Why Do They Lie?

Aaron Barlow wonders

What perplexes me so is that Horowitz and the rest are certainly smart enough to know that they could do a better job of lying, creating fabrications so strong that it wouldn t be like shooting fish in a barrel to knock them down. The White House, for example, had to know that their go-to-war con would be discovered (maybe not so soon which could be why they went after Joe Wilson with such venom). After all, people would demand proof, even if the debacle in Iraq had turned out more successfully (from their point of view). Even Horowitz has the resources (read  Scaife ) to do a better job.

The only answer that I can come up with is that these people really disdain Americans, consider us stupid, for the most part. And they must feel that the ones they can t fool are irrelevant, anyway. Abraham Lincoln said,  “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” The right seems to feel that it s OK to lie, then, if you fool enough of the people enough of the time. Knowing they can t fool all the people all the time, they don t bother to try.

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9 Responses to “Why Do They Lie?”


  1. Gravatar Icon 1 JWG

    Or there’s a difference between lying and being wrong. Like when Wilson repeatedly states that he informed the CIA that the Niger documents were forgeries. He was lying because he knew he had never seen the documents and told the CIA nothing of the kind. When Bush claimed the government knew where the WMD were in Iraq, he was wrong.

  2. Gravatar Icon 2 mjb

    I don’t think wilson “repeatedly” said that. You are implying there is certainty on this matter where there is not.

    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007412.php

    Did Wilson mislead Kristof and Pincus? Or did they just scramble what Wilson told them? As I mentioned yesterday, in an email to me last year, Wilson stated flatly:

    I told Nick and later Walter Pincus about my trip and the fact that it was a report based on those documents that had led to my being asked to travel. I never claimed to have seen the documents or to have known anything about signatures or dates.

    A couple of weeks later, he said that he had spoken to Kristof and “He confirmed that I had made clear to him that I had never seen the documents.”

    But what about Walter Pincus? Today Pincus wrote this:

    Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.” The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson “had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.” Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

  3. Gravatar Icon 3 drpedro

    What a vapid and self-serving article….all chest-puffed-out but no substance. PROVE he is wrong. Instead just assertion after assertion that the information is incorrect.

    A complete waste of electrons…

  4. Gravatar Icon 4 frameone
  5. Gravatar Icon 5 Frank_D

    Or there s a difference between lying and being wrong.

    Of course there is: When Democrats don’t tell the truth, they have misspoken; when the Republicans don’t tell the truth, they are perjuring betrayers of the public trust, who should resign, be impeached, or smeared with honey and stretched out on anthills.

  6. Gravatar Icon 6 qkslvr_wolf

    No, no, no. When a democrat lies he…umm….doesn’t get any more blowjobs?

    When a republican either lies or “was mislead” by people he had specifically asked to “mislead” him, tens of thousands of people die uncessarily.

  7. Gravatar Icon 7 Frank_D

    To Aaron Barlow: In 10 out of 10 cases, “The only answer that I can come up with” is an answer that is approved by liberals, and is actually one of many answers.

    “When a democrat lies he& umm& .doesn t get any more blowjobs?”
    Of course not.

    It’s impossible, even for a Democratic, to get a blowjob while he’s screwing America in the a**.

  8. Gravatar Icon 8 Wilbur

    It s impossible, even for a Democratic, to get a blowjob while he s screwing America in the a**.

    Oh, so that’s why Bush isn’t getting any blowjobs!

    As I’ve said before: I’d rather have a president who facef*cks interns in the oval office than one who buttf*cks the country from the oval office!

  9. Gravatar Icon 9 Frank_D

    You already had one whod did both for 8 years 1992 - 2000

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