Several commenters in my post below about Kevin Drum’s Taxonomy of Foolishness seem to think I am missing the point, but in reality, I think it is they whoare having trouble grasping my objections. I am going to try this one more time, and then, perhaps my objections to this nonsense will be understood.
I guess the very best way to start this discussion is with a picture of a cat. Below is a picture of Kevin’s cat, Inkblot:
By any standards, Inkblot appears to be a happy cat. At any rate, what would everyone’s reaction be if I made the following statement:
Kevin Drum’s cat, Inkblot, has three legs.
Time for Example #2, and we must reach into the sack of cold war jokes to help make the point. Here goes:
An American and a Soviet were in a foot race. The American won the race, and the next day in the Soviet-run newspaper Tass, the headline as follows:
Russian Comes in Second, Amercians Beat Only One Country
Now, if you think that both of those statements were lies, chances are you and I are not going to see anything eye to eye from here on out, because neither of those statements were lies. They were misleading as hell, but they were not lies. And this is what is driving me crazy about the Democrats and their current attempt to take EVERYTHING Bush says and call it a lie.
In the course of American history, politicians have been known to put the best face on their policies. They have been known to use statistics which best shape their case. Environmental groups have been known to make dire predictions based on weak science, feminist groups have been known to call all men ‘potential rapists.’ Why, one previous President said all of the folowing things:
“I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we’re going to make to have a short-term economic strategy.”
or
“That child would be alive today if that gun had had a child trigger lock on it.”
or
In the 60 Minutes interview, Steve Kroft asked: “I’m assuming from your answer that you’re categorically denying you’ve ever had an affair with Gennifer Flowers?” Clinton replied: “I’ve said that before, and so has she.” In his deposition in the Paula Jones case, Clinton admitted having sex with Flowers.
and
“All I’ve been asked about by the press are a woman I didn’t sleep with and a draft I didn’t dodge.” – ABC News’ Nightline, February 12, 1992.
All of which are at the very least misleading statements, yet there never seemed to be any outrage bubbling up from the left? What is the difference?
The difference, of course, is clear- Bush is a Republican, and thus, every attempt must be made to contort, distort, selectively misquote, and obfuscate so that every statement, regardless of how innocuous or accurate, is portrayed as a lie. As I stated before, this is an election strategy, not a concern for accuracy in politics. Thus, when Bush states “More than 40 percent of people who receive dividends make under $50,000 per year” it must be portrayed as a lie because there might be someone out there who thought it meant something different. Seriously- that is what some Democrats want you to believe qualifies as a lie.
In Kevin’s taxonomy of lies, he failed to mention the one that the Democrats are best at creating, which is the ‘lie that occurs because things change.’ For example, if Bush right now stated “It is around ten o’clock on Saturday morning,” on Monday, Ted Kennedy would call a press conference and say “George Bush said it was ‘ten o’clock on Saturday morning,’ while clearly it is Monday. George Bush is a liar.”
Presidents are often wrong, Presidents often change positions. That does not make them a liar. Unless, of course, they are Republicans.
Dwight Meredith, however, does pose a good question:
Bill Clinton was asked under oath “are you having an affair with Ms. Lewinski?” (that is a paraphrase but the tense is correct). He answered no.
Was that a lie? As a technical matter he was not having an affair at that moment, he was giving a deposition.
The law imposes a duty in certain circumstances not only to be technically accurate but also to disclose all material facts.
The failure to disclose all material facts when in a fiduciary relationship, for instance, constitutes fraud under the law.
Should our Presidents have the duty to disclose all material facts about public policy issues they choose to address?
I think that is an interesting question and I for one, am not prepared to give a definitive answer.
The fact of the matter is that in the current political climate, that is precisely what Democrats are demanding of Bush, while conveniently excluding themselves from the same standards. When Howard Dean LIES about his position regarding social security, it is a ‘flip-flop’ or a mistake. When Bush changes his mind or puts forward the best case for his policy (and remember, almost every policy proposal is at its heart subjective- we really can not predict outcomes with any degree of certainty- Matt Stinson has some good posts on this topic), he is called a liar.
Why the drive to call Bush a liar, to remake what is and is not a lie- November 2004, not because of some close personal relationship that Democrats have with captial T truth. Don’t play their game.
And while we are at it- you leftists can stop with the Bush/Hitler comparisons regarding ‘The Big Lie’ any day now. Grow up.
Francis W. Porretto
I am reminded of Lawrence Block’s famous riposte to the old saw, “It ain’t what you know, it’s who you know.” When hit with that dour statement by a frustrated would-be writer, Block replied, “It ain’t who you know, it’s what you’ve got on ’em.”
Democratic rage at the Bush Administration is almost palpable. Not only did Bush win the most narrowly contested presidential election in history from their crown prince — in peacetime with a good economy, and against unprecedented levels of Democratic vote fraud, no less — but he’s maintained consistently high popularity numbers and is widely viewed as the right man for the times. Worse, Dubya refuses to screw up in a big enough way to give them an entering wedge for their campaign.
Bill Clinton, the living proof that two heads are not better than one, especially if the wrong one is in the driver’s seat, gave the GOP so many avenues of attack against his policies and conduct in office that, had he not been the unwitting beneficiary of a Republican-dominated Congress that stoutly blocked all his worst initiatives, he would have been deposed in 1996. Yet Clinton, for all his faults and shortcomings, will remain the Democrats’ standard-bearer for the foreseeable future. Every Democratic president since FDR has laden them down with baggage they no longer wish to carry.
In a supremely ironic sense, it was the GOP that made Bill Clinton the Democrats’ point man. And they’re stuck with him, and they’re desperate to find some way to drag Bush the Younger down to Clintonian levels, and Dubya simply refuses to give them one. They ain’t got nothin’ on him.
The Democrats have to hope the anti-terror campaign will produce an Iran-Contra scandal, and the probability of any such diminishes day by day.
I know gloating is ungracious, but thank you, God! How I have longed to see precisely this situation!
Justin Katz
Regarding the “material facts” question, if a president were required to conduct his entire term under a deposition-level oath, the country would cease to function.
Part of the reason that we have a representative democracy is that the average citizen hasn’t the time, inclination, nor ability to sort through every “material fact” available to a president. Furthermore, politics work in such a way that such a demand on the President (assuming it wouldn’t become the law of the land for everybody) would lead directly to bad — deadly bad — policy, as the President’s opponents emphasized the downsides of every issue.
JKC
Francis crows over Democratic rage at Bush, and in the next couple paragraphs foams at the mouth over Bill Clinton, who isn’t President anymore.
Guess it all depends on whose ox is getting gored.
Francis W. Porretto
Spot-on, JKC. It always tickles me no end when dishonest bastards with no goal but power over others and the indulgence of their own vices have to watch a decent, honest man do well at a difficult job and be applauded for it by a grateful electorate. So sue me.
JKC
Francis, you really don’t have to keep restating your point. I think even people on your intellectual level can discern your feelings on this subject.
Bloggerhead
John:
I think you’re missing some salient points.
First, regarding the 40%/$50K statement, sure, it’s technically true (that’s Kevin point), as is the statement that all taxpayers stood to benefit from the tax cuts (well, the first round, at least), but these statements are nevertheless misleading, or are an attempt to deceive, inasmuch as they were meant to garner support from many taxpayers who in fact stand to derive scant benefit from the cuts. A similar, and I would say more egregious, example of this is the administration’s claim, in the context of proclaiming across-the-board cuts, that the average cut for taxpayers would exceed one thousand dollars. Now, I would agree that as far as attempts-to-deceive go in the political arena, these are rather garden variety, and hardly damning standing alone. To be sure, it is up to the loyal opposition to flesh these out and to shine light on the context, as part of healthy political discourse. This is simply of a piece with what Kevin Drum, Josh Marshall and Paul Krugman have been doing for months, though I suspect it has come to require much more time and effort than they would have wished or anticipated.
Second, what has been damning (as polls are more and more showing) are the repeated, bald-faced, accusation-laden (and sadly successful) attempts by the administration to deceive the nation into embracing a disastrous policy of the-rest-of-the-world-be-damned pre-emptive war. You can parse the shifting rationales until they come out your arse; you can construct lists of justifications until you’re blue in the face. Without the WMD and the link of Saddam to 9/11 (any link beyond he’s a bad guy in the Middle East), there is simply no way that the Congress would have authorized force or the American people would have countenanced the sacrifice which we now know this venture to entail. Hell, everyone knew Saddam was a tyrant capable of mass-murder and misadventure. Yet plenty forecast this difficult and dangerous reconstruction, esp. our going it alone, and determined that removing him the way the administration wanted to was not worth the effort unless a substantive threat could be shown. They were, of course, met with derision and aspersions from subtle neo-con/conservative thinkers. Indeed, within the government, Larry Lindsay calculated a $200M price-tag & Gen’l Shinseki estimated a 200,000-man occupation force. What happened to these truth-tellers? To answer, “silenced,” is probably not going too far.
Look at this way: This week, Bush finally admitted that there was no evidence–meaning, too, there never had been–of a link between Saddam and 9/11. He had to because there was Cheney on MTP last Sunday lying his ass off (with Russert kissing it, yet again). Now, a recent poll showed that up to 70% of the country believed that there was such a link. What do you imagine many of these people are now thinking? Are they shrugging it off with “I guess I’m an idiot,” or are they feeling like they’ve been lied to, oops, deceived? This is the Big Lie you seem not to want to acknowlege. (Please spare me the Bush/Hitler outrage for the following reasons: (1) so I can move on in this long-winded screed, (2) one needn’t be a Nazi in order to make use of Nazi propaganda theory, (3) most measured progressives believe that the comparison is probably counter-productive, and (4) do “Anti-American,” “commie-lib,” “objectively pro-Saddam,” “Treason,” etc., ring a bell?)
All of which is not to deny that there is an on-going and intensifying effort by the left to focus attention on Bush’s–what shall we call it–lack of candor. As thinkers are wont to do, left-leaning guys like KD, JMM & PK (ain’t it cool to be numbering some bloggers among the thinkers) are attempting to analyze and systematize this administration’s pattern of deception. Is it meant to do more than enlighten? Hell, yes, it’s a call to arms. Does that sometimes color the analysis? Sure, but in no way does it delegitimize the enterprise. Remember, a non-stop assault on a political opponent’s truthfulness is hardly new, nor is limited to the left. Clinton and Gore were savaged for even the most minor assertions and perceived misstatements, as was Clark just one day into his campaign. Listen to Rush or Hannity (or just about any other right-wing talking meathead), it’s their standard modus operandi. Lie this, lie that. To say that the left has only now discovered a respect for truth is also to say that the right has somehow lost it, after eight years of Scaife-financed dirt-digging that in the end yielded little in the way of substance and a warehouse full of bulk purchases.
It was Bush who rode to office as the straight-shooter, as the dignity-restorer, as the tone-changer, and as the responsible one, surrounded by adults (for no-one really believed he could handle it on his own.) After three years of unprecedented secrecy, disdain for science and general dissembling, of being the object of ridicule throughout the world, of manipulating every issue for political gain, and of blaiming everyone else for its failures, this administration is absolutely fair game. Indeed, it would be irresponsible not to point the contradictions out to the electorate. Should we sit on our hands, as the press for the most part has appeared to do? No, we Democrats (the proper use of the noun-form) seek to galvanize the electorate in a way that also has the added virtue of being true.
Francis W. Porretto
Nor do you have to keep restating yours, JKC, though it’s always amusing to watch a leftist try to defend the indefensible while simultaneously trying to label virtue as evil.
Yours very truly,
Francis W. Porretto, B.S., Ph.D.
John Cole
No one in congress voted for Iraq because of a presumed link to 9/11, and EVERYONE at the time thought that Saddam had WMD.
You can strike both of those off your ‘brazen’ list. The most accurate part of what you have said is:
Is it meant to do more than enlighten? Hell, yes, it’s a call to arms. Does that sometimes color the analysis? Sure.
JKC
“Francis W. Porretto, B.S., Ph.D.”
Proving that anyone can get a Ph.D. these days.
JKC
John-
If, as many conservatives assert, the Bush Administration never claimed a direct link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, and if the supposed link isn’t why Congress authorized the invasion of Iraq, then how did around 70% of the American public come to the erroneous conclusion that such a link exists?
John Cole
Probably for the same reason that 70% of the country liked the Macarena.
Dave
JKC:
The same way that 66% of registered Democrats can’t name any of the Democratic candidates?
A lot of people just don’t pay a lot of attention to details.
I have a couple questions for you:
Do you have any direct, quotable evidence of Bush stating, explicitly, that Iraq was directly connected to 9/11?
If not, why assume that there was such a claim?
Perhaps to the detriment of ‘my side’ (save that in this, at least, ‘my side’ is that of ‘what are the actual facts’), I do remember reading in one or two articles the suggestion that Iraq had INDIRECT connections, in the way of funding, at least, for 9/11. This may be something that’s been reported (or more likely, misreported)in the broadcast media (since they care more for ‘news’ than ‘facts’ and have for a long time), thus confusing the kind of people who have the time to answer telephone polls.
Kevin Drum
“Inkblot has 3 legs” is only misleading? You have a mighty high tolerance for misleading, my friend.
On the other hand, if you had said “Inkblot has an IQ of 3,” then you would have been spot on.
In any case, since I gave example of the kinds of lies I was talking about, complete with links, it’s easy enough for anyone to decide on their own if they qualify as lies, exaggerations, deceptions, spin, or merely misleading in their own personal view. I’m willing to compromise on “deceptive,” I suppose, but when it happens often enough on important matters, it’s a real problem no matter what you call it.
talbert
i’m with bolggerhead and kevin drum. also, it seems that everytime a “democrat” tries to justify their statements and provide evidence, the ‘conservatives’ just try to put spin on it and never back up what they say
DANEgerus
Blah blah blah
The case was made months before the war and the arguments were sound enough for Congress to authorize and the UN to pass 1441.
The duplicity is raising all this again now… all the while tripping over the lies-of-omission required to neglect the success of the war, the mass graves revealed and the strategic improvement.
To put it simply revisionists…
If Roosevelt was an (R) you’d all say FDR lied people died in 1945 right?
Two further years of Nazi resistance costing 2000 lives would be a quagmire right?
You’d ignore those death camps too right?
The holocaust was an exaggeration right?
The Nazi nuclear program was in it’s infancy right?
Hitler wasn’t an imminent threat right?
Our unilateral action against the Nazi regime was not sanctioned by any international organization?
Beer
Man this Bush lied thingy just turns the Democrats and leftists into one big group of slobbering circle jerks suffering from mental constipation and oral incontinence. You guys better lighten up before you give each other tennis elbow.
Sometimes the anti-Bush gang is guilty of stupidity by committee.
Justin Katz
Here’s my question for the Bush Haters, JKC in particular:
Could you stop being deceptive (or being dupes) if you wanted to?
Because, y’know, you might want to slow down a little and discover whether your “evidence” means what you think it means.
So much for your unsubstantiated assertion about which side spins and which side provides evidence, eh, talbert?
Robin Roberts
JKC’s posting above makes me urge him to take some beginning logic classes.
M. Scott Eiland
“On the other hand, if you had said “Inkblot has an IQ of 3,” then you would have been spot on.”
Have to disagree, Kevin. It wouldn’t be a lie–it would just mean that the sneaky little bugger had both you and John fooled, as the kitties of the world are wont to do. :-)
Moe Lane
“On the other hand, if you had said “Inkblot has an IQ of 3,” then you would have been spot on.”
Hmm. I could have sworn that they had an IQ of 5…
Nevermind. Obscure geek reference.
Kimmitt
Our unilateral action against the Nazi regime was not sanctioned by any international organization?
Ooh, cute. We’ve gone from decrying “Bush is a Nazi” to proclaiming, “Anyone who doesn’t like Bush is a Nazi.”
JKC
Justin-
I am not a “Bush hater.” I think the administration has all the fiscal discipline of a problem gambler with a blank check in Vegas, and I think going after Iraq instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan was a mistake. The ties of al-Qaeda to Pakistan and Saudi Arabis are a lot less tenuous than any that might have existed with the regime of Saddam Hussein.
But a “hater?” I don’t think so. Just because I disagree with the man’s politics doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be honored to buy him a cup of coffee if the chance ever came up.
Justin Katz
JKC… I’ll take you at your word. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
But did you look at the link that I provided? It still applies to what you’d written.
cameron
I love all this nazi talk.
The left say Bush is a nazi
The right says the entire left are nazis.
NAZIS FOR EVERYONE!
Next round is on me. ;-)
Andrew Lazarus
DANEgerous, how many US soldiers died in post-surrender terrorist activity in Germany?
I understand the answer is ZERO.
Maybe that’s because, among other things, we Democrats left enough manpower there, had pre-trained administrators to re-establish civil government, and soaked the American people with high taxes to pay for it all.
Did you really want to bring up this example?
David Perron
So, Andrew, your point is that maybe we should have firebombed Baghdad and Tikrit, and leveled most other cities? I mean, if you want to compare A and B, you have to make sure they come from the same alphabet.
R.C. Dean
What we had in Germany was a nation that was utterly crushed because the Russians and the allies, as a matter of policy, set out to destroy the German nation. Not just its army, not just its regime, but the nation itself.
The US, on the other hand, is intentonally trying not to destroy the Afghan and Iraqi nations, but is instead trying to accomplish its goals with minimum force. That this policy results in the revanchists hanging on longer should surprise no one.
Kathy K
There is one difference between Iraq and Germany. Germany surrendered. The Iraqi Army simply went home. Individual units surrendered but ‘the army’ did not. The same applies to the government. Parts of it have surrendered but the pre-war ‘government’ has not.
And the head of Iraq’s old government is still issuing statements. It would be more accurate to compare Iraq to pre-surrender Germany.
Bleeding Heart Conservative
It is simply untrue that 70% of the US thinks Saddam was involved in 9-11. The truth is the poll asked “do you think it is somewhat possible the Saddam was involved?” The answer to that, based on the $300k he gave Zawahiri, the support for Palestinian intifadeh, etc. and Salman Pak, that yes, it is possible. One can say it is still possible, without any evidence, because the nature of the question is non-evidentiary, but speculative. If the question had been “Is there solid proof?” I think the respondents would have said no.
David Perron
Oh, crap. We’re to be held responsible for what idiots believe. Now Bush is going to be to blame for leading some to believe that our use of DU in GWI caused birth defects, because he hasn’t cleared that issue up, either.
Ok, question:
Do any of those who claimed that Bush’s comments are misleading actually know anyone who was misled by them? Let’s have a show of hands, ok? More to the point: were any of those who claimed Bush’s comments were misleading misled by his comments? Kimmitt? Kevin? McFly? Anyone?
DANEgerus
‘Andrew Lazarus ‘
Do your own homework and you wouldn’t have to say things like
‘I understand the answer is ZERO’
Which only says you understand Zero.
The point is that the (D) postwar administration of Germany took years, lives and $’s and the (R) postwar administratin of Iraq will take years, lives and $’s
Yet (D) Roosevelt is worshipped and (R) Bush is mocked
So I ‘really want to bring up this example’ because your kneejerk response demonstrates exactly the mindless nature of the criticisms the comparison exposes.
David Perron
Ah, DANE, he’s just taking advantage of the fact that the word “terrorist” probably hadn’t been coined yet.
Andrew Lazarus
DANEgerus, the Roosevelt (more accurately the Truman) Administrations were a lot more honest with the American people about the expense and effort. Remember, before the war, Bush Administrations were going to Congress talking about a TOTAL reconstruction bill of $30 billion. At this link, Wolfowitz specifically says that $95 billion is too high, while now we see it’s too low.
And DANEgerus, you weren’t paying attention. According to Slate , the occupations of Germany and Japan DIDN’T cost any American soldiers’ lives from post-surrender terrorism.
Your fellow excuse-makers are busy explaining this away on the basis of differences between Germany and Iraq, some of which would seem to me to suggest that there would have been MORE terrorism in Germany. Maybe the difference is that one occupation was run by a realistic Administration able and willing to prepare and pay for the necessary tools. They are seen as heroes. The other is mis-managed by ignorant, easily deluded optimists unwilling even to postpone tax cuts, too proud to recruit allies, too dishonest to trust. They are, correctly, at last being seen as bozoes.
Andrew Lazarus
Very clever, Perron. If the facts interfere with the ideology, joke away the facts.
See the Slate link above, and clue up. (Or is it more fun being ignorant?)
John Cole
Andrew- I agree with you that there is no comparison really valid between Germany post WWII and the current building (not re-building, as some might wat to pretend). Because we agree there is no similarity, I am curious as to why the left keeps using post WWI Germany as a comparison to point out how this current endeavor in Iraq is such a failure. Why, when you agree there is no comparison, would you state:
Maybe the difference is that one occupation was run by a realistic Administration able and willing to prepare and pay for the necessary tools. They are seen as heroes. The other is mis-managed by ignorant, easily deluded optimists unwilling even to postpone tax cuts, too proud to recruit allies, too dishonest to trust. They are, correctly, at last being seen as bozoes.
Makes no sense to me other than partisan bickering.
Kimmitt
I much prefer to use the examples of Bosnia and Kosovo. In both of those nations, the occupation ended up being more or less open-ended, costing huge amounts of money, and each of them had a much higher occupier/occupied ratio than we currently have in Iraq.
Andrew Lazarus
John, I feel I’m acting in a rebuttal of an Administration argument that our Iraq occupation is encountering problems, including terrorism, similar to what we faced in Germany and Japan. According to the Slate article, that defense was advanced by Condi Rice, among others, and its premise is wholly false. (Where does it fall in the taxonomy of lies?)
There are certainly facts about Iraq and Germany that make the comparison very dubious, but we didn’t start it. Kimmitt is correct to use Bosnia and Kosovo as examples that suggest: (1) it’s possible to do a better job; (2) it’s very difficult, expensive, and manpower-intensive even so; (3) our commitment in forces size and money appear to be inadequate to do a good job in Iraq, notwithstanding that both are already far larger than promised by the Administration during the foreplay for war. Especially (3) makes it clear that the Bushies deluded themselves instead of seeking objective estimates of the task on which they embarked. I don’t retract bozoes at all, except to wonder if it is spelled with no “e”.
Andy
The Werewolves specialised in ambushes and sniping, and took the lives of many Allied and Soviet soldiers and officers — perhaps even that of the first Soviet commandant of Berlin, General N.E. Berzarin, who was rumoured to have been waylaid in Charlottenburg during an incident in June 1945. Buildings housing Allied and Soviet staffs were favourite targets for Werewolf bombings; an explosion in the Bremen police headquarters, also in June 1945, killed five Americans and thirty-nine Germans. Techniques for harassing the occupiers were given widespread publicity through Werewolf leaflets and radio propaganda, and long after May 1945 the sabotage methods promoted by the Werewolves were still being used against the occupying powers
Although the Werewolves originally limited themselves to guerrilla warfare with the invading armies, they soon began to undertake scorched-earth measures and vigilante actions against German `collaborators’ or `defeatists’. They damaged Germany’s economic infrastructure, already battered by Allied bombing and ground fighting, and tried to prevent anything of value from falling into enemy hands”.
– Perry Biddiscombe, ‘Minutemen of the Third Reich: history of the Nazi Werewolf guerilla movement’, History Today, October 2000.
Kimmitt
Okay, this is flat out contradicted by some other sources I’ve read. Help?
Andrew Lazarus
Biddiscombe was singing a different tune when interviewed last month by the LA Times. He refers there to “ambiguity”.
Here is what some other historians had to say in the same interview:
(comments don’t blockquote, do they?)
Tom Schlesinger, a retired Army major and professor at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire who served in Army intelligence in occupied Germany, described the werewolves as “almost a deliberate urban myth.”
“I was in Germany all through the surrender and, although at lower rank, had access to all classified intelligence distribution as part of the occupation security force,” Schlesinger said. “The werewolf story turned out to be mostly a hoax, perhaps some wishful thinking of a few SS officers, though it caused us a few inconveniences due to the phony alerts.” …
“The Army put bars on jeeps to prevent decapitation by wires, but that was the only action taken by the Army,” said Farrell of Fort Leavenworth. “There’s very little evidence of the werewolves offering effective resistance.”
(end quote)
A few German mayors died “suspicious” deaths. There isn’t mention of a single GI. I can’t find any reference in Google to Bremen that doesn’t derive from the same source.
Sorry, Andy, the Bushies are too cheap and too lazy to duplicate the effort we had in Germany, and too dishonest to admit it.