Oh, dopey me. I thought our government officials were interested in providing the American people with a representative government, where in the representatives don't lie to our faces and get away with it. I am naive enough to believe that when lies are exposed corrections are imposed. I even thought that maybe the individuals elected on the basis of a public trust would be the first to correct their own mistakes. But then, I guess I don't have the brilliance it takes to accept deception as the best recourse.
Read my lips, no new taxes?
We will never trade arms for hostages?
I was out of the loop?
We're invading Grenada to rescue medical students?
We love your love of democracy, or something like that- George Bush to Ferdinand Marcos?
Of course, Jimmy Carter said "I will never lie to you", or some such platitude.
If you want something more subtle, you might look back at how, post gulf war, pre-war Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie was hung out to dry because she was supposed to be the one who sent mixed signals to Saddam, pre-war, that the U.S. wouldn't particularly mind if Iraq invaded Kuwait, just a little anyway. As if a State Department career person, with modern day telecommunications to the "home office", would go start her own bizarre diplomatic offensive. We're not talking about Ollie North here.
Then, post war, we had George Bush telling the Iraqi people they should rise up against Saddam. When they did, and they were hung out to dry, it turns out that what George mean was that a suitable general, who we and the Saudis could deal with, should rise up against Saddam. The Kurds, at least, should have known by bitter experience not to trust us. The Shiites, well, they're the evil spawn of Khoemeni, who, you know, held 100-odd Americans hostage for a year or so, though they weren't harmed, helping to elect Ronald Reagan. Pre-war, the Iraqis fired missiles at a ship of ours in the gulf, killing people, but that was ok, as were numerous other Saddam doings.
But in terms of lying, there's always my personal favorite, the S&L bailout, held up for years at a cost of hundreds of billions, so that George Bush wouldn't have to explain about his sons before the '88 election. The lying there was pretty subtle, I admit. And there were plenty of other politicians up to their necks in it. But Reagan/Bush had direct control of the FDIC, unlike anybody in Congress. Somehow, only Clinton's very peripheral involvement ever merited much investigation.
Many, many people have lied in our faces and gotten away with it. It's a non-partisan thing, by all indications.
Cheers, Dan. |
