Sunday, January 14, 2007
it's like a bottle to the head:
Scott Pelley asks Bush how he responds to people who say he's dishonest. Bush replies, "When there were no weapons of mass destruction, I was the first one to say so." Needless to say, this is a lie; he said the exact opposite. It takes a special type of asshole to lie when trying to defend himself against the charge of lying. Ah, and then a second later: Saddam Hussein was "rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete with Iran." Another lie!

UPDATE: I misheard this last part. Bush actually implored us, when calculating whether the war was worth it, to "Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran." As an ex post facto rationalization, it doesn't even make any sense when considering the actual state of the Iraqi nuclear program. (See this.) Josh has the perfect succinct and insightful understanding.
--Spencer Ackerman
Speaking about exposing lies, McClatchy just went medieval on the administration.
Blogger jfaberuiuc | 8:10 PM

> Scott Pelley asks Bush how he responds to people who say he's dishonest

That's not news reporting; that's Hollywood reporting. Or maybe sports reporting.

Now, if I was a young cub reporter, I would update a page from the Front Page era. Ben Hecht tells (in his wondrous overstuffed memoir) of how his editor used to assign him to visit grieving victim families... so he could lift a family picture for the paper. I would visit the grieving families and ask, "how does it feel to have a soldier who died for a dishonest president?"
Blogger Reb Yudel | 3:22 PM