Dan Froomkin at the Huffington Post has put together an excellent report called The Two Most Essential, Abhorrent, Intolerable Lies Of George W. Bush’s Memoir
In the period during which Bush claims he was wringing his hands about whether or not to attack, he and his aides were instead intensely focused on building the public case for what was, in their minds, an inevitability.
Although they call out two lies “among the many”, it seems to me they may be two parts of the same lie. There is a hint in the above quote. Here are the two:
History is likely to judge Bush most harshly for two things in particular: Launching a war against a country that had not attacked us, and approving the use of cruel and inhumane interrogation techniques.
I call it one lie because it seems to be two phases of the same general issue. Approving war crimes is a second phase, directly related to Iraq invasion. In other words, the cruel and inhumane interrogation of prisoners in the US was intended to prove, through confession, that Iraq had in fact attacked the US.
In “Decision Points,” Bush describes the invasion of Iraq as something he came to support only reluctantly and after a long period of reflection. This is a flat-out lie. Anyone who paid any attention to the news at the time knew Bush was dead-set on war long before he sent in the troops in March 2003. And there is now an abundant amount of documentation, in the form of leaks, unclassified memos, witness interviews and other people’s memoirs to prove it.
While the US President pulled “questionable intelligence” and forgeries from others to justify the initial invasion, in the first phase, he later followed-up by generating questionable intelligence later through his illegal interrogation methods to complete the lie.
Whether you call it all the same lie or two “most essential, abhorrent, intolerable lies”, the memoir is a study in how this President seriously, and carelessly damaged National Security.
Cheney’s life since leaving office has given additional clues. It has been pointed out to me that his presence is always known because the civilian airports in some areas are shutdown and a giant SAM (surface to air missile) unit is stationed at the runway from touchdown until he flies out again.
Similarly, you can tell when Cheney goes fishing because two black military helicopters buzz an otherwise quiet countryside. I assume one helicopter is to deliver him to the exact spot in the river he prefers and the other is to stock the river upstream with fish that he likes to catch.
These men continue to exhibit a habit or removing themselves so far from reality — creating a coddled life with heavily-subsidized (by taxpayer) security blankets and cherry-picked yes men — that they probably will never understand or appreciate the damage that their lies do to their country.