Originally posted by: TaylorD
Originally posted by: Bowfinger
Yes, dear, whatever you say.
Thanks for helping to prove my point. You are unable to defend Bush so you attack me.
I've stated many times that Clinton lied. Do you have the integrity to make the same concession re. Bush? Didn't think so.
OK, I respect the fact that you concede that Clinton lied. The difference you're missing here is the timeframe. Did you conced to Clinton's lying only weeks after it was alleged that he had lied? Or did you wait until further evidence came out, and there was no question in anyones mind?
"Integrity" does not mean jumping the gun to call someone a liar before they have been proven to be one.
Thats all I am going to say here - give it time, and if it is proven that Bush lied, I will be more than happy to get a big cake with "Bush is a liar" on it, and we can all have a party and be civil.
I'm not sure I agree timeframe is relevant, but I'll answer your question anyway. I assumed pretty much from the beginning that Clinton was lying. He already had the reputation re. women. Having any sort of sexual activity with another woman (other than one's spouse) is exactly the thing guys are most likely to lie about.
The big difference was that I didn't really care. I thought it was a personal matter, I thought the Republicans showed a complete lack of class and civility by making a federal case of it -- literally -- and I thought it was shameful that the Republicans continued the witch hunt even as it became obvious they were hurting the country in general, and children in particular. I thought it was unforgivably hypocritical for Republicans to profess their belief in family values while ensuring that every child older than seven would be blasted with graphic information about oral sex. It was a shameful display of purely partisan hatred, and it debased everyone involved.
At the same time, I was disgusted with the way Clinton handled the whole fiasco. Even though his initial lie was predictable, he should have shown greater integrity. Continuing to lie after the truth was apparent was dumb. Lying under oath was flat-out stupid. It was consensual sex -- so what? He should have taken his lumps and moved on. It would have been difficult politically, but it was the right thing to do.
Re. Bush-lite and Iraq, I find the evidence overwhelming already. But, I was suspicious from the beginning, as the Bush Administration started bad-mouthing Iraq out of the blue. Even then, there was public evidence that Bush & Co. were lying. It just wasn't covered by U.S. media.
Maybe I have an extra-sensitive BS detector. I always felt the Iraq-bashing didn't pass the smell test. There was no mention of Iraq before early 2002. The whole focus was on bin Laden and Afghanistan. Then, as the economy kept tanking, corporate scandals started swirling closer and closer to the White House, Bush's approval was dropping, and there was no sign of bin Laden, suddenly Iraq popped up out of nowhere as the new target. In January, nobody cared. By August, Iraq was an imminent threat to the U.S. That didn't smell right; that kind of change doesn't happen overnight. Couple that with Bush's refusal to try diplomacy or work with the U.N., and I suspected from the beginning that the war was being sold on false pretenses.
Every single revelation since then has reinforced that view. The only thing Bush said about Iraq that we can confirm is that Hussein was a brutal thug. Everything else has been called into question or outright discredited. In my book, that's lying. No amount of weaseling about the technical definition of "lying" changes that.
That's how I see it. YMMV.
