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Bush Lies, People DieTruth and Consequences"The first casualty when war comes is truth," observed Senator Hiram Johnson in 1918.
Johnson's point was that leaders often exaggerate or lie to convince the public that war is so just, noble and urgent that ordinary people should send their sons and daughters off to fight, kill and even die in some distant land. George W. Bush now stands exposed as the latest perpetrator of such fraud. He has fouled the air with half truths, exaggerations and dirty lies on countless issues--from the Sept. 11 intelligence failures, to his rationale for war against Iraq, to the rich Iraq contracts being reaped by Bush campaign contributors, to the record budget deficit. As Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently observed: "An immoral war was thus waged and the world is a great deal less safe than before." The South African also called on George Bush and Tony Blair to admit their lethal mistakes. SCANDALOUS INTELLIGENCEThe president said the Sept. 11 attacks were a complete surprise. But it slowly leaked out that Bush, the FBI and the CIA botched dozens of leads, including some that indicated that Al Qaeda was planning to use hijacked airplanes as weapons. The Republican chairman of the independent review commission has concluded that the Sept. 11 attacks were "preventable" had the president and his intelligence services done their jobs. Bush said he had "no choice" but to attack Iraq because Saddam Hussein threatened the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Al Qaeda. One year and a $300 million U.S. search later, neither has been found. "It wasn't intelligence--it was propaganda," says Lt. Col. Katen Kwiatkowski, who told Mother Jones magazine that she observed firsthand the Pentagon's propaganda factory. Now the president has been forced to create another commission to investigate why U.S. intelligence was wrong. But he doesn't want the commission to investigate his own distortions of the intelligence and will not allow it to report its findings until after the election. The New York Times opined on Feb. 7 that this "looks more like an effort to deflect attention until after the election than a genuine attempt to get to the bottom of the Iraq fiasco." The president promised that the Iraqi people would welcome the U.S. troops and would also immediately benefit from the invasion. Instead Iraqi life is miserable and the death, agony and destruction mount each day. "DEMOCRACY" AT GUNPOINTBefore the war, Bush promised a fast transition to Iraqi democracy based on a new constitution, free elections and a quick U.S. exit. Now he opposes elections until at least 2005 and wants only to expand his handpicked Iraqi Governing Council and to impose an interim constitution by June 30. U.S. administrator Paul Bremer bluntly states: "The text [of the interim constitution] that is in there now is as I say. It can't become law until I sign it." Bush argues that this minor rearrangement should be hailed as "the end of the occupation" and the "restoration of Iraqi sovereignty." Yet he plans to keep 100,000 U.S. troops in control of Iraq until at least 2007 to guarantee U.S. supremacy. The White House is pressing the U.N. to provide a fig leaf for this plan. On the domestic front, the president poses as a champion of liberty, but has drastically increased surveillance, deportations and detentions--often in secret, without pressing charges or allowing the right to an attorney. He campaigned for a balanced budget, but this year the deficit will be a record $521 billion. Bush bills himself a "compassionate conservative," but his current budget proposal slashes or eliminates 128 vital social service programs. These cruel cuts are less than one percent of the deficit the president created with a combination of huge tax cuts weighted toward the wealthy and massive military spending. Under Bush the economy has shed 2.2 million jobs, the worst job creation record since Herbert Hoover. The president is finally feeling the heat. In February MoveOn.org gathered more than 300,000 letters calling for the Congress to censure him. A stalwart Republican judge from Cleveland told The New York Times: "We are really disgusted. It's the lies, the war, the economy. We have very good friends who are staunch Republicans, who don't even want to hear the name George Bush anymore." Bob Wing is managing editor of War Times. |
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