What are the top three lies of the Bush administration?
thehill.com
David Corn spoke with The Hill recently about his book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception.
My publisher pushed me to craft a top 10 list; it is posted on www.bushlies.com. That was hard enough to do--in terms of choosing. You want three? I suppose I could name three that are each related to the war. But for number one, I'll stick to Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein's brutal regime--because it supposedly possessed WMDs and supposedly was in league with al Qaeda--posed a "direct" and "immediate" threat to the United States.
Bush has yet to prove, as he claimed before the war, that Hussein was "a threat because he is dealing with al Qaeda." And Bush repeatedly overstated the overstated (and wrong) intelligence produced by the CIA on WMDs. One example: Bush said Iraq had a "massive stockpile" of biological weapons. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq said (again, wrongly) that Iraq had an extensive biological weapons development program.
Lie No. 2. In addition to invading and occupying Iraq, Bush's other radical policy move was pushing super-sized tax cuts. To represent many of the false or misleading assertions he and his lieutenants deployed to win support for these tax cuts, allow me to cite a statement Bush made when he was first selling his tax cut plan in 2000. "The vast majority of my tax cuts go to the bottom end of the spectrum," he said. A report produced by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal outfit, noted that 42.6 percent of the $1.6 billion tax package would go to the top 1 percent. The lowest 60 percent would net 12.6 percent. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, ABC News, and NBC News each reported that his tax cuts produced these sort of results. Bush was speaking the precise opposite of the truth when he claimed his tax cuts proposal benefited lower-income Americans more than the wealthy.
Lie No. 3. No list would be complete without perhaps the biggest whopper Bush told: his promise he would "return honor and integrity" to the White House.
Fahrenheit 9/11 questioned Bush’s reasons for going to war. How are your claims of Bush’s falsehoods similar/different from Michael Moore’s?
I was surprised that in F9/11, Moore did not spend more time puncturing Bush's stated reasons for war. I assume Moore thought the public was already on his side regarding this debate. After all, a majority of respondents in recent polls say they believe Bush purposefully exaggerated the case for war. In one poll, 47 percent said they believe Bush "deliberately" misled the nation. In my book, I carefully examine scores of assertions made by Bush and his aides and find that many of them were unsupported by the available evidence. In key instances, Bush and his lieutenants misrepresented the intelligence produced by the CIA. I chart all of this rather thoroughly--and look closely at the claims that Hussein had an operational alliance with al Qaeda. I approached this task as a journalistic exercise and, unlike Moore, was not aiming for laughs.
Why do you think journalists are reluctant to report Bush’s lies?
Ben Bradlee, the former executive editor of The Washington Post, said in 1997, "Even the very best newspapers have never learned how to handle public figures who lie with a straight face." In fact, my book ends with an exploration of this question. I don't want to give away the ending, but...there are several factors. White House reporters are beat reporters and sometimes find it hard to be too confrontational with the people they cover. They also do not want to appear too accusatory (until a scandal develops and a pack mentality sets in). There is an amount of deference paid to the president. Many see their task as first and foremost reporting what the president says. Evaluation comes second. And these reporters feel bound by unstated rules of what is appropriate and what is not. Several well-known members of the White House press corps have passed me their favorite Bush lies and have said that they sometimes wish they could be as blunt as I am in this book.
Where do Bush's lies stand in relation to Nixon's Watergate and Reagan’s Iran-Contra?
This may be a matter of taste. As odious as were the lies of Watergate, they did not lead to war and death. Reagan's lies about Iran-contra did involve matters of war, but the war in Central America was small and supposedly covert. Bush told the public there was an immediate threat that had to be resolved right away via invasion and occupation. If we measure by consequences, Bush makes Nixon and Reagan seem pikers in the field of presidential prevarication.
What are the consequences of White House deception?
War, death, injury, a decline in America's standing in the world, a less effective campaign against the mass murderers of 9/11, massive deficits, a real (but unacknowledged) ban on federally funded stem cell research, a global warming policy that increases the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere, a lousy Medicare drug benefits law, cynicism at home and abroad, and much more--perhaps even the defeat of an incumbent president. |
