By Larry Elder
Thursday, November 07, 2013
When the weapons hunters failed to find stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so began one of the greatest slanders on a
president in history: "Bush lied, people died."
Never mind that, in building the case for war in Iraq,
President George W. Bush relied on the unanimous opinion of all 16 U.S.
intelligence agencies.
Never mind that the bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission
examined the intelligence on which Bush relied, and unanimously found that
"the Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments
in response to political pressure. ... We conclude that it was the paucity of
intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure,
that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments."
Never mind that Bush retained the same CIA director,
George Tenet, who served under Bill Clinton. Tenet gave Bush the same
intelligence assessment: that Saddam Hussein, the dictator of Iraq, possessed
WMD is a "slam dunk." Indeed, according to The Washington Post's Bob
Woodward, Bush was initially skeptical of the intelligence that reached that
conclusion. When, on December 21, 2002, Tenet laid out the intelligence purportedly
showing the existence of WMD stockpiles, Bush said, "This is the best
we've got?"
Never mind that former secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, then a New York senator, was particularly adamant about the threat
posed by Saddam: "In the four years since the inspectors left,
intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his
chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his
nuclear program. ... If left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to
increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep
trying to develop nuclear weapons."
Finally, never mind about then-President Bill Clinton's
Persian Gulf expert on the National Security Council, Kenneth Pollack. While he
opposed the war's timing, Pollack said "no one doubted" Saddam's
stockpiles of WMD: "The intelligence community convinced me and the rest
of the Clinton Administration that Saddam had reconstituted his WMD programs
following the withdrawal of the U.N. inspectors, in 1998, and was only a matter
of years away from having a nuclear weapon. ... Other nations' intelligence
services were similarly aligned with U.S. views. ... Germany ... Israel,
Russia, Britain, China and even France held positions similar to that of the
United States. ... In sum, no one doubted that Iraq had weapons of mass
destruction."
"Bush lied, people died" -- or some version of
it -- was uttered at the highest levels in the opposition party. Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called W. a "loser" and a
"liar." He later apologized -- for the "loser" part. Liar
stands. The so-called Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, bellowed, "Before
the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie
after lie after lie."
If Bush is a "liar," having relied in good
faith on the unanimous opinion of the U.S. intelligence agencies, what do you
call President Barack Obama? In building the case for Obamacare, Obama
promised: "No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise
to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your
doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep
your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what."
Did Obama "lie"?
Obama's health care team, according to NBC News, knew
that more than half of the people who buy their plans on the individual market
would lose their plan: "Millions of Americans are getting or are about to
get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts,
and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years."
NBC News' sources estimated that 50 to 80 percent of
Americans who buy individual insurance will find their policies cancelled,
because those existing policies don't meet Obamacare standards. And for many of
those -- now forced to buy new policies -- the price tag will give them
"sticker shock."
The Affordable Care Act stated that an insurance policy
in effect before March 23, 2010, was to be grandfathered in -- provided
insurance companies have made no "significant change" to the plan.
But if the plan, say, had a change to the deductible, co-pay or benefits, the
plan was no longer eligible to be grandfathered, and the policyholder would
have to purchase a new plan.
Obamacare's July 2010 regulations included an estimate
that "40 to 67 percent" of customers wouldn't be able to keep their
policy because of normal annual turnover in the individual insurance market.
And, because many policies will have been changed since the March 23, 2010,
date, "the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather
status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range." Yet Obama
continued to tell Americans that no one would lose their plan or doctor, a
promise without which Obamacare would never have passed.
For his part, Obama now says:
"What we said was, you can keep it if it hasn't changed since the law
passed." A lie is an untruth told with intent to deceive.
Bush didn't "lie."
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