Bring It On!

White House Isn’t Even Making Up Plausible Lies Anymore

April 12th, 2007 | by Ken Grandlund |

To rephrase a line from an idiot, there are lies we know, lies we don’t yet know, and lies we don’t know we don’t know. For at least the last six years, George W. Bush and his merry band of chickenhawks have been spreading lies as thick as manure everywhere they go. Under the Republican-led, rubber-stamp Congress of the first 6 years of the Bush misadministration, many of those lies fell into the second and third categories and only after the perilous course had been chosen did they move into the first category and become lies we know. Some of the most classic (and detrimental) lies concern the case for war in Iraq, the federal reaction to the Gulf Coast tragedy, and the Plame scandal. And there are a plethora of other, lesser lies uncovered all the time. But the Attorneygate scandal that has been rocking the White House and the Dept. of Justice for the last few months has revealed more than a pattern of deception in our executive branch of government. It has revealed an entire culture of governance based on lies, some so petty as to make the average person shake their heads in disgust, much as you would at a child whose face is covered in chocolate while they insist the didn’t eat the candy bar.

They say that the more lies one tells, the harder it is to remember them, and the liar usually ends up tripped up by their own inconsistencies. And then there’s the tale of the little boy who cried “wolf” so often that no believed him when the real wolf came to town. Both of these descriptions aptly apply to the Bush regime. But there is one other thing about lying so often- when the tales start to unravel, the compulsive liar will continue to spin yarns even more far-fetched than the original stories were, and any credibility that may have remained gets tossed out quicker than a honey pot on a hot summer’s day. Such is the case in the latest round of revelations coming out of Attorneygate.

After first denying any knowledge of the political firings of federal prosecutors, evidence has come out that shows that the AG himself, as well as several senior White House aids did indeed know what was going on, why it was happening, and helped orchestrate the firings and the complicated cover-up of the process. But the latest information gets even murkier.

According to an LA Times report on April 9th, the Republican National Committee, after the ascension of King George the Dimwitted to the Oval Office, provided presidential advisor Karl Rove and several other top aids with non-government laptop computers for the purpose of political campaign communications. It is illegal to use government owned equipment for such purposes, something that got the previous Clinton Administration into a bit of hot water. Hoping to avoid a similar situation, the RNC probably thought they were helping out a new Republican administration avoid potential claims of wrongdoing. (If they only knew…..) Unfortunately, it seems that the folks who got the laptops also decided to use their new computers and a website set up and hosted on RNC servers to conduct official government business, such as the attorney firing scheme, on these non-government issue machines. And that’s a big no-no.

The federal Presidential Records Act requires that all presidential and vice-presidentail records generated during an adminstration be preserved and subject to public access and review after a specific time and limits what can or can’t be destroyed.

Recently, the House Oversight Committee investigating the Attorneygate scandal received information about the RNC laptops and their probable use in official government business, and specifically the US Attorney firings. They have asked for access to e-mails to these and some other e-mails.

Here come the list of lies. First, before the RNC accounts were known about, we heard all the spin and lies about reasons for the firings. Then we learned that some Republican lawmakers were pressuring Justice to take these attorneys out. Many of the Attorneys in question had prosecuted public officials involved with corruption. Several of those were Republicans. So the “we fired them for performance related issues” explanations were lies. Then we were told that this was handled pretty low on the chain, that the higher-ups were not involved in any meaningful way. Meeting notes proved that to be untrue as well. As more information came into the light, the lies seemed more and more improbable. And more and more ridiculous as a result. Now, with the RNC backdoor e-mail system uncovered, and a Congressional request for e-mail to be turned over, we hear the most absurd lie of all- “Oops. We accidentally deleted a bunch of those files. The system is just set up that way.”

This lie is not only stupid, according to all that we know about police computer forensics, it’s simply not possible. The recovery of deleted computer information is used frequently by American law-enforcement to trap child predators. Corporations use recovery techniques to discover employee impropriety. And every freaking computer expert in the world says that once something is sent out, it lives on forever. For the White House or the RNC to actually expect anyone to believe the “Sorry , deleted them,” argument shows how far into LaLa Land those folks really are.

Look, they know they are lying. They know we know they are lying. And they don’t even care enough about getting caught lying anymore to come up with plausible lies. At least when they had credible figures like Colin Powell lying for them they got a lot of people to consider they might be right. Now, with an administration in ruins, they aren’t even making an effort at deceit. And that in itself shows how far they’ve sunk into the mire.

If nothing else, this group has always been pretty good at lying. Now they can’t even do that well. And for us at least, that’s a good thing.

[tag]White+House+Lies, Bush, Rove, RNC+laptops, Congressional+Oversight+Committee, LA+Times, Attorneygate, politics[/tag]

Sphere: Related Content