PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

One of the worst aspects of the post-Bush era is having to read and listen to people who were in the administration try to defend what they did and deflect the judgment of history about their mistakes. Cheney refuses to go away and listening to him is like trying to eat a plate full of dry sand. Of course, Cheney loves this aspect of his public face, the fact that it drives some people crazy. That’s Cheney. Maybe if the talks enough, people in power will give greater consideration to whether there were prosecutable crimes committed by his office and the White House..

Now we get Rove. Everywhere you look, the quote from his book comes popping up. Bush didn’t lie us into Iraq. The labeling of Bush’s statements as “a lie” is, itself a lie, Rove says. Well, Rove is a spinner, isn’t he?, and he’s spinning this one pretty good.

First things first. The TerryReport did not call Bush a liar during the long, tortuous eight years Bush was in the White House. Some people did call Bush a liar, of course, and Rove would like to aim his loose canon at those loose canons and maybe score a big point. Pick the biggest, easiest  target (the straw man) and see if you can get some mileage out of hitting it, in other words.

It is sad, and a little funny, to say it, but Rove is lying about whether people lied by saying that Bush was lying. Say what? Trust me here, it will all make sense if you take a few minutes to unravel this thing.

First, Rove wants you to believe that everyone who criticized Bush and the administration is merely politically motivated and, being thus driven, jumped in to call Bush a liar because, and only because, of their politics. So, he wants to move your disapproval of Bush, and Rove, onto those who criticized the president.

Something should be carefully understood. First, there were no WMDs in Iraq. When the president said there were, he didn’t have to be lying to be wrong, did he? If something is asserted as the absolute truth, when it is known that this cannot be proven, it can become a functional lie. Somewhere in the process of months and years, the person uttering the statement can, in fact, become a liar, even if unintentionally.

What if you say something is true, with all the force of the presidency behind you, that turns out to be not true? This, by his own admission, Bush did. To separate intentions and actions, you have to have some understanding of how, and why, the president came up with his formulation. There is a long, tangled history behind this that is too involved to lay out in detail here, but there is no doubt that, in part, Bush and the Bushies accepted the idea that there were WMDs in Iraq because they wanted to believe there were. In large degree, their  motive, which was to go to war, helped to determine what they believed to be true.

In turn, they, through Bush, turned around and told the American public a vast, important untruth. This is a massive breach of trust between the public and the administration, for which American families sent their sons, and some of their daughters, to die in the desert 5,000 miles from home. Serious business of the first order.

Bush had a solemn responsibility to find the truth and, having not found it completely, an equal responsibility not to present something as truth that was not fully confirmed. Instead, we got Powell at the United Nations lying in the name of America and Rice, as National Security Advisor, warning us that we didn’t want the next act of Saddam to be in the shape of a nuclear cloud. They went full bore, no holds barred, selling all of us on a war which was based on a false belief.

As noted on the TerryReport at the time, the explanations as for why we were at war in Iraq kept changing. When WMDs disappeared like a desert mirage, we were told, well, there could have been WMDs, so we couldn’t take that chance. This was grade school level excuse making and the American public, by in large, bought it, right up until the moment they didn’t and voted Obama, and the Republicans, out. Citizens were treated like idiots, never given the simple decency of an honest full explanation.

Who’s lying now? Rove. He is distorting criticism of the Bush years to present a counter lie, that those who attacked the basis for war in Iraq are liars and extreme in their criticism.  This political operative should be listened to no more than any other disgraced warmonger who failed in his mission, whatever it was. Instead, he is treated like a fount of wisdom, given unlimited time on Fox News and big headlines about the specious claims in his book.

It is easy, far too easy, to see all of this as a matter of left versus right, right versus left. Indeed, that notion provides shelter and comfort for the right. All of this is much more important than mere politics. Presidents have always lied or misrepresented the truth. They have always pulled out evidence that they wanted to believe and presented that as the full story. We reached new heights during the Bush years, which were marked by rapidly evolving excuses to cover, and hide, the first mistake. The issue of larger import is whether we can operate as a nation with any sense of honor and truth, whether everything has to pass through a distortion machine before it can be debated.

Rove and his leftover gang of power seekers are not merely trying to make excuses for what they and Bush did. They are trying to cover falsehoods with the patina of righteousness. This is shameful and threatens to disintegrate our national debate, what’s left of it, into a complete farce, a barrel of slimy, slithering lies, half truths and fabrications from which no logic, and no way forward, can be extracted.

Doug Terry, 2.6.10                                  

 

CONTACT THE TERRYREPORT

       HOME PAGE

end