Lying for Bush

On September 11 George Bush contrived with Democratic assistance to send David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker to tell Congress how the Iraq war is going.

Bush wanted the date not because he thought it would be, in Lincoln's words, an altogether fitting and proper way to honor the fallen, but because he thought it a clever way to reinforce a lie he has been caught in many times -- that his war was an answer to that attack.

While Petraeus and Crocker pitched Congress, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, used a Pentagon memorial service to peddle the same line: we avenge the innocent by waging war in a country unconnected to their tragedy. It's all in keeping with a long held administration belief that it is unpatriotic for anyone else to politicize 9/11.

Petraeus, Crocker and Pace took a page from Karl Rove's White House Iraq Group playbook: Craft sentences that imply more than they say. Deliver them with conviction. When found out, reveal the artful parsing that proves you never said what everyone heard.

It always worked better than it should. We believed Saddam was behind 9/11; that he had weapons of mass destruction; that his oil would pay for Bush's war; that Iraq wanted to be just like us; that the mission was accomplished, resistance in its last throes.

To make it work Bush counts on us not to read any more than he does. Petraeus and Crocker's tales of progress contradicted the published findings of military and intelligence professionals across the administration and in Congress:

A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate, a report of the consensus views of all intelligence agencies, said flatly that the Iraq War undermines the war on terror. It warned that the worst threat we now face is from "dispersed, self radicalizing" terror cells that are almost impossible to engage, let alone defeat, in pitched battles.

A report of the non partisan Government Accountability Office gave Iraq passing grades on just 3 of 18 'benchmarks'. General Petraeus awarded passing grades on 9, a hell of a curve by any standard. GAO staff leaked their report early to ensure that it and not some watered down facsimile got to the public.

A 14 member mission led by Retired General James Jones, former head of NATO, unanimously concluded that Iraqi's security forces are a disaster. When polled, a substantial majority of Iraqis voice their agreement.

Don't trust anything our government says? Check out the official Iraqi tabulations of sectarian killings, according to which Petraeus' claim of a 55% drop is utterly false.

Petraeus touted success in Baghdad and Anbar Province. In Baghdad, Shiites simply drove Sunnis out. If one side finishes the other off, casualty rates drop but it's not what you or I mean by progress.

In Anbar, locals came together to snuff out a home grown strain of Al Qaeda that sprouted up after we invaded. It would appear its prospects of finding safe haven in Iraq are dimmer than Bush lets on. This isn't a small point.

Bush says early withdrawal will mean a bloodbath. (If only he'd thought this much about casualties before going in.) Baghdad and Anbar suggest hanging around forever isn't the best way to avoid one.

What Baghdad shows is how well and how quickly a partition of Iraq might work. Anbar proves Al Qaeda isn't the worst threat to Iraq, which doesn't need 100,000 American troops to deal with it. In a reasoned and informed debate these two "success stories" would be seen for what they are-- two more arguments for getting out.

On Thursday Bush asked support for "General Petraeus's strategy." He seemed to promise troop cuts but really said only that with luck the 'surge' might end by July, 2008. After that, 130,000 troops -- Rumsfeld's original force -- will fight on into someone else's presidency.

In the Senate, John Warner asked Petraeus if the war is making America safer. Petraeus squirmed, as if haunted by the ghost of Colin Powell at the UN. Petraeus generally ducked big questions, confining himself when he could to the merely tactical. He hopes we'll remember the strategy as Bush's.

Just before the 2004 election, Petraeus wrote a Washington Post piece informing voters that things in Iraq were really turning around. His optimism then puts his testimony now in context. Maybe things were going even better then -- or maybe his willingness to carry political water for Bush is what got him his present job.

The administration wouldn't feel it had wrung all the propaganda potential from the 9/11 anniversary without at least one attack on the war's critics. Actually there were many but the one that took the spotlight was the attack on MoveOn.org.

MoveOn's play on Petraeus' name -- general betray us -- was puerile. When will liberals learn how to talk to people not already in agreement with them? Still, if Americans read more they'd know MoveOn got its facts right. Petraeus didn't even try. It may not be treason to lie about a war, but the real patriot is almost always the one telling the truth.

This is Petraeus' first combat. He led the failed effort to train Iraqi security forces. He got the top job due to his one proven skill, talking to Congressmen. Today he's a Republican kitchen saint but when the truth catches up with him he'll look like George Tenet, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and everyone else who disgraced themselves lying for Bush.

Before Bush's speech, a leader of our new Anbar coalition was murdered. Worse yet, Iraqi Kurds, till now our only true allies in country, undercut the vital effort to divide Iraq's oil revenues among its three major factions. This they did by cutting their own deal with Hunt Oil of Texas.

Hunt's president, Ray Hunt is a close Bush ally and member of his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Did Bush green-light this prolonging of Iraq's chaos while asking our troops to prolong their sacrifice? If he did he betrayed his alleged mission and our troops and we need to know it.
Our democracy grows weak. Before the war Bush had to hide findings of government experts showing Iraq's nuclear program was peaceful. Now government hides reports in plain sight of a public that can't be bothered to read them.

In New York last week, families of the dead wept as the names were read aloud. At night, a "tribute in light" shot columns from 44 search lights up into the night from Ground Zero. The effect is of a ghostly specter of the twin towers. People are said to find it comforting. Better to honor our democracy and our dead with the truth.

Comments

[texasborn]

The root of all this "misinformation" and "tactical lying" can be traced back to Karl Rove. Don't believe it? Read about him from the time he began as a Republican fundraiser. It was Karl Rove that got Dubya elected governor of Texas, with his misinformation and smear tactics along with redistricting, and it's how he got him elected president. Everyone associated with any Bush administration has been using the Karl Rove playbook. Karl Rove, among others who followed his doctrine, is a traitor to this country. But they call it politics now.

[Kendo Nagasaki]

Karl's playbook was written by Joseph Goebbels his favorite Nazi and expanded in George Orwell's novel 1984

Most people thought Orwell was referring to the Soviet Union, but apparently he was not.

It was the good old USA

[Hoelder]

I find it troubling that people still dispute the semantics of Bush lying or whether he said or did not say whatever he is trying to say. "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious" Accreditation through the negative. "Everyone who is against me is against America". Then there is the track record as a business man and soldier and that does not look good. There are indicators, lots of them, that this man does not have the talent nor skill to be president and his prestige is on the line whenever he says something to prove he is the president. The idea of saving yourself into the future tells me that he cannot hold all the posturing and pretending together. The failure of this democracy is that a weak and incapable man was made President and the seal of this Presidency are the promises he made to cronies, that damaged intentionally this country.

[cognitorex]

Bush denies possibility of 'victory' in Iraq
If the public has hugely come on board that 'victory' in Iraq is ephemeral or bullshit as it were, then the Bush Propaganda Commissariat has rightly jettisoned the phrase for the new word 'success.'
That in itself is newsworthy.
GOP jettisons concept of victory.

Labels: Bush, criminal incompetence, Iraq victory comes a cropper

[Not Blind]

Bush is nothing more than point-man for the PNAC. Go to their website and read their manifesto. It states goals for dominating the world politically and economically, which means controlling the world's resources (OIL).
Their vision does NOT state anything about making the world more democratic, the environment safer or cleaner, or any other noble cause. It's about money and power.
They've rallied the evangelicals and fundamentalists to thir cause citing Bibilical quotes, when in fact these folks are the very demons who will destroy us all.
How can one who's religious and God-fearing embrace tyranny, torture, falsehood, death and destruction as a tool or means to an end? In this case, both the means and the end are unjustifiable by any standard of ethics, morality or religious faith.
As Condi Rice put it, the "opportunity" for this campaign began with the tragedy of 9/11. Rather than stopping those attacks (when they could have, with solid field intelligence and abundant memos about the iminent attack at hand) they waited for their pretext using faulty intelligence to skew facts, mislead and bribe their way onto this "mission."
The entire administration is filled with cowards and traitors. As their own credibility faltered, they solicited individuals with track records of integrity and service (Powell, and now Patreaus) to put forth their arguments, knowing the public would respect them. Even these once-honorable men served their Commander in Chief to a fault. Just as in Nuremberg, they were "following orders."
Perhaps one day all these folks will pay for their crimes, but in the mean time, we are the ones who pay and sacrifice, some with their wallets, others with their blood.

[plutorage]

A child can make the case for getting out of Iraq. So why are we still there??

[Levittown]

THe only way to counter the Bush-Cheney agenda in Iraq is to not fund the war any longer. It is not patriotic to deceive the American people, Bush and Chaney are the real terrorist. They undermine us from the inside just as
the 5th columnist did to the Allies in WW 11. The Joint
Chiefs should be testifying before Congress.

[tandrmcdonald]

Speaking of lying...wh­en is Petraeus going to answer for the death of Col. Ted Westhusing?
After uncovering rampant corruption in Iraq, he was found dead. A single shot to the head, and a suicide note that was not in his hand-writing. Why isn't anyone asking questions about that? Where's the so-called media outrage? Did everyone buy the suicide excuse? Or was it easier to devote gallons of ink and miles of video tape to the latest celebrity scandal? The recent spectacle put on by Petraeus and Crocker is just one more link in a long and growing chain of liars who sacrifice their integrity for a step up on the political food chain. I'm getting disgusted.
Gramma ROse

[daddysboy]

"When will liberals learn how to talk to people not already in agreement with them?"
You ask this rhetorical question and call out Moveon.org in the same paragraph as "puerile"; then you proceed to say "Still, if Americans read more they'd know MoveOn got its facts right."
On a personal level, I'd say I am in the habit of preaching to the choir because I am wholeheartedly tired of being yelled at which is all that ends up happening when you talk to someone mentally challenged enough to still be believing this bull crap. On a public level, PACs like Moveon.org have simply realized that if you are going to try and beat your head against the wall of stubborn ignorance you should at least use language that the stubborn and ignorant can understand. You pointed out yourself that Moveon.org's facts are correct so which is it? Damned for calling the lie out in a way that the believers of the lie will understand or speak only to people capable of understanding the truth and accomplish only reinforcement and clarification of ideas and maybe some moral support. Most of the readers of Huffington Post already know Patreaus is carrying water for the military and by proxy for bush and I am certain that even Patreaus knows it. What is important to me and I think many others is what we say when confronted with these amazing mistruths both from folks that believe them and from those questioning them; returning with amazingly coherent, articulate, and factually correct truths is an excellent way to counter horrible propaganda in my opinion.

[CactusTom]

The real strategic intent of the Bush administration is never discussed. Going to Iraq never had anything to do with fighting terrorism or taking out weapons of mass destruction or bringing democracy to the middle east. It was all about retuning Iraq to the status of an American client state that it once had been before Saddam decided to go off the reservation and invade Kuwait. Only this time the Bush neocons intended to forever remain a physical presence in Iraq so as to insure its allegiance to our corporate interests, and while they were about beating the Iraqis into submission it would be an excellent opportunity to drain the national treasure into the pockets of the Bush Chaney corporate cronies. Moreover, to help insure that we could never leave Iraq, we would sink countless billions into the world’s largest embassy along with permanent type military bases, investments that must be defended at even greater costs in men and treasure. And so when the Bush folks keep repeating the word “stay” they literally mean forever. Of course all this waste weakens America, but at least Bush and his corporate friends are rolling in dough and see big fat oil contracts in their future.

[realpolitic]

Why are so many otherwise talented people like Colin Powell or Tony Blair, for that matter, willing to sacrifice their credibility for a whiny, little snippet like George Bush? I believe upon meeting Bush it would be difficult to take him seriously, much less to lie for the man. So many in high government service who mindlessly repeat 'I serve at the pleasure of the President' should remember their real boss is the American people.

[Susanholmes]

"MoveOn's play on Petraeus' name -- general betray us -- was puerile. When will liberals learn how to talk to people not already in agreement with them?"

they're learning Now. this is how the republicans do it, after all, and you can hardly say the strategy is faulty.

[Lane]

Puerile???? Why make us look up words in the dictionary when everyone is using the same term???? Petraeus betrayed us. He had the opportunity to tell the truth and didn't. He is in Bushs' pocket.

[NCDog]

Hey Bill,
It would seem that our continued presence in Bosnia has prevented a bloodbath. Who was it again that put our troops in there without an exit strategy?

[laocoon]

Did we have troops "in" Bosnia?

[IntegrityIntact]

For the record, MoveOn.org did not come up with the play on words of Petreaus' name to "Betray-Us". Many of those who worked under him when he was a Lt. col referred to him as just that--for his step-on-an­yone-to-ge­t-ahead tendencies. This was observed early on by both superiors and subordinates in the military chain.

But no, the MSM doesn't report on this. oh, the good ol' days when journalists did their jobs in noble fearless, fashion.

And also, MoveOn was pleading with Gen. Pet (lol) to not come before the American people and lie, while presenting striking evidence that the Administration had him lined up to take a hit for their policies--a political shield adorned in military medals if you will.



Many of the generals;

[realpolitic]

Something else died on September 11th, 2001 in America- the truth.

[Nazdar]

Mr. Curry,

Each member of Congress needs to be sent a copy of your article...­they are the ones who are "in power" to do what they were elected to do...if only.