The Lie Next Time

Always presenting a lie to the public dominates the picture that Bob Woodward presents in his article on the White House operation of the Iraq War. That fits in with its continued insistence on many other lies, and is a large part of the reason the right wing has had to drop any association with its existing executive branch to campaign for a continued rein. It is a very good reason to ignore whatever the wingers present as arguments for their policies. They don't work, and therefore a lie is given out instead.

In Baghdad, Gen. Casey realized that he had lost a basic, necessary ingredient for a commanding general in wartime. He had lost the confidence of the president, a stunning and devastating realization.

He wasn't alone. The president was not listening to Casey's boss, Gen. John P. Abizaid at Central Command, anymore, either.

"Yeah, I know," the president said to Abizaid at a National Security Council session in December, "you're going to tell me you're against the surge."

Yes, Abizaid replied, and then presented his argument that U.S. forces needed to get out of Iraq in order to win.
(snip)
The next morning, he went to Fort Benning, Ga., to address military personnel and their families. His decision had been opposed by Casey and Abizaid, his military commanders in Iraq. Pace and the Joint Chiefs, his top military advisers, had suggested a smaller increase, if any at all. Schoomaker, the Army chief, had made it clear that the five brigades didn't really exist under the Army's current policy of 12-month rotations. But on this morning, the president delivered his own version of history.

"The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to -- by the way, that's what you want your commander-in-chief to do. You don't want decisions being made based upon politics or focus groups or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. They analyzed the plan, and they said to me and to the Iraqi government: 'This won't work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence.' "

Bush went on, "And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, 'Mr. President, it's not going to work until -- unless we support -- provide more troops.' "

The American public constantly was told that the officers were the source of our push to send in yet more forces, while they were opposing that very move.

Let's see, we're being told that we ought to drill for fossil fuels in protected areas to bring down the price of gasoline. The cretin in chief thinking he was not being recorded, blamed it on the stock market.

The public is lied to constantly, and our tax dollars are paid to put out stories meant to deceive us. Hirelings are not qualified for office, they are chosen for their adherence to the lies.

This is not the way to run a democracy. It is destroying all faith of the U.S. public in what the administration says.

When Bob Woodward described to Matt Lauer the secret methods we are using special forces to employ that he claims are eliminating al Qaeda chiefs, and compared it to the Manhattan Project that brought about the atom bomb, it occurred to me that the people committing these crimes have shown no bounds in their atrocities. I fear we are committing more horrible indecencies, and don't put chemical warfare out of the limits of the possible.