"Packaging" The Truth - Machiavelli, Anyone?

How Bush and Cheney Lied...and Lied... and Lied

... A prudent lord, therefore, cannot observe faith, nor should he, when such observance turns against him, and the causes that made him promise have been eliminated.... Nor does a prince ever lack legitimate causes to color his failure to observe faith.... But it is necessary to know well how to ... be a great pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple and so obedient to present necessities that he who deceives will always find someone who will let himself be deceived.

Nicollo Machiavelli - The Prince

Bush and Cheney lied. So? Everyone knew that. Everyone's been trying to prove that. Countless discrepancies, numerous secret memos (and meetings) numerous scandals, no WMDs, no "yellowcake" cronyism run wild, yet not any one of these has made Congress and the public admit what has been happening for almost eight years.


So along comes Scott McClellan and a book titled "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception."

From AP:

From life-and-death matters on down — the rationale for war, the leaking of classified information, Cheney's accidental shooting of a friend — the government's top two leaders undermined their credibility by "packaging" their version of the truth, former press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Now the Bush administration is just a little bit edgy. The situation even got 85-year-old Bob Dole out of semi-retirement/senility to crank out an ornery email to McClellan:

“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues,” Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. “No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.”

Notice that he didn't say that what McClellan said wasn't true. In fact, from all of the criticisms of the book and of McClellan, no one has come forth to say that McClellan himself is lying.

No one.

"It didn't bother me whether or not he (Bush) had used cocaine previously or not _ that wasn't the issue _ 30, 40 years ago. The issue was how he approached it and how that transferred over into other issues. And I think it tells something about his character." _ McClellan, elaborating on a claim he made in his book that he had overheard Bush say he does not recall whether he had ever used cocaine.

What McClellan said is certainly consistent with Bush's character, if not his lack of intelligence: what moron doesn't know if he ever used cocaine or not? Were those times so blurred by substance abuse that he just blanked them out? EVERYONE knows the first time they smoked pot, snorted cocaine or, for that matter, mainlined heroine. EVERYONE. To insult someone by giving such a asinine answer means only one thing: Bush doesn't even care what people think. He actually believes that the American public will swallow whatever he says!

Bush really is beyond political redemption. He should be held accountable in a world court just to acquaint himself with reality!

Words to ponder from Wikipedia:

The Prince should be read strictly as a guidebook on getting to and preserving power. In contrast with Plato and Aristotle, the ideal society is not the aim. In fact, Machiavelli emphasizes the need for the exercise of brute power where necessary and rewards, patron-clientelism etc. to preserve the status quo.

Karl Rove placed The Prince above the Bible in his office. Bush, Cheney and the administration followed Machiavelli's rules.

Scott McClellan shows how they followed them and when they followed them. They lied to achieve power. They lied to preserve power. They rewarded. They chastised.

"I stand by everything in this book. I was a spokesman for the president, not for myself." _ McClellan.