Lying Contradictions and the Iraq War

There are many who endeavor to suggest that Bush lied about the case for war against Saddam. This line of reasoning is intellectually dishonest. Notice this is for those who use the “lie” reasoning as the “fundamental” argument. There are many arguments people use and some of them are perhaps valid. I will concede one potentially good argument. However, those who use the “lie” argument repeatedly, as if it were their only tool, are the ones who need to consider the merits of this essay.

It goes without saying that no U.S. president in history has concocted a war on the principle of a lie. There have been poor decisions and there has been faulty intelligence but an outright lie is not only far fetched but conspiratorial fear mongering. There has never been a U.S president, no matter their moral depravity at the time, who would concoct a war for personal gain. Not at the expense of federalism, not at the expense of human lives and not at the expense of world security.

We must also consider the evidence used for this war and specifically who used it as justification prior to engagement. Simply put, everyone believed the evidence to be true but for effect one should see the individuals and groupings listed: George W. Bush, CIA, United Nations, France, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, John Kerry, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and Nancy Pelosi—to name but a few. Each of the individuals or their representatives expressed publicly that Saddam possessed of weapons of mass destruction. Each received and viewed the exact same evidence and used it to draw their conclusions. The U.S. Congress voted to give the president the option to wage war. This is where the “lying’ argument is lost. If the president lied, then why did John Kerry and John Edwards and Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi and the French, and the Germans and the Russians and the Brits not also lie? The answer is simple. No one lied. The evidence was simply not what everyone believed it was. Let’s face it. John Kerry did not need the president or the Whitehouse to tell him how to read the evidence. He is John Kerry after all. If he could not figure it out on his own then he had no business being president. The facts are that all these individuals believed the evidence and agreed.

The argument is that if a person is going to call Bush a liar, based on any intelligence he used to decide for war, then every other person who (on their own or with their advisors) came to the same conclusion is also a liar. Each Congressman and Senator has a rather large force of advisors, runners, etc. Their job is to glean through massive bits of information on various bills, intelligence memos etc. For something as big as another nation WMD program. I would like to believe our elected officials in Congress take great care when reading through the evidence. Now, with that said all the individuals I listed made public statements about the WMD program in Iraq. And after those statements they authorized the use of force at the president's discretion.

One can argue that his discretion was wrong. But one cannot call him a liar without calling everyone else a liar as well. If one chooses to call the president a liar they need to be fair in the application of their judgment. The intellectually honest will consider these points and reply with a tone in kind. Only these will merit a response.