Is Bush lying about his lies?
http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel25.html#November 25, 2005
BY ANDREW GREELEY
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.
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.
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.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
