A look back at some of the biggest falsehoods of 2006. Newsweek.com / Eleanor Clift: Bush’s Worst Lies of 2006 / 10:03 a.m. PT Dec 22, 2006
Note from Martin Carbone: These lies seem minor to me -- considering Bush's
lies that led up to the war.
Dec. 22, 2006 - In the spirit of holding our political leaders accountable, this
year-end review will tabulate the worst lies told by Bush and
company, along with several stories that were underreported in the media. Much
of what was generated
got lost in the fog of war, but the long arm of history will retrieve these
moments. As the president said in his news conference this week, if they’re still
writing about No. 1—George Washington—there’s plenty of time
before the historians can properly evaluate No. 43. Judging by the mess in Iraq,
it could be 200 or 300 years—if ever—before Bush is vindicated.
Bush has shifted his rhetoric in deference to the grim and deteriorating reality
on the ground in Iraq. Asked by a reporter on Oct. 25 if we are winning the
war, Bush said, “Absolutely, we’re winning.” Offered
the opportunity at his press conference to defend that statement, Bush has
adopted a new formulation.
He now says, “We’re not winning, but we’re not losing.” That
sounds like the definition of a quagmire.
Exploitation of the war gained Republicans seats in ’02 and got Bush a
second term in ’04, but it wasn’t enough in ’06. Karl Rove
decided the best way for Republicans to retain control of the House and Senate
was to embrace the war in Iraq and run against the Democrats as “Defeatocrats” and “Cut
and Runners.” It might have worked, had not most Americans decided they
did indeed want to cut and run. Not right away—the voters want an orderly
exit—but they weren’t buying Bush’s
big lie about the
Democrats.
Bush campaigned this fall as though the Democrats were the real enemy,
not the
terrorists. “They [Democrats] think the best way to protect the American
people is wait until we’re attacked again...If you don’t want your
government listening in on terrorists, vote for the Democrats.” Now that
the Democrats have won, watch Bush try to off-load blame for the failure in Iraq.
If the Democrats won’t go along with whatever cockamamie scheme he comes
up with, he can always accuse them of losing the war.
Days after giving Defense Secretary Rumsfeld a ringing endorsement, declaring
he would be there until the end, Bush fired him. It was the
most obvious lie of his presidency. And it tripped so easily off Bush’s
tongue. There was none of the stammering that usually accompanies his public
utterances. It was
as big a lie as Rove’s assertion on National Public Radio that
all the public polls pointing toward a rout for the GOP were wrong. “I have the
math,” Rove proclaimed. A lot of people believed Rove, but the voters didn’t.
The administration had the media snookered much of the time. Stories
that were
underreported largely because they ran counter to administration
spin include:
# 1) ..... A study that shows the death toll among Iraqis
has reached as high
as
655,000. Extensively researched by teams of doctors commissioned
by the Johns Hopkins
Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md., the study—and the
controversy over its sampling methodology—was given scant attention by
the media because it was so far out of line from the administration’s projection
of perhaps 50,000 civilian deaths. That’s still a horrendous death toll
of innocents in a country the size of Iraq. Now, 100 bodies routinely turn up
every day in Baghdad’s morgues, the victims of sectarian violence, and
the report, published in October in The Lancet medical journal, seems to be
closer to the truth than anything the Bush administration has acknowledged.
# 2) ..... Private contractors in Iraq. There
are 100,000 government contractors in
Iraq,
a number that rivals the 140,000 U.S. soldiers in the country. It’s dangerous
work; some 650 contractors have died there. They do a lot of the jobs the military
used to do, everything from providing security and interrogating prisoners to
cooking meals for the soldiers. They work for military contractors like KBR and
DynCorp International, which are helping train the Iraqi police force. This is
the largest contingent of civilians ever operating in a battlefield environment,
and there’s been no congressional oversight or accountability. That should
change with the Democrats taking over the investigative committees on Capitol
Hill. The abuses may be just waiting to be uncovered.
#3) ..... America’s secret torture prisons, whose
existence Bush acknowledged as
part of his tough-guy campaigning this fall. Set up in the aftermath of 9/11
to hold suspected terrorists indefinitely, the legality, morality and practicality
of these so-called “black sites” have come under scrutiny. After
a brief flurry about the use of torture tactics like “water boarding,” where
a prisoner is made to feel he’s drowning, the story of these CIA-operated
overseas prisons faded. Yet they contributed to the central tragedy of the Bush
administration, the collapse of America’s standing around the world.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16326716/site/newsweek/from/ET/
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