Burgess-Jackson makes a few distinctions to separate out the bad lie (a known falsehood uttered with the intent to deceive) from several sorts of non-lies. From the point of view of a consumer of statements from a person with autority and resources, purposeful and knowing lies, reckless falsehoods, and negligent falsehoods are much the same. If a car mechanic said all your engine needed a tune up and he was going to fix it, and he failed to fix it with a tune up, whether it is deceit, reckless behavior, negligence, or ignorance, they are all equivalent to a lie, since they are a betrayal of the trust placed in the mechanic and his ability to do the job. The mechanic has special knowledge of cars that a layman is not expected to have, and given the mechanic's alleged expertise, their study of the car, and the professional reputation of the mechanic, there is a meta-level promise that the mechanic is providing a professional opinion with special knowledge beyond that of non-mechanics.

Technically, negligence is not a purposeful lie, but to the injured party, a negligent mechanic is equivalent to the purposefully lying mechanic: neither is trustworthy for repairing your car.

President Bush had access to a great deal of information and planning resources. Some of what we are seeing now was forseen by some of the people charged with planning such things (CIA, State Department, Army War College, etc.,). Ignoring those warnings was at best negligent. Ignoring those warnings while moving forward with plans unresponsive to those warnings was at best reckless. Presenting a war to the public as a darn good plan, based on darn good intelligence seems like a purposeful deception. As far as I can tell, the Bush administration is incapable of integrating information which doesn't fit the 'vision' while recklessly committing our resources to impossible tasks.

If it isn't a lie, it is some other dangerous sort of wrong.

An honest mechanic would share some doubt about his theories and plan for proceeding. It would be negligent to trust that the mechanic's new statements were not some flavor of falsehood.

I suppose I should have made it clear at the start that my interest here is not in defending the Bush Administration. There are numerous arguments that can be made that the Administration erred in several of its fundamental assumptions leading up to Iraq. In particular, I would like to know if we're not finding WMDs because a) there never were any and we made it all up; b) there never were any but the CIA believed there were; c) they were shipped out of Iraq prior to the war and we know that; d) they were shipped out prior to the war but we have no idea where they went. If Iraq was truly WMD-free prior to our invasion but we believed that they still had massive stockpiles, that represents a glaring failure on the part of the intelligence community, and I'd like to know what the Administration plans to do to address this failure. I don't think I need explain the problems we have if the Administration knew there were no WMDs in Iraq but said there were to bolster their case.

In any case, as the title of the post tries to make clear, my interest here is more in the breakdown of the English language. It can easily be argued that the Bush Administration was wrong and deserves to be removed from office without resorting to the unproven and probably incorrect 'Bush Lied' meme.

What it comes down to for me is this: I'm interested in finding the best available solutions to our problems. Regardless of who wins the 2004 election, I'll still push for similar actions, based on my analysis of the problems and available solutions. Running around screaming that someone lied adds nothing to the argument.

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security." -- Hillary Clinton, October 10, 2002

Here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Our friend here has decided to further dilute the value of the concept of lying by trying to smear Hillary with the crime of 'lying' as well. Hillary no more was lying about this than President Bush; they were both operating off of what now appears to have been inaccurate intelligence. And that's the real problem we ought to be trying to fix.