Compulsive Liars

Seeing this got me thinking:

Telling outright falsehoods has become old hat for the Bush Administration, hasn't it? I mean, really, we've had a whole load of whoppers lately, but in today's WaPo, Glenn Kessler unloads on the latest "urban legend" to come out of the Preznit's mouth.

It seems the whole "the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak." is nothing but a big, old lie.

The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had already been reported in 1996 -- and the source of the information was another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time.

The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone, the source was bin Laden himself.

It's kind of tough to blame it on the media when Bin Laden is the one who told the media in the first place that he was using satellite phones, now isn't it?

Sure, this isn't a huge lie, like the mushroom clouds or the we'll be greeted with flowers and candy or we don't conduct domestic surveillance without a warrant or anything. But when an Administration gets comfortable enough to lie about the little things as easily as the big ones, it sure shows an intellectual sloppiness and an ethical black hole after a while.

This got me thinking about a couple of other whoppers--that is, besides the ones like African Uranium, or WMD, etc. etc. No, I'm thinking about smaller lies--falsehoods that speak volumes about the people in charge of the government:

They also feared that Air Force One itself was a target. Cheney told the president there was a credible threat against the plane. Using the code name for Air Force One, Mr. Bush told an aide, "Angel is next." The threat was passed to presidential pilot Col. Mark Tillman.

Um, actually, no:

Two weeks after these astonishing claims, the administration has all but admitted it concocted the entire story. CBS Evening News reported September 25 that the call "simply never happened."

And remember fake turkee day at Baghdad International Airport? Administration officials gloated about pulling the wool over everyone's eyes--including a British Airways jet--except that, well, the whole BA story was just that: a story:

British Airways said yesterday that none of its pilots made contact with President Bush’s plane during its secret flight to Baghdad on Thanksgiving, contradicting White House reports of a midair exchange that nearly prompted Bush to call off his trip. Honor Verrier, a spokeswoman for British Airways in North America, said two British Airways aircraft were in the area at the time and neither radioed the president’s plane to ask if it was Air Force One.

"We have spoken to the British Airways captains who were in the area at the time and neither made comments to Air Force One nor did they hear any other aircraft make the statement over the radio," Verrier said.

The White House had no immediate comment on the discrepancy.

Bush aides recounted last week that a British Airways pilot thought he spotted the president’s blue and white Boeing 747 from his cockpit.

This sort of compulsive lying--particularly given it's utter lack of necessity--is telling: it's indicative of a serious attempt at, well, covering up. Perhaps they're merely trying to hide incompetence. But it could be that they've got something far more serious to conceal. In the matter of warrantless wiretaps, Reddhedd, once again, speaks truth to power:

If you are doing blanket wiretaps of multiple people with absolutely no probable cause, then of course the judge is going to yell at you. Grow some balls and realize that the legal system requires that you actually do your freaking job instead of trying to cheat your way through everything.

It's not as though a probable cause standard for potential terrorist activity is so high, for hell's sakes -- you simply have to show that you have evidence of a connection to illegal activity and to an outside actor. You know, like "hey, this guy works for Osama and he's roommates with some other guys we know do as well." Or "we found this guy's phone number in the cell phone used by this other fellow who was caught with bomb-making material." Oh yeah, tough standards.

Look, the FISA court is there for a reason. You need a cool-headed third party to review these warrant applications to be certain the government isn't running around half-cocked on a call from someone's pissed off ex-wife who is trying to get even for a late child support check. (Yep, it happens. Been there, done that, reined in an officer on that warrant more than once in my prosecutor days.) I mean, it's not like this Administration has given everyone any sort of confidence that there is a cool head in the bunch. *snerk* No wonder the FISA judges are pissed.

Next time someone whines on teevee that the FISA requirements were just too cumbersome (And I'm talking to you, Toensing, you dissembling partisan mouthpiece.), I want the journalist interviewing them to say the following: "Is the cost of liberty so cheap, that you are willing to sell it because you are too lazy to do some paperwork?"

Grow up, George. Do your job. And stop thinking you run the world. This isn't King for a Day. Here's an urban legend for you: all those advisors telling you how great you are at your job? They're just sucking up. They don't really mean it.

As to the other instances of compulsive lying, well...draw your own conclusions.