If you want to experience the contrast between two GOP administrations who have lied, watch the 2010 thriller, Fair Game. It’s the true story of how George W. Bush and his cohorts, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, et al. — despite having actual expert evidence from the C.I.A. that there were no nuclear weapons in Saddam’s Iraq — lied to us in order to start a war as dishonest, ugly and stupid as Trump’s.
Besides, it’s a really good film and has held up well since it was first released, when I first saw it. It’ll tear into you, I’m sure, since it’s a wrenching dual portrait of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, and her husband, Joe Wilson, a retired diplomat, whose opinion column in the New York Times exposed the lies.
That was back in the old days, when rotten presidential administrations kept the lies relatively simple, even as the CIA argued against them, hid the facts smoothly, and destroyed careers and lives — in that case, Iraqi scientists — with smirks and sleazy aplomb.
There’s been a long-standing argument in and around politics that Bush and his responsible cabinet members should have been investigated and prosecuted for conjuring up lies to start a war. A couple of them were. Scooter Libby’s prison sentence of 31 months was commuted by Bush. Trump gave Libby a full pardon.
It’s something, isn’t it, that gross, twisted, egregiously obvious lies have become the entire communications from the current White House? That no information produced by the intelligence community or the DOJ or any of the Trump agencies has any credibility at all?
From Joe Wilson’s NYT article, “America’s foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information.”
Sanctity of information.
We’re the captive audience for a crazy sur-reality show performed by inmates of a multi-disciplinary psychiatric institution.