Three Lies – No Waiting.

The 40% Problem.

In another United States, along another timeline, I might very well be sitting in a field, chewing a pluck of straw, wondering what on Earth I would or should write about.

It'd probably be kinda dirty.

However that is not the problem in this here and now.

In this Universe -- this forlorn bubble of reality that sometimes seems to have been jettisoned by the nobler gods -- there is far, far too much material. Were I to abandon the jobs that keep the wolf from the door and the razor-wielding squirrels from the Frigidaire and do nothing 24/7 but dye-mark the serial lies of the Bush Administration as diligently as the MSM transcribes and broadcasts them, I would, within a few months, have wasted away to splinters of bone and flakes of long-pork pemmican.

I would have pounded my keyboard into divots of silicon and puddles of plastic, and I would not have even scratched the surface.

Like the seas held up to my lips, I find that I cannot drink even a fraction of a fraction of what is there.

Which makes me wonder, what it the mass of a lie?

What is mendacity’s atomic weight?

Because for the last six years there has been a veritable cataract of carefully shaped lies pounding against body politic.

Big, loud lies. And stupid lies. Murderous lies. And little lies with little knives that slither though the nation’s arteries, nicking them into a leaky, lacey Cheneyesque ruins and bleeding us slowly to death.

Like terrorists, the liars do not care about the takes-offs or landings of their flights of fancy, because they have no beginning or end in mind. The sole driver of this Administration has been the merciless expedient of the drunk trying to find his next bottle. And as they reel from self-made crises to self-made crises, it gives them a terrible purpose at which they have become terribly proficient.

To. Lie. All. The. Time.

For six years their lies have slammed into the pillars of our democracy, one after another, as calculatedly as the 9/11 murders drove their hijacked planes into our buildings. And to exactly the same ends. To crash the system. To paralyze the nation with fear. To goad us into doing one goddamned stupid thing after another.

And in then end, isn’t that the six word obituary history will pronounce over the Presidency of George W. Bush?

“One goddamned stupid thing after another.”

The last six years has not been about anything as noble as competing visions of the future of America, or even something as pragmatic as public debates about the best ways to keep us both as safe and as free as possible. Instead it has been a desperate, rear-guard action by the acolytes of the Gang Who Couldn’t Loot Straight to escape the consequences of proudly electing and then re-electing a passel of criminals, dullards, perverts and whores.

Which is why I wonder about the specific gravity of lies.

Having been blitzed us with lies to for six, straight years, half of us still stand unscathed and unimpressed, wondering who in their right minds could possibly fall for this insultingly inept fraud.

But for nearly half of the people in this country, when the President of one of his lackeys form their mouths to shape yet another falsehood, they go down like they’d been walloped upside the head with a neutronium skillet.

They go down like a two hundred pound sack of stupid. And with utter predictability begin to squeal and squawk and shit themselves blind with Chickenhawk Brand “Ouchless Patriotism”.

Consider the three latest lightening-jabs to the Conservative solar plexus.

First this snip , from the Washingon Monthly:

"HE WOULD FIRE THE NEXT PERSON THAT SAID THAT

"....Today, via Orin Kerr, comes a remarkable interview with Brigadier General Mark Scheid, chief of the Logistics War Plans Division after 9/11, and one of the people with primary responsibility for war planning. Shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan, he says, Donald Rumsfeld told his team to start planning for war in Iraq, but not to bother planning for a long stay:

"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like occupation.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

…

However, this is the clearest evidence I've seen yet. The guy who was actually in charge of logistics has now directly confirmed that Rumsfeld not only didn't intend to rebuild Iraq in any serious way, but threatened to fire anyone who wasted time on the idea. Needless to say, he wouldn't have done this unless it reflected the wishes of the president.

So we now know – know! – that Rumsfeld is a liar, and lied at the behest of his boss.

Not that there was ever a sliver of doubt, but this is so nakedly damning. More than enough, in a sane universe, for Rummy to be dragged by the hair out onto the White House lawn and publicly flogged for incompetence and treason.

But to be followed right on its heels by this?

U.S. count of Baghdad deaths excludes car bombs, mortar attacks

By Mark Brunswick and Zaineb Obeid

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

But it eliminates from tabulation huge numbers of people whose deaths are certainly part of the ongoing conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Not included, for example, are scores of people who died in a highly coordinated bombing that leveled an entire apartment building in eastern Baghdad, a stronghold of rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Johnson declined to provide an actual number for the U.S. tally of August deaths or for July, when the Baghdad city morgue counted a record 1,855 violent deaths.

…

So we now know – know! – that Rumsfeld’s people are lying about the casualty count. “Manufacturing” good news Vietnam-style, presumably to give Rummy something to talk about other than his criminal incompetence.

Again, ground for mass firings. And if anything a fraction this revolting had happened during a Democratic Administration, it would be a mortal lock that the GOP would be demanding and getting firing squads.

And now, to complete the Liefecta, this from the BBC…

Iraq war justifications laid bare

By Adam Brookes

BBC News, Washington

...

The Senate Intelligence Committee has found no evidence of links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

In a report issued on Friday, it also found that was little or no evidence to support a raft of claims made by the US intelligence community concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The 400-page report was three years in the making, and is probably the definitive public account of the intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

…

Cheney claims 'untrue'

In fact, the intelligence agencies had been extremely cautious in suggesting links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

It was Vice-President Dick Cheney who asserted most strongly in public that Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship.

In a television interview in September 2003, he said there was "a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s... al-Qaeda sent personnel to Baghdad to get trained... the Iraqis providing bomb-making expertise and advice to the al-Qaeda organisation."

It was "clearly official policy" on the part of Iraq, he said.

Friday's report, issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provides another definitive statement that that assertion is simply not true.

It says that debriefings conducted since the invasion of Iraq "indicate that Saddam issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with al-Qaeda. No post-war information suggests that the Iraqi regime attempted to facilitate a relationship with [Osama] Bin Laden.

"Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda... refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support."

Administration confusion

The report supports the intelligence community's finding that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - the man who was al-Qaeda's chief operative in Iraq between the invasion and his death in June this year - was indeed in Baghdad in 2002.

Was this an Iraqi link to al-Qaeda?

No, says the report. Far from harbouring him, Saddam's regime was trying to find and

capture him.

But the Bush administration has a way, still, of confusing this issue.

As recently as 21 August this year, President Bush said that Saddam "had relations with Zarqawi".

The Senate report is scathing of the intelligence community's product concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

"Post-war findings", it reads, "do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate judgement that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program."

Nor do "post-war findings" support the 2002 NIE's assertions that Iraq had chemical or biological weapons.

...

Bush – liar.

Cheney – liar.

Unequivocally. Indisputably.

Three fatal blows, especially for a President who has no measurable competence whatever and has never run for office on anything but a carefully manufactured illusion of personal straight-shootyness.

And in a sane Universe it would now all come to an end.

Under the weight of an incensed Legislative Branch, a furious press and an indignant public made up of good citizens of every political stripe, this regime of pimps and puppets and hucksters and lunatics who have led us into disaster would now implode and fall laughably and embarrassingly apart at the seams.

But they remain, lying even more loudly. Even more shamelessly.

And this from the lead paragraph of the BBC story explains why:

…

One starting point is this:

In a poll conducted this month by Opinion Research Corporation for CNN, a sample of American adults was asked: "Do you think Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 11 September terrorist attacks, or not?"

Forty-three percent of those polled answered yes, they believed Saddam was personally involved.

Even though it is well-established that Saddam Hussein was no ally of al-Qaeda, nor did he possess weapons of mass destruction, the original justifications for the invasion for Iraq linger on, often in ways that have strangely mutated on their journey through politics and media.

…

43%.

Bush isn’t the problem. Cheney isn’t the problem. Rummy isn’t the problem.

The 43% of our fellow citizens who are this stupid? This fucking stupid? This fucking, Quikrete headed, Limbaugh-gobbling, Christalopithecan stupid?

They’re the problem.

And mind you, piglump stupid as they are, they are also very selectively stupid.

These are, after all, many of the same human stinkweeds on the lawn of Liberty that followed every nuance, haircut and semicolon of William Jefferson Clinton for eight years with the fastidious obsession of an astronomer mapping a newly discovered solar system.

These are the raisers of ruckus over every trivial error of Bill Clinton. These are the eternally watchful digital vigilantes of the Right who spent eight nit-picking years belching hellfire in every direction over Clinton’s every flaw and foible – real or entirely fictional -- who now find themselves in the position of having to defend Dubya’s constellation of lies about life and death issues as “Truth”. As misunderstandings. As Liberal Media smears.

And the easiest way to “defend” the Liar in Chief is to do what Conservatives do whenever the facts controvert their despicable dogma: Ignore them.

Because the filthy reality at the very bottom of it all is that Conservatives don’t give a shit that Bush is a liar. Conservatives know damned good and well that Dubya and his junta are liars of the First Water.

That we were lied into a war we had no business fighting by men who had no intention of “winning”.

They simply don’t care.

These are men who are just happy to be killin’ brown people somewhere, and who proved irrefutably in New Orleans that they don’t give a shit if we lose whole cities as long as their shirts aren’t spattered and their stocks aren’t mussed.

They are our Enemy Within, and it is high time the leaders of our Party started treating them as such.