He’s telling lies, lies, lies, lies, lies lies lies

April 30, 2003

In case you missed it over at “Scott’s”:http://www.gamersnook.com/blog/archives/001202.html, the Bush administration has started saying now that it’s not important for us to find actual weapons of mass destruction, just evidence that a program existed at one time.

See, you’re supposed to “lower expectations”:http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/30/wmd/index.html _before_ you deliver, not after. Seven years in the web development business has taught me that.

Well, a lot of the brits are angry, which is no surprise since they were angry to begin with. It’s not like Blair had backing from his own people. They were pretty much disgusted by Blair playing Lenny to George’s … uh … George. “Tell us about the weapons, George.”

bq. “Well,” said George, “he’ll have a big anthrax patch and a chem lab and nukes. And when the UN says ‘no,’ we’ll just say the hell with dipolmacy, and we’ll build up a fire in the desert and set around it an’ listen to the artillery comin’ down on the roof…”

Of course, we may yet find WMDs. What’s surprising is this administration is already backpedalling. Seems to me the appropriate response would be to say, “now hold on there, pilgrim, we ain’t done a-searchin’ the canyon yet.” Unless, of course…

Unless Bush knew all along were no weapons of mass destruction.

Oh wow.

All sarcasm aside, that *would* be a shocker to a lot of us. Even I thought we’d find the things laying around like candy scattered from a piñata. My anger was mostly directed at Bush for his irresponsible and anti-American policies.

But we are undoubtedly going to be asked to accept this as a victory anyway. “What did you expect,” the right-wingers will say. “The things laying around like candy scattered from a piñata?”

Well, um, yeah. Because you said that’s what we should expect. Colin Powell even pointed to pictures in the UN and said “see, here are the things laying around like candy scattered from a piñata.”

[ _If you think I've beat that phrase to death, raise your hand_. ]

And we said “we need proof because that’s the way we’re supposed to work.” Some of the more savvy of us even said, in a whisper, “won’t he just give those weapons to terrorists before we attack? If that’s what he wants to do anyway?” And a lot of us were saying “let inspections work!”

And you told us “You anti-American appeasers aren’t going to be happy until there’s a mushroom cloud over Washington DC, are you?” And we sputtered. And you burned Dixie Chick albums. And you renamed French things.

And now, if it turns out we were right all along and that we should have had evidence before we acted and Saddam wasn’t an immediate threat, do you think people will change their minds?

I don’t think they will, because we now expect our government to lie to us. A coworker of mine once said “there is no lie where there is no expectation of truth,” and that certainly seems to be the operating principle of Americans today. “Your government is lying to you!” is met with “But all politicians lie!”

But we still support our own parties, don’t we? As Democrats we supported Clinton — even though he lied to us repeatedly. Republicans support Bush now, even though he’s hung many of his own out to dry. And the Green Party closed their eyes to the truth that there *were* significant differences between Bush and -Nader- Gore.

Why do we do this? Because they seem to have our interests at heart? Why can we let people lie to us, then say “well, they’ll do what’s best for us anyway.”

What kind of citizenship is that?

Posted in Archived Unsorted