Re: Runaway Global Warming Possible!

From: Jonathan Kirwan (jkirwan_at_easystreet.com)
Date: 03/01/05 

Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 20:19:40 GMT

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 18:09:41 GMT, simberg.interglobal@org.trash (Rand Simberg)
wrote:

>And on none of them did he say that Saddam tried to buy uranium in
>Africa.

That assertion from President Bush was made in his State of the Union address,
where he said, "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This statement was made
despite objections from CIA officials, who warned members of the President's
National Security Council staff that the intelligence was not good enough to
make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. So White House
officials decided that, so long as the statement was attributed to __British
Intelligence__, that it would at least be __technically__ accurate, if perhaps
intentionally misleading. With this intended slight of hand in place, the CIA
officials dropped their objections and that's how the line was delivered to the
public.

Whether or not that is considered to be a lie depends in part on where you draw
lines regarding statements a US President should be publicly making (I tend to
feel that a President should take their position very seriously and not abuse
the respect that the position has earned through time) and in part on whether or
not you believe that intentionally and strongly pointing in some direction when
you know better than that, is in fact a lie. I'm certain that this issue got
some serious play inside the White House as well as in the CIA and elsewhere
well before the statement was made; that the President and his staff knew
exactly what they were doing when they carefully crafted and shaped this
particular line to deal with the CIA objections; that they therefore also knew
the very weak nature of it; and that they purposefully intended to convey a
false sense of certainty when they knew better.

To me, that qualifies as lying. But then, I have standards. And worse, it is
the kind of thing that weakens the importance of listening to a President when
the speak, either to the US public or to the world. Few in the world will
listen to this President and trust, without verification, anything he says now.
There was a time when a US President could visit a world leader and be trusted.

A very famous case points this up. When President Kennedy (regarding the Cuban
missile crisis) began to alert US allies of his 'quarantine' decision, Dean
Acheson (Sec'y of State) was sent to inform Charles De Gaulle. Acheson then
offered to show De Gaulle the photographs of the missile sites and the French
leader brushed them aside, saying, "A great country such as yours does not act
without evidence. You may tell your President that France will support him."

This Administration has demolished that kind of trust around the world. Sadly.

Jon

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