Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to re: So basically you are saying:

Lie: 1. an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive
Larry J — (archived)

There's a big difference between saying something that you honestly believe to be true that later turns out to be wrong than to deliberately say something you know to be wrong. Based on the best available intelligence, politicians ranging from Bill Clinton to John Kerry to Jacques Chiraq to Ted Kennedy to Tony Blair to George Bush all believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and stated as much. Tom has provided several links where these people stated this. Were they all wrong? It certainly looks that way, although the jury is still out on the matter. Were they all lying? I don't think so. It's a known fact that Saddam had and used WMDs back in the 1980s. Lacking any evidence of their destruction, they made a reasonable conclusion that he still had them.

Like it or not, that's how a great deal of the intelligence business is conducted. Loose pieces of information are assembled to come up with the best estimate of the other side's capabilities and intentions. It's an inexact science, at best, especially when your access to the other side is limited and they're bent on deception.

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