I just can’t believe it. How does this country tolerate such enormous lies from its leaders?
We went ballistic over Clinton’s lie — you know, about “that woman.” And that was just about getting a little spit and polish in his office.
Bush and friends are constantly lying outright about the Iraq war, and even when the lies are uncovered they just keep doing it.
At last week’s Republican convention, President Bush and Vice President Cheney repeatedly linked the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq, largely abandoning the rationale offered when the Bush administration invaded the Persian Gulf country.
Announcing the invasion on March 19, 2003, Bush said in a nationwide televised address that the United States “will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder.” Two days earlier, Bush had asserted in another address to the nation, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”
But no such weapons were found after the invasion, and the subject was only fleetingly mentioned from the podium in Madison Square Garden. Instead, the war on Iraq was presented as a part of a seamless thread that stemmed directly from the terrorism of the Sept. 11 attacks. “We have fought the terrorists across the earth — not for pride, not for power, but because the lives of our citizens are at stake,” Bush said, before listing Iraq along with the struggle against terrorist groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Ever since the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration has searched for explanations for how to defend the war, such as the need to bring freedom to the Middle East and to end the brutal nature of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s government. With Bush’s convention speech, the administration laid out its most sweeping case to date — and campaign officials are betting voters will buy this retooled version of the need to go to war.
… It is a familiar strategy. Bush and particularly Cheney have long suggested links between Hussein and terrorist groups, even al Qaeda. But investigations after the war, such as the inquiry by the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission, have largely disproved the alleged connections. Yet in their convention speeches, the president and the vice president linked Sept. 11 and Iraq even more tightly than before.
… “I think the administration is testing the theory that you can fool all of the people some of time,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, a senior foreign policy adviser. He said that the assertion that Hussein possessed banned weapons allowed Bush to claim he needed to go to war immediately, even when it was opposed by many countries. “Once you remove the rationale for war, you no longer have the urgency that justified it,” Holbrooke said, adding that “every politician knows that when you don’t have a good case, you change the subject.”
Yes, we’re now fighting terrorists in Iraq. The right wing use this fact as an excuse for being there. More intelligent, rational people note that the terrorists are there simply because we are there. They had no foothold in Iraq until we invaded and created a perfect, chaotic situation for them to take advantage of. The invasion of Iraq removed a despot, but that despot was stable and contained and was no threat to us. Instead, Iraq is now a volatile, unstable place, a perfect haven for terrorists.
Perhaps that what Bush really wanted. If Iraq was still stable, he wouldn’t have as good a campaign issue — he wouldn’t be able to use fear to gain votes.
“I’ve created an unsafe world, now vote for me so that I can keep you safe.”
Meanwhile:
President Bush opened the Labor Day weekend with a bus cavalcade through Ohio for the second Saturday in a row, and said that peace and prosperity — which largely eluded him in the first term — would be his mission in a second.
That’s funny — we had peace and prosperity before he got into office. Why didn’t he promise these things in his first term?
Perhaps the best way to get it back is to remove him.
On the jobs front: the job creation numbers picked up in August, and the low number from an earlier month was revised upward — good news, to be sure, but still pretty dismal.
Bush’s radio address Saturday repeated his mantra that the economy “is strong and growing stronger,” and he said the nation has added about 1.7 million new jobs since last August.
Kerry’s campaign said that is worse than any single year of the eight that Bill Clinton was president. Kerry aides said Bush does not mention that, on balance, the economy has lost 913,000 jobs since he was inaugurated in January 2001 — 1,650,000 in the private sector, partly offset by 737,000 added by the government. Kerry used the Democratic radio address to call the most recent jobs report “disappointing.” He said Bush “is now certain to be the first president since Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression who didn’t create a single job.”
Note, you small-government conservatives, that the government added 737,000 jobs. Gee, sounds like the New Deal, doesn’t it?
