Party Chairmen on Meet the Press

RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, now with twice the lying power!

Here's the clip from Mehlman's appearance this morning on the Russert show. And I honestly found it hard to keep up with the full number of lies and half-truths that rolled out of his mouth.

I know that some of my more cautious readers will blanch at my use of the "L" word. But when so many falsehoods and misleading statements are rolled atop each other, there's really no other description that fairly categorizes what the man is doing. As for why he's doing so, it's not just that he has to as head of the RNC. He was part of the deception and perfidy to the constitution. So like the president and his advisors, Mehlman's dishonesty today is just self-protection.

Let's catalog a few of them.

One was that the Senate intel report exonerated the administration of any effort to mislead the American people over Iraq. Wrong. They specifically did not look at that question.

He also said the Silbermann/Robb Commission concluded the same thing. Wrong. They too were specifically not authorized to examine that question.

He said the British Butler Report said the same thing. First of all, who cares what a Report written to cover Tony Blair said? Second of all, it said no such thing.

He said the Duelfer Report said Saddam "was trying to reconstitute his weapons programs." That is at best a highly, highly misleading description of the report.

He said that Saddam "had supported terrrorists, had terrorists operating out of his country." There are so many different lies and canards potentially underlying this claim it's hard to know where to start. But again, wrong. None of the purported evidence for this claim has ever stood up.

This hurricane of lies scarcely covers all the false or misleading statements he made in just that one little video clip. So please take a look at the clip and send in any more examples you find of clearly false or intentionally misleading statements.

What this country will end up needing is something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission because what the country needs is not so much for particular people to go to jail but for the lies and the lies to cover up earlier lies to stop. The country can't get past what has happened or move forward until we can get the truth on the table, deal with it and move on.

Did anyone notice that once again, Mehlman and Dean were not on Meet the Press at the same time? This shows that Howard Dean is a coward and unwilling to face his opponents.