It's Not "Denial", Bob. It's LIES!

Juan Cole points out (yet again) that people died because Bush lied:

If you can't announce that there is an insurgency, then you cannot order an effective counter-insurgency policy. The failure of the Bush administration all along in Iraq to publicly acknowledge how bad the situation was has cost thousands of US soldiers' their lives. They died because Bush was treading water instead of coming on television and saying, there is an insurgency, and here are the five practical things we are going to do to combat it.

He came on television and told everybody that things are just fine over there. He shares a profound culpability for all those horrible deaths and maimings of Americans in uniform, over 20,000 by now.

And Condi Rice has been lying through her big, double-spaced teeth as well:

Now, remember when Bill Clinton said he had left a comprehensive plan for fighting al-Qaeda to the Bush Administration. What was Condi's petulant answer? That Clinton had left no plans and she and Bush had done as much to fight al-Qaeda as Clinton. Yeah, sure.

Cole's conclusion is sobering:

The United States has a one-party state. The presidency, the vice presidency, the cabinet, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court-- are all and have for some time been in the hands of the same party. Not only that, but the most extreme factions within the Republican Party: the theocrats, the Neoconservative ex-Trotskiyites, the John Yoo Torture Apologists, the Grover Norquist advocates of Mr. Scrooge plutocracy, the corrupt Abramoffist lobbyists and Delayist horse thieves--they are ascendant. Parties don't investigate themselves. They are about power, interests, and money. They are about winning. They aren't a charity.

The American public has been unwise to allow this one party state to grow up, which is chipping away at our liberties as Americans and creating a new monarchy and a new aristocracy. It works by lies and cover-ups.

Another four years of the one-party state, and the Republic will be finished, if it is not already.

Juan Cole for Prez!