First rule of covering your ass.
When the reasons you suggested for going into an utter catastrophe of a war are no longer operative, and people ask you "why not," you don't have to lie. You just answer an altogether different question.
And if you're a new network anchor who wants to continue to have 1600 Pennsylvania access by kissing the presidential ass that's in the midst of being covered, you don't follow up your unanswered question.
But the prime example of how wrong this White House knows it has been came after Williams asked what Iraq had to do with the 9-11 attacks.
President Bush called up the latest administration rephrasing, a parsing that had all the soundbite of a Karl Rove rewrite.
"I never said that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks of 9-11."
True. Bush never said that Saddam ordered the attacks. But Williams didn't ask that question, and Bush knew it. Bush was well aware that he and his people had bent over backwards to connect Iraq and 9-11. He's been using the word "ordered" in his responses for the past couple weeks. Well, done, sir. Well done. For Bush to have answered the actual question would have sucked any credibility from his earlier admonitions. Instead, Bush just gave a sucky answer.
If he were a liar, he would have just lied, say, like his vice-president did when he was asked if he ever confirmed a connection between Iraq and al Quaeda. He said he had not. But he had. And it was recorded. See. That's a lie. A lie substantiated. A lie on tape that can be played back to back to prove his newest lie But Cheney doesn't care whether you know he lies or not. If he did he wouldn't have lied in the first place.
You say that this administration has no strategy for getting out of Iraq. Wrong. Lying is their strategy...about everything.
And the leavings of the bulls in this White House smell up the right-wing radio Lords of Loud. Hannity has spent the past months repeating his litany of fear-mongering parsings...
"The Democrats are against the NSA wiretaps, data mining, the Patriot Act..."
That he left out prefaces like "parts of..." and suffixes like, "that are illegal," don't seem to bother the goreous hunk of Goebbels.
But whether it's a lie or an evasion, this administration has proven over and over that they will not trust the American people with the truth. It's a strategy they've been using for six years and over 2600 dead American soldiers.
And there's no evidence they will stop.
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