In case you missed it...

[ThisElfRocksHard]

Rather intriguing news story:

US President George W Bush and other top officials issued almost one thousand false statements about the national security threat from Iraq following the September 11 attacks, according to a study by two not-for-profit organisations.

The Associated Press reports the study, published on the website of the Centre for Public Integrity, concluded the statements ?were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanised public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretences?.

Read the rest here: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599...29-401,00.html

[juneau]

And people wonder why there are so many conspiracy theories about this topic.

[BigTwinky]

I think its somewhat common knowledge that the war in Iraq was made under false impressions. Its so very unfortunate that so many soldiers have lost their lives based on false information. Yep, Saddam was a dictator and he was a bad, bad man. Sad hearing Iraqis say that they prefer being under Saddam?s reign than living with the constant suicide bombs and gun fights going on.

Hmm?this thread can turn nasty quick, so please keep it to mature discussions. If you are unable to discuss without keeping a cool head and understanding that people have different opinions, then don?t post.

[Zantheus]

Some ppl say that Bush is the Anti-Christ...everyday more and more evidence against him is kinda makin me a believer

[BigTwinky]

Bush is many things, many bad things, probably a few good, but Anti-Christ may be a stretch. Too many serial killers out there should take that title over Bush

[Thrashdragon]

Yep, Saddam was a dictator and he was a bad, bad man. Sad hearing Iraqis say that they prefer being under Saddam?s reign than living with the constant suicide bombs and gun fights going on.

It's become readily apparent that only a bad, bad man can keep the Iraqi people in line. If they hadn't hung him they should've just stuck him back in power, it would be better than the mess we're in now...and the even bigger mess it will devolve into once we pull our troops out.

While I'm not disputing the accuracy of their report (having not read it), the Centre for Public Policy has come under fire before for being decidedly biased towards the left, and much of their funding comes from leftist organizations. So you may not want to take it at face value.

[drunken_chef]

four words "weapons of mass destruction". the administrations justification for the invasion was there insistance that WoMD would be found. lies

[BigTwinky]

Its like people who keep convincing themselves that they are driving a polluting monster of an SUV because it keeps them safe.

[-IRC-MIKE]

You really believe these articles coming from a newssite from another country? First of all there are an aweful lot of quotes coming from unknown sources... hell the author even has a weird name "staff writers". Last but not least, I don't tend to trust any such BS coming from these "staff writers" or from ANY news staff who claim any sort of professionalism when they can't even spell words like "organizations", "galvanized", and "pretences" which by the way is a noun that assimilates "Chiefly British" (you think there's something strange there?) when they meant to spell "pretenses". I didn't bother reading anything past the first two paragraphs for these simple reasons.

Garbage.

[LIMEY]

Its like people who keep convincing themselves that they are driving a polluting monster of an SUV because it keeps them safe.

or people that think it is better for the environment to drive a prius.

[-IRC-MIKE]

LOL Chiefly British is not the definition, but the only assimilatory meaning to the actual word:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pretences

There's more than one word in the lot of it that is incorrectly spelled that WHEN incorrectly spelled has no meaning but is defined as "Chiefly British". Hmm... possible .... you think...maybe the... naaah!

[-Bar]

Its like people who keep convincing themselves that they are driving a polluting monster of an SUV because it keeps them safe.

or people that think it is better for the environment to drive a prius.

[Bar's stupidity mode on]
I drive an SUV because I like it... The earth has cycles and we are in a warmer cycle at the moment. Green peace can burn in my opinion. But that is me.... Summers with the BBQ... Bon-fires every night.

Here is my answer to Greenpeace... if the planet was gonna give out then it would have a long time ago. I don't plan to live my life day by day thinking to myself that If I go and start the car the world might collapse. I do feel that leaving garbage around will destroy land but apart from radiation and a few other smalls things... anything we do can be fixed.[/off]

[mapes]

While I'm not disputing the accuracy of their report (having not read it), the Centre for Public Policy has come under fire before for being decidedly biased towards the left, and much of their funding comes from leftist organizations. So you may not want to take it at face value.

Obviously I need to read it before definitively stating one way or the other. However it wouldn't surprise me coming from this administration. Considering everything else this administration has done. For example how the Bush administration has used the state secrets act. Hers a quote fro wiki on it

According to John Dean:

While precise numbers are hard to come by (because not all cases are reported), a recent study reports that the "Bush administration has invoked the state secrets privilege in 23 cases since 2001." By way of comparison, "between 1953 and 1976, the government invoked the privilege in only four cases."[7]

Coupled with the amount of time used is also the acts dubious beginnings namely this case

Main article: United States v. Reynolds

In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court which they had deemed a threat to national security. In 2000, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many legal experts have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case.[2][3][5][7][8]

couple that with

The WMD fiasco
Detaining foreigners
Torturing
Illegal Wiretaping
Outtting of CIA operatives for political revenge

It can't all be lies or bias now can it

[-IRC-MIKE]

I know you were not directing your post toward me, totally, however I will say that I never denied any truthfullness behind any of it, but a news site that can't even publish something grammatically correct isn't something I'd put my money on for any kind of accuracy.

[mapes]

I know you were not directing your post toward me, totally, however I will say that I never denied any truthfullness behind any of it, but a news site that can't even publish something grammatically correct isn't something I'd put my money on for any kind of accuracy.

I can understand however theres more to a point being made than correct spelling and grammar. It is quite easy to ascertain how many time the president lied. For example I could quite easily merge all of the text from the associated press's coverage of the president's speeches into one large file. Then I would use the the unix tool called grep. Which would output a line for each to the things that I looked for. It's actually quite easy


Heres what grep is

grep is a command line utility that was originally written for use with the Unix operating system. Given a list of files or standard input to read, grep searches for lines of text that match one or many regular expressions, and outputs only the matching lines.