Lies and the Lying Liars

Two "must read" posts by Reddhead at firedoglake.

"All Hat, No Cattle" - about George Bush and the unravelling web of lies.

It's not enough that the President lies about the big things. He lies about the little ones, too. (...)

George Bush is a product, with all sorts of fun labeling on the box -- nifty claims of "made with whole grains" and "fortified with vitamins and minerals," but what we're really looking at is a sort of candidate who, when you get down to what is really there, is a whole lot of fluff and nonsense, lots of fillers and ultra-refined crap, with a really good marketing team behind him. He sounds good when the team has everything working like a well-oiled machine, but those moments when he's off-script, off-plan, being "real" as opposed to "scripted," you get a real sense of who he is -- and in a crisis, it's not a pretty picture.

It's this pattern of behavior with this President that concerns me, the real behavior, not the spin and the projection and the tap dance that his Wurlitzer pals try to sell like so many PR folks with a wind-up Energizer bunny in their pocket -- and it ought to concern all Americans.

Faced with a crisis or some question of his leadership, his integrity, pretty much any question at all, George Bush's first response is to freeze, then huddle with his staff and come up with a media response. It's all statement, no actual leadership, no actual work. The PR blitz becomes the entire focus of this Administration -- all campaign mode, all the time, with no real concern for doing the actual work -- for really digging into the nitty gritty and governing. (emphasis mine)

All hat, no cattle. (...)

In the other, Redd discusses Murray Waas' article in the National Journal, and gives us only two choices with regard to Bush's decision to invade Iraq. And - unsurprisingly -neither instills a lot of confidence in the man who has his finger on the big red button.

Here's my conclusion after reading Murray Waas' exceptional new piece in the National Journal today: (1) the President either knew that Saddam posed no immediate threat to the United States and repeatedly lied to the American public and leaders around the world (and allowed multiple members of his Administration to lie about it as well) or (2) he doesn't bother doing his job, and had no idea what information was contained in multiple sensitive national security briefs that he was given over a long period of time, and no one in the Administration bothered to clue him in on this.

You choose.

I've wracked my brain this afternoon to come up with another alternative -- but no matter how I twist it around in my brain, it comes back to "he knew and lied" or "he doesn't bother doing his job."