Why is Bush's (frequent, blatant, bald-faced) lying given a pass?

[BurtWorm]

I'm not talking about the Reaganesque lying-to-himself kind of lying he has a reputation for. I think that reputation is undeserved.

I'm talking about the full-frontal, shameless spewings from the mouth what his alleged brain and heart must know to be false, such as his continual claim in public that the Iraq war was a last resort when it has consistently been shown that among his fellow hawks he made clear the war was a done deal (see. e.g., DSMs and report in the Independent about his conversation with Blair in January 2003 about Iraq being the start of a vastly more ambitious war drive throughout the region) before he was even elected?

Here's just the latest example of Bush's reflexive mendacity. (He really should become known as Bush the Liar.):


http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/10/19/abortion/index.html

What Bush really knew about Harriet Miers

As we noted a couple of weeks ago, George W. Bush did a little dance when he was asked, during a Rose Garden press conference, what he knew about Harriet Miers' views on abortion. The president kept saying that he didn't have a "litmus test." And when somebody asked him whether he'd ever asked Miers about her views on abortion, he suggested that he didn't remember. "Not to my recollection have I ever sat down with her," he said. "What I have done is understand the type of person she is and the type of judge she will be."

We were skeptical then -- did Bush really nominate someone whose views on abortion he didn't know? -- and it turns out that our skepticism was warranted. As we reported yesterday, a questionnaire Miers completed in 1989 makes it clear that she has held some extreme anti-abortion views. And as the Washington Post reports today, Bush was told about that questionnaire before he offered her a Supreme Court nomination. The president "was informed of the views she had expressed as a candidate for public office back in the late '80s," Scott McClellan says.