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Who Is Buried in Bush's Speech?The truth has been shot! Round up some unusual suspects.

By Michael KinsleyPosted Monday, July 14, 2003, at 6:53 PM ET

Once again a mysterious criminal stalks the nation's capital. First there was the mystery sniper. Then there was the mystery arsonist. Now there is the mystery ventriloquist. The media are in a frenzy of speculation and leakage. Senators are calling for hearings. All of Washington demands an answer: Who was the arch-fiend who told a lie in President Bush's State of the Union speech? No investigation has plumbed such depths of the unknown since O.J. Simpson's hunt for the real killer of his ex-wife. (Whatever happened to that, by the way?)

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Whodunit? Was it Col. Mustard in the kitchen with a candlestick? Condoleezza Rice in the Situation Room with a bottle of wite-out and a felt-tipped pen?

Linguists note that the question, "Who lied in George Bush's State of the Union speech" bears a certain resemblance to the famous conundrum, "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?" They speculate that the two questions may have parallel answers. But philosophers are still struggling to properly analyze the Grant's Tomb issue—let alone answer it. And experts say that even when this famous 19^th-century presidential puzzle is solved, it could be many years before the findings can be applied with any confidence to presidents of more recent vintage.

Lacking a real-life analogy that sufficiently captures the complexity of the speech-gate puzzle and the challenge facing investigators dedicated to solving it, political scientists say the best comparison may be to the assassination of Maj. Strasser in the film Casablanca. If you recall, Humphrey Bogart is standing over the body, holding a smoking gun. Claude Rains says: "Maj. Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects." And yet the mystery of who killed the major is never solved.

Ever since Watergate, a "smoking gun" has been the standard for judging any Washington scandal. Many a miscreant has escaped with his reputation undamaged—or even enhanced by the publicity and pseudovindication—because there was no "smoking gun" like the Watergate tapes. But now it seems that the standard has been lifted. You would think that on the question of who told a lie in a speech, evidence seen on television by millions of people around the world might count for something. Apparently not. The Bush administration borrows from Chico Marx*: "Who are you going to believe—us or your own two eyes?"

The case for the defense is a classic illustration of what lawyers call "arguing in the alternative." The Bushies say: 1) It wasn't really a lie; 2) someone else told the lie; and 3) the lie doesn't matter. All these defenses are invalid.

1) Bushies fanned out to the weekend talk shows to note, as if with one voice, that what Bush said was technically accurate. But it was not accurate, even technically. The words in question were: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Bush didn't say it was true, you see—he just said the Brits said it. This is a contemptible argument in any event. But to descend to the administration's level of nitpickery, the argument simply doesn't work. Bush didn't say that the Brits "said" this Africa business—he said they "learned" it. The difference between "said" and "learned" is that "learned" clearly means there is some pre-existing basis for believing whatever it is, apart from the fact that someone said it. Is it theoretically possible to "learn" something that is not true? I'm not sure (as Donald Rumsfeld would say). However, it certainly is not possible to say that someone has "learned" a piece of information without clearly intending to imply that you, the speaker, wish the listener to accept it as true. Bush expressed no skepticism or doubt, even though the Brits qualification was only added as protection because doubts had been expressed internally.

2) The Bush argument blaming the CIA for failing to remove this falsehood from the president's speech is based on the logic of "stop me before I lie again." Bush spoke the words, his staff wrote them, those involved carefully overlooked reasons for skepticism. It would have been nice if the CIA had caught this falsehood, but its failure to do so hardly exonerates others. Furthermore, the CIA is part of the executive branch, as is the White House staff. If the president—especially this president—can disown anything he says that he didn't actually find out or think up and write down all by himself, he is more or less beyond criticism. Which seems to be the idea here.

The president says he has not lost his confidence in CIA Director George Tenet. How sweet. If someone backed me up in a lie and then took the fall for me when it was exposed, I'd have confidence in him too.

3) The final argument: It was only 16 words! What's the big deal? The bulk of the case for war remains intact. Logically, of course, this argument will work for any single thread of the pro-war argument. Perhaps the president will tell us which particular points among those he and his administration have made are the ones we are supposed to take seriously. Or how many gimmes he feels entitled to take in the course of this game. Is it a matter of word count? When he hits 100 words, say, are we entitled to assume that he cares whether the words are true?

Correction, July 16, 2003: It was Chico Marx, not Groucho, as was originally stated, who asked, "Who are you going to believe—us or your own two eyes?" [Return to the corrected sentence.]

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Michael Kinsley is a columnist for the Washington Post and the founding editor of Slate.

COMMENTS

Remarks from the Fray:

…A word of clarification on the statements of administration officials about the statement in the State of the Union address: the British belief that Iraq had sought to buy yellowcake from Africa was based largely on documents widely known to be forged well before the SotU. British Foreign Minister Straw has recently claimed that other, newer evidence has led his government to believe that Iraq did indeed try to purchase African yellowcake. We do not know when or from whom, because the British have not made the intelligence…behind their conclusion public. We may well suspect this conclusion now, given the fraudulent basis for a similar conclusion last year. However, Straw could be correct, and British intelligence about Saddam's pursuit of nuclear-related material may be right this time. Belief in this possibility is behind Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's assertion that the SotU assertion about African yellowcake may turn out to be accurate. Well, not every one who skates on thin ice falls through. A statement based on bogus information could turn out to be true, or at least not completely false, based on better information that only becomes available months after the original statement is made. But this is no way to run a railroad. By featuring the African uranium statement and at least one other dubious allegation so prominently in his justification for war Bush lays himself open to accusations that he was not entirely on the level and to suspicions that his future statements may be similarly untrustworthy. This reduction in Bush's credibility automatically translates to an increase in the credibility of alternate theories about American motives and objectives in Iraq, most of which are neither well-founded nor helpful to our interests. The war to destroy the Baathist regime in Iraq was well justified without exaggerating the imminence of the Iraqi threat or throwing in allegations not based on credible evidence at the time they were made, but Bush and his team in the White House decided that making that case would be too much work. So they took shortcuts, and they are paying the price for them now.

--Zathras

(To reply, click here)

The American tradition of political responsibility is very different from the British parliamentary tradition. The British Prime Minister is directly beholden to Parliament for his position. He must report to Parliament and be available to answer questions from MP's on a regular basis. If Parliament withdraws support for the PM or his government, the PM loses his job and (usually) the Queen calls an election. Because of this, a tradition has developed that the PM can never lie to or mislead Parliament, and that Ministers are responsible for everything that happens in their departments, and that the PM is responsible for the government at large. The American President, on the other hand, has no such relationship with Congress. He is President with or without their support. Congress can only remove a President from office with the quasi-judicial impeachment procedure, which is designed to make it difficult. Thus, he does not have the same level of expectation with the State of the Union Speech that the British PM has with every address he makes to Parliament, nor does he have the same level of accountability. This is why Tony Blair is having so much more of a hard time that Bush. That being said, it would cost Bush much less than Blair to say, "There was an error in that speech. I take responsibility. I'm sorry." So, why doesn't he just do that?

--JoelCairo

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(7/15)

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