Having the bottom line written already is not the same thing as lying. Neither is a good thing where rational dialogue is concerned, but the claim “Bush lied” has in most common moral frameworks a very different meaning than “By a host of systemic effects and severe cognitive biases, the Bush administration gave a deeply inaccurate summary of the situation.” In order to be better rationalists we need to try to be aware of how frequently apparent lies are likely just severe biases.
But deliberately misrepresenting the data in order to support a particular conclusion, that which the memo alleges, is lying about the state of the evidence, whether he and other members of the administration believed the conclusion or not.
But deliberately misrepresenting the data in order to support a particular conclusion, that which the memo alleges, is lying about the state of the evidence, whether he and other members of the administration believed the conclusion or not.
This is interesting, in that having reread the memo, I still don’t see it as saying that the data was deliberately misrepresented, and having just reread the Wikipedia page, I still don’t get that attitude. I don’t think this is due to bias on my part, since if I have any biases in this regard it would be biases that would make me want to think that Bush lied.
The memo says things like:
Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.
That doesn’t sound like deliberate lying to me. The administration had massive systemic problems. This isn’t the only example of this problem. A substantial fraction of the administration seemed to think that their personal wishes effectively determined what reality would do. (See for example Rove’s comment about the “reality-based community”).
It is difficult to underestimate human capacity for mendacity but it is equally hard to underestimate human capacity for self-deception.
On the one hand, I think we need to take into account which disguised queries “Bush lied” might stand for, given that the choices in the poll were “They were misinformed,” “They lied,” “Might still find WMD,” “Unsure.” If one suspects that Bush cherry-picked evidence in order to support an action he wanted to carry out, that seems closer to lying than being misinformed.
On the other hand, this whole discussion with the Downing Street Memo may be unimportant given that the Iraqi informant whose information was fairly important in the case for U.S. invasion of Iraq recently admitted to lying about WMDs.
Having the bottom line written already is not the same thing as lying. Neither is a good thing where rational dialogue is concerned, but the claim “Bush lied” has in most common moral frameworks a very different meaning than “By a host of systemic effects and severe cognitive biases, the Bush administration gave a deeply inaccurate summary of the situation.” In order to be better rationalists we need to try to be aware of how frequently apparent lies are likely just severe biases.
But deliberately misrepresenting the data in order to support a particular conclusion, that which the memo alleges, is lying about the state of the evidence, whether he and other members of the administration believed the conclusion or not.
This is interesting, in that having reread the memo, I still don’t see it as saying that the data was deliberately misrepresented, and having just reread the Wikipedia page, I still don’t get that attitude. I don’t think this is due to bias on my part, since if I have any biases in this regard it would be biases that would make me want to think that Bush lied.
The memo says things like:
That doesn’t sound like deliberate lying to me. The administration had massive systemic problems. This isn’t the only example of this problem. A substantial fraction of the administration seemed to think that their personal wishes effectively determined what reality would do. (See for example Rove’s comment about the “reality-based community”).
It is difficult to underestimate human capacity for mendacity but it is equally hard to underestimate human capacity for self-deception.
On the one hand, I think we need to take into account which disguised queries “Bush lied” might stand for, given that the choices in the poll were “They were misinformed,” “They lied,” “Might still find WMD,” “Unsure.” If one suspects that Bush cherry-picked evidence in order to support an action he wanted to carry out, that seems closer to lying than being misinformed.
On the other hand, this whole discussion with the Downing Street Memo may be unimportant given that the Iraqi informant whose information was fairly important in the case for U.S. invasion of Iraq recently admitted to lying about WMDs.