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Is The President A
Pathological Liar?
Bush's
Unhealthy Relationship With Reality
By David Corn
LA
Weekly
12-13-3
- It was a set-up question. Conservative radio talk-show
host Michael Medved was trying to bait me, to push me into saying
something so out of whack about the commander in chief that I would
destroy my own credibility before the audience of his nationally
syndicated show. It was a ruse I've become quite familiar with in recent
weeks, since I published a book demurely titled The Lies of George W.
Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. In scores of media
interviews, right-wing hosts have pressed me to pronounce Bush the
all-time biggest SOB-of-a-liar in the White House and essentially accuse
him of being a psycho. I have resisted the invitations, choosing to
stick to my just-the-facts case that Bush has misled the public on a
host of issues � the war in Iraq, his tax cuts, global warming, Social
Security, his own past and more. The goal of these interlocutors is to
dismiss any harsh critique of Bush as nothing more than angry-left
name-calling. I obviously believe Bush has lied often and consistently
about grave matters, but I have shied away from labeling Bush
"pathological" and the like.
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- Now I wonder about that.
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- What forced this reconsideration was a speech Bush
delivered in late November to several thousand troops at Butts Army Air
Field in Fort Carson, Colorado. On this occasion, Bush served up the
usual rah-rah about the war on terrorism. But as he was hailing the U.S.
military, he remarked, "Working with a fine coalition, our military went
to Afghanistan, destroyed the training camps of al Qaeda and put the
Taliban out of business forever."
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- Out of business forever?
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- That was a false statement. Days before Bush's speech,
a U.S. helicopter crashed near Kabul, and five American soldiers were
killed. These troops were hunting Taliban remnants. Two days before the
speech, a rocket was fired at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul;
Taliban insurgents were the prime suspects. On November 16, a U.N. aid
worker was assassinated, apparently by the Taliban. In Kandahar, the
Taliban was threatening to harm Afghans who participated in local
elections.
-
- None of this has been secret, even if events in
Afghanistan receive less media coverage than the Laci Peterson case. In
recent weeks, a stream of news reports has noted that the Taliban is on
the rise and mounting an increasing number of attacks. These assaults
have impeded much-needed reconstruction projects. In mid-November, a
U.N. mission reported that the Taliban attacks were endangering
democracy in Afghanistan.
-
- What then could account for Bush's truth-defying
assertion about the Taliban? After all, it was a statement ridiculously
easy to disprove. (The Bush bashers of Moveon.org immediately sent out a
mass e-mail citing this remark as further evidence that Bush is a
misleader.) Was Bush really trying to hornswoggle the troops and the
American people? In a way. I assume that had he bothered to think about
this line, he probably would have realized that it was inaccurate and
that there was no reason to claim the Taliban was stone-cold dead when
he could have truthfully declared that the U.S. military (under his
command) and its Afghan allies had routed the Taliban. It was not as if
Bush said to himself, Aha! I know what I'll do. I will boast that I
eliminated the Taliban � even though anyone who follows this stuff knows
a Taliban resurgence is under way � and fool people into believing I am
winning the war on terrorism.
-
- Bush was more likely engaged in the deceit of
triumphalism � ignoring facts and saying whatever sounds good to juice
up the public. It was hype, extreme rhetoric, utterly divorced from
events on the ground. This statement was a report from Planet Bush, not
the world as it exists � a demonstration of Bush's penchant to embrace
(and peddle) self-serving fantasy over the obvious truth.
-
- The dishonesty underlying the Taliban line was
transparent. In the same speech, Bush also practiced (yet again) a more
nuanced form of dissembling. He told the crowd that the war on terrorism
began with 9/11, and that "we will not rest until we bring these
committed killers to justice. These terrorists will not be stopped by
negotiations, or by appeals to reason, or by the least hint of
conscience ... We must, and we will continue to, take the fight to the
enemy." So far so good: The terrorists who mounted the 9/11 attacks are
bad and must be defeated. Then Bush distorted the picture: "Terrorists
need places to hide, to plot and to train, so we're holding their
allies, the allies of terror, to account." And he cited Afghanistan and
Iraq.
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- The implication was that somehow Iraq had afforded
direct assistance to the people who attacked the United States on
September 11, 2001. But there has been no proof that the mass-murdering
perps of 9/11 used Iraq to hide, plot or train. Even though Bush
conceded in September that there was "no evidence" tying Hussein to
9/11, he still endeavors to draw a straight line from the 9/11 evildoers
to Iraq.
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- He displayed a similar disingenuousness during his
surprise, 150-minute-long Thanksgiving Day visit to the American troops
at the Bob Hope mess hall at the Baghdad airport. "You are," he told the
GIs, "defeating the terrorists here in Iraq, so that we don't have to
face them in our own country." That comment - which Bush had said
previously - sure seemed designed to create the impression that the war
in Iraq is about beating back al Qaeda, the only terrorists Americans
have had to face in their "own country." In the weeks after Baghdad
fell, reports out of Iraq raised the possibility that anti-American
jihadists linked to or motivated by al Qaeda were pouring into Iraq to
do battle with the United States. But a week before Bush told the troops
they were battling "terrorists" in Iraq who might otherwise be gunning
for their loved ones on the streets of America, two of Bush's top
commanders in Iraq - Major General Charles Swannack Jr. and Major
General David Petraeus - said that they had seen little sign that a
significant number of al Qaeda loyalists or wannabes had flocked to
Iraq. The enemy they are facing, the pair asserted, were mainly Baathist
remnants. And there is no reason to believe these murderous thugs would
be planning raids on domestic U.S. targets if the U.S. military were not
chasing after them in Iraq.
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- So Bush tells us the ongoing war in Iraq is a strike
against the forces that hit America on 9/11 and would do so again (were
it not for the invasion of Iraq), and he proclaims the Taliban extinct.
None of this is supported by the readily available information provided
by the media or Bush's own military. Making such melodramatic and
misleading claims may or may not be pathological, but it certainly isn't
a sign that Bush has a healthy relationship with reality.
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- http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/02/news-corn.php
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Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in
anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans
l'anarchie"
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