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This election has become a test of whether reality still means anything to the American people, whether this country has moved to essentially a new form of government in which one side is free to lie about everything while a paid "amen corner" of ideological media drowns out any serious public debate.
For weeks now, George W. Bush's campaign has been radically testing the limits of how thoroughly one party can lie, misrepresent and smear without paying any price and indeed while reaping rewards in the opinion polls. Bush personally capped off this binge of dishonesty with his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, continuing his pattern of lying about how the war in Iraq began.
Before a national television audience, Bush repeated his false account of the run-up to the Iraq War, asserting he had no choice but to invade because Saddam Hussein refused to disarm or to comply with United Nations inspection demands. The reality is that not only did Hussein say publicly - and apparently accurately - that Iraq no longer possessed stockpiles of banned weapons but he allowed U.N. inspectors into Iraq in November 2002 and gave them free rein to examine any site of their choosing.
As the saying goes, you can look it up. U.N. chief inspector Hans Blix said he was encouraged by the Iraqi cooperation as his inspectors checked out sites designated as suspicious by Washington but found nothing. According to Blix, the Bush administration then forced the U.N. inspectors to leave in mid-March 2003 so the invasion could proceed.
"Although the inspection organization was now operating at full strength and Iraq seemed determined to give it prompt access everywhere, the United States appeared as determined to replace our inspection force with an invasion army," Blix wrote in his book, Disarming Iraq.
But that was not what Bush told the American people. Bush rewrote the historical record to make his invasion seem more reasonable. Bush said:
"We went to the United Nations Security Council, which passed a unanimous resolution demanding the dictator disarm, or face serious consequences. Leaders in the Middle East urged him to comply. After more than a decade of diplomacy, we gave Saddam Hussein another chance, a final chance, to meet his responsibilities to the civilized world. He again refused, and I faced the kind of decision no president would ask for, but must be prepared to make."
Even though the people of the world lived through those events less than a year and a half ago, Bush sees no apparent risk in fabricating the history. Indeed, he began revising the record within months of the invasion and has not been challenged by the U.S. press corps for his dishonesty. In July 2003, for instance, Bush said about Hussein, "we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power."
Bush reiterated that war-justifying claim on Jan. 27, 2004, saying: "We went to the United Nations, of course, and got an overwhelming resolution -- 1441 -- unanimous resolution, that said to Saddam, you must disclose and destroy your weapons programs, which obviously meant the world felt he had such programs. He chose defiance. It was his choice to make, and he did not let us in."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spun the same historical point in an op-ed article in the New York Times on March 19, the war's first anniversary. "In September 2002, President Bush went to the United Nations, which gave Iraq still another 'final opportunity' to disarm and to prove it had done so," Rumsfeld wrote, adding that "Saddam Hussein passed up that final opportunity" and then rejected a U.S. ultimatum to flee. "Only then, after every peaceful option had been exhausted, did the president and our coalition partners order the liberation of Iraq," Rumsfeld wrote.
Brazen Lying
Beyond the brazen lying about the U.N. inspections, Bush and Rumsfeld also ducked two other obvious historical points: that the U.N. Security Council refused to sanction the invasion (so the inspectors would have more time to do their work) and that U.S. forces failed to find any stockpiles of illegal weapons in Iraq. The facts on the ground would seem to lead to a logical conclusion that Iraq actually was in compliance with the U.N. resolutions. Hussein's compliance might not have come willingly - previous U.N. inspections and U.S. bombing raids in 1998 apparently destroyed many of the Iraqi weapons - but it amounted to compliance nonetheless.
Still, what is almost as remarkable as Bush's obvious lie is the breathtaking arrogance with which it is delivered. Bush and his advisers must have concluded that they are free to say virtually anything - no matter how false or misleading - without fear of adverse consequences. Certainly, with the built-in echo chamber of Rush Limbaugh's talk radio, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, Bush has reason for this confidence.
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