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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- The [San Francisco] Examiner
02/05/2003
Taking liberties with liberty
BY DEBBY MORSE, Examiner columnist
PRESIDENT BUSH IS sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to do his dirty work before the United Nations Security Council today. He's having Powell mouth his lies about Iraq's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction and its links to al Qaeda.
Is it OK to call the president a liar? "Fibber" seems too cute a word for a man who systematically distorts the truth in order to have his way.
It might be the right word for a president who gave a speech before a phony backdrop of painted cardboard boxes, as he did last month, while the genuine boxes piled in front of the microphone had the words "Made in China" covered over with paper. That's basically harmless, if dishonest.
"Misleader" might be more accurate, as when Bush said in his State of the Union address that "92 million Americans will keep an average of $1,083 more of their own money when this tax plan goes through." Arithmetically, true. But the Urban Institute-Brookings Institute calculated that 80 percent of all tax filers would receive less than $1,083, with half of them getting less than $100.
I suppose we could diplomatically call Bush a "construer" of facts, but the intent is the same: He makes up stuff to support his positions, and hammers away with his myths until he himself believes them to be true -- and sadly, until all too many Americans believe them to be true.
Take another remark from Bush's speech: "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda." Bush has been trying to link Saddam with Osama bin Laden ever since the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He entered the presidency determined to take on his father's enemy, and the events of Sept. 11 gave him an opportunity to confuse Americans as to just who our enemy is.
He has insidiously conflated Iraq and al Qaeda for so long now that a recent poll showed a majority of Americans couldn't accurately say how many of the terrorists who hijacked those planes on Sept. 11 were Iraqis. All of them? Some of them?
Bong! The correct answer is: None of them were Iraqis.
Regarding Bush's "evidence" of collusion, an investigator at the FBI was quoted in the New York Times this week as saying, "We've been looking at this hard for more than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there."
Uh-oh. Bush isn't going to like that. Heads may roll.
In January, when some senior Pentagon officials voiced dissent over Bush's rush to war, he was allegedly "extremely angry," according to a report in Capitol Hill Blue, an online news site. A White House source was said to have remarked: "The president considers this nation to be at war, and, as such, considers any opposition to his policies to be no less than an act of treason."
Can this be?
When Bush was campaigning for the presidency, he told reporters that he would rely on the advice of experts, not fire them if they disagreed.
Asked about nuclear weapons, he told Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press," "That's going to depend upon generals helping me make that decision, Tim." I guess he was lying to Russert.
Bush has told Americans that U.N. inspectors found "high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Maybe not. Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, "We believe the tubes were destined for the conventional rocket program," adding that to modify them for uranium enrichment would be expensive, time-consuming -- and detectable.
Bush told the nation that "Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview." ElBaradei scoffed, "We know all the scientists from the past and I think our people could easily detect if that person is a scientist or not."
Today, Bush is having his henchman try to convince the Security Council that war is necessary, because, as Powell wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece Monday, Iraq continues to use "denial, deception and subterfuge" in its dealings with the world.
If there is real evidence, let's see it. If not, Mr. Bush, stop using denial, deception and subterfuge.
Debby Morse's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday in The Examiner.
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