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

To: jlallen who wrote (148674)	10/22/2004 2:38:53 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Let me see if I can answer you and Jewel in the post. You may know from past discussions that I don't care much for "intentions". They are a consideration, but not nearly half as much as people tend to think. Not only intentions are hard to prove (who can really know what is in another's heart), in case of a president they matter even less; either the man wanted to lie, or he was too naive or ignorant see the truth for himself. Either way, he is not qualified to lead. So this brings us to rule number one: #1 It is the actions we are debating and not the motives. i.e. a lie is a lie is a lie. To be fair, there is such a thing as an honest mistake and everyone has to rely on information they get from advisors. So statements made based on faulty info are not considered a lie, unless there were substantial opinions to the contrary. In other words, if you cherry pick your sources or leave out opinions to the contrary, then it is not an honest mistake...but don't worry, for the sake of this discussion I will not even bring the Iraq war intel into question. I am also not going to include little white lies and "courtesy" lies, or minor omissions of speech, but a lie that furthers his agenda is fair game. We also have to believe in the concept of responsible chain of command; the buck has to stop at the president. If people under your command lie, mislead, or misbehave and you do not reprimand them, then you are tacitly approving of their lies and are party to the crime. An "innocent" leader who surrounds himself by corrupt advisors is an old trick of attempting to smell like roses while being every bit as guilty. Again, to be fair there needs to be limit to how far down the chain of command one can go, I am not going to hold Bush accountable for what a staff sergeant says or does, but a top general is fair game. I'd say something like 3-4 levels is fair game. And again, just to put your mind at ease, I will not bring high profile Iraqi fiascos like Abu Ghraib into the discussion. So do we have a deal?