Lies, Lies and More Lies. Bush Fires More Weapons of Mass Deception at American Legion Propaganda Speech

Honest Abe he's not. But for just a second last week we had a rare moment of truth (albeit off the cuff and under pressure from a dogged reporter) when President Bush admitted that the Iraq war had "nothing" to do with the war on terror. All that of course changed Thursday during Bush's first in a brand-new series of PR speeches designed to justify the Iraq war, bolster the Busheviks' image and perhaps salvage the midterm elections for Republican incumbents.

Speaking before thousands of veterans at the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, UT, Bush was in rare form, once again masterfully morphing Saddam and bin Laden, Iraq and al Qaeda, in an effort to confuse the hell out of Americans and scare them into the voting booths. It was a most shameful, pathetic and desperate display of lies and deception, and it came a day after his miserable failure of a Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, accused those against the war of being like Nazi-era appeasers. Just when you think this administration cannot sink any lower they find new cracks in the political pavement through which to crawl and spew their bile.

Let's remember again that a week ago Iraq had "nothing" to do with 9/11 and the war on terror. But to his applause-generous audience Thursday, Bush lobbed these weapons of mass deception:

"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq."

"Some politicians look at our efforts in Iraq and see a diversion from the war on terror. That would come as news to Osama bin Laden, who proclaimed that the third world war is raging in Iraq. It would come as news to the number-two man of Al Qaida, Zawahiri, who has called the struggle in Iraq, quote, 'the place for the greatest battle.' It would come as news to the terrorists from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Yemen and other countries who have come to Iraq to fight the rise of democracy."

"The truth is there is violence, but those who cause it have a clear purpose. When terrorists murder at the World Trade Center or car bombers strike in Baghdad or hijackers plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic or terrorist militias shoot rockets at Israeli towns, they are all pursuing the same objective: to turn back the advance of freedom and impose a dark vision of tyranny and terror across the world."

"As veterans, you have seen this kind of enemy before. They're successors to Fascists, to Nazis, to communists, and other totalitarians of the 20th century. And history shows what the outcome will be: This war will be difficult; this war will be long; and this war will end in the defeat of the terrorists and totalitarians, and a victory for the cause of freedom and liberty. We're now approaching the fifth anniversary of the day this war reached our shores."

"The war we fight today is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century. On one side are those who believe in the values of freedom and moderation ... and on the other side are those driven by the values of tyranny and extremism."

Bush's new Traveling Bullshit Campaign is a desperate attempt to save face and drum up support for a war that two-thirds of Americans are against, and 61% of whom see as separate from the global war on terror, according to recent polls. Yet the president stated, "My series of speeches, they're not political speeches." I'm not sure what's worse: his blatant lying, or the mainstream media's impotence in calling him on it.

This is not the first time Bush has hit the road for a PR mission. He did so last Fall and early Spring this year to no avail. The war took more violent, unsuccessful turns, his poll numbers dropped precipitously, and so did voters' patience. There's little doubt that the same will happen again. Bush can't simply make the war a success by saying it is. The "news on the ground," which he likes to curiously cite so often, contradicts him at every turn, and it will continue to.

More important is that voters will not likely accept the new round of incendiary rhetoric about Iraq, the war on terror, and calculated comparisons to World War II. The simple fact is, we've been fighting terrorists for decades. It's nothing new. Terrorists killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972; bombed the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983; tossed Leon Klinghoffer off of the Achille Lauro in 1985; and have been committing random acts of violence since. George Bush did not invent the battle against terrorists despite coining the grammatically-challenged phrase, "war on terror." So for him to compare it to WW II and the battle against the Nazis and Fascists is more reprehensible, completely irresponsible, and supremely insensitive to the millions of victims who died at the hands of these brutal dictatorships.

The Iraq war is not about fighting terrorists, at least in the sense of retaliation for 9/11. Roughly 95% of those we're battling there are home-grown insurgents; Saddam loyalists and holdovers from his Baathist regime. It's also about Sunnis vs. Shia. Our soldiers are dying in the middle of a civil war. A war that has nothing to do with protecting America from those who attacked us five years ago.

"There is a struggle going on in Iraq," said Sen. Jack Reid (D-RI) on MSNBC's Hardball Thursday evening. "But at this moment it appears to be a struggle among the Shia community as to who will control Iraq in the future...This is a fight that goes back many, many years between ethnic groups within Iraq. To see this as 'the great struggle' misperceives the point."

And as Democratic strategist Bob Shrum said, the Busheviks, by throwing around terms like Nazis and Fascists, "Number one, you know they're desperate, and number 2, you wonder, did they just figure this out? Three years into the war they're deciding what it's all about? They're gonna run the third 9/11 election in a row because they have nothing else to run on."