How long can Bush get away with lies? By Father Andrew Greeley

[jbfam4]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/greeley/cst-edt-greel25.html
How long can Bush get away with lies?

February 25, 2005

BY ANDREW GREELEY

As the criminal, sinful war in Iraq enters its third year, the president goes to Europe to heal the wounds between the United States and its former allies, on his own terms of course. The White House propaganda mill will hail it as another victory for the president and ignore the fact that most Europeans still consider the war dangerous folly and the president a dangerous fool.

One hears new rationalizations for the war on this side of the Atlantic. After the hearings on Secretary of State Rice, a Republican senator, with all the self-righteous anger that characterizes many such, proclaimed, "The Democrats just have to understand that the president really believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." This justification is not unlike the one heard frequently at the White House, "The president believed the intelligence agencies of the world."

Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?

It is also asserted that the election settled the matters of the war and the torture of prisoners. These are dead issues that no longer need be addressed. Yet the president received only 51 percent of the vote and carried only one more state than the last time (picking up New Mexico and Iowa and losing New Hampshire). This is a validation of the war and of prisoner abuse? This is a mandate to do whatever he wants to do and whatever the leadership of the evangelical denominations want? A percentage point and a single state are a mandate for more war? Never before in American political history!

[saracat]

1. Why , how can this be? All the Catholics voted for Bush! (saracasm)

The papers tell us so! How could "Father' Greely say such things? Giggle.

[Placebo]

2. Ouch!

"Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?"

Zing! :D

[blm]

3. Because the GOP controls most of the media and most of the voting machines

so Bush can get away with pretty much anything, including gifting a WH press pass to a $200hr male prostitute.

[etherealtruth]

4. God, I love Andrew Greeley

[Robeson]

5. Well Father Greeley....

...you're a man of the "cloth". You ought to know better than anyone. As long as he is being perceived as doing "Gods Work" - as so many in this country think he's doing - he can get away with anything. Afterall, he's only doing what God tells him to do. Who are we to question God's will?

If Nixon had been able to wrap himself in "God" as well as this administration has, he would never have had to resign.