[extropy-chat] Who thinks the Bush admin lied over Iraq? On what basis?

[MB]

On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:


> The term "lie" only applies to social systems or individuals whose
> (collective) minds are sufficiently directed to finding truth that there
> exists knowledge inverted to create a lie.  If you're mired down in a
> political system devoted to finding evidence for particular theories,
> selectively passing on arguments for particular theories, not contradicting
> the boss, etc., the boundary between dishonest lies and honest mistakes is too
> fuzzy to be worth pursuing.  If Bush were a scientist publishing a paper on
> WMD we'd call it a lie.  But I think it very probable that Bush believed Iraq
> had WMD.  Practically everyone did, including me.  You can say we were all,
> including Bush, fooled by a self-deceiving intelligence system for which Bush
> was partially responsible; but the fact remains, we believed it at the time.
>

 Thank you! This is the most sensible comment I've seen on this
subject in *years*! Although we certainly did not find an WMD (that I
know of) there is no telling what might have been spirited out befoer
we actually got there... that was a nasty group of folks, that crowd,
and I think there's very little argument on that score. Indedd they
might have had WMD, they surely wanted to!

I'm not a praying person, but I do spend a good bit of time hoping
that situation will settle down, that the people there will find
something more constructive to do than tear each other apart...
there's so much more to living than fighting!

Regards,
MB