�Bush Lied?� Let�s Examine the Facts

From the whitehouse's web site, On February 20 2003
President Meets with Small Business Owners of Georgia:

"There's a blue chip survey from leading economists that predict growth this year of 3.3%. And that's positive. But I want to remind the members of congress who are going to be studying whether or not there needs to be tax relief that, A part of the fine print of this prediction is this, the economists are basing this prediction on congress passing tax relief this year. In other words inherent in the 3.3% prediction of economic growth is that congress acts in a positive way, if congress doesn't act there's a risk we won't have economic vitality the likes of which we all support."

NOTE HOW HE HAMMERED IT HOME.

about minute 17:28 .rm audio file
www.whitehouse.gov...

"I don't know what he was citing", said Randell E. Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip Economic Forecast

Moore said that a survey taken in January BEFORE the president announced his plan forecast 3.3 percent annual growth between the last quarter of 2002 and the last quarter of 2003.
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whitehouse website: .rm audio file from February 25:

Reporter:"What would it take at this point to avoid the war with Iraq?"

GW Bush: "Full Disarmament", "There's only one thing, there's Full disarmament. The man has been told to disarm, for the sake of peace he must completely disarm."
. . . .
"War is my last choice"
. . . .
"Perhaps the biggest risk [ah] in the theater IF we were to commit our troops is Saddam himself."
. . . .
"IF, IF we go to war."

whitehouse website: .rm audio file from February 26:

GW Bush: (min 6:20) "We hope that the Iraqi regime will meet the demands of the United Nations and disarm fully and peacefully. IF it does not, we are prepared to disarm Iraq by force."
. . . (min 23:08)
"IF we have to act will act to restrain the violent and defend the cause of peace."
. . .
(min 23:50) "IF war is forced upon us by Iraq's refusal to disarm, we will meet an enemy who hides his military forces behind civilians"

www.whitehouse.gov...

US official:"You are not going to decide whether there is war in Iraq or not," the diplomat said U.S. officials told him. "That decision is ours, and we have already made it. It is already final. The only question now is whether the council will go along with it or not."

www.washingtonpost.com...
note: Washington Post story showed up on the 25th of February which means the quote must have come from the previous day. The president is speaking on the 25th and 26th.

He had already decided to go to war, and was trying to make it look like he was being diplomatic and mulitlateral.
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Originally posted by Majic
Thanks for the updates! Good stuff. Lest I forget, I wanted to drop a Salon link here (not sure if it's in thread, didn't want to forget):

Bush lied about his arrest, a reporter says

There are others out there, but they all seem to hinge on the claims of Wayne Slater, a reporter with the Dallas Morning News. Good enough, in my opinion, but the more substantiation, the better.

The link in the Salon story to a New Republic story is broken. Some of the sources Google turns up have links to a November 3, 2000 story by Wayne Slater in the Dallas Morning News. But these links are also broken.

I checked out the archive of the Dallas Morning News. They charge to get articles from the archive, but you can search it for free. The search returns the headline and a decent summary. I searched for all articles between January 1, 2000 and January 1, 2001 by Wayne Slater that mentioned George Bush. The search returned 40 articles. None of them were about the arrest record lie. Could this article have been expunged from the Dallas Morning News archives?

At this point, I don't think this lie qualifies according to thread guidelines. It is not a public statement by Bush. We just have the word of the reporter. The story would be a lot more credible if Slater had published the story in 1998, when the alleged conversation with Bush took place. News of Bush's drunken driving arrest in 1976 became public knowledge in 2000, shortly before the Presidential Election. Of course, before the drunken driving story broke, Slater probably didn't think it was newsworthy that Bush said he had not been arrested since 1968.

Also, bear in mind that both Slater and the Dallas Morning News have been extremely critical of Bush. That doesn't disqualify them as news sources, but it's something to consider.

I'm about to head out for a couple of weeks where I will have either limited or no access to a computer.

Before I left, I wanted to check into and post on other topics, and have let this one lay idle for a bit, but I am committed to seeing what we can get out of it in the long term.

I'm pleased with what has been collected so far, am certain that there is much more out there and am confident that this is a worthwhile effort.

donguillermo: If your time and interest permit, you may want to take over the thread summaries. I started this thread, but obviously don't own it. I'm sure, if you wish to do so, that you would do a far better job than me.

Everyone else: If you have any good examples of a Bush humdinger, I would love to see you add it to this thread. Once a list is compiled, I would like to present it in another thread for discussion.

I'll be trolling around the forums as I can before I go, if I don't "see" you before I go, here's wishing you a happy first half of August!

Majic

This is an excellent thread IMO, & one that even Bush admirers should not find fault with, as it's based on proven data. All politicians are notoriously hard to pin down on matters such as this - it's their stock in trade.

It's too bad, because I had hope for donguillermo, and I think this thread really shows some of what he could contribute -- perhaps a better good/bad ratio than other threads. He had great zeal, significant analytical talent, dogged persistence and a penchant for research and citation.

But, sadly, these traits were betrayed by an unshakable and disproportionate devotion to confrontation coupled with an apparent inability to accept differences of opinion, and, predictably it would seem, he went and got himself banned.

Before his demise, he did, however, help me relearn some basic truths about human nature:

1) People believe what they want to believe.

2) If a fact agrees with their beliefs, it will be accepted.

3) If a fact disagrees with their beliefs, it will be rejected.

4) Truth has nothing to do with it.

Even someone as obviously bright and talented as donguillermo can become a prisoner of his own prejudices. A cautionary tale for us all, who, to one degree or another, will inevitably do likewise, whether we try to resist doing so or not.

I realize now that politics is a subject I should try to avoid on ATS. Not because I have no interest in politics, I do indeed. Rather, because politics was not what attracted me to ATS. I already visit enough political websites as it is, and find more meaning in a thread on psychic phenomenon than a whole website on politics. I grow weary of the same old song.

I'm not here to change anyone's mind about politics, except perhaps to encourage a more independent-minded approach rather than submit to partisan brainwashing, but that is ultimately a tedious and thankless task, and distantly secondary to my interests here.

So I will seek to take leave of this and other political threads, and try to focus instead on those things that make ATS unique: the unknown and paranormal. While I will no doubt slip now and then and get suckered into political mudslinging contests, that's not where I want to find myself, and I am resolved not to buy into the Mud Pit for this reason.

I encourage anyone who wishes to take up the thread by promoting and summarizing it, which I consider worthwhile for numerous reasons. However, for even more numerous reasons, I have decided it should not be me who does this.

I believe that an examination of the facts will show that Bush is neither the angel or devil he is made out to be, but simply a human being.

He neither lies as much as he is typically accused of by his detractors, nor is he as blamelessly honest as his supporters claim him to be. Perhaps someone may be able to illustrate this point with hard evidence.

Regards,

Majic