Politicians Can't Hide Their Lying Eyes - Or Can They?

Sometimes politicians lie.

Sometimes they tell us what we want to hear although what we want is unrealistic and won't happen. Is this called lying?

It seems to me that lying is in the heart and mind of the speaker. President Obama would like to close down the facilities at Guantanamo Bay. He seems sincere in saying so. He also knows that he has had to work with Congress on this issue. Congressmen, reckoning with their constituencies back home, are refusing to relocate "enemy combatants" into their districts. NIMBY. Not in my back yard.

President George W. Bush told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that they would share with terrorists to attack us on the home front. Let's say he knew that none of these weapons existed in Iraq.* Was he lying, or was he using an idea of a threat to mobilize us for war — regime change in Iraq? Was the idea of weapons of mass destruction a pretext to go to war? Will history exonerate this pretext when (and if) the Middle East settles into stable governments that rule with the consent of the governed?

If I remember correctly, President George W. Bush told us that the United States would not be involved in nation building. Instead, our military forces have primarily been dedicated to promoting civil society in Afghanistan and Iraq. The terrorist attack of 9/11 created a new reality, and any president would have reviewed and revised foreign policy considering the unprecedented event.

* Many will assert that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because we didn't find any. This assertion is based on faulty logic. It is impossible to prove a negative. All we can say is that so far we have not found these weapons. We might find them tomorrow or the next day. Granted that finding weapons of mass destruction is less likely day by day to the point where we say, "There are and have not been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."