Lying About Lying

Since the CIA leak investigation didn't produce much, Democrats took up the strategy of claiming that Bush lied. We hear it from them again and again. Bush lied. He distorted and cherry-picked intelligence. A well-written answer for that is here. The main point is that too many Democrats also said that Saddam was re-arming.

The current Democratic response is to say that Congress didn't have access to all intelligence. They only got a summary. While true, it does not explain why the Clinton administration was saying the same things as Bush.

So why are they doing this? The obvious reason is that they hope to cripple Bush politically. Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts on why democrats who voted for the war have signed on to the Bush Lied campaign.

Because, as I've noted, Democratic politicians voted for the war, but their activist donor base opposes it. They're boxed in, and claiming that they were misled seems like a way for them to explain away the contradiction while going on the offensive against Bush.

But there is more to it than that. Yes, some democratic leaders in Congress seem to be forced to take this route but they are just going along with the MoveOn/Sheehan/Moore wing. These people really believe it.

Look at all of the things that this group accuses Bush of doing. While numerous sources are on record as saying that Saddam was re-arming, Bush knew otherwise then pushed the war, anyway.

According to these people, Bush decided to go to war with Iraq around 9/13/2001. Some even say that he decided to go to war sometime in 1999 in order to raise political capital. This is only one of the reasons given for the war. The real reason - that given Iraq's sponsorship of terrorism and use of WMDs, Saddam was too dangerous to stay in power in a post-9/11 world - is never even considered.

Instead we are told that Bush wanted to raise political capital, that he wanted to enrich Halliburton, that he was seeking revenge for a plot to kill his daddy, that he wanted to clean up the blot on his daddy's record (leaving Saddam in power), or that it was a private feud between the Bushes and Saddam.

These people look at everything that Bush does in the worst possible light. His tax cuts were not to stimulate the economy, they were just to benefit the rich (and no one but the rich). Standard reviews of new environmental actions are portrayed as rolling back existing regulations. I look at Bush's growing deficit and attribute it to a moderate who doesn't want to cause the pain that tight fiscal controls would induce. The anti-Bush crowd claims that he is trying to cripple the government's future by running up the deficit.

And world-wide terrorism is a response to Bush. Nevermind that planning for 9/11 started in 1998 or earlier.

Dr. Sanity has a good piece on this. It is his opinion that democrats are afraid of terrorists and are projecting their fears onto Bush as a defense mechanism.

Bush becomes the "criminal mastermind", so devious, so evil, that everything he says is a "lie", everything he does is part of a vast global conspiracy. His family has intimate ties to Bin Laden and the Saudis; He is trying to enrich his oil business friends; He is trying to avenge the insult to his father by getting rid of Saddam; He plans world domination etc. etc. I could go on an on, but you get the point.

There is probably something to this. He goes on to say:

What is most funny is that these psychologically naiive individuals simultaneously think of Bush as this "criminal mastermind"--a genius of evil; and also as a complete moron who isn't capable of uttering a sentence without making a hash of it; or that his brain is controlled by the equally evil Karl Rove.

That is why the CIA leak was so important to them. They were convinced that Rove would be arrested (preferably "frog-marched" out of the White House) and Bush would be denied his brain. Some of the more delusional also hoped that the probe would go onto include the entire run-up to the war but the big prize was always Rove. Don't forget that prominent democrats demanded his resignation as soon as Libby was arrested.

Dr. Sanity calls for democrats to act like adults and recognize the real threat. Too bad it's not going to happen. The democrats have already started their counter-attack. It boils down to ignoring any statements about Saddam made by the Clinton administration and insist that Bush manipulated what information Congress had access to. This may help the democrats but it hurts the country.