That's the thing -- when I look at the entire body of evidence, I don't.
Huh. Do you think Mr. Orenthal J. Simpson was innocent of murder, too?

...and for some reason I suspect Saddam and Company weren't exactly virgin snow pure.
Well, who is? Certainly not the L.A.P.D.

That's how absurd your plausible deniability sounds. I will grant you that Geo. W. Bush's particular insanity may be more accountable by the phenomena of lying to oneself well enough before trying it out on others, but the creation of an intelligence branch to get "the facts we want to believe", is just more convolutions on the simple lie of why we should need to war with Iraq.

----- The earth may fail, but we will quiver

Main Entry:

lie

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English lige, lie, from Old English lyge; akin to Old High German lugī, Old English lēogan to lie

Date:

before 12th century

1 a: an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive; b: an untrue or inaccurate statement that may or may not be believed true by the speaker

2: something that misleads or deceives

3: a charge of lying

So, are you making the case for definition 1 a, or are you just saying he was "inaccurate?"

1a all the way...the only time Bush might ever get this designation from anyone.

It's the sound of Rove slapping his forehead..."Doh!  Why didn't we think of that?"

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

I think that most people would agree that an untrue statement made in accordance with the speaker's own belief is (potentially) forgivable, and that an untrue statement made despite said speaker's knowledge to the contrary is (generally) immoral.  There is, however, another type of falsehood - and it deserves mention if only to point out that the absence of the latter case does not imply the former: presenting a statement as true when in fact you have absolutely no idea as to its accuracy.

Consider the following scenarios:

As your family doctor, I falsely tell you that your wife's test results are fine, not knowing that there was a mix-up at the lab.
As your family doctor, I falsely tell you that your wife's test results are fine, although I know that she actually has a terminal illness.
As your family doctor, I falsely tell you that your wife's test results are fine, although I haven't actually bothered to check them, and have no intention of doing so.

Is #3 really less morally reprehensible - or less deceitful - than #2 on the basis that there is a possibility that my statement might turn out to be true?

Just to clarify - I don't claim to have any insight into what type of falsehood the article's "lies" might actually be (although, like most people, I have my own suspicions...)  I simply wanted to point out that a lie need not be a "deliberate falsehood" to be a lie.

Being able to convince me that they 'lied' would involve showing proof that they knew what they were saying, when they said it, to be bollocks.

Oh, they knew they were selling the American public a load of bullshit.  Pure, unmitigated bullshit.  Of course, Bush then claimed faulty intelligence was at the root of the lies he foisted on the American public, and there he was dead on - but not perhaps in the way he meant the term.

Look, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. were salivating at the thought of going into Iraq.  They snatched at any and every hare-brained idea they could to try and convince a credulous nation that Iraq had WMD, that Iraq was closely linked to Al Qaeda, that Iraq was poised to wreak nuclear destruction upon the west.  Lies, lies, lies.  And how utterly fucking convenient that "plausible deniability" is an out because of less than vigorous intel reports.

Did Bush convince people that war in Iraq was a needed thing with untruths meant to deceive?  Yes.  Does this make him a liar?  To my mind, an overwhelming "YES."

You are perfectly correct, inaccuracy is not the same thing as dishonesty.  However, in this case, when there is so much inaccuracy in spite of so many intelligence reports which could have been used to arrive at more accurate conclusions, we can reasonably conclude that the Bush administration was biased toward inaccurate conclusions.  They wanted to go to war with Iraq, and they made every effort to interpret their information in such a way as to support that objective.  I cannot regard their record as one of an unbiased and honest search for truth.

At the same time, ironically, I believe that a good case for war could have been made WITHOUT all these inaccuracies or biased interpretations.  Saddam Hussein really did present a problem for the US, whether he had weapons of mass destruction or not (although of course, the problem would have been more urgent if he did have WMD).  Something did have to be done about Saddam, who refused to comply with the terms of the Gulf War cease-fire and who violated a very long series of UN Security Council resolutions over a period of more than a decade, despite all diplomatic efforts.  At some point the world community had to either take action or admit that the UN is actually meaningless.  Even so, and with the hindsight that we now have, of a war that has gone very badly, it is clear that Bush did not act wisely in this matter.  Action was needed, but not the action that Bush took.  Personally I would say that the most critical error was in failing to obtain a clear consensus at the UN and particularly at the UN Security Council, which had it been obtained would have made it possible to act with the full support of the other nations of the world, just as the original Gulf War had been carried out with virtually unanimous support and participation of the member states of the UN (the only exception being North Korea).

Nice defense!  "They weren't lying, they were stupid."  The evidence tends to indicate that the Bushies are are both stupid and liars.