Prez Wins One-Day Lying Trifecta

Yesterday, disclosures showed Bush lied on three separate issues: 1. The Prez says Library Tower in Los Angeles was the target for a 2002 attack. Untrue from the git-go. 2. The White House knew the New Orleans levees had been breached the night it happened even though the next day the Prez said New Orleans had “dodged a bullet”. 3. E-mail from lobbyist Jack Abramoff confirmed that he met at least twelve times with George W. Bush. Of the three lies, the one about a foiled Al Qaeda attack on Los Angeles is the most reckless and most reeks of George W. Bush’s Narcissism and grandiose fancies. Interestingly, when Bush made his claim yesterday that an attack on the Library Tower in LA had been foiled, he couldn’t even get the name of the building right. He called it the Liberty Tower. In 2004 the FBI’s counterterrorism director John Pistole said he didn’t know what the CIA was referring to when it claimed a few aviation attacks had probably been prevented since 9/11. In spite of that disclaimer, the Prez, needing positive reinforcement for extending the Patriot Act, went ahead and told his lie anyway. I remember back when the rumor was circulating around LA that tall buildings might be of interest to Al Qaeda and that the Library Tower might be a target. At the time, a contact of mine in LA said the consensus was that Al Qaeda probably researched the Library Tower for its 9/11 attack but that the World Trade Center was picked because it was a more potentially devastating site. The idea that subsequent attacks would feature suicide bombers and tall buildings didn’t make sense since all security measures would be focused on airplanes and tall buildings. Plus, the Library Tower in LA (now called the US Bank Tower) most particularly didn’t make sense because it was constructed to be earthquake-resistant and would be unlikely to collapse. The US government did not foil an attack on the US Bank Tower. If anything, the tower architects foiled an attack even before the Tower could have been seriously considered a potential target. So the GOP Plan A is to keep telling lies that only its lunatic base will believe, and then the whole Bush administration will be swallowed up in the ooze of moral and ethical slime? And Plan B is to let the Prez say such idiotic things that he’ll be carted off to a lunatic asylum and dick Cheney will choke on his own bile and have a heart attack? Excellent.