The biggest GOP lies go unchallenged by Democrats.

[JoshK]

If you think back over the multitude of lies of the last few years, consider how few of the biggest were publicly challenged by the Democrats.

For example:
- The Iraq invasion was based on the alleged existence of WMD. Those are the terms in which the issue was presented & debated. Though some Democrats were opposed to the invasion, almost none dared to say that the REAL reason for it was anything other than WMD (for example, control of oil, an excuse to build military bases, a way to squeeze economic rivals, etc). Because so few Democrats challenged the WMD "reason" for the invasion, few Americans saw it as anything else. This prevented any broad public appreciation of the enormity of the GOP lie.

- When there proved to be no WMD, the GOP shrugged its shoulders and said, "Oh well, it must have been an intelligence flaw!! The Democrats did not challenge this childish excuse. The Kerry campaign never made an issue of how ridiculous this "dog ate my homework" excuse was. Thus, it was never possible to teach the public that the "flaw" was not innocent, but rather a manufacturing of a deliberately bogus case. Again, the opportunity was lost to publicly portray the GOP as a bunch of pathological liars -- because the Democrats went along with the Big Lie. The lack of WMD should have been a scandal of unprecedented proportion -- yet the Democrats never made the slightest effort for the public to see it as such.

- When Bush shifted gears and claimed he was now trying to "bring democracy to Iraq," the Democrats never seriously challenged the assertion. Certainly, their lack of challenge helped to solidify in the public mind that the Bush assertion must be more or less legitimate. Who is going to tell the public that the GOP is lying, if the "opposition party" won't?

- Why wasn't Abu Ghraib and the concentration camps a tremendous scandal? (The GOP claimed it was "just a few bad apples." The Dems never challenged this assertion, despite the memos, which everyone knew about last June.) Why wasn't Enron's closeness to Bush a major campaign issue? The word "Halliburton" was mentioned by Sen. Edwards in several one-liners during the VP debate, but overall, no serious effort was made by the Dems to educate the public about the depth of corruption that the Halliburton contracts exemplified.

This pattern repeats itself over & over again, on many other fronts. How is the public supposed to perceive the deep criminality of the GOP, if even the opposition party won't tell them? If YOU were running for president against a gangster and war criminal, don't you think it would be your responsibility to present a powerful case to the public that your opponent was a gangster and a war criminal? Yet on many of the biggest GOP lies, the Dems never made this case.

[Al-CIAda]

1. They are COMPLICIT!

...and you forgot to mention all the DOCUMENTED lies concerning 9-11.

[JoshK]

2. Sure. It wasn't exactly "forgetting," though.

It was more that listing all the major examples would've taken up an awful lot of time and space!