Many of us here in Left Blogsylvania, after we finish beating up on George W. Bush, love to end our disembowelings with the snark, "Well, at least a blowjob wasn't involved!" That's our way of pointing out the ridiculous hypocrisy of the Right in forgiving Commander Chimpy almost everything, while to this day defending impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton for his little dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.
Occasionally, though (as happened here recently), some wanker will rise to the challenge and respond with something like:
"Boy, you lefties sure are stupid. Clinton wasn't impeached just for getting a blowjob. He was impeached for lying about it under oath. Man, can't you people understand anything? What a bunch of morons you are."
Or something to that effect.
All right, then -- let's go with this idea and see where it takes us, as it gives us the opportunity to establish the Right's pecking order regarding the relative severity of what they see as unforgivable sins.
As I understand it, even when those on the Right are forced to concede that the Bush administration has clearly lied about numerous things regarding Iraq and WMDs and wiretapping and on and on, these lies are somehow not nearly as serious as Clinton's as they were not uttered under oath.
Apparently, that "under oath" thing is what makes all the difference. As I understand it, the increasingly immoral, unethical, illegal and downright unconstitutional behaviour of the Bush administration on so many fronts still doesn't even rise to the level of censure, but the fact that Bill Clinton lied about something as trivial and meaningless (to the American public) as getting oral sex demands the punishment of impeachment and removal from office. Do I have that about right?
By the way, this is not a rhetorical question. It may seem like I'm being snarky and sarcastic but I'm asking this question in all seriousness. Even though the Bush administration has now clearly and blatantly lied (not just to the American public but to Congress as well) about issues that have resulted in the pre-emptive invasion of another country, the deaths of over 2,000 U.S. military personnel and the permament injury and disfigurement of thousands more, a raging deficit and tanking economy -- all of this is forgivable since, in your minds, these lies were not told under oath and are therefore not worthy even of censure. On the other hand, Bill Clinton lying under oath about oral sex in a civil lawsuit -- that's absolutely, in your minds, deserving of far, far worse punishment.
Is that what you're saying here? I just want to make sure we understand one another before I carry this argument to its logical conclusion.
SPEAKING OF LIES, it's not like this is even a challenge anymore (all emphasis added):
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war.
You know what's coming, don't you? Of course you do:
But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
If you're a Bush supporter these days, your life must really suck. Really.
7 comments:
Come on CC, open your eyes. The team of experts that studied the trailers were obviously liberals. It's the only conceivable explanation for this. They looked at the trailers through liberal goggles, reached liberal conclusions, wrote a liberal report, and leaked it to the liberal media. It's so obvious.
But you know what they'll say, right? The President wasn't lying because nobody had told him before he made the speech. Or that he was talking about different trailers. Or...
Seriously, I've read wingnuts in the comments at Sadly,No! and Americablog assert with all seriousness that there is not one proven lie that Bush told. Not one. Everything is either an honest mistake, acting on bad information, a misinterpretation of the President's statements, etc. For example, the conflation of Iraq and 9/11 was just a case where they meant that they were related as far as a new foreign policy outlook, not that they ever claimed that one actually had anything to do with the other. He can't be blamed for people not listening carefully to his statements.
It's really amazing. Never actually told a lie, and to say he did is just because of some irrational hatred of a fine, upstanding man.
Dave - the spin doctor's phrase is "plausible deniability".
More or less, everybody knows the speaker is lying like a bad rug, but nobody wants to admit it.
My personal favourite is how Bush administration officials refuse to be sworn in at all. They just show up, dispense with the lies, and leave. But they don't lie under oath, because they refuse to be put under oath.
Participate in investigations in good faith and under the same terms as normal mortals? Hah, that's what the terrorists want.
They get away with their lies because they make the effort to find usually at least a scrap of shaky evidence to support their claim, compared of course to much stronger evidence to refute their claim. And of course later they can blame it on the old standy: bad intelligence.
Classic McClellan:
McClellan said the Post story was "nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago," pointing out that an independent commission on Iraq had already determined the intelligence on alleged Iraqi biological weapons was wrong.
These guys are like the husband who gets caught cheating red-handed, never admits it, never apologizes, and every time it gets brought up goes -"Why are you bringing that up again? We've been through this already. Geez!"
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