One Lie is Okay, 935 Lies = War

Not that there's anything remarkably surprising about this. Most of us here in this hippy haven understand full well that the War in Iraq was forged under false pretense, and there have been plenty of news stories in the past five years to back up our suspicions.

But, now there's a study showing that, in fact, it was the confluence of 935 lies the Bush administration told in order to set the stage for war with Iraq. 935. That's almost a thousand lies. How long does it take one to come up with 935 lies? If you lined up the lies the Bush administration reportedly told, according to this study, we wonder how far those lies would stretch. Would they be able to build a bridge across the Tigris? If those 935 lies could be bricks, could they even begin to rebuild one destroyed home in Iraq?

If only we could bring back the life of one person killed for each lie reportedly told by the Bush administration....well, there would still be thousands of lives lost.

Of course, the validity of this study is yet to be shown. But, it was conducted by the Center for Public Integrity (a non-profit organization of nearly 100 investigative journalists in 48 countries) and the Fund for Independence in Journalism (which states its primary purpose as "providing legal defense and endowment support" for the Center for Public Integrity).

According to the article on MSN.com:

The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

There's also this little gem from later in the article:

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.

"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

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By Kim Ruehl in News on January 23, 2008 3:25 PM

Comments [rss]

Troy Morris

This lie vs. Lie and truth vs. Truth debate has been going on since (wo)man could lie. The idea of and absolute is really what is being debated which branches into can one know something which is not true or only think they know.

I broke up with a girlfriend in college over this debate. Oh college, full of philosophical battles.

Courtney

I see your point Seth (and still haven't read Pinker's new book, dammit!). I still believe, however, that Bush et al looked for the information they wanted to support their case, when there was conflicting info out there as well. They then pushed that information as the truth, so it is a grey area whether they were lying or not, but I don't think you can say they were aggressive in finding out what the real situation was before pressing for war. So, perhaps not lying, but definitely steering clear of the truth when they could. Perhaps like suspecting your girlfriend is cheating, but avoiding all evidence that might make it really true so you'd have to deal with it, and only believing what you see/hear that convinces you she isn't.

Seth

Courtney, I think the better analogy would be if, after she denied it, I told friends "My girlfriend isn't cheating on me."

If I found out later that she'd had been cheating on me, was I lying back then? No. I just had wrong information.

The question is, where is the line between "believing" something and "knowing" something.

Stephen Pinker has a whole big chapter about this very topic in his book The Stuff of Thought.

Troy Morris

Well, for one, really quickly, Bush has been quoted as asking for only intelligence that helps with a one resolution and one resolution only. Any other conflicting data is thrown out.

But more importantly than this worn out debate of if Bush and his House are Good, Bad or Ugly is this:

"There needs to be a better way to hold irresponsible media outlets accountable for regurgitating the effective and folksy lies that the conservative echo chamber so productively produces. -jwhieger"

Yeah, it's called the FCC and we (the people) own it. We own the air above us. Not the FCC, not the FAA. Unfortunately, those are not elected offices. They're appointed by... yeah, the Presidents office.

Look, we can do things to end the media's control, we just have to pay attention to the FCC and put the pressure on. These radio and television stations have to ask our permission to broadcast. We give them that right. We can take it away.

Same thing goes for corporations. We, the people, have the power to say "You can't exist anymore."

But, way easier said than done.

kdupre

Bush merely reported what world wide intelligence agencies told him about Iraq. This is not lying.

Check the facts if you don't believe me.

Saddam bragged about having weapons of mass destruction! Look up the news of Iraq during the period prior to the war to see for yourself.

If you reject the idea that reporting what intelligence agencies believe you truly have a serious problem with understand the definition of a lie.

What do you expect Bush to use for intelligence? A crystal ball?

first hill bill

Funny how the post is about misleading the public by lying or giving false pretenses to promote an agenda.

The Center for Public Integrity is anything but non-partisan or unbiased. Big donors include George Soros, the Barbara Streisand Foundation, The Liberty Hill Foundation (anyone read Upton's books? not exactly a fan of any sort of capitalism), Bill Moyers, Popplestone Foundation, Scherman Foundation, etc. Wiki the major donors of the group.

The CPI is misleading the public in much the same way that Bush admin. is accused of doing. They have an obvious agenda and of course their "study" will support that agenda. Look at their damn donors. Gee.....I wonder why they think Bush conducted a deceitful campaign to drag the country into a war?

David F.

Not to be contrarian, or suck up to the editor, but Courtney's analogy doesn't make sense. Or I'm missing it. Where is the definitive proof that Bush and his minions were actively lying. Where is the proof that they were stating things that they knew at the time were false with the intention of deceiving us?

Personally, I suspect that they were probably lying, but I haven't seen persuasive evidence. The thing that bugs me is that whther or not they had WMD's, we should have not gone in the way we did. And this liar, liar stuff assuages the guilt of the many, many people who supported the war and now no longer do. Golly, we were lied to!

I thought that there probably were some WMD's in Iraq -- Hans Blix and bunch of other non-Bush folks thought the same thing. I also thought invading the country and toppling the govermnet was sure to make a bad situation much, much worse.

And now I find myself in the odd place of being against the war from the get-go, but against leading the people in Iraq into a huge bloodbath by pulling out completely. It's as if the cops come in, ransack your house looking for drugs, break your kid's arm, find no drugs, burn down your house, and then leave you to pick up the pieces.

Courtney

Er, Seth, let's say you're dating someone and start to suspect she's cheating on you. You ask her point blank, she says she isn't and you believe her. But later you find out definitively she was cheating. Still not a lie? Methinks not.

Kim Ruehl

i don't know, i think even if you believe a lie, it's still a lie. either it got in your head because someone else lied to you, or it got in your head because you made it up. either way, it's not based on facts.

jwhieger

Well I was watching Glenn Beck last night and he told me if we elect a progressive President all our freedoms will vanish because of P.C. tribunals or something.

There needs to be a better way to hold irresponsible media outlets accountable for regurgitating the effective and folksy lies that the conservative echo chamber so productively produces.

Seth

To be further fair and balanced.

I don't think it's a lie if you believed it.

I think the Bushies actually did think that Iraq had and/or was trying to produce WMDs.

Maybe they had no rational basis for thinking that, they did think it.

In retrospect, they were wrong, but it's not a "lie" anymore than "The Seahawks will beat the Packers" is a lie.