Lies and the Lying Presidents Who Tell Them
These past few days I've been making up for lost time in sending letters to the editor of the SF Chronicle. Here's the latest, and a bit more commentary afterward:
Editor --
Two headlines in the first section of the Chronicle (3/21), both of them datelined Baghdad, spell out in no uncertain terms just about all there is to tell about the current situation in Iraq: "39 more killed as surge of violence grinds on" and "U. S. Marines shot and killed 15 civilians, residents say." Meanwhile, in a speech in Cleveland on Monday and a White House press conference Tuesday, George Bush trotted out many of the same tired lies and obfuscations about his war of choice that he's been parroting all along, telling an increasingly skeptical press and public that progress is being made, things are going well there, and claiming that the public would still support him if only the media would report the "positive" news.
This brazen display of stubbornness and arrogance in the face of the carnage that he brought on Iraq and on our troops is akin to a man who has murdered your wife and children standing up in front of you in court and claiming that "It's all the media's fault. They aren't reporting on all the wives and children out there that I didn't kill!"
-- EW
*****
This is clearly a president who is not just isolated and out of touch, but who is criminally negligent and unable to see the train barreling down the tracks, coming straight at him. His refusal to acknowledge the truth of the situation in Iraq, even as nearly everyone around him does (with the exception of a handful of presidential advisors and sycophants, like the clueless Donald Rumsfeld and the pathological Dick Cheney, who, on Face the Nation Sunday made the claim that his statements about "our troops being greeted as liberators" and the Iraqi insurgency being in its "last throes" some months ago were "basically accurate" and "reflected reality"), does not only a disservice to his own credibility but to our foreign policy and the very lives of many of the citizens of this country as well. He is now crying wolf about Iran in almost exactly the same manner as he did three-plus years ago about Iraq, but who is willing to listen to him and take him at his word? We've seen how that movie plays out, and most of us don't like the way it ends.
Or, more accurately, the way it goes on and on and on...
Editor --
Two headlines in the first section of the Chronicle (3/21), both of them datelined Baghdad, spell out in no uncertain terms just about all there is to tell about the current situation in Iraq: "39 more killed as surge of violence grinds on" and "U. S. Marines shot and killed 15 civilians, residents say." Meanwhile, in a speech in Cleveland on Monday and a White House press conference Tuesday, George Bush trotted out many of the same tired lies and obfuscations about his war of choice that he's been parroting all along, telling an increasingly skeptical press and public that progress is being made, things are going well there, and claiming that the public would still support him if only the media would report the "positive" news.
This brazen display of stubbornness and arrogance in the face of the carnage that he brought on Iraq and on our troops is akin to a man who has murdered your wife and children standing up in front of you in court and claiming that "It's all the media's fault. They aren't reporting on all the wives and children out there that I didn't kill!"
-- EW
*****
This is clearly a president who is not just isolated and out of touch, but who is criminally negligent and unable to see the train barreling down the tracks, coming straight at him. His refusal to acknowledge the truth of the situation in Iraq, even as nearly everyone around him does (with the exception of a handful of presidential advisors and sycophants, like the clueless Donald Rumsfeld and the pathological Dick Cheney, who, on Face the Nation Sunday made the claim that his statements about "our troops being greeted as liberators" and the Iraqi insurgency being in its "last throes" some months ago were "basically accurate" and "reflected reality"), does not only a disservice to his own credibility but to our foreign policy and the very lives of many of the citizens of this country as well. He is now crying wolf about Iran in almost exactly the same manner as he did three-plus years ago about Iraq, but who is willing to listen to him and take him at his word? We've seen how that movie plays out, and most of us don't like the way it ends.
Or, more accurately, the way it goes on and on and on...
posted by Generik at 2:25 PM
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