"Nobody in any of these statements is lying."

Now, do we make this linguistic quibble by trying to define the meaning of is, or are we going to make it by saying 'they may not be lying, they're just not speaking the truth'...

How do we get this sequence to not be a lie, BTW:

Rumsfeld: I did not use the phrase immediate threat, thats a lie propagated by 'critics' like youself. I never said that [...]

Journalist: Quotes Rumsfeld saying 'there is no more immediate threat to the us .... than iraq'

thats not a lie?

Look, when you only take information from analysts that agree with you, discount world class experts from around the world (example: chgeney and the '6 month' nuclear claim- largely discounted by the entire nuclear proliferation expert community), who are actively telling you that you are mistaken and then tell this to the congress and the rest of america as 'fact'- how is this not equivalent to a lie?

To make it worse, those who are telling you wnat you don't want to hear (UN inspectors) are publically derided as weasles and nincompoops.

The only semantic quibble, for me, thats reasonable is whether to consider this behavior to be a lie, or to consider this behavior to be incompetence bourn of 'true belief'. Tough choice.

"No, I am saying that given the same information the administration had, the Democratic leaders came to the same conclusions about WMD and Saddam. I'm not even counting the same conclusions reached by the previous admininistration."

Finding other people who messed up and did something wrong does not vindicate your screw up.

As to the rest, See Tonys adjustment of your absurd analogy and see also my in-general criticism of argument by analogy below. If your down to criticising Kerry and painting absurd analogies, then you got nothing and you are acting in ways consistent with a partisan shill for the Right.

Davin L.