Lies, lies, lies- part one

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Registered: 08-07-2004
Lies, lies, lies- part one
Sun, 08-22-2004 - 1:27pm
consortiumnews.com

Bush & the L-Word

By Nat Parry

March 29, 2004

Over the past four years, one of the most powerful U.S. media taboos has been against calling George W. Bush’s pattern of false statements lies. Among Washington journalists, the l-word is casually applied to people who have gotten in the way of the Bush Dynasty – from Bill Clinton and Al Gore to more recently John Kerry and now Richard Clarke – but almost never to Bush.

Sen. Kerry’s credibility took a thrashing when he remarked that many world leaders say they hope Bush will be defeated. Now, top Republicans are calling former counter-terrorism czar Clarke a liar for his comments about Bush’s handling of the war on terror. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist used the l-word repeatedly in attacking Clarke from the Senate floor, even suggesting that Clarke should be charged with perjury.

In these cases, the major newspapers and the TV networks have added to the impact by giving credence to the liar-liar charges. When Clarke appeared for a full hour on NBC's "Meet the Press" on March 28, host Tim Russert spent nearly the entire time buffeting Clarke with the Republican attacks, demanding responses to each charge, even flashing on the screen a "liar" accusation from conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer. But opposite rules apply to Bush. Calling him a liar remains out of bounds in the mainstream press.

Indeed, when Kerry made another off-hand remark about the Bush team as “the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen,” his comments were reported as a bizarre slander and the media puzzled over why Kerry would say such a ridiculous thing, even acting as if Kerry was talking about all Republicans, not just Bush's inner circle.

Whatever the media’s excuse for this double standard, it has thrown the U.S. political balance out of whack. Bush and his surrogates now know they have virtual carte blanche to smear their critics as liars while knowing that the major media will not permit counter-attacks.

Case Study

A recent example of bending over backwards to avoid connecting Bush and the l-word was the Wall Street Journal’s March 22 lead story about gaps between Bush’s account of his actions on Sept. 11, 2001, and the public record.

The story's headline, “Detailed Picture of U.S. Actions On Sept. 11 Remains Elusive,” didn’t give much of a clue what to expect. While avoiding the l-word or anything close to a synonym, the article told the story of how Bush and his aides made statements at variance with the verifiable record about the events of that tragic day.

The Journal article by Scot J. Paltrow gave six examples of Bush or his top aides offering Sept. 11 accounts – all portraying Bush as a decisive leader – that didn’t square with the factual record. Some of the discrepancies relate to important historical facts; others amount to political spin to help build a heroic myth around George W. Bush as “war president.” The Journal’s examples included:

--Did Bush watch the first plane hit one of the Twin Towers?

Bush’s arrival for a photo op at a second-grade classroom in Sarasota, Fla., on Sept. 11, 2001, coincided with the first news reaching the presidential entourage that a plane had struck the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York. On Dec. 4, 2001, Bush told a town-hall meeting in Orlando, Fla., “I was sitting outside the classroom, waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower – the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly myself, and I said, ‘Well, there’s one terrible pilot.’” But, as the Journal reported, there was no footage of the first plane until late that night and the TV in the room where Bush waited was unplugged.

--Did Bush quickly respond when Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered in Bush’s ear, “A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack”?

Card has said “not that many seconds later, the president excused himself from the classroom, and we gathered in the holding room and talked about the situation.” An uncut videotape of the scene, however, shows that Bush – after having been told “America is under attack” – waited in the classroom for at least seven more minutes, as he listened to children read a story about a pet goat and asked the children questions. Card later said Bush’s “instinct was not to frighten the children by rushing out of the room.”

--Who raised the U.S. defense level to Defcon III, the highest state of military threat since the 1973 Arab-Israeli War?

Bush told the town-hall meeting in Orlando that “one of the first acts I did was to put our military on alert.” But the Journal reported that the evidence is that Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, the acting head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made the decision, as Bush was rushing from the school in Florida to Air Force One and then westward to Louisiana and Nebraska.

--Did Bush activate the government’s emergency response plans as he claimed in his nationally televised speech on the night of Sept. 11?

Federal officials, interviewed by the Journal, said the emergency plans were implemented by lower-level officials, not by Bush. FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said the so-called “Conplan” was activated without any input from Bush or the White House. A former White House official told the Journal that Bush was not involved until he signed a disaster declaration on Sept. 14.

--Was there a threat against Air Force One?

White House officials insisted at the time that Bush’s decision to flee first to Louisiana and then to Nebraska was driven by a credible terrorist threat against Air Force One. But White House spokesman Dan Bartlett now acknowledges that there was no credible threat, only misunderstood rumors.

--Did Bush delay his return flight to Washington until 4 p.m. because there were still unaccounted for aircraft in the skies?

In explaining Bush’s tardy return to Washington, political adviser Karl Rove said there were still reports about civilian jetliners aloft until 4 p.m. and thus still a threat to Air Force One. But Benjamin Sliney, the top Federal Aviation Administration official responsible for air-traffic control, said the agency informed the White House and the Pentagon at 12:16 p.m. that there were no more hijacked planes in the air and all commercial planes were out of U.S. airspace, the Journal reported.