In ascending order of awfulness:
10. Jan de Bont
9. Martin Brest
8. Mario Van Peebles
7. Tom Shadyac
6. Brian De Palma
5. Kevin Costner
4. Joel Schumacher
[3.5 Oliver Stone]
3. John Singleton
2. Michael Bay
1. Kevin Smith
Excluded from the list only because he hasn't worked since 1983: Chong.
Lie:
I’ve asked the American people to foot the tab for $20 billion of reconstruction…Others are stepping up as well, 13 billion out of the Madrid Conference…The Iraqi oil revenues – excess Iraqi oil revenues, coupled with private investments, should make up the difference.
President George W. Bush
Press Conference
10/28/2003
Truth:
The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials. ...[CPA Administrator Paul] Bremer, in his remarks to legislators two weeks ago, said that for the next two years, whatever revenue was reaped from oil production would not exceed the cost of Iraq's day-to-day operating expenses. In 2005, he said, there would be a surplus of only $4 million to $5 million.
New York Times
10/5/2003
Lie:
Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.
President George W. Bush
Town Hall Meeting with Displaced Workers
12/4/2001
(Comment repeated 1/5/02, 9/10/02)
Truth:
Think about that. Bush's remark implies he saw the first plane hit the tower. But we all know that video of the first plane hitting did not surface until the next day. Could Bush have meant he saw the second plane hit - which many Americans witnessed? No, because he said that he was in the classroom when Card whispered in his ear that a second plane hit.
Boston Herald
10/22/02
I think this one is my favorite, because it's so pointless. It starts out as an embellishment - it's a much better story if you see the plane hitting rather than just hearing about it. We've all done it. But then, as you realize your new, improved story doesn't make any sense, you have to invent a TV set in a hallway. But then it comes out that there was no TV set in the hallway, and, even if there was, there was no video of the first crash until the next day.
Now, here at this point is where normal people either say that they must have misremembered in all the excitement; or, if they are unusually honest, admit that they made it up in order to improve the story. But Bush keeps going, and even a year later he's saying how he watched the non-existent video on a non-existent TV set, despite the fact that it has been widely reported that he heard about it before he even reached the school. It's certainly not his most important lie, and if it were a lie about the sort of thing normal people lie about - how many beers your friend drank before trying to steal the police car, or how great an athelete you were in high school, or whatever - you'd just let it slide. But it's about the defining moment of his Presidency, and he can't even be bothered, even on the solemn anniversary of the event, to change his lie into something that's at least physically possible. Pretty amazing.
“This man is a vicious liar. There is no end to it. It’s like you find someone killing with a gun in his hand, and he says he’s innocent. He just wears you down.” The official declined to be named, because he feared Chalabi’s influence. “He has more powerful friends in Washington than you or me,” he said, adding, “Really, some of your people are such suckers.”
Excellent, long essay by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker on how Our Man in Baghdad, Ahmad Chalabi, conned the neocons. A companion piece to Douglas McCollam's CJR article on how the media got duped (and continues to get duped) by Iraq's George Washington.
According to General Janis Karpinski, former head of Abu Graib, Donald Rumsfeld - the best Secretary of Defense the United States has ever had, who is doing a superb job - directly authorized the use of "Guantanamo Bay-style interrogation tactics".
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, which is at the centre of the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal, said documents yet to be released by the Pentagon would show that Mr Rumsfeld personally approved the introduction of harsher conditions of detention in Iraq.In an interview with The Signal newspaper of Santa Clarita, California, also broadcast on local television, General Karpinski was asked if she knew of documents showing that Mr Rumsfeld approved "particular interrogation techniques" for Abu Ghraib.
"Since all this came out," she replied, "I've not only seen but I've been asked about some of those documents that he (Mr Rumsfeld) signed and agreed to."
The Pentagon continues to deny it all. We may now be moving from the "no I didn't!" type denial to the "it was entirely justified!" gambit. Soon to be followed by "why are you still talking about old news?"
Lie:
I want to get to the bottom of this [the Valerie Plame leak].
President George W. Bush
As quoted by a "senior official"
9/30/2003
Truth:
I'm not involved with the [Plame] investigation in any way, shape or form.
President George W. Bush
Remarks to press pool
1/1/2004
It's slime and defend.
Unnamed Republican Congressman
(on the White House's response to the Plame scandal)
10/2/2003
Stop me if you've heard this one before:
Sixteen rocket warheads found last week in south-central Iraq by Polish troops did not contain deadly chemicals, a coalition spokesman said yesterday, but US and Polish officials agreed that insurgents loyal to former president Saddam Hussein of Iraq and foreign terrorist fighters are trying to buy such old weapons or purchase the services of Iraqi scientists who know how to make them.The Coalition Press Information Center in Baghdad said in a statement yesterday that the 122mm rocket rounds, which initially showed traces of sarin, "were all empty and tested negative for any type of chemicals."
Let's just deal with this fact: there are no WMD in Iraq. If Saddam had been building bio/chem weapons, as was claimed as a fact before the war, he would have tried to use them. If he had been unable to use them - if every single one of his soldiers had been unwilling to use them, for example - we would have found them when we searched their bases. If he had had his WMD programs on hot standby, ready to churn out quantities of WMD as soon as the heat was off, we would have found the facilities that could do this, and the scientists who were working there. If there was anything to find, we would have found it a long time ago. All these "preliminary tests indicate" stories are disinformation, pure and simple - an opportunity for desperate administration officials to muddy the water, and to continue the push-back against an objective reality that refuses to conform to pleasing neocon fantasies. Even David Kay thinks it's "delusional" to think otherwise. Just give it up already.
Countering the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, which found no "collaborative relationship" between Hussein's Iraq and al Qaeda, Cheney renewed his accusation that they had "long-established ties." He listed several examples and stated: "In the early 1990s, Saddam had sent a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence service to Sudan to train al Qaeda in bombmaking and document forgery."Senior intelligence officials said yesterday that they had no knowledge of this.
How does Dick Cheney know things about the Saddam-al Qaeda connection that senior intelligence officials have never even heard of? It seems we've moved past misrepresentation and exaggeration to the "just make shit up" stage of justifying the war. That's nice. And how to explain the fact that defeating al Qaeda bedfellow Saddam has not decreased terrorism at all?
In an indication of the political significance of the wars against al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney placed blame for the spread of terrorism on the Clinton administration.
Lie:
I continued flying with my [Texas Air National Guard] unit for the next several years.
President George W. Bush
"A Charge To Keep"
Copyright 11/17/1999
Truth:
[Bush's account is] contradicted by copies of Bush's military records, obtained by the Globe. In his final 18 months of military service in 1972 and 1973, Bush did not fly at all. And for much of that time, Bush was all but unaccounted for: For a full year, there is no record that he showed up for the periodic drills required of part-time guardsmen. ...From May to November 1972, Bush was in Alabama working in a US Senate campaign, and was required to attend drills at an Air National Guard unit in Montgomery. But there is no evidence in his record that he did so. And William Turnipseed, the retired general who commanded the Alabama unit back then, said in an interview last week that Bush never appeared for duty there.
Walter V. Robinson
Boston Globe
5/23/2000
Falling behind schedule here, so just quickly:
Lie:
There's no question that Saddam Hussein had al Qaeda ties.
President George W. Bush
Remarks To The Congressional Conference Committee on Energy Legislation
9/17/2003
Truth:
Three former Bush Administration officials who worked on intelligence and national security issues said the prewar evidence tying Al Qaeda was tenuous, exaggerated and often at odds with the conclusions of key intelligence agencies.
National Journal
9/17/2003
Lie:
Tax relief means new jobs for Americans.
President George W. Bush
Discussion of the Economy in Indianapolis
9/17/2003
Truth:
Total non-farm employment 6/2001 (thousands): 132,087 Total non-farm employment 4/2004 (thousands): 130,954Total private employment 6/2001 (thousands): 112,047
Total private employment 4/2004 (thousands): 108,996
In terms of employment growth, the current recovery is the worst on record since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking employment in 1939.
Economic Policy Institute
Jared Bernstein and Lawrence Mishel
"Labor Market Left Behind"
9/2003
Kevin Drum on how the Bush administration manages to be so brilliantly incompetent in all matters with more depth than a campaign ad:
Conservative distrust of liberal social science — sometimes justified — has metastasized in the past few decades into a distrust of any fact-based research program that reaches non-favored conclusions. Thus the distrust of the CIA when it initially resisted neocon beliefs about Saddam's WMD and the contempt for Arabists and State Department experts who warned that occupying Iraq required real planning and real knowledge.The disaster this has caused is obvious and immediate. Less immediate, but no less disastrous, is the administration's refusal to acknowledge the CBO's economic projections or the scientific establishment's consensus on global warming. In this administration, if the facts don't fit their agenda, all the worse for the facts.
And you have to hand it to these guys: they aren't lazy. They are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to cover up the facts about the scientific consensus on global warming - incredible amounts of time and money. Imagine if this effort was spent on actually solving problems, rather than trying to convince people that they don't exist.
Conservatives who don't like the message these days either shoot the messenger or else hire their own more compliant messenger. It doesn't change the facts, mind you, but for a short while it makes them feel better.Eventually, though, that "short while" will pass. What do they do then?
Blame liberals. What else is there?
