Ooooooh ... this is delightful. The Republicans are now starting to trip over their own semantic distortions in trying to claim they never "lied" about WMDs in Iraq. From earlier this month, we have this semantic nit-picking from Pat Buchanan on an episode of the McLaughlin Group (emphasis added):
MR. BUCHANAN: What the president did, John, was he made a prosecutor's case for war. Things that contradicted his case, they ignored.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Cherry-picking.
MR. BUCHANAN: Things that strengthened it -- they cherry-picked it. They hyped. But I personally do not believe the president of the United States deliberately lied about anything.
OK, did you catch the distinction? According to neo-con Buchanan himself, Bush and his cronies "hyped" but they didn't "lie." So, again, according to Buchanan, it is perfectly valid to accuse the Bush administration of "hyping" but not "lying," simply because "hyping" is not equivalent to "lying." With me so far?
How then to explain Dick Cheney's recent defense of the integrity of his administration:
"Any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false," Cheney said, decrying what he called the "self-defeating pessimism" of Democrats.
Uh ... sorry, Dick, but everyone has already acknowledged the "hyped" part. It's a bit late to put that horse back in the barn, isn't it?
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