Sure he has.
Well, perhaps--at least, some of his lies have gotten more clever--such that he relies on the press to reinterpret** what he says to say what he means...
**to create the pre-digested pablum so common in the news these days--albeit with the planned flaws in their interpretations, as intended by the Bush Administration, such that they work to their advantage (such that people think he's finally admitting and learning from his "mistakes" and are therefore willing to give the guy yet another chance). Exceedingly clever--most people miss it entirely (especially those who obtain all their information from the corporate media).
GWB: "Our coalition confronted a regime that defied United Nations Security Council resolutions, violated a cease-fire agreement, sponsored terrorism, and possessed, we believed, weapons of mass destruction."
GWB: "we found mass graves filled by a dictator; we found some capacity to restart programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, but we did not find those weapons."
Noise: "that defied United Nations Security Counsil resolutions". If it merited "WAR", the U.N. would have authorized one.
Noise: "violated a cease-fire agreement". Did they? Were our aircraft within the no-fly zone, not that we'd admit it if they weren't? Did we fire first, not that we'd admit it? Even so, it's a trivial matter--I'd be surprised if the remaining IRAQI air defenses could have even hit one of our planes short of extreme luck or incompetence on our part. In any case, that involved what? One or more planes? One or more people? Even if they did this several times (and they presumably did), it's not sufficient to even begin to talk about an invasion.
Noise: "sponsored terrorism". They didn't do much of this, and of course, given the position we ourselves put them in, it's hardly a surprise that Saddam would turn to any approach to annoy us. Generally, I suspect this didn't amount to very much--it certainly had nothin to do with us or 9/11. Even so, we aren't bothering with a great many other countries that support terrorism or have done. Furthermore, this doesn't rise to the level worthy of even momentary discussion of invasion or war.
Bullshit/Bushshit: "and posessed, we believed, weapons of mass destruction". Uh, right. Like how many countries have WMDs, even ones we don't like. Is such a condition worthy of invasion/war? I'd say no. Would any of Saddam's WMD's, if he'd had them, have been a threat to the U.S.? No. Our allies? Well, perhaps Israel--but they're more than capable of taking care of themselves. As a consequence of the war, we had the U.N. make a rule that IRAQ couldn't have various WMDs... To which end, by the way, we had the U.N. Weapons Inspectors. Sure, they'd been given the run-around, but they'd also managed to root out and destroy the vast majority of--and it turns out--effectively all of IRAQ's WMDs. Towards the end, the weapons inspectors themselves were satisfied IRAQ was complying. However, as Britain, being a signatory to the World Court, couldn't legally join us in our invasion plans unless IRAQ did something provocative--such as expelling the weapons inspectors, every effort was made to provoke IRAQ and to make it appear the weapons inspectors were being thwarted--and they just weren't. Intelligence, however, especially when you have disenchanted IRAQI defectors who have their own agendas as sources, can be--with effort--subject to manipulation and "cherry-picking". The Bush Administration is guilty of this--with full intention to "fix" the intelligence/evidence around the intention to go to war. So, the intelligence wasn't really wrong--and even if it hadn't been, it might have been cause for a few bombing raids, but nerver an outright invasion or illegal war. Illegal since we simply were never in any danger.
Assumption... "we did not find those weapons" is an admission of making a mistake. Georgie didn't say that. Indeed, to the extent that it matters to him (it doesn't, other than the public relations problem it's caused, it's irrelevant to him), he probably thinks they just managed to hide them well.
Attempted distraction: "found some capacity to restart" WMD programs. Some? How much--not much, and besides, so what?
Attempted distraction: "found mass graves filled by a dictator". I doubt that they found graves filled with the remains of one large dictator--but we all know he meant that there were uncountable numbers of IRAQIs found in mass graves that were the result of actions taken by Saddam Hussein, a dictator. Really, though, how many mass graves were found? How many bodies in them? How many of the bodies were simply remnants of a certain IRAN-IRAQ war that we promoted? Even so, is this an attempt to say the purpose of our invasion was to stop some current production of mass-killings/mass-graves? Truly, and by several orders of magnitude, the severe sanctions we forced the U.N. to allow us to enforce over IRAQ throughout the 90's, created far more dead bodies (which, if buried in mass graves would dwarf those that were found), and they were the bodies of truly innocent men, women and especially children! So, it shouldn't be accepted that somehow we were outraged over dead IRAQI's. H_ll, consider the thousands upon thousands of dead IRAQI bodies we created directly, both in the Gulf War, as well as the Bush II Escapades (Operation Iraqi Freedom--where we certainly freed many IRAQI souls from their bodies--some estimates range from 30,000-ish to 100,000!). Mass graves indeed.
After all this... Bush has the temerity to insist: "...much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong. As your President, I am responsible for the decision to go into Iraq. Yet it was right to remove Saddam Hussein from power."
Some of the press are stupid (or complicit) enough to conclude that that somehow means he's admitting to the mistake of having relied upon faulty intelligence in his decision to invade IRAQ (and start a war with an unending and violently opposed occupation).
Bush further thinks: "And I have never been more certain that America's actions in Iraq are essential to the security of our citizens, and will lay the foundation of peace for our children and grandchildren."
Sure, IRAQ is more able now than ever before to somehow reach out and harm American citizens--especially without WMDs. Well, to the extent that we've created untold numbers of new terrorists--it's at least partially true (though our occupation is hardly a means to prevent this outcome). As for peace for our children and grandchildren. That's a non-sequitur if I ever heard one. Since we now have millions of IRAQI chidren/youth who've lost parents, friends and untold numbers of loved ones with the primary, if not direct, cause being the United States--we are going to see generations of IRAQIs who hate us deeply... They're not likely to just forget and put the war behind them. Many have been so traumatized they'll never be the same--and one day, when they have children, their children are going to hear, see and feel hate for us. In that part of the world, such animosity is liable to last for any number of generations. Even if we rebuild their country and "give them Democracy", all at simply unestimable, great cost to us--we can't make up for dead/mutilated loved ones (though, it might be said that we "owe them" at least that). Peace will be elusive for us, and probably require a significant, permanent presence if it's even possible.
The main points are: Bush lies. Bush is delusional. Bush is obsessed. Oh, and, Bush lies (bears repeating). Of course, sometimes Bush lies with great cleverness and subtlety (thank you Karl). The key is to listen to what he actually says (and be sure to notice what he is very careful not to say).
On a related note... I find it interesting that the press keeps hammering us with statements to the effect that Bush has changed, he's admitting mistakes, he's taking responsibility... etc., even following a press briefing (this one, Sunday, 12/18) in which he mostly talked about other things. That is, they keep rehashing what is primarily an interpretation of a couple of sentences in one of the previous speeches in his recent ad (public relations) campaign. Also, I'm growing seriously tired of hearing Bush keep trying to resurrect memories of 9/11 for political purposes--especially when it's brought up to gain support for a war that had exactly nothing whatsoever to do with it (a trick that has no right to work)!
The text of his latest pack of lies/delusions and deceptions:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051218-2.html
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