FirmhandKY
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Someone else has taken a much more detailed look at the "study" that started this thread.
Not that I expect most "Bush lied" people to even click on the link, but *shrugs* who knows ....
Study on Bush's Iraq Deception and Lies: Full of Deception and Lies
The headline-grabbing report released by two non-profits, Iraq: The War Card—Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War, charged that the Bush administration issued “hundreds of false statements” on Iraq. Bob Owens contends that the pseudo-scientific research is filled with “spin, false pretenses, cherry-picked statements.”
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The FIJ and CPI researchers may have purposefully compromised the integrity of the report by creating the definition “false statements” and sub-categories “direct false statements” and “indirect false statements,” which seem to be predicated upon the ultimate veracity of the statements after several years of hindsight and study.
They did not, as it would seem to be fair, base the study upon what was known at the time in the 2001-2003 run-up to the war in Iraq. The premise for the report seems to be reflected in the title of the report, that there was orchestrated deception on behalf of senior Bush Administration officials, not statements made upon inaccurate or misleading intelligence information as events unfolded.
Comparative framing analysis suggests that this report purposefully constructed a point of view that encouraged readers to interpret the “facts” in a particular manner.
Dr. Jim A. Kuypers, an assistant professor of Political Communication and Rhetoric & Public Address at Virginia Tech University, is an expert in comparative framing analysis and is author of Bush’s War: Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age and A Comparative Framing Analysis of Embedded and Behind-the-Lines Reporting on the 2003 Iraq War, published in Qualitative Research Reports in Communication, Volume 6, Issue 1 October 2005.
Asked by PJM to comment upon the CPI/FIJ study’s stated methodology and definitions, Dr Kuypers wrote that the study was compromised by biases and prejudiced assumptions from the outset:
The study does not appear to take into account the context of the time the original statements were uttered. Instead, it seems to start with an assumption that the administration deliberately mislead America to war. If the study had started with the assumption that the Bush administration and the intelligence community had misinterpreted intelligence reports, then these statements CPI collected could be interpreted in a very different manner. The study also fails to mention that a large majority in Congress, including top ranking Democrats, believed the intelligence assessments, and were briefed in more detail than the president about the situation. They still supported action against Hussein. It would be interesting to see the study enlarged to include statements made by those Democrats who voted for military action.
Their “methodology” is short on detail, but I infer that they (who, how many?) actually performed a sort of “content analysis” using very broad categories: Direct false statements — “when [the administration] specifically linked Iraq to Al Qaeda or referenced Iraq’s contemporaneous possession, possible possession, or efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons). In addition, any use of the verb ‘disarm’ was categorized as a direct statement because of the literal meaning of the word.” The other category, Indirect false statements—“Statements were classified as “indirect” if they did not specifically link Iraq to Al Qaeda but alleged, for example, that Iraq supported or sponsored terrorism or terrorist organizations, or if they referred to Iraq’s former possession of weapons of mass destruction or used such general phrases, for example, as “dangerous weapons.” These indirect false statements are not included in the total count of 935.”
Essentially, then, someone (we don’t know who or how many) read through transcripts and speeches looking for quotes that would in anyway support the a priori belief that the Bush administration misled Americans.
On the one hand, this looks like a sloppy study; on the other, the results do fall within the categories above, it is just the “spin” or interpretation put on them that causes one to wonder about motivation.
The “study” is based upon spin, false pretenses, cherry-picked statements, and artificial limitations to the breath of scope which excludes similar conclusions reached by the Clinton administration and Democrats and Republicans alike in both houses of Congress, and assessments from foreign governments.
The study’s “Key False Statements” page is as much an indictment of the lack of integrity from The Center for Public Integrity, and lack of independence from The Fund for Independence in Journalism, as it is an assault on the Bush Administration.
The CPI’s “Key False Statements” report stated, for example:
In a speech on August 26, 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney flatly asserted that “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet later wrote that Cheney’s statement “went well beyond what our own analysis could support.” Tenet was not alone within the CIA. As one of his top deputies later told journalist Ron Suskind: “Our reaction was, ‘Where is he getting this stuff from? Does he have a source of information that we don’t know about?’”
As Dr. Kuyper notes in response, “Perhaps the question to ask is why did the administration believe so strongly that Iraq had WMDs? Instead, CPI contextualizes by paraphrase and citing an anonymous source. Alternatively, Cheney’s statement could have been framed as running congruent to many members of Congress and British Intelligence.”
Again, another erroneous “Key False Statement” from CPI’s study:
In his State of the Union address on January 28, 2003, President Bush said: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
But as early as March 2002, there was uncertainty within the intelligence community regarding the sale of uranium to Iraq. That month, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research published an intelligence assessment titled, “Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely.” In July 2002, the Energy Department concluded that there was “no information indicating that any of the uranium shipments arrived in Iraq” and suggested that the “amount of uranium specified far exceeds what Iraq would need even for a robust nuclear weapons program.” In August 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency made no mention of the Iraq-Niger connection in a paper on Iraq’s WMD capabilities.
Note that President Bush said that Hussein sought uranium, not that a transaction or transfer had been completed. Seeking to complete a task and actually completing it are two entirely separate things. This statement by the President is in no way contradicted by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research assessment, nor the Energy Department’s conclusion that no shipments arrived in Iraq. This simply was not a false statement—but it was yet more evidence of misleading allegations from the CPI/FIJ authors.
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You get the picture. Read the entire thing if you are interested in learning how not to be spun next time.
Firm
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Some people are just idiots.
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RE: 935 lies: 3929 American deaths - 
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