What's the Delimeter Between Misspeaking and Lying?

[TeamsterDem]

I'm an Obama supporter. I should be honest about that before beginning, so there ya have it.

That said, can any of HRC's supporters clarify for me what the line between misspeaking and lying is? We've all misstated things; we've all misspoken at one time or another. But having served in the Marine Corps including 2 tours in combat I can say with certainty that when someone is on a plane that's corkscrewing in for a hot landing, that person is damn sure that their plane is corkscrewing. "Misspeaking" about a corkscrew landing would be like "misspeaking" about having had a root canal; it's not something you forget or something you falsely remember happening.

I don't have much a problem believing HRC when she says she misspoke about what happened on the ground. It's understandable how a civilian could be unnerved by reports of sniper fire, and later have that unnerving come back to haunt them in the form of a "heightened" recollection of the event. But for me it's the landing part: Having been on a few of those it's just not something you forget. It's not as if corkscrew landings are "life-flashing-in-front-of-your-eyes" moments necessarily (some are), but they are absolutely jarring and in no conceivable way comparable to mere rough landings. I'm sorry, but she can only be lying about that one.

And then there's NAFTA. HRC says she opposed NAFTA and was very vocal in opposition to it. The problem is that the recent document dump shows that she held meetings in which she championed NAFTA. You can say that she was just being a good "soldier" and what not but think about it logically: You can oppose something privately, but if you campaign for it publicly then you're inherently one of the people who supports it. After all, if you campaign for something you're inherently assisting the process of selling it. That doesn't make you an opponent no matter how you parse it.

It's kinda like the Iraq War. Hillary says she opposed the management of the war but the fact is that she voted for the IWR which inherently gave Bush the power to wage that war. Giving power to an idiot to launch a war and then being shocked that the idiot mismanaged it seems to call into question just who the idiot is. Or at least it would if I believed that she were truly shocked about his ineptitude. My guess is that she didn't have the political courage to vote against it because she feared the unpatriotic label would be bestowed on her, so acquiescence became expedient. HRC is far too smart to be shocked that an idiot would do something idiotic, but judging by her history she is susceptible to putting political concerns ahead of her conscience. That's likely what happened here.

It's certainly laudable that she devoted so much of her pre-vote speech to explain that she was concerned about what the vote might do and how Bush might abuse it, but the fact is that none of those concerns were evidently important enough to cause her to rethink her vote. And ultimately she voted for the thing which she feared Bush would use to launch a war, and he of course did just that. But now she's suddenly some great opponent of the war? I don't get how that works.

It's things like these that make many of us Obama supporters. That's not to say that he's the definition of honesty or that he's never lied. I can't think of a particular lie, but I'm not stupid enough to say he's never lied. I'm sure he has; we all have. But it's the egregiousness of the lies in addition to the nature of them that concerns people like me: She's lying about something for which there were many witnesses (including cameras). She's lied about something that goes to the heart of why labor supports Democrats: Their supposed alignment with fair trade policies. And I don't have proof that she's lying about the IWR, but I'm more than comfortable saying she's at least shading the truth on that one.

So there's at least 2 lies, maybe 3 depending on your view of the IWR vote, all of which are directly related to why we consider ourselves Democrats. How in the world is she supportable given the ample proof of these important lies?

Barack Obama has had his share of misstatements as well, the recent "bitter" flap being a good example of that. But his statements echo something that the very popular (on DU) Howard Dean campaign used to say in 2004, something having to do with how he (Dean) wasn't going to allow the election to be about God and guns. When Dean used to say whatever the line was, DU wasn't awash in posts about the "controversy." Yet now it is. What's the difference? Why was Howard Dean speaking the truth and Barack Obama spitting venom?

Is it not yet another lie to blast Obama for statements that were widely supported when they were made by someone else?

[Lerkfish]

1. intent with the goal of influencing an outcome is a lie

a slip of the tongue or malapropism or poor word choice is misspeaking.

pure and simple.

for example:

HRC's lie about bosnian sniper fire was intentional with the goal of influencing people's opinion that her stint as first lady was every bit as important in terms of experience as being president.
She told the lie several times. It was not an accidental slip. And, when called on it, she fabricated more buttressing of falsehoods to explain it away. These are lies. The essential core of what she asserted was knowingly false.

[Lerkfish]

2. kicke