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The Bush Lies Marathon, Day 4

A fresh reminder today, courtesy of Tony Blair's former international development secretary, Clare Short, of a Bush administration lie we've already listed in slightly different form: The Bush administration was not bent on invading Iraq from the start. In the Guardian Short describes being briefed on a summer 2002 pact between Bush and Blair to go to war in February/March of this year. No wonder the administration thought Hans Blix's efforts were so ten minutes ago.

Today's first nine lies are the rest of Rob Johnson's long list; number 10 was sent by Vince Bradley. I'll be posting compilations of the rest of the submissions, and a few more of my own, in the next couple of days, and I'm still taking fresh entries at sperry@citypages.com.

1) That the U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions with regard to POWs of Afghanistan or Iraq

2) That the U.S. is obeying the Geneva conventions period.

 

3) That the Congressional "war resolution" was constitutional (some argument about this one I'm sure, but I would include it)

 

4) That UN resolutions 687 and 1441 provided the justification for U.S. action

 

5) That the "no-fly" zones were UN-imposed

 

6) That Saddam was solely responsible for "starving his people" during the sanctions years

 

7) That people being held in Guantanamo are mostly "terrorists"

 

8) That Judith Miller and the rest of the "embeds" are journalists

 

9) That the American people are now safer

 

10) The staged statue toppling in the Baghdad square, featuring tight shots of a non-existent "crowd" that consisted of Chalabi stooges.

Why Bush's Lies Stick, part 3

He believes them.

This is an underrated quality in presidents, especially ones of the modern era, who do their jobs in front of cameras. Bill Clinton lied often and lied well, but you could see the intelligence and calculation in his carefully parsed public words. We knew he was lying; he knew he was lying; the game was to catch him. Ronald Reagan was a much more effective public liar because you knew in watching him that he believed every myth and fabrication that passed his lips. And why shouldn't he? They worked well enough for him.

W partakes of the same magic. Like Reagan, he is not stupid but profoundly lazy. He never bothers to learn the details that put the lie to what he says in public, so he never has to bother about the elaborate web of prevarication some politicians are forced to construct. He merely keeps saying the same things over and over, whether they make sense or not. And as we noted yesterday, repetition is everything in our free press. 

But W does not have Reagan's unflappable public gravitas, and that may prove a problem later. There are moments when you catch him mugging on camera, like a boy trying on faces to find one that seems appropriate to a situation he doesn't really understand. Bush and the American people share a dirty little secret: Both know that he's in imminent peril of getting in over his head if he's not already there. (He is.) Americans have always loved rooting for his type--the raw but spirited greenhorn--but the infatuation has its limits. If things begin going badly for Bush, his bumbling aggressions won't seem so endearing anymore.

Posted by Steve Perry at June 18, 2003 11:56 AM

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