nicholas kristof’s op-ed piece in todays paper of record “Calling Bush A Liar,” so i did.

and howard, i see your kristof (who basically admits that the president exaggerates, stretches the truth, is often confused, and deceived himself.. but didnt flat-out lie), and his 25 inches of “it depends on what your definition of a lie is”,

and i raise you the NY Times ED Board column on 6/17 “The Plain Truth” about the lie that iraq had ties to al qaeda

“the Bush administration convinced a substantial majority of Americans before the war that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to 9/11. And since the invasion, administration officials, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, have continued to declare such a connection. Last September, Mr. Bush had to grudgingly correct Mr. Cheney for going too far in spinning a Hussein-bin Laden conspiracy. But the claim has crept back into view as the president has made the war on terror a centerpiece of his re-election campaign.

On Monday, Mr. Cheney said Mr. Hussein “had long-established ties with Al Qaeda.” Mr. Bush later backed up Mr. Cheney, claiming that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a terrorist who may be operating in Baghdad, is “the best evidence” of a Qaeda link. This was particularly astonishing because the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, told the Senate earlier this year that Mr. Zarqawi did not work with the Hussein regime.

and i’ll even throw in another NYT Ed Board column “The Faulty Weapons Estimates” from January that suggests that Bush’s claim that Iraq had wmd including the ability to have nukes “amounted mainly to wishful thinking.”

we could split hairs all day about the difference of a lie and spreading false information, but one thing that i found interesting about F 9/11 is that it had so many things to attack bush about and yet he shied away from the most glaring Bush lie of all: the one he told during the State of the Union Address in ’03 that Saddam was making his nukes from Nigerian uranium even though Joe Wilson and the CIA said that it wasnt true.

but what’s worse is two months after the address, VP Cheney went on Meet the Press and kept the lie going, “He’s had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

but it didnt end there. once they found out that their “evidence” was not true, they stuck to their guns claiming that they had other intelligence saying that iraq was getting uranium from africa.

finally, six months after he lied on Meet the Press, Cheney returned to admit, “Yeah. I did misspeak… We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon.“

i cannot think of a bigger more destructive lie than one that costs a country a billion dollars a day, hundreds of lives, and thousands of casualties.

it baffles me when intelligent people defend such reckless and selfish and murderous behavoir because it may polarize people, because it’s insulting, or because it may “impede understanding,” as Kristof says.

what impedes understanding far quicker are deceptions, exaggerations, misspeaking, and untruths while marching to an unprecidented invasion of a country that posed no threat to this country.

the president sure loves to talk about freedom. good. the truth will set him free to play cowboy on his ranch for good come november. and he can be confused there all he damn well pleases.

and nobody else will die from it.

bob mould + i got a nice postcard from bunnie today + brian made a great photo essay