"I didn't take what Buster said as calling you a liar but maybe that's just a lack of sensitivity on my part."

Actually, what he said that: "It was all about WMD and Bush lied about WMDs are lies or sheer ignorance"

So I suppose he could have been calling me ignorant. Or an ignorant liar, depending on how you interpret the 'or'.
;-)

My point is that I have laid a very firm evidentiary basis for making the claim: "This war was fought because of the WMD, and WMD were the stated reason by our administration". Furthermore, False statements are generally Lies, or at least one is not unreasonable to impose that definition. So if Buster can call me a liar (or to be fair, a liar or ignorant) when I claim this war was fought on the basis of WMD, then I am certainly within my rights to claim that BLATANTLY flase statements made by Bush&Co are lies.

What You, Buster, Tom and etc seem to want to do is predicate this argument on weather Bush lied with malice and full knowledge that his statements are false. Basically, what you folks want to do is boil this down to an argument about what the mental state of Bush was during the moments in which he (or his admin) made the statements which they made. You want to argue about what he knew or didn't know.

This is navel gazing. It would take telepathy to prove or disprove this. So obviously, its a safe place (for fools) to hide, as telepathy isn't going to happen any time soon.

Interestingly, you bring up legal notions of proof. The Law OBVIOUSLY does not require judges and juries to 'know' what the accused 'knew' at the time of the statement- to do so would be an impossible burden of proof that would make perjery impossible to prove.

Instead, the law need only establish that the individual in question likely knew that what he said was untrue (by producing evidence, such as written logs) or by establishing that it would be imporbable for the individual to NOT know that he was telling falsehood (catching a Doctor saying the Liver pumped blood, for example).

Interestingly, without a trial or any sort of rigorous inquiry into this, the discussion does not prgress beyond beliefs abiut the mental states of bush. Its like gazing at the clouds: you largely see what you want to see.

So, thats where this country is.

For me, though, the kicker is the incompetence factor. The gulf between what Bush said and the facts are too inconcievably vast. Either he did indeed lie or fudge intentionally, or he (and his admin) was massively incompetent.

So you not believing Bush lied until a conviction in a court of law is a little disingenuous to me. A little too convinient. If there are no calls for accountability (no 'trial') how can he ever be convicted? Of course he can't. All we can do is argue about his intentions when he made a statement.

Would you support a trial?

I doubt it. Thats why I call him 'your boy'. That and you have never disagreed with a thing he has said or done, at least not where I can see.

Also, WRT to the intentional lying question, think about it in terms of motive. I find that very illuminating.

Davin L.