Soapbox

9/18 Pick of the Litter

After yesterday’s entry, Ted suggested that I create a ranting category. I resisted, thinking I shouldn’t encourage myself to run off at the mouth. Then I read the front page of today’s paper.
I still think I shouldn’t encourage myself…but the flesh is weak.

So I see from the headlines that yesterday our president kinda sorta almost admitted the administration may have perpetuated an eensie teensie lie. What he said was that there is no evidence that Iraq had any ties to the 9/11 attack, and there never was. The administration pretty well knew all along that Sadaam had nothing to do with the bombing, other than probably laughing like crazy when he watched it on CNN.

Yet a majority of americans think that Sadaam was involved in 9/11. Why? Well Ok, partly its because a distressing proportion of Americans have their head up their a**, but it’s also because the Bush administration has been trying like heck to make the rest of us believe that he was!

Striking Iraq, they have told us, is striking a blow against the terrorism of 9/11. As recently as Sunday, the evil puppetmaster Dick Cheney was on the TV saying that they didn’t really know if Sadaam had a hand in 9/11 or not, but assuring us that Iraq and al Qaida were definitely in bed together.

Today the shrubs (Bush staff) assures us that, despite all evidence to the contrary, these statements don’t contradict each other, and no one lied or deliberately misled the American public to whip up support for a stupid war that we’re soon going to wish like hell we’d never started.

Right. And Sadaam really was about to use those invisible weapons of mass destruction on us , and of course the Iraqi people feel very grateful now for all we’ve done: why, just look at how much better things are in Afghanistan! And tax cuts for the rich actually help the poor, and the air at ground zero was perfectly safe to breath all along, and global warming is caused by marmosets, and…

Here is my advise to our president, for all future endeavors:
IF YOU CAN’T LIE NO BETTER THAN THAT, YOU MIGHT AS WELL TELL THE TRUTH!!
*Delbert McClintock

Boy, we Americans sure can pick ’em, can’t we? For eight years we had a president with an Oxford education who didn’t know the definition of “is”. Now we have a cowboy president who is too stupid to keep his own lies straight and wouldn’t know the truth if it came up and… gave him a campaign contribution.

But think for a moment about the specifics of their lies.

Clinton lied about cheating on his wife. What he did was wrong, and he was impeached for it, and he squandered his “legacy” in pursuit of a quickie.
Bush lied about…well, nearly everything as far as we can tell. The final tally won’t be in for years. As a result of his lies, thousands of people are dead, and more are dieing every day.
And it looks like he may be re-elected for it.

Holy smokes; guess I’d better take back my advice. If it ain’t broke, pal, don’t fix it!