When George W. Bush was sworn in as president 4 years ago, it probably didn’t escape his notice that the oath said nothing about telling the truth.
For instance, during Bush’s first inaugural speech, it sounded to me as if he said: “Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.”
Take a look at the 2004 election map of red and blue states and tell me: Do I need a hearing aid, or what?
Back in May 2003, when Bush was taking questions from reporters about the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I could have sworn I heard him say: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.”
In October 2002, several newspapers quoted him as saying, “And surveillance photos reveal that the regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons.” He also said, “We’ve discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical weapons across broad areas.”
But after Saddam Hussein’s ouster, he went even further, saying that weapons of mass destruction had actually been found.
“You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons,” Bush told a television reporter from Poland. “And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong. We found them.”
… “The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001 — and still goes on,” Bush said in May 2003. That’s when he announced that major combat operations in Iraq had ended — that is, if I heard him right.
Meanwhile, I feel compelled to point out that Bush’s “mandate” of 51%… well, now polls say that only 45% said they preferred that the country go in the direction that Bush wanted to lead it. [Washington Post poll] 52% disapprove of his handling of the economy, 58% disapprove of his deficit, 51% are dissatisfied with his work on health care. Wow — those are all mandate numbers, aren’t they?
