Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified under oath 71 times that he could not recall or recollect
by Charley Reese
It’s been said often that while everyone is entitled to his own opinion, no one is entitled to his own facts. Today, we hear misstatements all the time. Some of them are deliberate lies. Some of them are just mistakes.
A House committee has just exposed the terrible fact that Army officials fabricated a story about the death of Pat Tillman and lied through their teeth. The Army knew from Day One that Tillman died from so-called friendly fire, but it was five weeks before Army officials got around to telling the family.
In the meantime, the Army falsified a citation to give him a Silver Star at his memorial service, which was turned into a media event – conveniently timed, his family now believes, to distract attention from the scandal of Abu Ghraib prison.Tillman did not die fighting the enemy. He died of American bullets. The girl from West Virginia, Jessica Lynch, hailed as a female Rambo, in fact was knocked unconscious in a vehicle wreck before she ever had a chance to fire a shot. She woke up in an Iraqi hospital. To her credit, as soon as she recovered from her serious injuries, she always told the truth. The story had been spread by a “government source” that she had fought heroically until the last bullet.
Lies and faulty memories (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified under oath 71 times that he could not recall or recollect) should not be tolerated even by this pathologically tolerant society. Mistakes can be forgiven, but deliberate lies are hostile acts. The liar is trying to subvert your mind and manipulate you into a position favorable to him. Calling a man a liar was once an act that would prompt a duel, but today people seem to shrug it off.
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=10885