.”
• A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from “a number of intelligence reports,” a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
• Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger.
• Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.
None of the new information suggests Iraq ever nailed down a deal to buy uranium, and the Senate report makes clear that US intelligence analysts have come to doubt whether Iraq was even trying to buy the stuff. In fact, both the White House and the CIA long ago conceded that the 16 words shouldn’t have been part of Bush’s speech.
But what he said – that Iraq sought uranium – is just what both British and US intelligence were telling him at the time. So Bush may indeed have been misinformed, but that's not the same as lying.

http://www.factcheck.org/bushs_16_words ... anium.html

the claim about aluminum tubes that can only be used for enriching uranium, and the claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members to make bombs and chemical weapons.

Please give me the exact quotes which are lies in your opinion.

[_krose]

I don't know who wrote Bush's Saddam statements in the build-up to the invasion, but they were pretty cleverly crafted. He would never come right out and say that Hussein was behind the 11Sept plot. It was always an insinuation, made by using the terms in close proximity, often in the same sentence.

Most listeners got the underlying message (Saddam = al Qaeda) loud and clear without him having to actually say it directly, evidenced by the fact that a high percentage of Americans actually believed that Hussein was behind the attacks. It was very cunning.

So he didn't lie

That's where you want to go, with a technical definition? It's not really a lie if I imply something and allow you to believe it, as long as I don't put the actual words together in the proper order? So I take it you agree that Pres. Clinton also did not lie when he said he didn't "have sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky, because he didn't actually have intercourse with her.

[_krose]

the claim about aluminum tubes that can only be used for enriching uranium, and the claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda members to make bombs and chemical weapons.

Please give me the exact quotes which are lies in your opinion.

These are the quotes I've seen:

"The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program ... Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." -- President Bush, Oct. 7, 2002, in Cincinnati

"We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." -- President Bush, Oct. 7.

I suppose you could say he was misled himself, or was saying things he truly believed. But you have to give everyone else the same benefit, and there is no denying that there was a systematic twisting and cherry-picking of data to sell the idea of invading a country that was not a threat to the USA and had not attacked us. Whether you make a distinction that this sales job was not technically lying is a minor distinction in my book. The end result was that people ended up believing things that were not true, and I believe that was the goal.

[_richardMdBorn]

I don't know who wrote Bush's Saddam statements in the build-up to the invasion, but they were pretty cleverly crafted. He would never come right out and say that Hussein was behind the 11Sept plot. It was always an insinuation, made by using the terms in close proximity, often in the same sentence.

Most listeners got the underlying message (Saddam = al Qaeda) loud and clear without him having to actually say it directly, evidenced by the fact that a high percentage of Americans actually believed that Hussein was behind the attacks. It was very cunning.

Please give me the quotes which you think were intentionally misleading.

[_richardMdBorn]

"We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases ... Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints." -- President Bush, Oct. 7.

The following appears to substantiate Bush’s statement.

THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.
The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.
The photographs and documents on Iraqi training camps come from a collection of some 2 million "exploitable items" captured in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. They include handwritten notes, typed documents, audiotapes, videotapes, compact discs, floppy discs, and computer hard drives. Taken together, this collection could give U.S.

intelligence officials and policymakers an inside look at the activities of the former Iraqi regime in the months and years before the Iraq war.
The discovery of the information on jihadist training camps in Iraq would seem to have two major consequences: It exposes the flawed assumptions of the experts and U.S. intelligence officials who told us for years that a secularist like Saddam Hussein would never work with Islamic radicals, any more than such jihadists would work with an infidel like the Iraqi dictator. It also reminds us that valuable information remains buried in the mountain of documents recovered in Afghanistan and Iraq over the past four years.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/P ... 0kmbzd.asp

[_moksha]

Also, Bush stated that there were WMD in Iraq. Where are they? Because the last time I checked, they hadn't been found.

Guess what, being wrong about something is not lying. I suggest that you not accuse a person of lying when you don't know the definition of the word.

I thought the CIA Director red lining this part of the State of the Union address and emphasizing that there was no reliable information to warrant that errant speculation, would have been sufficient for a person wishing to tell the truth.