Last week Senator Patrick Leahy held a hearing to consider a Truth Commission to look at a range of lies promulgated by the Bush Administration in order to develop its range of foreign policies. It seems that few in the Senate care much for getting at the truth.
As noted in the San Francisco Chronicle recently, “Leahy held a dog-and-pony hearing with invited luminaries who both praised and criticized the overall idea without getting into details. The hearing did draw out one telling result: Strong doubts from Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the kind of a moderate needed to give the commission bipartisan credibility.”
Perhaps the most infamous of Bush’s lies is the following quote, which lays bare the foundation of that failed presidency:
“The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.”
But should we let bygones be bygones as President Obama and Congressional Republicans suggest or should a thorough inquiry be conducted into the eight years of the Bush presidency? I think that the following quote and its author provides some insight into that question:
Ordinary people “more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie since they themselves often tell small lies … but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Adolf Hitler
Set aside for a moment the hundreds of thousands of people who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, the victims of gross violations of the Constitution and of basic standards for the protection of human rights, the corruption of the global economy for the sake of deregulation. The question is whether we are a nation of laws.
If the answer is yes then the fundamental question about seeking the truth is clear.
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