UN TRUTHS

Bush May Have Exaggerated, but Did He Lie? (DAVID E. ROSENBAUM, June 22, 2003, NY Times)

The hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq has been fruitless. The tax cut turns out to give no break whatsoever to millions of low-income taxpayers. In the view of some Democrats, President Bush has been lying about these and other matters, the way Lyndon B. Johnson lied about Vietnam, Richard M. Nixon about Watergate and Bill Clinton about his sex life. [...]

In fact, a review of the president's public statements found little that could lead to a conclusion that the president actually lied on either subject. But more pertinent than whether the president told the literal truth is what factors he stressed and which ones he played down.

Certainly, a strong argument can be made that he exaggerated the danger posed by banned Iraqi weapons when he was trying to convince the country and Congress of the need for a pre-emptive strike and that he overemphasized the benefits to people of modest means when he was trying to sell his tax cut.

Jim Angle of Fox News made a good point about the WMD strategy on The Diane Rehm Show on Friday: the Administration believed that the nature of Saddam Hussein's rule justified his removal, but you could hardly go to the UN with the argument that brutality, repression, and mass murder are just cause for regime change because there are about fifty states there against whom similar action would thereby be justified. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 22, 2003 5:48 AM