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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (18535)	12/3/2003 9:07:54 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793897

Democrats claimed Bush "lied" & "misled" when they falsely claimed that Bush called Iraq an "imminent threat". Major media outlets & liberal politicians attacked Bush claiming that Bush said Iraq is an "imminent threat" within hours of the SOTUA. You are not receptive to my point. I've read the Address. I said in my earlier post that Bush himself may not have said exactly that. I don't really recall which member of the Administration said what. Regardless of who said what, the distinct impression of a huge chunk of the population was that we were at risk from Iraq if we didn't wipe out their resources PDQ. That was a key rationale for the war. The word, lie, must be one of the most used words on SI. People accuse other people of doing it all the time. Dealt with one such incident today already on another thread. People have different senses of what the word means. I use it strictly to mean a deliberate attempt to deceive. I think others draw on it to cavalierly. But the fact remains that allowing a misimpression that is favorable to oneself stand without taking steps to correct it is still deceit. If you want to be picky about whether the Democrats who said Bush lied are technically correct or not, that is your privilege. That's rather along the lines of falling back on the definition of what "is" is, or whether oral sex is "sexual relations" or not. It may not be a deliberate falsehood and I wouldn't call someone a liar for it, but the WH is still on the hook for letting the impression stand. I had a friend once, many decades ago, who, when she didn't want to talk to someone who telephoned, would stand outside so her mother could say she wasn't home without it being a lie. That's baloney. The Dems who called him personally a liar were hyping, IMO, but the deception was still a deception. You didn't claim that the media called Bush a liar, I see. So then what is the responsibility of the media in that regard? Well, I guess some feisty interviewer could have challenged one of the Dems to report where Bush actually said that. Personally, I think that's a waste of expensive air time given the seriousness of the war and all there is to report to fuss at the Dems over some overstatement. imminent : ready to take place; especially : hanging threateningly over one's head <was in imminent danger of being run over> I acknowledge it wasn't clear whether the threat was six weeks or six months away. Seems to me that "imminent" means something closer to six weeks. Still, given the lead time for a war, there's not much difference practically speaking between the two. You're hanging a lot on a minor distinction, IMO. I suggest you read the articles linked below & then decide who said what & more precisely when they said it. Technicalities seem to mean a lot to you. I'm more interested in the spirit. The spirit of the message was that we have to crank the war up right now or we're toast. That's enough for this post. I will address your other points anon.