Left I on the News

"The fundamentalist world attacked the U.S. and killed 3000 people before I even thought about removing Saddam Hussein from power."

- George Bush, interviewed by MSNBC's Brian Williams (but transcribed by me from TV; it isn't part of the partial transcript which is online)

This is a treble lie. First, it wasn't the "fundamentalist world" which attacked the U.S. on 9/11, it was a particular (and extremely small) group of people for whom "fundamentalism" may or may not have had anything whatsoever to do with the motivations for their actions. Second, they didn't "attack the U.S.," anymore than Timothy McVeigh "attacked the U.S." when he bombed the Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 people. In both cases, terrorists carried out attacks in the U.S. targeting Americans. "Attacking a country" is what Israel just did to Lebanon, or what Japan did to the U.S. at Pearl Harbor.

And third, and most significantly of all, is the lie which doesn't in any way rely on definitions, as someone is going to say that the first two lies I've identified do. And that is the lie that George Bush hadn't "even thought about removing Saddam Hussein from power" before 9/11. Balderdash. His own former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, has made clear there were conversations on that subject in the very first meetings of the Bush cabinet.

Needless to say, Brian Williams didn't call him on it.