Gene Callahan on We Already Know the Administration Was Lying:
I think it is important to be fair to those one criticizes, so I want to consider two scenarios that might excuse those who claimed certainty about Iraq's WMDs. First of all, it is quite possible for someone to be "certain" about something, in a subjective sense, only to later discover that he was wrong. Most of us have probably had the experience of having been "certain" that we had an appointment at ten, only to show up at ten and discover that it really had been for nine. When this happens, an honest person expresses his bewilderment and apologizes: "I was sure Joe's phone number was 544-8657, but to my amazement it turns out I was wrong!"
Sounds reasonable to me. Most folks would agree I suppose.
But that is not what the Bush administration is doing. No one is saying, "My God, our evidence appeared to us to be airtight, but now we wonder if it was." Instead, they are adopting the somewhat absurd posture, "We really did have conclusive evidence, and, if you can give us just another six months, we'll be able to find some of it."
Yep. The evidence was rock-solid, yet magically non-existent. But no one is lying. Wanna buy a bridge?
It is also possible to find oneself in a situation where it seems that deception is the most ethical course at the time. (I don't believe that ethical precepts are "all relative," but rather that they all must be balanced against other ethical precepts. Murder is wrong, but so is disobeying God: therefore Abraham found himself reluctantly bringing Isaac to the sacrificial altar.) A person who realizes that her friend is far too drunk to drive or to reason with may decide that the best thing to do is to hide the friend's keys and lie about their whereabouts. But an honest person will regard this as only a temporary necessity. The next morning, when her friend has sobered up, she will say, "Fred, I felt I had to hide your keys, because I thought if you drove there was a good chance that you'd kill yourself or someone else. I'm sorry to have lied to you, but I couldn't see what else to do."
But, as I've said before, this Administration has no more integrity than the last. Its impeachment time folks.