The Truth Shall Set You Back - Lying is no sin for Bush's minions

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-carlson13jan13.story
MARGARET CARLSON
The Truth Shall Set You Back
Lying is no sin for Bush's minions.
Margaret Carlson

January 13, 2005

At CBS, four high-level people (five, if you count Dan Rather giving up his anchor chair) have been fired for being taken in by phony documents. You may not think that's enough, but what strikes me is how rare such firings are. When there's lying, cheating and stealing on Wall Street, a prosecutor has to have the corporate executive dead to rights — at Fannie Mae, at Marsh & McLennan, at Sanford Weill's Citigroup — before heads roll. And even then the dismissals are generally accompanied by a payday so lavish it would make Croesus blush.

It is not surprising that an administration that rose so directly from corporate America would operate the same way. Has anyone, for instance, lost his job for being wrong about weapons of mass destruction or for failing to put enough troops in place to secure Iraq before a deadly insurgency could take hold?

In the Bush administration, you lose your job not for lying but for telling the truth, as the axing of Gen. Eric Shinseki and economic advisor Lawrence Lindsey shows. No wonder most government officials wait until they're former officials before speaking out, as former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke did.

Those who speak in real time are soon gone. Consider the case of the Department of Homeland Security's former inspector general, Clark Kent Ervin. When Ervin, a Republican and a Harvard Law School graduate, reported that only 6% of oceangoing cargo was being inspected, that known felons were operating airport checkpoints, that no consolidated terrorist watch list had been compiled and that the managers responsible for these failures had been feted at a lavish awards ceremony that cost half a million dollars, the White House allowed his appointment to lapse, costing him his job, according to Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Senate Government Affairs Committee chairwoman.

The opposite happened over at the inspector general's office at the Department of Health and Human Services. The IG there decided it was perfectly fine for former Medicare chief Thomas Scully to repeatedly threaten to fire a subordinate if he dared tell Congress (which had asked) that the prescription drug bill would cost nearly $200 billion more than the president was letting on. The subordinate's silence carried the day. It wasn't until after the bill passed with the vote of 13 Republican deficit hawks (who had sworn they couldn't vote for a bill costing more than $400 billion) that President Bush said, oops, the price was $534 billion after all.

Then there's poor Dr. David Graham, who wouldn't keep silent over at the Food and Drug Administration. When Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) called him to Congress to testify, the Yale-trained physician said Merck and the FDA had ignored studies that showed Vioxx doubling the risk of heart attack. Graham estimated that 55,000 people had died as a result. Dr. Sandra Kweder, deputy director of the FDA's Office of New Drugs, insisted nonetheless that "our system works very well." Protected by civil service laws, Graham still has his job, but he says he has been made to feel "that I'm an enemy, a traitor, a pariah."<snip>

[Inland]

1. Lying is how they get it done--and Bush supporters condone it

My theory is that every Bush supporter knows Bush lies, but feels it justified--why, if Bush told the truth about X, then the liberals would jump on it and then all the good policy things Bush wants to do won't get accomplished. So the Bush supporters simply join in the lies.

So even people who know, for example, that the Iraq war was based on lies feel that they can't say so. That would mean Bush wouldn't win reelection and then there would be a tax hike. And people who know that Bush is lying when he denies the tax cuts lead to disasterous deficits can't say so, because then Bush wouldn't win reelection and then proabortion justices would be appointed. And people who dknow Bush is lying when he says there is no limit test on abortion can't say so, because then Bush wouldn't win reelection and then he wouldn't be able to establish christianity won't be established.

In short, the Bush backers all assume that Bush is on THEIR side and only lying to the OTHER guy, namely, us, in order to outfox us. It is the idea that the government disguises troop movements in order to fool the enemy brought into democratic politics. The concept that Bush is lying to his own supporters as well just isn't accepted. The concept that having a leader elected based on his willingness to tell lies isn't good for democracy certainly is not accepted. The Bush supporters have not gotten to the point where things are SO bad that they are willing to say so. Expect things to get worse.

[wabeewoman]

2. Excellent analysis Inland

I think you are right and it explains how these people can claim to be so moral and rightous. They really do view anyone outside of their viewpoint as the enemy and all is fair in war. They don't trust us or even themselves.