Pants on Fire

Vol. 2 No. 84 Feb. 29, 2008
The Bogus Economist
Pants on Fire


It's been over a month since we first heard the report of 935 false statements by the Bush Administration in the two years after 9/11 and I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The Administration didn't talk much about it, which can be understood, but neither did the Loyal Opposition, which seems to be more loyal than opposition. Charging an Administration with lying a country into a war doesn't seem to be minor news. Of course, the report could have been just another load of horse puckey, in which case it deserved to be ignored, but being dropped didn't kill it.

Like a seed, the thing went dormant for a couple of weeks, sent down tiny roots and, by the end of February, stuck its first little shoot above ground, where an alert Bogus Economist spotted it and, like any good investigator, submitted it to an interview.

“Good morning, Mister or Miss Shoot,” I said, “What brings you to our fair land?” The shoot consulted its notes and replied in a distinctly Eastern accent that since it couldn't get a hearing on TV, it was taking its case directly to the people.

“I've got a list of almost a thousand fibbies scattered by the White House in the two years after 9/11,” said the shoot, “including 532 statements linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or saying that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These statements left no room for argument. They were definite. Over two hundred fifty of them were made by the President.”

“But that means Mr. Bush led the country into war under false pretenses,” I gasped.

“Right,” agreed the shoot, “Now excuse me, I've got to continue growing.”

Naturally, I was taken aback by this information since the shoot was correct in saying his/her charges had not been widely broadcast by the media. Could the shoot be part of a smear campaign against Mr. Bush to balance the ones Karl Rove used so effectively against the Democrats and even against John McCain? Where did the story start? Maybe it was in the left corner of somebody's basement. I went to Google.

I found the authors of the study were Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith and that it had been published on the website of the Center for Public Integrity. Was this a fly-by-night outfit? Back to Google. Well, it seems Mr. Lewis started the Center in 1989 after an eleven year career in television journalism, including a job as a producer for “60 Minutes.” The Center has published over 250 investigative reports, fourteen books, including “The Buying of the President ,“(1996) (2000) (2004) and “The Buying of Congress.” Concerning its accuracy, it had won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Foundation and several others. The Center might be tilted a bit left, but it had solid credentials.

After the charges were made, Presidential Press Secretary Dana Perino was indignant. “I hardly think that the study is worth spending time on. It is so flawed, in terms of taking anything into context or including, I mean, they only looked at members of the administration, rather than looking at members of Congress or people around the world.” I see. That makes it O.K. Thanks, Ms Perino, I feel a lot better.

Whoever is right, we're certainly entitled to know if the guy who won the presidency not once, but twice, told us a stack of whoppers. The Center's judgment was harsh: “The Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.” This is strong stuff and deserves our attention. After all, deliberately lying to advance a political cause that causes damage to Americans isn't in the same league as jaywalking.

Heaven knows lying isn't new. Politicians have been lying since the time of Federalists and Whigs, although words like “spin” were invented lately to make it sound friendlier. In recent times, I can think of Reagan fibbing about arms sales to Iran, George H.W. Bush's forked-tongue pledge on taxes, Clinton's fairy tales about you-know-what and our present president's myth about his military service. A good percentage of people believe they can tell a politician is lying because his lips are moving. However, while a lie is one thing; nearly a thousand of them in two years by one administration is another. These are big time Liar-Liar-Pants-on-Fire numbers.

The American way of settling things isn't to fight about whether or not Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney “spun” us into war, but rather to find somebody who can look into the whole matter fairly, render a decision and, if the Center (and the shoot) are right, have a trial to determine the extent of the deception. If they were wrong, we should raise hell and demand a public retraction and a very public apology, complete with front page headlines. It's simple as pie. People a lot smarter than we are have already told us how it should be done. You can find it in the Constitution. If you don't remember how it works, ask Bill Clinton.
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