Is Bush lying about his lies?

Is Bush lying about his lies?

November 25, 2005
BY ANDREW GREELEY

Not only did the Bush administration deceive the American people about the
reasons for invading Iraq, it is now deceiving them about the deceptions. In
a burst of political tantrums, the president and the vice president have
shouted that it was "irresponsible" to assert that there had been deception
and it was unfair to the troops fighting in Iraq.

Is the administration lying about its lies? That many of the arguments in
favor of the war were false is beyond question. Nor can there be any serious
doubt that the new argument that it is irresponsible to question the old
arguments is also false. But if a lie is a conscious effort to deceive, then
the charge that the president and the men around him deliberately lied and
are now lying again, then that issue must be left to heaven. It is enough to
say they spread falsehoods three years because they had made up their minds
that there had to be a war and are now spreading falsehoods about the
original falsehoods. The president is not a man who likes to admit he was
wrong. Therefore, one must cover up the mistakes.

Consider some of the evidence. Vice President ***** Cheney and the president
both insisted that Iraq was trying to import "yellowcake" uranium for
nuclear weapons. Then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and the
vice president warned of "mushroom clouds."

Bush says that everyone agreed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He
has said in the past that it was not his fault that all the intelligence
agencies of the world believed that they did. Therefore, the intelligence
agencies of the world were to blame for the mistake, he wasn't. Everyone in
Washington, he argues, supported the war.

In truth, many Democratic senators did, not realizing how much the case in
favor of the war had been cooked. In the national intelligence estimate
issued just before the war, the internal dissent was excluded. The
administration had created an atmosphere of fear and deception that indeed
won support for the war.

Now we realize that even before Sept. 11, the powerful people in the
administration (Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz) wanted a war with Iraq. The
day of the attack some of them tried to find evidence that Iraq had attacked
us. Now there was certainly going to be a war, and the challenge was to
present a case to the American people to win their support for the war.

The search for evidence was essentially a search to make the case, not a
search for the truth, much as one prepares a political campaign or support
for legislation or drafts a legal brief. One looked for evidence that would
justify the war as preventing Rice's mushroom clouds. One took whatever one
could find. Even Colin Powell says his sad attempt to be the Adlai Stevenson
of his day was the worst experience of his life. The U.N. inspectors found
no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. But that conclusion was
dismissed, in effect, as a typical example of U.N. "waffling." No one in the
administration, as far as I know, has ever said that the inspectors were
right. It would seem such a suggestion is "irresponsible."

The buck stops in the Oval Office. If the president was not deliberately
lying to the American people, he nonetheless presided over what was in
effect and in truth a massive deception. He would be much wiser to admit his
mistake and assume responsibility, but it is apparently not in his character
to do so.

Moreover at least three-fifths of the American people now believe that he
did in fact deceive them. The question arises as to whether he and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are also deceiving us on the certainty of victory
in Iraq. Granting for the sake of an argument that we must train a
functioning Iraq army, why will no one in the administration predict how
long that will take? Why after several years of that effort is there only
one fully capable Iraqi unit (of 750 men)?

James Fallows, in a long and careful article in the Atlantic Monthly, says
that it would probably take 10 years, just as anonymous hints from the
Pentagon assert. The alternative is set a strict schedule for withdrawal,
which Fallows admits would be a loss of honor.

Whose honor? That of the United States or those who fabricated the reasons
for the war? What honor do Bush and Cheney have left?

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--
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1435181,00.html

www.iraqbodycount.net

www.costofwar.com

http://icasualties.org/oif/

In
a burst of political tantrums, the president and the vice president have
shouted that it was "irresponsible" to assert that there had been deception
and it was unfair to the troops fighting in Iraq.