A BuzzFlash Reader Commentary
September 14, 2002
Bush a Liar, Liar
by Linda Kekumu
A Letter to the New York Post
Dear Editor,
The New York Post's front page carried the anti-Gore headline 'Liar, Liar' after the first presidential debate in October, 2000. What terrible deed had the paper uncovered? Another Watergate? A blatantly misleading promise? Hardly. Gore spoke of a 15-year-old from Florida who had to stand during class due to a shortage of desks. The crack teams of journalists quickly honed in on the school only to find the girl had stood for only one day. Then came the Vice President's story of inspecting fire and flood damage with the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Texas. It turned out that the FEMA Director had not accompanied Gore on the specific date referred to, it was the Assistant Director who had accompanied him. Not exactly an what you'd call earth shattering.
Much was made of the above cases of "lying," so much so, that Gore was labeled by the press as a pathological liar. We were led to believe by the press that if Gore couldn't be trusted to get every detail of every anecdote perfect, how can he be trusted at all?
Now, on Sunday, according to . . .
MSNBC "Study: Iraq could arm nukes quickly"
http://www.msnbc.com/news/802167.asp?cp1=1"In his meeting with Blair, Bush cited a satellite photograph and a report by the U.N. atomic energy agency as evidence of Iraq's impending rearmament."
. . . a senior White House official acknowledged Saturday night that the 1998 report did not say what Bush claimed. "What happened was, we formed our own conclusions based on the report," the official told NBC News' Norah O' Donnell.
Meanwhile, Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the U.N. agency, disputed Bush's and Blair's assessment of the satellite photograph, which was first publicized Friday. Contrary to news service reports, there was no specific photo or building that aroused suspicions, he told Windrem.
The photograph in question was not U.N. intelligence imaging but simply a picture from a commercial satellite imaging company, Gwozdecky said. He said that the IAEA reviewed commercial satellite imagery regularly and that, from time to time, it noticed construction at sites it had previously examined.
Gwozdecky said the new construction indicated in the photograph was no surprise and that no conclusions were drawn from it. "There is not a single building we see," he said.
Considering the gravity of the situation, frankly I am surprised that the New York Post is not equal to it's task of informing the American public of just who is the liar.
Linda Kekumu
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