"In The Darkness" wrote in message
...
Jarg wrote:
"john" wrote in message
Bush, on numerous occasions, said that these weapons threatened our
national security.
Jarg

And how was that a lie exactly? It hasn't been disproven, and even if
it
were it wouldn't make it a lie. You see, a lie is an INTENTIONAL
untruth,
not a mistaken statement.

"The onus to war was forced upon the Intelligence group from the Top
Down, to a given conclusion..." - According to O'Neil.

Also according to O'Neil: "O'Neill said Tuesday that he did not mean to
imply that the administration was wrong to begin contingency planning for a
regime change in Iraq..."
(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3925358&p1=0 )

And from an interview on the Today Show...

O'Neil: "Yeah, and the other thing that's good, today the book is going to
be available, and this red meat frenzy that's occurred when people didn't
have anything except snippets -- as an example, you know, people are trying
to make a case that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in
the administration. Actually, there was a continuation of work that had been
going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to
be regime change in Iraq."

COURIC: So you see nothing wrong with that being at the top of the president
's agenda 10 days after the inauguration?
O'NEILL: Absolutely not. One of the candidates had said this confirms his
worst suspicions...But I was not surprised that we were doing a continuation
of planning that had been going on and looking at contingency options during
the Clinton administration.

COURIC: Well, we'll get to that in a moment. But you say nowhere did you
ever see evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Well, an
intelligent person would draw the conclusion that those charges were being
trumped up by the administration as a rationale for the invasion.

O'NEILL: No, that's not what I've said...certainly there were lots of
inferences and circumstantial things that the national security assessments
pulled together in looking at this question of mass destruction. I'm not
denying or gainsaying the fact that one could make a case. What I have said
is I never saw anything that I considered to be concrete evidence of weapons
of mass destruction...That also doesn't make a point that we shouldn't have
gotten rid of Saddam Hussein. I'm not making that case.

COURIC: Well, do you think an invasion of a country should be based on
allusion and assertion?

O'NEILL: Well, I think one has to look very hard at the apparatus we have
with the national intelligence assessments. And it's why we have presidents.
At the end of the day there's one person who gets to decide is what he
considers to be convincing proof of basis for going to war, and we elected
George Bush and he decided it was good enough.

http://www.nationalreview.com/thecor...er-archive.asp


And you think he _didn't_ know ?

If you read *all* of what he has said, you would realize that is not what
O'Neil now claims to have been his view.

Brooks



A little reading in a dictionary might help clear
this concept up for you.

Jarg