There is lying, and not carrying through on your word. There is glibly making the promise that you think you will never have to be called on, and there is intent to have your words prove wrong because of decisions that you darned well should have made.

And that word intent, what a slippery word is that? No matter how often Bush doesn't do what he says he will, no matter how many facts he gets wrong, no matter how good the evidence is that he knew better, you can always ask about proving intent. After all nobody will ever have more than circumstantial evidence of what Bush intended to do - how dare we claim to be able to read his mind?

Nice goalposts there. Nobody can ever reach them. He stands up and shouts that - no matter what the whip count - we will have a second vote. But when the whip count became obvious, we didn't have the vote. What changed? What would have changes his intent? Perhaps his intentions were good, but he got different marching orders from his handlers? So Bush might not be lying, he just says what his handlers say to when they say to do it with no idea what any of it means.

Now my definitions tend to be a bit sloppier. From my point of view if someone attempts to project sincerity as they tell me something that proves false, and said person doesn't seem to care that I was mislead, then I say that person lied to me. Because impossible gradations of intent are impossible for me to detect, but clearly there is a lack of basic integrity. And certainly I have every reason to not believe the next thing that that particular jerk tells me.

By my definition, Bush has lied to the nation repeatedly, both on Iraq and on other matters. But from yours his intent can become a theological dispute akin to discussions of angels using pins for ballrooms. OK, fine. I don't care to argue theology. Theological nitpicking aside, though, there is no practical difference between what Bush has done and blatant lying, and the whole world knows to not believe anything that Bush says when he is posturing. And no, this does not make me feel proud...

Regards,
Ben