Here’s a joke, an oldie but a goodie.
Q: How do you know when President Bush is lying?
A: When his lips are moving.
The problem is, it isn’t a joke. After Clinton and his “is” situation lying about blowjobs, you’d think the nation would be wise to a serial liar in the office. But apparently not, take a look at this data from The War Card Project (a link my brother sent me):
This independent media study project has amassed a database of statements from the Bush Administration leading up to the Iraq war. I guess that we’re all wrapped up in finding the next Presidential leadership team, but the findings from this report makes me wonder in all seriousness if key players in the Bush Administration will escape prosecution when this is all said and done. Think I’m over stating the case? Read this:
President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.
On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.
Back to the title of this entry, where’s the outrage? It’s clear in retrospect that the public was a victim of a deliberately misleading public relations campaign leading the nation to this interminable war that is bleeding our nation by taking the lives of our servicemen and dragging us into bankruptcy. To a certain extent, post 9/11 I believe the nation wanted to give the Administration the benefit of the doubt and to demonstrate unity in the face of a threat to our nation that showed once, spectacularly, that it has teeth. That set the stage for the deception. But now, with all we know, shouldn’t we all be outraged?
Perhaps the problem we have now, being simply overwhelmed by media messages is also the answer. The War Card Project has done an admirable job in using the archives of this massive media assault to examine the role and message of the politicians as well as the mainstream media outlets complicit in accepting the stories at face value rather than investigating the claims. Finally, we, the public at large bear responsibility for not holding our representatives in government accountable.
After seeing this information presented, it calls into question every assertion made by our leadership. Is Iran really doing what they claim? That recent incident with the attack boats in the Persian Gulf smells staged and spun. It makes you wonder why we haven’t taken a hard line with the “rogue” nations who do have nuclear weapons, exactly why haven’t we invaded North Korea? I don’t know the answers to these questions but I do know that our government in its present form with its present leadership and congressional composition is neither trustworthy nor acts in the best interest of the nation.
Maybe the outrage is irrelevant now. The horse, as they say, is out of the barn. But I still think that the results of this project clearly and unequivocally show that we’ve been duped, one might even say it’s the smoking gun for “high crimes and misdemeanors” or even treason.
What do you think? Are you outraged?
