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Originally posted by Spanky
1) I don't think he did something wrong. If his opponent had won we may have never gone to war with Germany.
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Here is where we disagree, then. I don't see a whole lot of virtue when political leaders mislead people to do something that they think is wise policy but which they know the people oppose.
And it's not at all clear to me that the GOP had much chance of winning in 1940.
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2) This is just not a theory I have come up with. I can't believe that you have not heard it before. It is pretty much conventional wisdom (not that that is evidence of its truth) that FDR lied in the 1940 election. It is also conventional wisdom that he pushed the envelope to get us in the war. Before posting on this board I had never heard anyone argue against that idea. Most of the experts that I have heard expound this theory are big FDR supporters. They justify his deceit because after the war, when people saw how awful the Nazi were, it was clear he was right. I agree.
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I have heard it before, e.g. from Penske, and I didn't say it was wrong. I just said that I'm not convinced that FDR was misleading people, and I'd want to see more of what he said before I reached that conclusion.
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But unlike you, when it comes to foreign policy, I expect Presidents to lie, just not when they are under oath.
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That's too bad. Is there a principled reason why you think this is OK, or are you just used to presidents who will not live up to your principles?
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3) As far as Bush is concerned I am convinced he thought there were WMDs. He may have favored the evidence that backed up his belief but that is a far cry from intentional lying - like FDR did. I actually would have minded it so much it he did lie (as long as it was not under oath), but I don't think he did.
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I think I have been pretty clear about this. I don't think Bush knew that there were no WMD and decided to mislead people. But I also am convinced that his senior advisors presented him a picture in shades of grey. They extrapolated from what we'd known in the past, they gave him their best guess about intel, etc. Some of the expressions of ambiguity have made it into the public record -- e.g.,
this -- and yet Bush and his advisors shared none of these doubts with the public. Thus, Tommy Franks tells him that they've been looking for WMD for years and have never found them, and Bush turns around and says that we know Hussein has WMD. I think we can agree that if he'd said the same thing under oath, he'd have a problem.
There is no doubt that during the run-up to the war, the intelligence agencies were being pressured to produce information and conclusions favorable to path Bush was inclined to reach -- i.e., to help him make the case for war. Did this happen because Bush was trying to snow people? I don't think so. But the administration was trying to sell its policy, and an accurate picture of the ambiguity of the intel would not have been helpful, so this was not shared with the public. Instead, you have an administration that was pushing the envelope at every turn -- e.g., including statements about uranium from Niger in presidential speeches when our own intelligence officials said they shouldn't be in there. The administration was picking and choosing what intel to use, and representing it as fact.
