Bush speaks of truth, but doesn't tell it (Cynthia Tucker Alert)

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | April 11, 2004 | Cynthia Tucker

[where's_the_Outrage?]

"We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."

-- Vice President Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003

As a candidate, President Bush pledged to restore integrity to the White House. Against the backdrop of President Clinton's repeated lies about a sordid adulterous affair, Bush ran on his claims to be a man of strong character -- a politician of plain speaking and straight talk. He wouldn't lie to us.

Yet, this administration has produced more dissembling and distortion, more fabrications and pseudo-facts than any White House in recent memory -- Richard Nixon's included. The Bushites lie brazenly and repeatedly, refusing to back down even when caught in the web of their own contradictions.

The falsehoods aren't limited to Iraq. In domestic policy Bush administration officials have shaded the truth, spread lies and even threatened underlings who believed in a moral obligation to honesty.

As just one example, the chief Medicare actuary, Richard S. Foster, has said his supervisor, Thomas Scully (who recently joined an Atlanta-based law firm that lobbies on behalf of hospitals and drug companies), threatened to fire him if Foster revealed to Congress the true costs of the proposed prescription drug benefit for Medicare. While the administration was ramming the costly benefit through Congress -- promising that its price would be no more than $400 billion over 10 years -- Foster had calculated the actual cost at between $500 billion and $600 billion, figures the White House disclosed after the bill passed.

But there is no area that better demonstrates the Orwellian quality of the Bush administration -- its insistence that black is white, up is down, war is peace -- than its deceptions about Iraq. Testimony under oath before the Sept. 11 commission and the Iraq uprising make increasingly clear that the central underpinning of the president's re-election campaign -- that he has conducted a tough-minded war on terror -- stands the truth on its head.

In fact, ousting Saddam Hussein has been a costly diversion from the war on terror. The Bushites came into office obsessed with Saddam, and when they could find no evidence that he represented an immediate threat, they simply manufactured it.

Now, our troops are trapped in a quagmire. Osama bin Laden is still at large. And the occupation of Iraq cannot help but breed a new generation of terrorists: Every time U.S. soldiers hit a mosque with mortars or strafe a carload of civilians mistaken for insurgents, another dozen teenage boys in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or Iran become America-hating jihadists.

Bush and his underlings lie when there is no reason to. In response to Richard A. Clarke's charge that his administration didn't view the al-Qaida threat as urgent, the president might simply have agreed and apologized. Few Americans would hold him responsible for failing to anticipate an attack as evil in its creation and brazen in its execution as Sept. 11.

Besides, Bush had already admitted his failure to forecast the immediacy of the al-Qaida menace. In "Bush at War," published last year, Bob Woodward quoted the president as saying he "didn't feel that sense of urgency" about bin Laden before the attacks.

Nevertheless, the administration greeted Clarke's charges with character assassination and fabrications. Vice President Dick Cheney went on Rush Limbaugh's radio show to dismiss Clarke as "out of the loop," a characterization National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was forced to refute, since Clarke was at the center of the administration's anti-terrorism efforts.

The entire premise of the Bush presidency -- that he is a man of principle, of honor, of candor -- is crumbling. The chaos engulfing Iraq is not just the result of guileless miscalculations. It is the inevitable outcome of a policy built on mendacity.

[sauropod]

Correct. The major media and columnists, including Cynthia, have blood on their hands.

Blood of our soldiers, to be specific. 'Pod.

[sauropod]

I've been polarized for a long time. Since about 1990 in fact.

The other side could have lowered the rhetoric (esp. following 2000 election). They haven't done one damn thing to do so. Remember His Slickness blaming OKC on talk radio and us right=wingers?

Lowering the rhetoric is for diplomats and corporate creatures. Myself, i prefer the verbal rapier delivered with a twist and the wink of an eye. 'Pod.

[onyx]

Cynthia Tucker castigating Dubya about honesty and candor is like the pot - no, "pot and kettle" is too mild - is like a vat of coal-slurry calling new-fallen snow black.

even THAT is too mild






LOL! Sure is too mild.
Way too mild.
Wait'll you read what the sweetest gal writes
about Cynthia, now that I've pinged her.
Hey, Dan's Angel, you sweet thang.
Let it rip and please ping King Prout.
LOL-LOL-LOL

[okie01]

I believe you would find us on the right only too ready to "reason together".

But post your message of moderation on Democrat Underground and see what you get.

It takes two to make a peace. But only one can make a war...

[Brian Allen]

<< We were greeted as liberators. Perhaps she's forgotten the day we pulled down the statue? >>

True and true.

But didn't those greetings and that pulling down happen before a solid year of treachery, sedition, fifth-columning, cynicism, politicking and downright bloody treason on the part of such un-and-anti-American activists as Tucker and those other fascisocialist "DemocRATS" for whom she lickspittles and shills?

Subjects of such barbaric tyrannies as Soddom's and the Taliban's [And the American Forces which confront them] are literally being murdered every day by America's treasonous Tuckers.

Ordinary Russians and Chinese and North Koreans and Cambodians and Vietnamese and Iraqis and Afghans and all of the other victims of the world's bloody barbarians have too many generations of experience of seeing what happens to every last family member -- three generations in both directions -- of those that back losers -- to not be bloody terrified in the light of such un-and-anti-American Goebbelsian propaganda and treason and sedition as that perpetrated by Tucker et al -- and after their experience of eight years of the cravenly cowardly Cli'tonista regime -- to commit 100% to our side.

The disgusting cowards Johnson, KKKahtah and KKli'ton, among others, have spent years establishing an American track-record of gutlessly cutting and running from responsibility and even if the likes of Tucker are all dragged to the nearest wall and shot -- as not all that long ago, she and they might well have been and should be -- it will take our President and Armed-Forces Commander-In-Chief, George Walker Bush -- if they don't weaken HIS resolve and cause him to go wobbly, too -- every minute of his eight years in office to win back world-wide totalitarianism's victims' trust.

By staying the course.

By relentlessly and, if required, ruthlessly, [Remember Dresden! Remember Hiroshima!] doing what is necessary to succeed.

["It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." -- Winston Churchill]

And by winning!

["We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills;we shall never surrender." -- Winston Churchill]

[.45MAN]

I am beginning to believe that Tucker is related to McKinney, at least mentally

[BraveMan]

Ms. Tucker needs another 911; her campaign contributions are falling off . . .

[dansangel]

Yet, this administration has produced more dissembling and distortion, more fabrications and pseudo-facts than any White House in recent memory -- Richard Nixon's included

Could be changed to:

"Yet, this journalist (Tucker) has produced more dissembling and distortion, more fabrications and pseudo-facts than any journalist in recent history, Jayson Blair of the NYT included."

She is a POS of the 1st order. That's *two* lunatic Cynthias that we, in Atlanta, have to deal with. What a life.....

((((onyx))))) - thank you for my Monday blood pressure check - thanks to you, I know I'm *alive* - LOL!

[Vigilantcitizen]

There's more truth on a "buy here-pay here" used car lot than in Cynthia's column.

That's *two* lunatic Cynthias that we, in Atlanta, have to deal with.

Shudder...

[Richard Axtell]

Cynthia repeats the DNC talking points, and contends that if you don't say the same thing, you're lying. I am not sure about the Medicare "lie", but on the rest of it... she seems to be one up on Orwell himself. The truth is that "quagmire" is a virtually meaningless term, unless you have a disloyal opposition, like her and the Democrat Party, to undermine national security and the war effort. Much of this is to deflect attention from further revelations about Clinton's total ineptitude and lack of awareness, if not concern, about foreign terrorists. Cynthia is a good little Clintonite, which makes her a terrible journalist.

[onyx]

((((onyx))))) - thank you for my Monday blood pressure check - thanks to you, I know I'm *alive* - LOL!





LOL-LOL-LOL
Thank you for giving me a hearty laugh.
Best way to begin my day.
See, KP, what did I tell you?

[dansangel]

Thank you for giving me a hearty laugh.

I aim to please, girlFRiend. The pleasure is mine.

:-)

[Poodlebrain]

"In fact, ousting Saddam Hussein has been a costly diversion from the war on terror. Cynthia's Opinion"

How can she make this assertion given the zero acts of terrorism against U.S. targets since 9/11? How would she have the U.S. use the military forces in Iraq in a more efficient or effective manner combating terrorism?

[NYC GOP Chick]

Why does the Atlanta Urinal keep her on as a columnist?

Because they don't *quite* suck as much as the New York Slimes does?

She is quite the picknose, ain't she? ;)

[RenegadeReporter]

UUUGGGHHHH! I don't like Cynthia Tucker and I've ranted on my blog about her.