BuzzFlash Reader Contribution

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Bush’s Lips Are Moving – He Must be Lying

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Jimmy Lohman

I didn’t watch the speech but I did catch a glimpse of President Bush’s lips moving, so I was sure of one thing: he was lying.

Bush is incapable of telling the truth. He has lied to us about absolutely everything. He said he didn’t know Ken Lay, CEO of Enron, the guy who stole the life savings of thousands of workers and investors, but it turned out Lay was his close friend and one of his most trusted long-time fundraisers.

He promised he would be a "president of all the people" – not just of those who voted for him, but despite losing the popular vote in 2000, Bush shunned and turned his back on the majority of Americans – those who voted against him.

He lied about the reason for the $200 billion war in Iraq, claiming first that invading that small country was necessary to save us from weapons of mass destruction. Two years later, it turned out no such weapons existed. He told us our national security depended on toppling Saddam Hussein because Hussein was in bed with Al Qaeda and thus had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. That, too, turned out to be a lie, though it was repeated regularly by Dick Cheney en route to stealing another presidential election.

After 117 U.S. service people had died in Iraq, and 600 were wounded, Bush strutted onto an aircraft carrier all puffed up in ill-fitting battle regalia and announced with a pathologically straight face: "Mission Accomplished." Since then, 1300 more troops have died and 10,000 more have been wounded. He told us the troops would be home in 2005, but now they are saying it will be more like 2015. He told us the torture of POW’s in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were isolated incidents committed by a mere handful of loose cannons, that such measures were not approved on high. It turned out the notorious torture that has brought incalculable disgrace to our contry was approved by Bush’s Secretary of Defense and his Attorney Generals past and future.

Bush promised he would run a budget deficit that would be "small and short term," but in his first four years he squandered budget surpluses and ran up the biggest deficit in history. He lied about Republican tax cuts and about who really benefits from them. He claimed that the bulk of the benefits go to the middle and working classes when in fact most of his "tax relief" goes to the wealthiest Americans.

He lied about education funding and his bogus "No Child Left Behind" scheme for undermining public education, and he misrepresented the "Texas miracle," a shell game invented by his Secretary of Education to make test scores look better than they really are. He lied about environmental protection and the damaging effects his relaxation of clean air and water standards would have on the quality of those precious and vital resources. He lied about global warming, claiming there is no evidence it poses any threat.

He lies about anything and everything. Why, then, should anyone believe what he tells us about the need to "reform" social security?

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Jimmy Lohman is a human rights lawyer and musician in Austin, Texas. He is also the author of "An Open Letter to My Pro-Bush Brother-in-Law," which BuzzFlash ran on May 19, 2004.