"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Supporters of President Bush say it's all no big deal, even if his statement on Iraq and African "yellowcake" uranium in the January 2003 State of the Union Address really was false, and even if it was used as a key justification for going to war with Iraq. Still, Bush supporters insist, all we're talking about are 16 little words. The problem is, it's not just one statement and one lie we're talking about. On the contrary, the now-infamous 16 words are part of a longer-term pattern of deception with George W. Bush.

Well, you might say, all politicians lie, right? What's so particularly heinous about Bush's lies? Well, nothing, except for: a) how much Bush lies; b) how badly; c) how consistently; d) how brazenly; e) how consequentially, and, ultimately, f) how destructively. In fact, when one looks at Bush's record in only three years as President, he and his Administration have lied so frequently on so many important issues that, if they haven't done so already, before long they are going to morph into the "Big Lie Administration"

Start researching Bush's broken promises and lies, and soon one is deluged by floods of information. Sorting through all these lists of Bush lies, rants about the Bush "Big Lie," theoretical analyses of Bush's lying pattern and "techniques of deceit," calls for Bush's impeachment for lying, and much, much more, is not easy. Nor is it particularly uplifting or enjoyable. But it is important to get the facts straight. And ultimately, it's important because Americans need to know that President Bush is not the "straight shootin', plain talkin' Texan" he claims to be.

In the interest of brevity, not to mention sanity, I will limit this list to what I'll call Bush's "Big 16 Lies" -- an appropriate bookend to the lying "16 words" in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address. As you read on, I ask only that you keep in mind that, unlike President Bush, I'm not making any of this up; I use only actual Bush Administration or genuine George W. Bush quotes, claims, facts and figures. Don't believe me? Go to the library, log onto the internet, and check it out yourself!

1) The "yellowcake" uranium claim, as described above, helped start a war but turned out to be a fabrication. In other words, it's a lie.

2) The Bush Administration has repeatedly and insistently insinuated that, despite much evidence to the contrary, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden somehow were linked. Bush himself has stated unequivocally about Saddam Hussein: "This is a man who we know has had connections with al Qaeda." This claim has got to rank as the biggest of the "Big Lies," both because there is absolutely no evidence to back it up, but also because it was used to justify a war by connecting Saddam Hussein with 9/11. In fact, there is a large amount of evidence and analysis indicating that Saddam and Bin Laden despised each other. The Bush claim that there is some sort of Iraqi connection to 9/11 is just a ridiculous, nasty, war-mongering lie.

3) Bush has offered varying explanations for the Iraq war: one minute the Saddam connection to 9/11; the next minute a WMD threat to the United States; and nowadays alternately "liberating the Iraqi people" from a brutal dictator or enhancing Middle Eastern stability (pick one). Anyway, it's all "murky" now, unlike during the months leading up to the war, when everything was sold to the American people and Congress as a crystal clear and undeniably present danger to the nation. Could it be that the Bush Administration was simply hell-bent on starting a war with Iraq and was using any conceivable justification, however tenuous its connection to reality, to make the sale? This is sleazy used-car salesman lying at its finest.

4) On a related topic, on the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, Bush Administration officials claimed to know exactly where they were hidden, and supposedly had "irrefutable evidence" about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. As it turns out, Bush Administration officials did not have "irrefutable evidence" about any such weapons or programs. This one's simply an "irrefutable lie."

5) Turning to the home front, Bush claimed that his latest tax plan, passed in May 2003 and signed into law with great fanfare, would result in "92 million Americans receiv[ing] an average tax cut of $1,083." In actuality, according to the Urban Institute and the Brookings Foundation, the top 1 percent of filers receive an average tax cut of $24,100 under the Bush tax cut. Almost half of people who pay income taxes realize savings of under $100. And people who pay no income taxes because they are too poor to do so, including nearly 11 million families with children, of course receive nothing back. In fact, these people often end up paying more taxes as the states are forced to raise sales taxes and fees to cover their increasing budget deficits, while slashing services that overwhelmingly help low-income families. Bush's claim to be giving the average American $1,083 falls into the category of "lies, damned lies, and statistics."

6) Then there's Bush's whole line of argument that tax cuts are necessary as a stimulus for the economy during an economic downturn. Standard Keynesian demand-side economics, one might think. There's just one problem here: Bush isn't a Keynesian at all. In actuality, Bush is a supply-side true believer who argued for tax cuts even during the 2000 Presidential campaign, when the economy was still roaring along. At that time, he justified cutting taxes not as a stimulus to the economy, which was not needed, but as simply the right thing to do morally and philosophically, as a way to give "your money" back and at the same time prevent the government from spending it. So which one is it, Mr. President? Oh yeah, it's whatever argument will justify the answer you already know. Sure sounds like more lying to me.

7) Bush, the self-proclaimed "compassionate conservative" has reneged on one of his biggest promises, to "leave no child behind." He also has slashed AmeriCorps despite his promise to expand national service programs, among which are many that help children learn to read and stay out of trouble. On the first issue, Bush has clearly left many children behind by his regressive tax policies (including his recent failure to extend tax cuts to low-income working families with children), his cuts in after-school and child care services for low-income families, his failure to fully fund Head Start, and much more. On the second issue, in late June 2003, AmeriCorps announced that, due to 60 percent cuts under President Bush's latest budget, it would be forced to slash the "Jumpstart" program, which provides one-on-one academic mentoring for poor, preschool kids in pre-reading and language skills. Bush himself has visited with and praised JumpStart volunteers as "heroes," but has gutted the program anyway. "Leave no child behind" has become "leave millions of poor kids further and further behind" under the Bush "Big Lie."

8) In early 2001, Bush promised, "we can proceed with tax relief without fear of budget deficits, even if the economy softens." Whoops, must be that "fuzzy math" again. Now we've gone from surpluses under Clinton to a Federal budget deficit estimated at more than $440 billion for fiscal year 2003 alone, with no end to red ink as far as the eye can see. An honest mistake or a lie? Well, back in 2001, when the first Bush tax cut was being debated in Congress, many people, including Bush's own Council of Economic Advisors, said that a huge tax cut would not pay for itself. Supply-side true believers, those same people many of us thought were thoroughly discredited during the early 1980s, apparently are not gone after all. No, they're still around in the Bush Administration, arguing that tax cuts for rich people and businesses will create so much economic activity that tax revenues will more than compensate for any given tax cut. This theory was proven to be a bad joke in the 1980s, when even Republican hero Ronald Reagan was forced to raise taxes to reduce the fiscal hemorrhaging his supply side experiment caused. Come to think of it, George W. Bush's dad was forced for similar reasons to break his "Read My Lips, No New Taxes" promise. Now the wacky economic theories and fiscal dissembling -- also known as "lying" -- have trickled down to Dubya. Trickle down lying, what a wonderful concept.

9) As a candidate for President, George W. Bush said he wouldn't touch the Social Security "lockbox," but now the lock is picked and the box is empty. Bush's exact words were: "In my economic plan, more than $2 trillion of the federal surplus is locked away for Social Security. For years, politicians in both parties have dipped into the Trust Fund to pay for more spending. And I will stop it." Well, maybe not. Now, as a result of Bush's raids on the "lockbox," the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office is projecting a continuous raid on the Social Security Trust Fund through 2012 at a cost of more than $1 trillion. This is one damn expensive lie.

10) On September 29, 2000, during the final days of the Presidential election campaign, Bush explicitly promised: "We will require all power plants to meet clean-air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, mercury and carbon dioxide within a reasonable period of time." Well, maybe Bush was breathing mercury vapors or laughing gas or something when he made this promise, because in March 2001, only two months after taking office, Bush promptly reneged. Bush said he didn't want to harm the U.S. economy, while Vice President Cheney said simply that the carbon dioxide pledge had been "a mistake." Isn't it amazing how all these "mistakes" -- also known as "lies" -- keep getting into Bush speeches?

11) In a related lie, Bush also justified his broken promise on carbon emissions by stating that the science on global warming was not yet settled. Aside from the fact that there actually is a wide degree of scientific consensus on this issue, why has the Bush Administration felt the need to suppress discussion of climate change in its own agencies' reports? In June 2003, for instance, a chapter in a report by the EPA was gutted at the White House's behest, with original language stating that "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment" replaced with pablum about how it's all just too much of a "scientific challenge" to figure it all out, so why bother? Darn those pesky bureaucrats, though, who leaked an internal EPA memo stating that the White House deletions meant the global warming section of the report "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change." When the New York Times reported on this coverup, the White House decided simply to cut the whole section to a bare minimum to avoid political controversy, and EPA Administrator Christie Whitman subsequently resigned. Great, now we've got lies and cover-ups.

12) Bush's claim that he is a "compassionate conservative" is a lie. In his case, it's more than a lie; it's an oxymoron. By definition, you can't be compassionate and be a George W. Bush or Tom DeLay-style conservative, slashing programs for poor people, leaving millions of children behind, harming the environment, giving huge amounts of money to rich people and big business (oil, guns, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, you name it), while leaving enormous debts for future generations to pay. This lie is so outrageous it could almost be funny - if it weren't so awful in its consequences.

13) Bush's claim, made repeatedly during the 2000 campaign, that he was a "reformer with results," is patently ridiculous. Heard about any "reforms" Bush has enacted lately? Let alone reforms with any results? True, Bush did reluctantly sign the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill into law, but only knowing full well that a) it was popular; b) it would hurt the Democrats disproportionately in the 2004 Presidential election cycle, since Republicans traditionally have had a huge edge in "hard money" but not so much in the "soft money" restricted by McCain-Feingold; and c) that it likely would be struck down by the Supreme Court. What we have here is an incredibly cynical form of lying.

14) Bush supports cutting down what he calls "hazardous fuels," or what are known in the popular vernacular as "trees," in our national forests, supposedly in order to remove regulations that prevent "foresters from keeping our woodlands healthy and safe." There's just one problem: nearly all scientists believe that periodic fires are healthy for forests. However, what's healthy for the forests and what's healthy for Bush politically are two different things. Bush chooses to reward big timber companies -- a major source of Republican campaign contributions -- while making ridiculous, nonsensical, Vietnam War-like statements about how we need to destroy the trees in order to save them.

15) Bush is pro-free trade but not when it comes to his political prospects in key steel-producing states. In 1999, for instance, Bush said that he would "work to end tariffs and break down barriers everywhere, entirely, so the whole world trades in freedom," and in 2000 he said that free trade was "not just monetary but moral." Well, then, why did he impose large protectionist steel tariffs in March 2002? Not to be too cynical or anything, but there are exactly 46 reasons for this decision -- namely, the number of combined electoral votes in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania, three key steel-producing "swing states."

16) Finally, just to show that Bush's lying didn't start when he entered the White House, and isn't just related to policy matters, let's go back to those halcyon days of "youthful indiscretion." Bush never has owned up to his drunk driving conviction from 1976. In fact, he lied to the Dallas Morning News in 1998 when he said that he had not been arrested "after 1968." Bush also has dodged questions about cocaine or marijuana use with the following convoluted formulation: "I could have passed the [FBI] background check on the standards applied on the most stringent conditions when my dad was president of the United States -- a 15-year period." Huh? Finally, Bush has changed his story about, oh, a million times on his Vietnam-era military service, or lack thereof. The truth is, though, that Dubya simply stopped showing up 10 months before the end of his six-year, part-time commitment to the Texas Air National Guard. Obviously, lying goes way back with this guy.

Yes, there is a whole lot of lying here, but the scary thing is that we have barely scratched the surface; this list could go on and on almost indefinitely. In fact, Bush has lied about so many things in his three years in power, let alone his "youth," that a question comes to mind: How does one know when Bush is lying? Answer? Just "read his lips."

Interestingly, Bush's lies, unlike Clinton's, are not just about private sexual relations but about far more serious matters of life and death, war and peace. Also unlike Bill Clinton, with the Republicans in control of Congress Bush is not likely to be impeached for his lies anytime soon. On the other hand, Bush must face the voters in November 2004. So here's a bit of advice as the 2004 campaign season gets underway: when you hear Bush or his supporters talk, don't believe a word they say. They're probably lying.

About Lowell Feld

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