BUSH IS NOT A LIAR
(Small Consolation If You're in the Armed Forces)
An easy way to pique the ire of Republicans and other defenders of our current president is to call George W. Bush a liar. Al Franken does it. Michael Moore does it. Tempting as it is, I won't.
Why not? Because I don't think Bush is a liar. He didn't tell a deliberate un-truth while under oath, unlike certain former presidents I can name. Bill Clinton lied; George W. Bush didn't. That takes care of the semantics.
Clinton, however, lied about his personal life. The consequences of his lie, in the big picture, affected few outside his immediate family and Monica Lewinsky's. Certainly no one died as a result of his infamous "I did not have sexual relations" denial.
Bush's statements concerning our reasons for invading Iraq, by contrast, were not outright lies. There was some evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that he was in cahoots with al Qaeda, and that Iraq was an immediate threat to the United States; he was not lying about that.
There is also some evidence that George H.W. Bush was involved in John Hinckley's attempted assassination of President Reagan, and may also have had a role in the events of 22 November, 1963.
As it turns out, the evidence against Saddam Hussein is about as accurate as the evidence against Bush pére.
It's easy to see how this happened. The CIA's primary client is the President, so when the President asks the CIA to find links between Iraq and al Qaeda, that's what the CIA does. Unfortunately there is no link, Saddam had no WMDs, Iraq is a shambles and a hotbed of terrorist activity, we've spent billions of dollars on the fiasco, and more than 900 Americans have died for the non-cause, some by beheading.
Bush didn't lie; he mislead Congress and the American people into invading a country we didn't need to invade, at the cost of over 900 American lives, so far.
That doesn't make Bush a liar. It makes him a murderer.
—Greg Olear
Editor, LARGEREGO
August 10, 2004
Editor, LARGEREGO
August 10, 2004
"We are a nation in danger." |