WWTBAM Bored

That's the exact number of false statements (read: lies) made by the Bush Administration in order to gin up support for the Iraq occupation/war, as stated in an extensive study by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/ ... cnn_latest

Absolutely mindblowing. I thought that number was somewhere around 300.

Remember: That's 935 lies before the occupation. We're approaching 5 years since the occupation began.

I told you so! I told you so! I told you so! But does anybody listen to ol' Bob? Nooooooo.......

I would not presume to defend the people who made the various statements: they've obviously botched this from start to finish, and obviously had an agenda from start to finish. But...

There is (or should be) a distinction between 'lies' and 'mistatements'-- just because something is not true (a matter of 'fact') does not necessarily make it a lie (a value judgment). As an example, on this Bored we have had several discussions about evolution, and some of us have been pretty strong in stating that 'human evolution' is bunk, while others have been equally strong in stating that human evolution is a fact: obviously they cannot both be correct, one group or the other is 'mistating' what actually happened during human history, but regardless of which group is actually correct, I don't think that either group (at least, the people who are on this Bored) are actually 'lying,' rather, I think that both are stating the truth as they understand it, it's simply a matter of one of the groups simply being incorrect. Newton stated certain 'laws' as being true, but it turns out that they are not quite true, in that his laws do not actually apply to (among other things) the orbit of Mercury, but I do not think it is fair to say that Newton 'lied' when he formulated those laws. If you read genetics texts from the 1940's or so, and you will learn that the normal human cell contains 48 chromosomes (except for the sex cells, which have 24), but that is now known to be incorrect (most of us have 46 in most of our cells); the geneticists weren't lying, and it was not that they could not count, they were just certain that they actually saw 24 pairs of chromosomes, and they reported it thus. Read the newsmagazines of the 1970's, and you will see that the prevailing scientific opinion was that we were heading into an Ice Age (glaciers were advancing to levels not seen before, ocean levels were dropping, etc.), but unless I've missed something, it never happened; but again, I don't think that the scientists whose projections showed we would all freeze to death by 1990 were lying, they were just... wrong.

In all of these instances, what you have is people making statements based upon the facts they have before them, and stating what they believe to be true; they are not lying, they are just... wrong. When Bush, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the others were going on and on about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, they were not making stuff up out of whole cloth-- their claims were grounded upon CIA reports, and reports from British intelligence, French intelligence, Russian intelligence, Israeli intelligence and they Jordanian intelligence, all of which were saying the same thing... and all of which were wrong. You can criticize them for having picked and chosen their way through all those reports (just as you can criticize the intelligence agencies for picking and choosing the items that they actually reported), but that does not mean that anyone was 'lying,' it means that they were stating the truth as they believed it to be, based upon the facts they had in front of them.

I've made the point before that if you want to see where someone's bias lies, look at where they make their mistakes. We all see the world through the prism of our bias (or fundamental belief system, if you prefer), and we tend to see what we expect to see, which is sometimes not true in an absolute sense. That is what is going on here: these people were all convinced that Saddam Hussein was a menace and that he was developing weapons of mass destruction (we do know for a fact that he was doing this; what happened was that the program was discontinued years ago, and the intelligence agencies missed it; intelligence agencies ALWAYS have a bias toward finding problems: the consequences of error are far more severe if they erroneously underestimate a risk than if they erroneously overestimate a risk); they had 'evidence' that confirmed their bias, and they ran with it. That's not lying. Stupid, maybe, but not lying.

I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied."

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied."

I'll take a BJ over to a B-2 Bomber anyday....

MuhammadSaidalSahhaf wrote:I told you so! I told you so! I told you so! But does anybody listen to ol' Bob? Nooooooo.......

Doesn't your retort come with a little dance? (ala Will & Grace - Bobbi Adler's "Told you so!")

fuzzy

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied."

The one person who died at Al-Shifa would disagree...if he could.

Jeemie wrote:

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied."

The one person who died at Al-Shifa would disagree...if he could.

That death was not the result of Clinton's lying or his sexual indiscretions. Unless you want to believe it was a "Wag the Dog" scenario.

wintergreen48 wrote:I would not presume to defend the people who made the various statements: they've obviously botched this from start to finish, and obviously had an agenda from start to finish. But...

There is (or should be) a distinction between 'lies' and 'mistatements'-- just because something is not true (a matter of 'fact') does not necessarily make it a lie (a value judgment). (rest of quote omitted for space reasons)

I recall something similar from my career as a door-to-door canvasser. People would tell me things like "you guys were here last week/month/etc". Sometimes when it was possible that some other canvasser had made a mistake and we really were, but often when it just wasn't (i.e. it was our first day in town since this same month last year).

For a while my standard response, when I knew we WEREN'T there last week/month/etc was to state it as fact that we weren't. (Usually they had us confused with some other group that worked on something similar.) Eventually I figured out that flatly contradicting what someone was saying wasn't a good way to have them be receptive to continuing the conversation, much less making a contribution later on in it, and would just ask them if they were sure it wasn't some other group. (I learned that a whole other bunch of wiseassitude was counterproductive, too.)

But before I figured that out, I told some guy that we definitely weren't there last week like he said we were, and he asked if I was calling him a liar, and I said no, just that we weren't there last week. And he said something about you were too, and if you're saying different, you must be calling me a liar. So I asked him if he ever got a question wrong on a math test, and he said sure, and I asked him if he was lying when he put down the wrong answer. So we got into a longer, much friendlier conversation.

Took me a while longer to figure out that the occasional good result to my wiseassitude didn't make the wiseassitude a good idea (there was a day when I had a trainee quit on the spot and hand me his clipboard and leave, so the clipboard was in my backpack. Some guy said something like "I love what you guys do, and I'll do whatever else you ask me, but I won't give you any money". So I took the clipboard out of my backpack and handed it to him and told him I hadn't done the rest of his side of the street yet, and here on top of the clipboard is a copy of what I just said to you and I'll meet you here in an hour or two after you've had a chance to knock on your neighbors' doors. He wrote me a very large check - what was at the time the largest anyone had ever given me. I would have been better off if he told me what an asshole I was being and slammed the door - I wouldn't have tried the same stunt again several more times).

On the other hand, one day when I was guest-canvassing in a state I'd never been to before, on the first day someone told me that not only had our group been there last week, but that I personally had been to his door last week.

earendel wrote:

Jeemie wrote:

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied."

The one person who died at Al-Shifa would disagree...if he could.

That death was not the result of Clinton's lying or his sexual indiscretions. Unless you want to believe it was a "Wag the Dog" scenario.

I sure thought it was at the time.

ToLiveIsToFly wrote: sure thought it was at the time.

I mean, I thought there were plausible reasons for the action (which is a little different from the movie), but I didn't think it would have happened if not for the whole scandal.

earendel wrote:

Jeemie wrote:

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that read "Nobody Died When Clinton Lied."

The one person who died at Al-Shifa would disagree...if he could.

That death was not the result of Clinton's lying or his sexual indiscretions. Unless you want to believe it was a "Wag the Dog" scenario.

I do believe it was a "Wag the Dog" scenario.

That's the exact number of false statements (read: lies) made by the Bush Administration in order to gin up support for the Iraq occupation/war, as stated in an extensive study by the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity.

Wow! Only 3000 more lies and they will come close to the untruths of the Johnson/Nixon administrations concerning Viet Nam.

wintergreen48 wrote:Read the newsmagazines of the 1970's, and you will see that the prevailing scientific opinion was that we were heading into an Ice Age

That's a lie! Or at least a gross misstatement, as the following makes clear:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

smilergrogan wrote:

wintergreen48 wrote:Read the newsmagazines of the 1970's, and you will see that the prevailing scientific opinion was that we were heading into an Ice Age

That's a lie! Or at least a gross misstatement, as the following makes clear:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=94

When someone complains of a lie or gross misstatement and then quotes realclimate for "clarity" my BS meter pegs out.

wintergreen48 wrote:I don't think that the scientists whose projections showed we would all freeze to death by 1990 were lying, they were just... wrong.

I must have missed this. Had I known, I might have lived my life more recklessly. Who were these scientists?

TheConfessor wrote:

wintergreen48 wrote:I don't think that the scientists whose projections showed we would all freeze to death by 1990 were lying, they were just... wrong.

I must have missed this. Had I known, I might have lived my life more recklessly. Who were these scientists?

http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf



http://amazing.deter.com/content/Politi ... %20Age.pdf

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:

TheConfessor wrote:

wintergreen48 wrote:I don't think that the scientists whose projections showed we would all freeze to death by 1990 were lying, they were just... wrong.

I must have missed this. Had I known, I might have lived my life more recklessly. Who were these scientists?

http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf



http://amazing.deter.com/content/Politi ... %20Age.pdf

Thanks, but there's nothing there about us all freezing to death by 1990. That would have been good to know at the time, if anyone had actually said such a thing. Applying wintergreen's terminology, I wonder whether such a claim was a "lie" or a "misstatement." And doesn't the name "wintergreen" imply a bias in favor of global warming? Hmmm.

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:When someone complains of a lie or gross misstatement and then quotes realclimate for "clarity" my BS meter pegs out.

Yes, you are right. After all, when the subject is climate science, the last people you want to consult are professional climate scientists. They are all communists, as is well known. It is much better to listen to political pundits, science fiction writers, and mining company investors.

If you would bother to read the url I referenced, you will note that it mentions the Newsweek and Science News articles you link to below. Neither in any way represents the "prevailing opinion" of climate science at the time, as any perusal of the actual peer reviewed scientific literature of the period would also demonstrate.

smilergrogan wrote:

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:When someone complains of a lie or gross misstatement and then quotes realclimate for "clarity" my BS meter pegs out.

Yes, you are right. After all, when the subject is climate science, the last people you want to consult are professional climate scientists. They are all communists, as is well known. It is much better to listen to political pundits, science fiction writers, and mining company investors.

If you would bother to read the url I referenced, you will note that it mentions the Newsweek and Science News articles you link to below. Neither in any way represents the "prevailing opinion" of climate science at the time, as any perusal of the actual peer reviewed scientific literature of the period would also demonstrate.

Since I actually do read this stuff, I read the Newsweek article in 1974, and I do read realclimate, but certainly not for balanced and objective science. I find the "mining company investors" to have the more compelling arguments than the fantasy's of "professional climate scientists" who seem more interested in increasing their funding than doing real science. In 15 years "they" will be saying that AGW was never really the "prevailing opinion" it was just over hyped by the media.

"Producing" results that will generate more funds for yourself? How "big business" of the climatologists. Kudos

Too bad Chicken Little didn't think of that. He'd have made millions.

"Producing" results that will generate more funds for yourself? How "big business" of the climatologists. Kudos

When all you have is a hammer. you tend to look at everything as a nail.

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:

smilergrogan wrote:

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:When someone complains of a lie or gross misstatement and then quotes realclimate for "clarity" my BS meter pegs out.

Yes, you are right. After all, when the subject is climate science, the last people you want to consult are professional climate scientists. They are all communists, as is well known. It is much better to listen to political pundits, science fiction writers, and mining company investors.

If you would bother to read the url I referenced, you will note that it mentions the Newsweek and Science News articles you link to below. Neither in any way represents the "prevailing opinion" of climate science at the time, as any perusal of the actual peer reviewed scientific literature of the period would also demonstrate.

Since I actually do read this stuff, I read the Newsweek article in 1974, and I do read realclimate, but certainly not for balanced and objective science. I find the "mining company investors" to have the more compelling arguments than the fantasy's of "professional climate scientists" who seem more interested in increasing their funding than doing real science. In 15 years "they" will be saying that AGW was never really the "prevailing opinion" it was just over hyped by the media.

I kinda like seeing suitguy get a little testy.

Bravo!

eyégor wrote:"Producing" results that will generate more funds for yourself? How "big business" of the climatologists. Kudos

Too bad Chicken Little didn't think of that. He'd have made millions.

If I just had a PhD, I could've been rich, rich I tell you.