O'Reilly's George Constanza moment with Michael Moore

[underpants]

"This is not a lie if you believe it to be true, now ..."

I couldn't believe it when I heard that

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,127236,00.html


MOORE: He didn’t tell the truth, he said there were weapons of mass destruction.

O'REILLY: Yeah, but he didn’t lie, he was misinformed by — all of those investigations come to the same conclusion. That’s not a lie.

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Several minutes of discussion about lies and lying and then:
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O'REILLY: Just the issues. You’ve got three separate investigations plus the president of Russia all saying… British intelligence, U.S. intelligence, Russian intelligence, told the president there were weapons of mass destruction; you say he lied. This is not a lie if you believe it to be true, now he may have made a mistake, which is obvious…

MOORE: Well, that’s almost pathological. I mean, many criminals believe what they say is true; they could pass a lie detector test…

O'REILLY: All right, now you’re dancing around a question…

MOORE: No, I’m not. There’s no dancing.

O'REILLY: He didn’t lie.

MOORE: He said something that wasn’t true.

O'REILLY: Based upon bad information given to him by legitimate sources.

MOORE: Now you know that they went to the CIA, Cheney went to the CIA, they wanted that information, they wouldn’t listen to anybody.

[JuniorPlankton]

1. I hate to admit it, but I do see O'Lielly's point

THERE is a difference between a lie and a mistake.
However, I want Chimpy to admit the mistake and to apologize to the public. Not doing it and pretending things are peachy probably qualifies as a lie :)

[PassingFair]

4. And I want...

the second tier of the investigation to be released. The one that deals with the administration's oversite of the agencies. The one that tells us what the OSP was up to.
Put Powell under oath.
Why did HE think the intel was "bullshit"?

[underpants]

5. Yeah but I couldn't believe it when I heard it

Moore's jaw opened up too but either he didn't catch that or he just let it go.

Can't-stand-ya!

[leesa]

6. There was no mistake. He was told the evidence was bogus

by everyone, including our own CIA, the UN inspectors, many other nations, even Israel admitted it.

[StClone]

8. I can see it too

Too bad if that is what they base their whole defense on it wouldn't hold up in court.

[JHB]

9. Don't miss Moore's point...

If *'s intel was bad, it's because Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the rest of the PNAC Gallery appointed to the Pentagon and intel agencies MADE it bad, had them pay too much attention to sources tellingly code named "Curveball", and gennerally put pressure on the rank & file to come up with suitably alarming results.

Objectively, the intel flaws the committee found were not enough to justify Bush's chicken-little speecifying ("We have to act NOW or the sky will fall!")

[Stockholm]

12. Hell no remember Hans Blix!!!

They used shaky intelligence (gave it a good back rub) to suit their predetermined policy. They did not use the intelligence to form their policy. It was a done deal.

In my book that is lying or if you want to be technical lying through omission of facts.

Moore is correct on this one as far as I am concerned.

Everyone should read "Disarming Iraq" where Blix gives his accounts on the period leading up to the war.

[MichaelHarris]

15. yeah but does

O'Liely wanna be the one to go up to 900+ houses, knock on the door, and say, "We're sorry, we made a mistake, your son or daughter died today"?

Lie or mistake, people died. Clinton got a blowjob, no one died.

Here's the bottom line. Somewhere along this whole Intel gathering extravaganza someone lied. Maybe it was a young analist wanted to make a name, maybe a Jr director adding some numbers, maybe a President saying, "make it so". Someone lied. Where that lie came from needs to be investigated. Sure there's the commissions and Tenets resignation but no one has stepped up and said, "hey I found the mistake" or better yet, "here's the guy who lied". Wanna know why? This administration doesn't want you to know. If this President had any sense of moral obligation he would be in the streets saying, "I'll find out where we messed up". No one is doing that. That, and that alone makes me very suspicious about where the lie originated. Hell who would step up and say, "I'll investigate myself".

[qanda]

16. I want people to stop acting like it's not the president's job

To make sure the evidence he is taking the country to war on is solid. If I, a housewife in Maryland, knew something was wrong with the evidence before the war then how come the President of the United States didn't know? Cut the BULL and hold the man accountable!

[Bandit]

17. Not true really..

Out of all the informnation given to the Bush* Administration from the CIA 70% of the CIA said it was untrue. Bush* chose to go with the thirty percent who said it was true. He knew better and still went with the lies. War is a last option not a first and he deliberately went with the minority reports to launch a pre-emptive war when more could have been done. Bush* deserves to be held accountable for his rush to war.

[Brian Morans]

21. There were enough dissenting opinions

to qualify this as a lie. Bush took the intelligence that suited him; he ignored the qualifiers and cautious language, and overblew it grotesquely. He and his cohorts spoke with absolute certainty; and when discussing intelligence, they repeatedly left the impression that they had other information which they could not share because they had to protect sources and methods. O'Reilly's argument is a red herring, just a flawed parsing of the semantics: "But Mommy, when I said I didn't take the candy, I had forgotten that I did! That wasn't lying!"
They LIED. Impeach the bastard.

[Cocoa]

2. when history writes about Bush

one thing they'll write about is how the press bent over backwards not to call his lies lies.

Especially compared to the treatment they gave Clinton. Impeachment, for chrissakes.

[gratuitous]

3. Wow, I didn't know O'Reilly was Stupidhead's analyst

How does O'Reilly know what Simpleton W. Bush believed? He's talking very authoritatively about what Bush believed, but I'm unaware of any public pronouncements (and for sure no press conferences) in which Bush stated unequivocally that he believed the bullshit he was peddling.

And Moore makes an excellent point, when he mentions that the administration cooked the intelligence reports to say what they wanted those reports to say. Moderating voices, doubters, and views contrary to "Saddam's a bad, bad man who's ready to kill us all" were effectively stifled by the administration.

[thebigidea]

7. so, using O'Reilly's remarkably selective logic...

... Clinton didn't lie about sex because he didn't INTEND to lie, because he believed it to be true: a blowjob didn't count as sex.

Who are we to judge?

Oh, the humanity!

[in_cog_ni_to]

10. Cheney planted his ass at the CIA

looking through files for something, anything that would sorta fit their WMD story. THEY LIED. They knew the truth, but thought they could twist the facts to fit. They're liars. Every last one of them and their asses belong in jail. IMCPO

[Beloved Citizen]

11. The O'Reilly Rule absolves any fool who has ever been taken in by someone

But shouldn't we expect a little more from a president?

[neoteric lefty]

13. Then who lied?

Was it George Tenet who told Bush that the case was a 'slam dunk'?

Was it the analysts who gave Tenet the 'slam dunk' case?

Was it the sources who gave the analysts the evidence for Tenet's 'slam dunk' case?

Was it Cheney who told the anylysts the there needs to be a 'slam dunk' case or else?

Was it Rice, Powell, Cheney, Rumsfield, and Wolfowitz who went out and told the American people that the evidence was 'slam dunk'?

Bush lied, its that simple. Clarke told him there was no evidence. That was his leader of counterterrorism. He disregarded his man, and went to war against his own words. He said 'war was the last option' and obviously is was not. He had to pull out inspectors, who were destroying Al Simud (sp?) missles at the time, so he could 'Shock and Awe' Iraq.

Also, George W. Bush is the leader of his administration. The buck stops there. If his administration lied, then it is his fault and he should be punished.

[underpants]

18. They prop him up as a LEADER and then if anything goes wrong...

it's the old Reagan line about decentralized command. One or the other guys, not both.

"Decisiveness" is great but GOOD decisions are more important, the first lemming to head west is "Decisive" too.

[name not needed]

14. Next thing you know,

you'll see Mr. Peabody screaming "I WAS IN THE POOL!" on his show.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

19. Geez this drives me crazy....

I knew there weren't any freakin' WMD's and I'm just an average schlub that keeps up on world politics (more or less). How in the heck can these folks expect us to believe this crap?

[apnu]

20. Bush did lie, by making the Saddam-Bin Laden link n/t