Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
It is not OK for the president to lie about the reason he is sending troops to battle. That said, I don't think Bush lied. His statements may not have been accurate, but I don't think he knew that to be the case at the time made.
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There's no serious dispute that Bush said things that weren't true. In absolving Bush of any bad intent, it's not clear to me what club thinks Bush was thinking.
I don't think Bush believed that he was misleading people. I think he decided upon his Iraq policy, for reasons that he thought were good, and then said what he had to in order to get popular support for it -- ignoring inconsistent facts and pushing whatever evidence there was as far or farther than it supported. Bush lied in the sense that he showed a reckless disregard for the truth.
And we can stop pretending that Bush simply repeated bad intelligence. First, we know that he was leaning on the intel agencies to tell him what he wanted to hear. Second, we know that he said things that went beyond what the intel was supporting.
