Harry Browne's Journal

This Journal provides random thoughts on news items and other issues. There won't be new postings every day, but most weeks there should be one to four new entries. This isn't an interactive blog where you can post your thoughts. However, you can email me — and if your email seems to be of general interest, I might respond in this Journal. I can't provide a personal answer, because I don't have the time to do many things I'd like to do.

November 16, 2005

The Writing Resumes: Since getting out of the hospital for the final time in August, I have found that I need an inordinate amount of sleep each day. This, of course, has left fewer working hours. I've been able to lead a simpler life and I'm determined not to let commitments cause pressure. I've kept up on most of my productive activities, but writing has been sacrificed in the process.

I feel now that I've arranged all other parts of my life satisfactorily, and I hope to be able to devote at least several hours a week to writing — divided among articles and entries to this Journal. I've learned not to promise any given output; let's just say I hope to write often enough to keep people coming back to this website to see what's new.

Beginning with this . . .

Lying about Lies about Lying: John Gibson is one of the more vocal Bush supporters on Fox-TV News. This past Tuesday his My Word segment was entitled "Everybody Thought There Were WMDs in Iraq."

Here are some excerpts from it:

The Democrats are making huge gains in public opinion on the line "Bush lied."

They have said it so often, many many people have come to believe it.

There is a certain flaw in the logic. The Dems never want to talk about the flaw, but here goes.

If Bush lied about the presence of WMD in Iraq, then he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

If he knew there were no WMDs in Iraq, why would he send U.S. troops in to look for WMD and discover — for the world to see — that there weren't any WMD, and he lied?

Not even his opponents really think Bush is that stupid.

The truth is, no jokes, everybody thought there were WMDs — even the French.

Clinton thought so, Teddy Kennedy thought so, John Kerry thought so.

The question is what should have been done about it. . . . 

What's going on now is revisionist history. Bush lied, no WMDs. All leading to the inevitable conclusion that all would be perfect in the world if nothing had happened and we were still watching Saddam Hussein run Iraq, steal Oil-for-Food billions, kill his political opponents and plot against his neighbors and us.

Remember, if Bush were going to lie about something, why would he send 150,000 U.S. troops to discover the lie and put it on display before the world and the American voter?

It's nonsense. . . . 

Unfortunately, there’s a certain flaw in Mr. Gibson’s logic.

In fact, George Bush lied over and over. He may have believed his lies would somehow turn out to be true. But, nonetheless, he stated as fact assertions that he had no evidence for. He said Hussein had WMD; he didn't say Hussein might have WMD, or that it was his opinion that Hussein had WMD. He said he knew that Hussein had WMD. That was a lie.

As to the dumb Democrats and other world leaders having "believed" that Hussein had WMD, why wouldn't they believe it? After all, they all relied on what the Bush administration said. And with the Bush administration saying it had evidence that Hussein could attack the east coast of the U.S. with unmanned aircraft, why wouldn't they vote to invade Iraq?

As I said, Bush may have been hoping his assertions would turn out to be true — or at least enough of them to justify his brutality.

But, instead, none of them have turned out to be true — not even his argument that the world is a better place because of his invasion.

2,000 Americans are dead. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis are dead. Is this bringing peace and democracy to the Middle East? My God! Not one administration official has ever uttered one word of remorse for the Iraqis who have died in George Bush's futile effort to prove himself.

When George Bush says "the defense of freedom is always worth it," to whom is it worth it? Those poor Iraqis who were slaughtered or lost their homes in Fallujah? The innocent women and children who happened to be in the way of the cluster bombs dropped by the U.S. Air Force? Don't those people count as human beings? Or is it only the posturing politicians whose fate is important?

The fact remains that George Bush lied about having evidence of WMDs, mobile laboratories, aluminum tubes, unmanned aircraft that could carry WMDs to America's east coast, ballistic missiles that could threaten the whole Middle East, uranium purchases in Africa, Al-Qaeda training camps in Iraq, and a few other things.

If you'd like to see the whole litany of lies by George Bush and his cohorts, go to:

Lying for a Living and George Bush, Lying, & the Dogs of War.

It is time for thoughtful commentators to stop playing lapdog for the Republican Party. Abandoning George Bush doesn't mean climbing in the lap of Al Gore or John Kerry. It simply means starting to think for yourself and not echoing any party line.

Is that such a sacrifice?

October 2005 Journal

 

 

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