Let's begin with the assumption that there are two major categories of deception: the self-protective and the ego-inflating.
The self-protective lie tends to surface after an act that one doesn't want others to know about. In other words, it's an effort to cover something up for the purpose of avoiding detection and the possibility of punishment or revenge. It's a behavior that we can actually observe in other creatures. Some birds go even further and use deception to protect their off-spring by luring a potential predator in another direction. So, an element of distraction is also quite commonly associated with deception.
Deception that's designed to inflate the ego is an entirely different event. While we are all familiar with "boasting"--lies designed to make an individual appear more important than he is--and soon learn to discount whatever such a person habitually presents about himself, ego-inflating deception is actually entirely disconnected from the effect on its audience. One might even characterize such deception as "pure" in the sense that there is no ulterior motive. The deceiver glories in the act of deception, of "putting one over on other people," regardless of the eventual discovery and/or reaction. The deceiver derives self-importance in direct proportion to the success of the deception and the number of people deceived. When "all the people" are "fooled all the time" that's the epitomy of success. But, since there are no limits to how far the ego can be inflated, no number or extent of the deception is ever enough. If anything, like a serial killer, the ego-inflating deceiver is driven to do it over and over.
One of the recorded reactions by various members of the public to the deception practiced by the White House in the run-up to the war in Iraq, that caught my eye the other day, was the assessment by a long-time law enforcer that the changing story or justification for an action is a clear sign of deception in his experience. Of course, we all expect crooks to lie in an effort to escape detection, but it seems to me that the changing story, whose inconsistencies are easy to see, must be movitated something else--the desire to maintain the deception at any cost.
By "any cost" I mean that no matter how flimsy the new story seems and how ridiculous the deceiver is perceived, the deception is more important than that it be believed. Which would seem to suggest that regardless of how long it lasts, eventually the deception will be so tattered and porous that it will no longer be believed by anyone. And that's our only salvation.
That and the probability that lies are in fact limited, even if the inflation of the ego is not, and that, being limited, the pattern of lies tends to be repeated, making it possible for the observant person to recognize what's going on and arrest it before it goes too far.
Which, oddly enough, brings me back to my topic--the relationship between Watergate and 9/11. Obviously, the similarity doesn't lie in the perpetrators being speedily arrested. While the individual's charged with perpetrating a third-rate burglary in a large apartment and office complex were arrested on the spot, the third-rate high-jackers of four jets on 9/11 will, presumably, never even be charged because they all died on the spot. Or so the story goes.
So what's got me thinking about Watergate in connection with 9/11? Well, first there's the fact that the perpetrators were under contract, hired on by someone who considered their ethnicity to be an advantage. Why was that?
Consider if you wanted an office in a posh Washington complex burgled, would you be likely to hire on a handful of characters who would stand out like a sore thumb, if spotted? Would you hire on individuals who need to keep your phone number handy, on a slip of paper in a coat pocket, in case they encounter a problem? Would you hire on individuals who don't realize they've been sent on a fool's errand until long after they are apprehended?
Would you do these things if you meant for the men to be caught and if wanted to be certain that the natural suspicion of law enforcement towards "aliens" would virtually guarantee their lengthy detention and a thorough investigation of how they came to have all that money in their pockets?
Of course, if the hirelings aren't likely to survive the caper for which they've been signed up, there will have to be other ways to identify them as the culprits. Like, for example, uncollected rental cars with pertinent maps, credit card slips and airline ticket receipts. Or maybe even a passport found at the site of their demise, miraculously unsinged and untattered by the spectacular fire-ball and explosion of jet fuel and the collapse of the no-longer tallest buildings in the world.
Why, with all the available evidence, was it necessary to have a shill in the press to unravel the story of Watergate--to lay down a trail to the Oval Office and implicate a sitting President? Not in the planning of the bungled burglary, but in a ham-handed effort to cover up for a bunch of subordinates who obviously weren't worth it? Is it because Richard Nixon, the Vice President of the man who warned the nation against the military-industrial complex, was set up to be removed from office?
Why would someone have wanted to do that? And why would someone want to deceive the American public about 9/11?
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The lies of Dick Cheney--in no particular order
That Bush had transfered the authority to order the shoot down of planes to him on 9/11.
That there was a direct threat to Air Force One on 9/11.
Whopper No. 1: On Oct. 10, 2003, Cheney told neocons at the Heritage Foundation that Saddam Hussein "had an established relationship with al-Qaeda," a charge contradicted by U.S. intelligence briefings Cheney has received.
Whopper No. 2: In the same speech, Cheney, doing his best impression of Baghdad Bob, still maintained Iraq was a weapons-of-mass-destruction powerhouse.
"If Saddam Hussein were in power today," he said, "this ally of terrorists would still have a hidden biological weapons program capable of producing deadly agents on short notice."
Whopper No. 3: A month earlier, Cheney claimed they had found conclusive proof of an illicit Iraqi bioweapons program in the form of two old trailers rusting in the desert.
Whopper No. 4: Cheney in the same NBC interview claimed the pair of trailers discovered in Iraq could have been used to make smallpox.
"We've, since the war, found two mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack," he told Russert.
Whopper No. 5: Further trying to justify the Iraq war, the vice president brazenly tried in the same interview to resuscitate the fable that hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta met in Prague with Iraqi intelligence before 9-11.
Whopper No. 6: Cheney has suggested Iraq sponsored 9-11, or at least harbored and supported the terrorists who attacked America.
"If we're successful in Iraq," he told Russert last September, "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9-11."
Whopper No. 7: "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years," Cheney also told Russert last fall.
Whopper No. 8: Russert asked Cheney if he had any role in the secret $7 billion contract the Pentagon gave Halliburton before the war to rebuild and run Iraq's oil system and even distribute its energy products outside Iraq. "Were you involved in any way in the awarding of those contracts?"
"Of course not, Tim," Cheney indignantly replied. "And as vice president, I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of ? in any way, shape or form ? of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the federal government."
Whopper No. 9: Russert: "Why is there no bidding?"
Cheney: "I have no idea."
But if his office was read in on the Pentagon deal as the e-mail indicates, then he had to have known why competitors were muscled out. There's no less than a 10-page Pentagon document justifying the secret Halliburton deal, declassified last week thanks to a Judicial Watch lawsuit.
In effect, it says Cheney's old firm was favored because it was the only one that could hit the ground running in Iraq ? but the only reason it could do that was because the Pentagon gave it a head start. Halliburton got to study its secret contingency plan in November 2002. And the month before the final contract was inked, Halliburton was allowed to "pre-position equipment and personnel" for the Iraq oil project ? an advantage Bechtel, Fluor and other competitors never got.
Posted by Hannah at November 26, 2005 06:38 AM