This thread is drawn from Steven Pinker’s latest book, The Stuff of Thought. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address includes the following passage of sixteen words:
The British Government has recently learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
The passage refers to to intelligence reports suggesting that Saddam may have tried to buy 500,000 tons of uranium ore called yellowcake from Niger in West Africa. For many Americans and Britons the possibility of Iraq possessing nuclear weapons was the only defensible reason for invading and deposing Saddam. During the occupatiion it became clear that Saddam had no facilities in place to manufacturenuclear weapons and had probably never had explored the possibility of buying yellowcake from Niger. In the words of placards and headlines throughout the world, “Bush lied”.
Did he? Investigations showed that though it was not completely unreasonable to rely on the British intelligence, it was far from conclusive. Bush had placed complete confidence on intelligence which, if exhaustively evaluated, may have revealed flaws. But it is not Bush’s prudential talents we are concerned with, but rather his integrity. It’s a question of whether he was dishonest in how he conveyed this part of of his rationale for the invasion to the world. And this question hinges on the semantics of one of those sixteen words: the verb learn. Learn is classified as a factive verb; it entails that the belief attributed to the subject is true.
So did Bush lie? It is submitted that he did. When he said that British Government had “learned” that Saddam had sought uranium, he committed himself to the proposition that the seeking of uranium actually took place, despite knowing of doubts within the intelligence community.
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