Fwd: [ NOLA_C3_Discussion] A Special Comment About Lying ...By Keith Olbermann

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[NOLA_C3_Discussion] A Special Comment About Lying ...By

Keith Olbermann

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A Special Comment About Lying

By Keith Olbermann

MSNBC Countdown

 

Thursday 05 October 2006

 

Keith Olbermann on the difference between terrorists and critics.

 

While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the

revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ...

 

While the leadership inside the White House has self-destructed over the

revelations of a book with a glowing red cover ...

 

The president of the United States - unbowed, undeterred and unconnected

to reality - has continued his extraordinary trek through our country

rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

 

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed,

quote, " 177 of the opposition party said, 'You know, we don't think we ought

to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.' "

 

The hell they did.

 

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president's seizure of

another part of the Constitution.

 

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single

Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn't be listening to the

conversations of terrorists.

 

President Bush hears what he wants.

 

Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, " Democrats

take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait

until we're attacked again before we respond. "

 

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

 

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader.

 

" If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, "

the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, " it sounds like

they think the best way to protect the American people is - wait until we're

attacked again. "

 

The president doesn't just hear what he wants.

 

He hears things that only he can hear.

 

It defies belief that this president and his administration could

continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could

wallow.

 

Yet they do.

 

It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any

president of this nation.

 

Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic

leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies

of treason.

 

But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.

 

Just 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this

same man spoke to this nation and insisted, " We must put aside our

differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us. "

 

Mr. Bush, this is a test you have already failed.

 

If your commitment to " put aside differences and work together " is

replaced in the span of just three weeks by claiming your political

opponents prefer to wait to see this country attacked again, and by spewing

fabrications about what they've said, then the questions your critics need

to be asking are no longer about your policies.

 

They are, instead, solemn and even terrible questions, about your

fitness to fulfill the responsibilities of your office.

 

No Democrat, sir, has ever said anything approaching the suggestion that

the best means of self-defense is to " wait until we're attacked again. "

 

No critic, no commentator, no reluctant Republican in the Senate has

ever said anything that any responsible person could even have exaggerated

into the slander you spoke in Nevada on Monday night, nor the slander you

spoke in California on Tuesday, nor the slander you spoke in Arizona on

Wednesday ... nor whatever is next.

 

You have dishonored your party, sir; you have dishonored your

supporters; you have dishonored yourself.

 

But tonight the stark question we must face is - why?

 

Why has the ferocity of your venom against the Democrats now exceeded

the ferocity of your venom against the terrorists?

 

Why have you chosen to go down in history as the president who made

things up?

 

In less than one month you have gone from a flawed call to unity to this

clarion call to hatred of Americans, by Americans.

 

If this is not simply the most shameless example of the rhetoric of

political hackery, then it would have to be the cry of a leader crumbling

under the weight of his own lies.

 

We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every

shape, size and party. We will have to suffer it, for as long as the

Republic stands.

 

But the premise of a president who comes across as a compulsive liar is

nothing less than terrifying.

 

A president who since 9/11 will not listen, is not listening - and

thanks to Bob Woodward's most recent account - evidently has never listened.

 

A president who since 9/11 so hates or fears other Americans that he

accuses them of advocating deliberate inaction in the face of the enemy.

 

A president who since 9/11 has savaged the very freedoms he claims to be

protecting from attack - attack by terrorists, or by Democrats, or by both -

it is now impossible to find a consistent thread of logic as to who Mr. Bush

believes the enemy is.

 

But if we know one thing for certain about Mr. Bush, it is this: This

president - in his bullying of the Senate last month and in his slandering

of the Democrats this month - has shown us that he believes whoever the

enemies are, they are hiding themselves inside a dangerous cloak called the

Constitution of the United States of America.

 

How often do we find priceless truth in the unlikeliest of places?

 

I tonight quote not Jefferson nor Voltaire, but Cigar Aficionado

Magazine.

 

On Sept. 11th, 2003, the editor of that publication interviewed General

Tommy Franks, at that point, just retired from his post as

commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command - of Cent-Com.

 

And amid his quaint defenses of the then-nagging absence of weapons of

mass destruction in Iraq, or the continuing freedom of Osama bin Laden,

General Franks said some of the most profound words of this generation.

 

He spoke of " the worst thing that can happen " to this country:

 

First, quoting, a " massive casualty-producing event somewhere in the

Western World - it may be in the United States of America. "

 

Then, the general continued, " the Western World, the free world, loses

what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a

couple of hundred years, in this grand experiment that we call democracy. "

 

It was this super-patriotic warrior's fear that we would lose that most

cherished liberty, because of another attack, one - again quoting General

Franks - " that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to

begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another

mass-casualty-producing event. Which, in fact, then begins to potentially

unravel the fabric of our Constitution. "

 

And here we are, the fabric of our Constitution being unraveled, anyway.

 

Habeus corpus neutered; the rights of self-defense now as malleable and

impermanent as clay; a president stifling all critics by every means

available and, when he runs out of those, by simply lying about what they

said or felt.

 

And all this, even without the dreaded attack.

 

General Franks, like all of us, loves this country, and believes not

just in its values, but in its continuity.

 

He has been trained to look for threats to that continuity from without.

 

He has, perhaps been as naive as the rest of us, in failing to keep

close enough vigil on the threats to that continuity from within.

 

Secretary of State Rice first cannot remember urgent cautionary meetings

with counterterrorism officials before 9/11. Then within hours of this lie,

her spokesman confirms the meetings in question. Then she dismisses those

meetings as nothing new - yet insists she wanted the same cautions expressed

to Secretaries Ashcroft and Rumsfeld.

 

Mr. Rumsfeld, meantime, has been unable to accept the most logical and

simple influence of the most noble and neutral of advisers. He and his

employer insist they rely on the " generals in the field. " But dozens of

those generals have now come forward to say how their words, their

experiences, have been ignored.

 

And, of course, inherent in the Pentagon's war-making functions is the

regulation of presidential war lust.

 

Enacting that regulation should include everything up to symbolically

wrestling the Chief Executive to the floor.

 

Yet-and it is Pentagon transcripts that now tell us this-evidently Mr.

Rumsfeld's strongest check on Mr. Bush's ambitions, was to get somebody to

excise the phrase " Mission Accomplished " out of the infamous Air Force

Carrier speech of May 1st, 2003, even while the same empty words hung on a

banner over the President's shoulder.

 

And the vice president is a chilling figure, still unable, it seems, to

accept the conclusions of his own party's leaders in the Senate, that the

foundations of his public position, are made out of sand.

 

There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

 

But he still says so.

 

There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida.

 

But he still says so.

 

And thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr.

Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads-around him and before

him-darkness, like some contagion of fear.

 

They are never wrong, and they never regret - admirable in a French

torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader.

 

Thus, the sickening attempt to blame the Foley scandal on the negligence

of others or " the Clinton era " -even though the Foley scandal began before

the Lewinsky scandal.

 

Thus, last month's enraged attacks on this administration's

predecessors, about Osama bin Laden-a projection of their own negligence in

the immediate months before 9/11.

 

Thus, the terrifying attempt to hamstring the fundament of our

freedom-the Constitution-a triumph for al Qaida, for which the terrorists

could not hope to achieve with a hundred 9/11's.

 

And thus, worst of all perhaps, these newest lies by President Bush

about Democrats choosing to await another attack and not listen to the

conversations of terrorists.

 

It is the terror and the guilt within your own heart, Mr. Bush, that you

redirect at others who simply wish for you to temper your certainty with

counsel.

 

It is the failure and the incompetence within your own memory, Mr. Bush,

that leads you to demonize those who might merely quote to you the pleadings

of Oliver Cromwell: " I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it

possible you may be mistaken. "

 

It is not the Democrats whose inaction in the face of the enemy you

fear, Sir.

 

It is your own-before 9/11 - and (and you alone know this), perhaps

afterwards.

 

Mr. President, these new lies go to the heart of what it is that you

truly wish to preserve.

 

It is not our freedom, nor our country-your actions against the

Constitution give irrefutable proof of that.

 

You want to preserve a political party's power. And obviously you'll

sell this country out, to do it.

 

These are lies about the Democrats - piled atop lies about Iraq - which

were piled atop lies about your preparations for al Qaida.

 

To you, perhaps, they feel like the weight of a million centuries - as

crushing, as immovable.

 

They are not.

 

If you add more lies to them, you cannot free yourself, and us, from

them.

 

But if you stop - if you stop fabricating quotes, and building

straw-men, and inspiring those around you to do the same - you may yet

liberate yourself and this nation.

 

Please, sir, do not throw this country's principles away because your

lies have made it such that you can no longer differentiate between the

terrorists and the critics.

 

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