Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
"Lied" is a poor shorthand for reckless disregard for the truth. Go back to those quotes I posted from the Woodward book. On Friday, General Myers tells Bush that they've been looking for WMD in Iraq for 10 years and they haven't found any. On Sunday, Bush stands in front of reporters and says, "Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." What was he thinking? I don't rightly now.
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What "we" was looking.
I knew the inspectors hadn't found anything. You knew that, right?
If someone had asked "do you think covert inspections had been done that did discover WMDs?" I would have said no, because they would have been publicized.
So me, thinking US citizen, heard Bush to say "we knew he had the weapons, we can't see that he got rid of them, so we assume he has them." The inspectors hadn't found any, sure, but that seemed part of the game. Not even you can claim the inspections were allowed to operate as necessary, can you Ty?
Blix has said he was sure we'd find some when we invaded and the UN kept the Sanctions in place, apparently because it assumed they were there.
Bottom line,
1 everyone knew "we hadn't found them in 10 years."
2 everyone assumed he had them
3 Bush wasn't willing to run that risk
4 I would have been angry if he was willing to run the risk