HIGHTOWER: Our Lying President
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By Jim Hightower
AlterNet
May 26, 2003
alternet.org
What a Wonderland World it is in Washington! Wrong can be right, down can be up, a lie can be truth – all because the president says it's so.
Our present president seems to love to lie. Not because George W likes doing wrong, but because lies simplify his life, turning his confusion into clarity. I think he even believes his lies when he speaks them, and when he gets caught lying, hey – that's in the past, it's just a technicality, and besides... it depends on how you define "truth."
How about the big truth of WMDs? Where are those tons of Weapons of Mass Destruction that George W so absolutely insisted Saddam Hussein had targeted at the U.S., posing the imminent threat that was his moral excuse for invading Iraq?
It's a scream to watch the Bushites now try to squirm out of the inconvenient reality that they've found no masses of WMDs in Iraq. Lately they've tried to claim every slingshot, trailor, empty casing, and barbeque pit they come across as "proof" of Saddam's WMD program.
But when launching his Iraq Attack, George didn't talk about such small stuff – he spoke specifically about a "mushroom cloud" that Saddam would ignite in America. The Bushites also flatly asserted that Saddam had 500 tons of mustard gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 30,000 rockets to deliver chemical weapons, dozens of scud missiles, 18 biological warfare factories, all sorts of long-range missiles and other WMDs – that now can't be found.
First they claimed that Saddam hid them, then that he took them with him (how, in his backback?). But now, the Bushites say it doesn't matter – we kicked Saddam's butt and that's all anyone needs to know. Doesn't matter? The president blatantly lied to We The People and it's OK? What moral message are the Bushites sending to America's children and the people of the world?
Lies don't make truth, and might doesn't make right – even if a president says they do. |
