From the beginning, the tactic of the Bush White House has been one of deception and manipulation, of fear and obsfucation, of placing public relations and politics before solid policy. And, as noted previously, the chickens always come home to roost. To wit, from Robert Parry’s article George W. Bush IS a Liar:
The White House is taking umbrage over new press reports that George W. Bush misled the American people on a key justification for invading Iraq. But Bush’s latest excuse – that he was just an unwitting conveyor of bad information, not a willful purveyor of lies – has been stretched thin by overuse. [...] But the truth is that Bush has been caught, again and again, relying on lies and distortions to confuse the American people about the Iraq War. Sometimes, he can blame U.S. intelligence agencies for the false information, but other times, he simply lies about facts that he personally knows.
Read the full article for a list of those abuses.
And, from US News:
Day after day, the president’s credibility has been under assault, even when the facts are in dispute. Last week, the Washington Post reported that in 2003 Bush declared that U.S. troops in Iraq had captured two trailers outfitted as mobile biological weapons labs even though a secret intelligence report at the time found the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan attacked the Post report as “reckless,” saying it was a preponderance of intelligence, now seen to be erroneous, that led Bush to make the statement about the Iraqi trailers, not a desire to mislead anyone. In another episode, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker that Bush has accelerated Pentagon planning for attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites, including potential use of nuclear “bunkerbuster” bombs, a story the administration tried to shoot down as “speculation.”All this came on the heels of the disclosure that Bush authorized the declassification and release of information about prewar Iraq’s nuclear capabilities in order to discredit critics like former Ambassador Joe Wilson. Democrats quickly condemned Bush as a hypocrite because he has been a longtime critic of leaks. Even more damaging is news that a growing number of retired senior military officers have turned against Bush’s Iraq policy–which has become the biggest political millstone around his neck–and are calling for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s replacement.
Amazing it took this long if you ask me.
