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Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

Submitted by Paul Sullivan on May 29, 2008 | Comments (12)

Can you believe Scott McClellan?

I mean, obviously you can’t. The former GW Bush press secretary, the man who was responsible for selling war in Iraq to a skeptical world, has just published a book in which he admits it was all a "political propaganda campaign", that is, a pack of lies!

The little weasel put his finger in the air and, determining the direction of the wind, decided to spill the beans on what really happened on the run-up to Shock and Awe. He says that Bush decided to go to war in at least 2002, and maybe earlier. Like maybe the minute he took office?

And here’s a direct quote: “He (Bush) signed off on a strategy for selling the war that was less than candid and honest,” McClellan writes in his book, to be released on Monday. It’s called “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

He says the White House pursued a “political propaganda campaign to sell the war to the American people”, working to make the “WMD (weapons of mass destruction) threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable than they were.”

Dammit, that’s what sold me…Colin Powell, the man who had fought the original – and successful – campaign against Saddam Hussein, standing bare-faced in front of the world and presenting evidence of WMDs and terrorism. He certainly whipped me into a frenzy of anxiety, one that, to my eternal shame, turned out to be nothing more than an update on “the sky is falling”, only the hoax was not perpetrated by a little chicken, but the former head of the US military and the Secretary of State. The Big Chicken. The Head Of The Barnyard.

And his little weasel buddy, Scott McClellan.

It was my shame because Powell’s speech led me to support the war and I even wrote a column about it for the Globe and Mail, which bills itself as Canada's National Newspaper. Now, five years after Shock and Awe, I’m with Scottie, and I quote: “The war in Iraq was not necessary.”

So what do you do, how do you feel, when the press liaison for the White House admits he led a campaign of deception that led his nation into a war which, at last count, cost anywhere from 500,000 to a million lives, depending on who is doing the counting, and $800 billion…plunging the US into a recession which is systematically ruining the lives of many who supported the stupid war in the first place?

Put your head in your hands and cry. That's what I suggest. That's what I'm doing today.

Way to go Scott. He now admits “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.”

You can say that again.

*Thanks to Al Franken

*****
Did the stars align to prompt McClellan's turn? Read Scott McClellan: The Emperor Isn't Wearing Any Clothes!


Comments

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Richard Day Gore, June 2, 2008 at 02:54

He could have made plenty of money writing a book that supports Bush.

It seems to me that at this point the controversy is about the controversy, which has the unfortunate side effect of further diverting the public's attention from the substance, intent and effect of the original lies.

Richard Day Gore

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Paul Sullivan, June 2, 2008 at 08:47

Richard...good point. I'm not sure Bush will ever be called to account, although I hope the more the bare-faced lies of an entire administration are exposed, the less likely a new adventure (e.g. Iran) will be likely. It would be ruinous for the "free world".

Paul Sullivan,
Editor-In-Chief

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Bud Oracle (not verified), June 2, 2008 at 07:50

It's too bad that Americans are so easily distracted, lack intelligence and resort to their beliefs to make decisions which need rational input. Why is that?
Too much TV?
There has been a 10% overall decline in the figures for the Turnout in American presidential elections from 1960 through the latest. I postulate it a decline in general intelligence and it fits for the intro of TV as a the reason for it.
This is a unique study that tries to explain what might be the reason for your voting results. Although it is not peer reviewed, it is original and the methodology is valid. judge for yourself if you can get through it.
http://www.orato.com/health-science/2008/04/24/do-humans-have-political-...

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Michelle Kenneth, May 30, 2008 at 20:36

Paul ~

You astonish me. I can't believe you believed the lies!

Just the other day, someone sent me one of those "Support Your Troops" emails. One of the things that it said in the email went along the lines of, "They fought and died for your freedom." I sat there staring at those words thinking...terrorists didn't take away our freedoms. President Bush did. And yet, President Bush is their Commander in Chief ordering them to fight for the freedom of America, when it wasn't the Iraqis, the Taliban, or the terrorists that took away our freedom. It was President Bush and this little thing called the Patriot Act.

So if it was President Bush and Congress that took away our freedoms, shouldn't our soldiers be fighting them?

Either way, there's just some very extreme irony in the situation.

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Paul Sullivan, June 2, 2008 at 08:14

Michelle. Sometimes, looking back, I astonish myself. The only response I can muster in my defense is that I wasn't expecting two hijacked jets to take out the Twin Towers, and I'm afraid that Bush & Co. played on my newly-minted vulnerability. The Patriot Act is just one dark shadow of this cynical manipulation of fear that Scott McLellan, former master manipulator, is now repudiating. Now that we've all seen the full consequences of the neo-conservative agenda played out, I can't imagine anyone voting for John McCain and four more years, but I didn't think anyone would vote for George Bush over Al Gore either.

Paul Sullivan,
Editor-In-Chief

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Michelle Kenneth, June 2, 2008 at 08:36

I thought Al Gore won that election. ; ) Well, all I know is that he won the popular vote. I learned in that election that our vote doesn't mean anything. The guy with the most votes doesn't always win. I think I began to lose faith in the US government after Bush became president the first time around. I think that was when I became super suspicious of everything he does.

The irony of the situation is that I've had the opportunity to meet Bush four times. That is four more times than Bill Clinton. I'm not even a Republican, but the opportunity to meet Bush has been presented to me four times. I went the first time and immediately resented even going. At least I got to look the enemy straight in the eye before coming to a final conclusion on what I would think of Bush. He had only been President for six months by that time.

I've always contended that if someone lies to me, the truth will come forward eventually. I knew the truth from the beginning on every little and big fib Bush has told to us. Some people just didn't fall for the brainwashing. I don't know what separates us from the rest of the populace, but one thing is for sure...those who believed in Bush from the get-go post-9/11 are now learning the truth. Guess all of us Democrats and independents who were called traitors and terrorists by the Republicans are keeping their mouths shut this time. We were right to be skeptical of everything Bush was doing all along.

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Bud Oracle (not verified), May 29, 2008 at 21:18

Paul,

you did the best thing now that anyone can do with an honest mistake; admit it, study why you weren't critcal enough to see it, evaluate it as I see things on acid from all around, at once, as well as inside out. Then bare your soul like you have, and your credibility actually rises to a new level in my eyes.

I think its all about like that character in the movie "Catch me if you can" It's the uniform of a general of such a stature, it is the whole weight of official type aerial photography. I could tell it was way too vague because for my environmental studies i studied aerial photography and learned to glean many things from them. I could not get any threats from what the general was showing me.

To me what was a dead give-away that it was a con, was that if you gained a little altitude and looked at it from an overview, you could see it was an orchestrated strongly pitched con to get public support for the war. With another president, (someone who was not a coward and shirked his duty at the helm) he would have steppped up and bombed the cr*p out of Iraq had there been the slightest question about Sadam having weapons of mass destruction, no questions asked. That is the mark of a decisive leader taking steps to protect his country, not someone who sits stunned in the kindergarten classroom while he tries to grasp what was said to him about his country being under terror attack.

I love dogs, but the ludicrous behavior of the most powerful man in the world carrying his dog to the White house from the chopper, when his enemies are Muslims, is to me an insult to my sense of leadership, such that I could never believe a single thing from this moron's mouth. He can deliver words remarkably well, but has little capacity to understand what he is saying.

Thanks for the honesty, Paul!

By exposing it we can all take a lesson from this.

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Paul Sullivan, June 2, 2008 at 08:50

Bud: I guess I failed to understand Colin Powell's capacity for spin.
All those people have died and what has been accomplished?
Is the new chaos an improvement over the old tyranny? Is that even a valid calculation?

Paul Sullivan,
Editor-In-Chief

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Bud Oracle (not verified), June 4, 2008 at 00:05

Paul,
I wish we all were less quick to judge. Think of change as "just change" don't hang the label chaos on it. Let change happen in a free flowing way offering the least resistance, go with the flow and let natural selection determine which fits best before labellling one better than the other--I learned to ride swirls of rising air, counting on them like a motor by simply observing the signs/conditions and then feeding the numbers into the correct formulas.
I once was asked by Don, our instructor at Loyalist College to come up with an off the cuff estimate. He was teaching our class to stream gauge the Moira, near Belleville. It was a beautiful day and the Moira was but a shallow, wide, barely moving ditch. Only a 1/2 meter deep, at-its-deepest, channel maybe 2 meters wide, was barely moving in an expanse of about 75 meters of almost standing water only an in or two deep. My "edge" in this class (and pretty well all of them) was that I had done much more than my homework. (1) be well informed and don't become emotionally attached to any outcome.
When Don had asked me what I thought in front of the class as I sat smoking on the bank, he and I weren't too far apart in age and had shared some similar, even intertwined experiences (I was 41 and he had constructed the Microwave Tower around which top I had often turned on my Hang glider over the Athabasca tower Ridge)
I estimated the area of the cross section of the flowing section of the Moira, for a moment. Then, with accuracy I flicked my cigarette butt into the flowing part exactly half way between the fastest and slowest parts. The would be the mean velocity. I timed it through a second and extrapolated the figures withing a few seconds.
"I think its flowing about one cubic meter per second Don. If not perhaps a bit more." Was my reply. Honestly-- after a weeks working on figures and then handing in our work, the most accurate figure when the highs and lows were discarded was 1.3 cubic meters per second.
As a soaring pilot and having a science background i believe the most things can be accurately deduced by close observation.
Usually if you can define all the parameters of a challenge which presents itself, you will have solved the problem. People are also very predictable.
Take this Republican right-wing slogan now marketing more war, "Don't let Obama snatch defeat from the jaws of victory"
How you can't let the USA loose face by retreating. What a lie, there will never be a military victory in Iraq before the cows come home and America has no face left. The USA would gain respect in the eyes of the world if it quit its killing and destroying of a country that it had no business invading.
Victory? Does Israel have victory after sixty years of illegal occupation? Only at the cost of peace and the threat of constant annihilation, so far, and sixty years isn't an old age as nations go, meaning the fat Jewish lady has not yet sung.
These republicans keep shifting the mark, moving the goal posts, readjusting their reasons and their definitions.
Haven't they already celebrated victory on an aircraft carrier once before? So now its still only around the corner?
About 25% of Americans are irrevocably right-wing. They believe in God and want war. The whole trick is for Obama to engage the middle because the core of warmongers aren't going to see things differently. The rational middle, who can think through the challenges facing them and come up with an answer based on reason, has to be engaged with a mantra of change.
People need to discard the old and engage with the new, and not believe so much of the marketing.
It's a Natural Selection thing, because like the Prohibition model , war has failed abyssmally, we must discard it, without emotion.
Then instead of looking to the future with fear of what "chaos?" Isn't chaos a label conjured up by the right-wingers to scare people from going there?
Without a shred of emotion we should allow as many approaches to be tried by individuals or consortia without prejudice as are feasible, and then let the deciding factors be based on reason not will of the majority.
Besides Chaos can be fun! It only require a shift in mental attitude.

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By Bud Oracle (not verified), June 4, 2008 at 01:03

Then Paul, after going through all the conventional routes of developing expertise at evaluating people and their messages, you might actually consider trying LSD.
I wouldn't suggest it, except that I want to be totally honest, and don't give a cr*p about what people think, anymore. I don't care about the conventional lies, because I have learned to trust my own instincts and understanding.
LSD is nothing to be afraid of if you are a well balanced intelligent person. It gives many a "perspective on perspective" deeply layered understanding, existing in a spiritual connectedness, all at once in a glance.
I don't put much stock in this "go-it-natural-chanting-method" only, it is propaganda TOWING THE PROHIBITION LINE. Go there if you like, I'll do things my way, because I have learned to judge things finely for myself. I've actually spent many hours hanging my life on many interactive fluid decisions for the fun of it, successfully, under the influence of pot. So don't be telling me where I should go, Mr. Harper, you can't even choose a competent Foreign Minister.
No, I know for sure that LSD has been very good for me. I am sure that it has given me mutations of perception and thought which many people don't get. Even those who have done a lot of acid might not get this return, it depends on what one seeks. This experience should be encountered with an open and filled-to-the-brim mind in an adventurous, fun mood. The slightest bit of fear, of not being ready for it, can be a bad trip(nothing requiring a bit of comfort and sleep won't cure). It is not something that should be a casual thing, but approached with confident curiosity.
To me its totally idiocy to allow someone to drown themselves just short of death with alcohol, while being so prohibitive to a sacramental substance like LSD. Honestly, for a normal adult, a trip on LSD could be a journey of revelation like the one Jody Foster went on in Contact. Tto the ends of the universe in perception for a few bucks---beats Mexico and Techuila Sunrises any day in my book and not a bit of pollution or carbon impact.
Yes, you won't come back the same, but then I have an aversion to same. I've never come back the same every time I landed back on earth after soaring my hang glider. Do you want to STAY THE SAME?

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By johnhatch, May 29, 2008 at 17:33

Paul Wolfowitz (there's another one for you) stated some time ago that the members of the Bush Putsch chose to emphasize WMD because they figured that is what would 'sell' best to the American people. All those people died and will die simply because Bush thought he'd be in a better position as a 'war President'. And yes, oil and empire played a part.

Now they're trying the very same thing regarding Iran.

Crazy or what?

Scotty got to tell lots of lies.

Now he gets rich.

No justice.

Re: Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them*

By renegade98, June 3, 2008 at 21:30

Let's not forget Cheney, Haliburton and Blackwater etc, just a few of the War Profiteers. At least Scott is verifying for many of us with certainty what we had already believed from the beginning, that, Bush and company were selling us a war based on lies. Corruption runs deep through the core of America and the last several years under the Bush administration have been tragic. America will never again rise to the level of respect it once held in the world.

Should George W. Bush be prosecuted for murder? Well Vincent Bugliosi who was the prosecutor in the Charles Manson case thinks so. He has just released a book, 'The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.

http://www.prosecutionofbush.com/