corrente

Why oh why do our jaws still drop in amazement that Bush just makes shit up? After all the crapola conflating "9/11 and Sadaam", which we all knew was a lie but which half the American people still believe is Gospel, why have we not gotten it across to them that he lies about everything? To tell if he is lying, check to see if his lips are moving.

Just two brief examples today. This from Maureen Dowd had such a crappy headline I didn't even read it, so didn't understand its importance until Atrios caught it:

(via MoDo at NYT )

Painting himself as the noble agent for "the transformational power of liberty" abroad, [Prince George] said "there have always been doubters" when America uses its "strength" to "advance freedom": "In 1946, 18 months after the fall of Berlin to Allied forces, a journalist in The New York Times wrote this: 'Germany is a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis. European capitals are frightened. In every military headquarters, one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed.' End quote. Maybe that same person's still around, writing editorials."

She isn't. Anne O'Hare McCormick, who died in 1954, was The Times's pioneering foreign affairs correspondent who covered the real Axis of Evil, interviewing Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Patton. She was hardly a left-wing radical or defeatist. In 1937, she became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, and she was the first woman to be a member of The Times's editorial board.

The president distorted the columnist's dispatch.The "moral crisis" and failure she described were in the British and French sectors. She reported that the Americans were doing better because of their policy to "encourage initiative and develop self-government." She wanted the U.S. to commit more troops and stay the course - not cut and run.

Mr. Bush Swift-boated her.

Atrios notes the relevant TRUTH here:

Kudos to her for picking up on this. The truth is, in 1946 Germany was in crisis. And, there was a discussion about what to be done. And a proposal. What was the proposal called? Oh, yes, the Marshall Plan, which Marshall propsed in June of 1947 and which began being implemented in 1948. Now, it would be wonderful to say that this is an example of how things could be turned around in Iraq, but the Marshall Plan "only" cost us about $100 billion dollars, in current terms. How much have we already spent in Iraq? How much of those reconstruction dollars are being siphoned off into contractors pockets and diverted to "security" costs?

Digby catches another God-damn stinking lie in the same speech:

Remember the stirring letter from a soldier in Iraq that Bush quoted so dramatically [in his coronation acceptance address]?

It turns out that the guy is a soldier all right, but he's also a "scholar" at one of the Scaife funded, right wing foundations [the "National Center for Public Policy Research"].

I don't suppose they could have found any letters of support from members of the military who aren't employed as operatives in the VRWC.

Actually, now that I think about it, they probably couldn't.

Want proof of the connection?

National Center website

Joe Roche serves with the U.S. Army's 16th Combat Engineer Battalion in Iraq and is an adjunct fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, a Washington think-tank. Comments may be sent to him via info@nationalcenter.org

Much talk around the blogosphere today about how dirty Kerry's campaign is going to have to get to avoid another Dukakis debacle. Digby's points in posts above the one cited here have some good analyses; it would behoove everyone to read them. Any defeatist talk must be ignored, scruples should be the only thing in the closet. The good news for the principled among us is we don't need lies about Bush, we just need to rachet up the volume on the truth.