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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lou Weed who wrote (99450)	5/29/2003 7:17:44 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

If Tony Benn told me London is the capital of England, I wouldn't believe it until I had confirmed it with two other sources. Benn is right up there on my list of "Saddam's paid minions with zero credibility", along with George Galloway, Scott Ritter, and - I nearly forgot - the now ex-director of Al Jazeera. A poor, a very poor choice to use to get all righteous about the possibility of "being lied to" by our elected representatives. "If you can't believe what you are told by ministers, the whole democratic process is put at risk. You can't be allowed to get away with telling lies for political purposes." Do you agree or disagree with this statement??? Disagree. IMO, a more realistic hope is to have ministers who prefer to tell the truth and will not lie needlessly or for mere self-promotion. There are real reasons of security or diplomacy which will cause ministers to lie; and in matters of intelligence, they may well be sincerely mistaken. Not every thing that turns out to be untrue is a lie. I have yet to see any evidence that Tony Blair or George Bush "lied" about WMDs, and lots of evidence that Saddam (or someone else) had them, but dumped them before the war. I liked Sig's analogy - here are the bowling shoes, there is the bowling alley, should we assume that no bowling balls ever existed?