Bush's Long War With The Truth

By Robert Parry
Consortium News

George W. Bush's dysfunctional relationship with the truth seems to be shaped by two complementary factors - a personal compulsion to say whatever makes him look good at that moment and a permissive environment that rarely holds him accountable for his lies.

How else to explain his endless attempts to rewrite history and reshape his own statements, a pattern on display again in his New Year's Day comments to reporters in San Antonio, Texas? In that session, as Bush denied misleading the public, he twice again misled the public.

Bush launched into a defense of his honesty by denying that he lied when he told a crowd in Buffalo, NY, in 2004 that "by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires - a wiretap requires a court order."

Two years earlier, Bush had approved rules that freed the National Security Agency to use warrantless wiretaps on communications originating in the United States without a court order. But Bush still told the Buffalo audience, "Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

On New Year's Day 2006, Bush sought to explain those misleading comments by contending. "I was talking about roving wiretaps, I believe, involved in the Patriot Act. This is different from the NSA program."

However, the context of Bush's 2004 statement was clear. He broke away from a discussion of the USA Patriot Act to note "by the way" that "any time" a wiretap is needed a court order must be obtained. He was not confining his remarks to "roving wiretaps" under the Patriot Act.

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