Big Lies: Who told the worst political untruth of 2005? It’s a shame the list of

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Sun, 22 Jan 2006 05:43:34 -0800 (PST)

Big Lies: Who told the worst political untruth of 2005? It's

a shame the list of contenders is so long.

 

 

 

http://www.leighsaavedra.com/

 

Big Lies

 

Who told the worst political untruth of 2005? It's a shame the

list of contenders is so long.

 

By Eleanor Clift

Newsweek

 

Dec. 22, 2005 - Every holiday season, we on " The McLaughlin Group "

hand out news awards. Some categories, like " Biggest Winner, " are easy

(My choice was Chief Justice John Roberts, with the oil companies as

runner-up). Others are a struggle to fill, like who to insult with

the " Overrated " award.

 

In compiling this year's list, I had the highest number of entries

for the category, " Biggest Lie. " I chose the White House declaration

that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby had nothing to do with leaking the

identity of a covert CIA agent. They were the principal participants

in the effort to discredit former ambassador Joe Wilson because he had

raised doubts about one of the pillars of their argument for war,

namely that Iraq had tried to buy yellowcake uranium to make a bomb.

 

Another favorite—heard all the time from the White House—is that

" everybody saw the same intelligence we did. " Members of Congress

don't see the President's Daily Briefing (one of them was the

glossed-over pre-9/11 document that warned " Bin Laden Determined to

Strike Inside the U.S. " ), and they didn't see all the qualifying

caveats about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, or the

doubts about the credibility of the sources the administration was

relying on.

 

Bush is good at stating the obviously untrue. " We do not torture, "

he declared despite ample evidence to the contrary from Abu Ghraib to

Guantanamo to secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Vice President Cheney

went to Capitol Hill repeatedly to lobby for the U.S. right to

torture, capitulating only when the vote went against him 90 to 9.

Sen. John McCain, who was tortured when held prisoner during the

Vietnam War, took on Bush's No. 2 and stood up for democratic

principles. It's a wonder Cheney has any credibility left after

assuring the country in May, " the insurgency is in its last throes. "

 

The revelation that President Bush authorized spying on American

citizens without warrants is a late entry to the year's " Biggest Lies "

list. Bush says he bypassed the law because of the need for speed. He

may believe that, but the facts say otherwise.

 

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 established a

special FISA secret court designed to act expeditiously. The executive

branch can tap anybody's phone and not even get a warrant until 72

hours after the fact. The FISA court isn't picky; it's only turned

down five requests out of 19,000 in its quarter-century existence.

Bush publicly and proudly says he will continue to break the law. The

Washington Post reported that one FISA court judge has resigned in

apparent protest, and the others are asking why we have a secret court

when it is ignored.

 

Bush's explanation is riddled with lies. He says our enemies are

watching and threatens The New York Times, which broke the spying

story, with legal action. It takes a vivid imagination to believe that

Osama bin Laden and his buddies are keeping up with the niceties of

FISA courts and would otherwise have no idea their phones might be

tapped. Bush says he talks to Congress all the time and that there was

plenty of congressional oversight. Not true. The Gang of Eight

(leaders of both parties in the House and Senate, plus the chair and

ranking members of the Intelligence Committees) were forbidden to take

notes or discuss what they were told with colleagues or staff.

Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller's hand-written letter to Cheney

expressed uneasiness about the program. Rockefeller couldn't have its

legality evaluated by staff. He couldn't even have the letter typed

because of the secrecy. That hardly qualifies as congressional

oversight.

 

The cavalier attitude toward the checks and balance of a

democratic society is a pattern with this administration. Bush and

Cheney regard Congress and the judiciary as obstacles, not as equal

branches of government. The polls show that a majority of Americans no

longer trust this team, which is why Bush and Cheney are hitting back

hard at their critics. If they lose this round over spying, the

spillover effect will be devastating for their war policy and on any

domestic agenda they hope to salvage. We have no mechanism to deal

with a president who has lost the trust and confidence of the American

people and has three years remaining in office. Impeachment is a

nonissue; it's not going to happen with Republicans in control of the

House and Senate.

 

What will happen is more open insurrection on the part of

senators—both Democrats and Republicans. Confirmation hearings for

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito are scheduled to begin the first

week in January. In the weeks since being named by Bush, there have

been a series of stories about Alito's early writings as a member of

the Reagan administration. Alito wants us to believe he was a callow

young thirtysomething who advocated far-right positions to curry favor

for a job. The White House is telling senators that Alito didn't mean

all those things he wrote about disregarding privacy rights and

overturning Roe v. Wade—another big lie. No wonder this year's list

was so easy to put together.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

 

 

 

" The President may err without causing great mischief.

Congress may decide amiss without destroying the

Union. But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of

imprudent or bad men, the Union may be plunged into

anarchy or civil war. "

-- Alexis de Tocqueville

 

" The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an

energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average

share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to

fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on

the one hand and terrorism on the other. "

 

Bertrand Russell: Freedom, Harcourt Brace, 1940

 

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