Hi Jonas.

Though I do think that language can only convey approximate or relative truths, the Bush administration lies about Iraq together are a pattern of deliberate deception aimed at millions of people (the U.S. chattering classes and the population) and hence more significant than the average so called "white lie" or the common confusion of symbols and allegory with reality and specific circumstance.

More so the moral consequence of lying to create a discretionary aggressive war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people is quite terrible, obviously, and makes it to my mind one of the worst lies ever told -- but sadly not in a class by itself.

To continue with my previous line of discussion of viewing actions and language in various relative frames, I suppose a possible long-term positive could exist (only possibly) through the debilitating impact the war might ultimately have on U.S. empire and warmongering. This is a tenuous hypothetical, though, and an argument I would never make for many reasons, most especially due to the heavy toll of demonstrable suffering which could only be weighed against potential outcomes that should come about (to my mind) through peaceful alternative organization instead of through more war.

Another aspect of Bush administration lies to my previous discussion is: Did they believe the lies?

I think most of them did. This is based on my opinion that most people have a near infinite capacity for self delusion, plus the structural weaknesses of hierarchical systems to corruption and incompetence from the top.

Corruption? Incompetence? Self-delusion? And yet they still believe? Yes, I think so. I wish I had a more realistic analogy, but I think it's something like a guy can go into a room and find a $20 bill on the ground and by the time he walks out of the room he convinces himself it's his 20 by birthright -- though this is an exaggeration.

With Iraq, the Bushies began investing a lot of their energy and prestige into justifying invading (going back to the 1990s) and I think their justifications became more solid in their minds as something real the more that they came to define and defend the need to invade. The more they put the wheels in motion the more they came to believe it and block out alternative analyses.

Hence, I don't think the Bushies imagined the Office of Special Plans as a propaganda machine to spin fabrications, but a way to circumvent a skeptical bureaucracy (Pentagon, CIA, State) and present their case for invasion in the best possible light.

This is all speculation, but it makes more sense to me from what I've seen of different types of people that they would, in pursuit of long standing (and self-serving) goals, convince themselves of the truth of various lies by steps rather than conspiring in the Cheney bunker, twisting bad-guy mustaches, laughing maniacally, and planning all the ridiculous untruths from A-to-Z that they've been peddling.

Simultaneously, I also think it's fair (and inevitable) for an outside observer to view this as a deliberate pattern of deception. I just think most deceivers deceive themselves, first and foremost, and the higher up and more powerful (with more "invested" and more to lose) the deceivers, the more this is likely to be true.

Now, I've been talking about the Bush administration and Bushies as if they were a monostructure which is also ridiculous. There are undoubtedly a wide range of thoughts and views (even if only privately admitted) within the Bush administration and especially among the technocratic war planners. Wheels have come off the machine regularly, but it is still rolling.

I review the cartoons for Z Magazine and I've seen several portraying a "tipping point" after which the whole house of cards will fall. It's truly amazing to me it has not and something I attribute to the whole post-60s, post-Vietnam, post-Watergate fear among power-elites and mainstream media of going to far and upsetting the apple cart, the "crisis of democracy" (i.e., a fear of "too much democracy") that Chomsky has written about.

Well, I'm prone to blarney as my partner says and this is another long post so I'll sign off there.

Andy

Andy Dunn, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on good and evil some time back. So, in terms of moral consequence, how do these lies rate, that is are some of the lies more or less morally reprehensible than others?

-Jonas