Lies, damned lies, and yellow cakes

A while back, I foolishly predicted that the centrifuge discovery would spell the end of aggressive reporting and investigation into Bush administration WMD claims.

As it turns out, I was wrong, wrong, wrong-ity wrong. Maybe really amazingly disastrously wrong (for the administration), if this Capitol Hill Blue story cited by Kevin Drum turns out to have legs. Because, if this is true:

”[Bush] said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn’t prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could,” Wilkinson said. “He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country.”

then it’s possible that people other than LA Times op-ed writers (reg. required, use cpunks/cpunks) may start using the I-word, because then it will no longer be deniable by any honest observer that Bush lied in his State of the Union address. No, he didn’t tell as clear a lie as Clinton’s; but claiming to have proof when you have none—even if you are really really sure you’ll find some—is, in fact, lying.

Not that Bush would ever be impeached: rank partisanship, powered by the vicious politicking of DeLay, Rove, and Frist, will see to it that no Republican-controlled chamber even brings such a blasphemous proposal up for a vote. But Bush ran on two things, more or less: his character, and the brains of his advisers. Both must now be called into question. If the Capitol Hill Blue story is accurate, then Bush was led by his own overweening pride and arrogance to lie to the nation about his, and its, most serious responsibility. If it’s not accurate, then he is surrounded by idiots and yes-men, or corrupt viziers who were led by their overweening pride and arrogance to keep from their President the information he needed to fulfill his most serious responsibility. Looks bad for Bush either way. Looks pretty good, on the other hand, if you happen to be a principled fiscal conservative, who is fairly liberal on social issues, and who steadfastly opposed the war because he believed Iraq was not a threat to the US.

Which all just goes to show you that the Bush strategy of deny, deny, deny then change the subject was brilliant, and they should have stuck with it. Admitting in public that the uranium “information” was false—something everyone knew already—allowed the press leeway to hammer and hammer on the subject, and now it has every appearance of not going away by the end of the news cycle. This is the flip side of the press’ self-imposed objectivity trap: since they can only “objectively” go after on-the-record hypocrisy, they tend to go after it with claws bared and teeth gnashing.

Now we get to see whether Bush, Rove, and company are smart or ruthless or lucky enough to survive a vacation at the yellowcakegate hotel. Should be interesting.

UPDATE: Kevin Drum now reports that the CHB story was false, which swings the pendulum strongly over to the idiots/yes men/corrupt viziers side. Fascinating stuff, this yellow cake saga.

Filed under: politics/war