The dictionary defines a lie as  making an untrue statement with intent to deceive. It is also defined as making a false or misleading impression. When I was a boy, I was taught that lying was wrong. In many of the religions of the world, lying is frowned upon and is even a sin. We all know that there are different grades of lies and that sometimes a little lie may be necessary to spare someone's feelings. These are not the kind of lies that I am discussing here. I am talking about those big honking lies that do incredible damage or hide dirty secrets and maybe even crimes. We are surrounded by lies and liars. You would expect this when you are dealing with dishonest people, but when we get this with our elected officials, it is time to do something about it, especially when those lies are so bad that they are costing human lives. It is very important to remember the lie that was told us, no matter what the outcome of a situation might be, if it has damaged any Americans.

President Nixon
Photo Source: Social Security Administration

Are you old enough to remember the Watergate scandal? President Nixon was not a bad president, as president's go. True he was sort of ruled by Henry Kissinger, but all in all, we seemed to be getting along better in the world with other nations when he was president. Then it happened, there was a break in at the Watergate complex and the Democratic Party Headquarters had some records stolen. Well we all know that the president didn't go over there late at night with a flash light and crowbar, but apparently he knew something about this and we don't know for sure if he could have stopped it or not. Remember this was a burglary, a crime that we are talking about. Then came the big lies. One famous line was "I am not a crook" and he said this at a press conference. Well the truth was that if he allowed the break in to happen, then he was a crook. The problem here was the men that broke into Watergate were connected with the Nixon re-election committee. The White House released tapes that they said would prove the president's innocence, but there was missing time, thus missing tapes and more lies by omission. Nixon said about the transcripts he was releasing, "In these transcripts, portions not relevant to my knowledge or actions with regard to Watergate are not included, but everything that is relevant is included". Well this wasn't true, the really relevant portions of the transcript were left out. Nixon had to resign in disgrace.

President Truman
Photo Source: CIA

President Harry Truman stated when we dropped the first atomic bomb, "The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because he wished in this first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians." Unfortunately this was not true. The city was mostly civilian, though it did have a few military units headquartered there, as I am sure all the big Japanese cities had. This lie was probably told to us, because the truth was too horrible to contemplate. We had killed hundreds of thousands of civilians and the president might have thought the the average American couldn't handle the truth.

President Kennedy
Photo Source: NASA

President Kennedy was loved by many people, but the truth of the matter is, he too misled the American public. Oh I am not talking about the hot and cold running women that he had on tap, but rather his statement that, "I have previously stated and I repeat now that the United States intends no military intervention in Cuba." At the time everyone believed what he said, because you believed the president in those days, we didn't know any better. The truth was he had authorized covert missions by the CIA in that country and had misled the dissident Cubans in this country into thinking that he would support them at the Bay of Pigs invasion, but he left them stranded on the beach. We even lost a plane that was sent to Cuba on a bombing mission. The pilot's body was kept on ice by Castro for 18 years to prove what had happened.

President Johnson
Photo Source: NASA

President Lyndon Johnson, was one of the biggest liars. of all. He was responsible for getting us into the Vietnam War with the following lie, "As President and Commander in Chief, it is my duty to the American people to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply." With this one statement he prepared us for a fight that would claim tens of thousands of American lives. The truth of the matter was that the attack NEVER HAPPENED. Because of Johnson's lie a resolution was passed that authorized all future presidents to take all necessary actions to defend US forces, thus giving the green light for presidents to send troops anywhere without having to get an act of war passed in congress. Our presidents had now become emperors.

Ronald Regan was caught in a lie, but I guess as lies go, you can almost understand this one. When he spoke about the American hostages being kept by the Iranians he said, "We did not -- repeat -- did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages -- nor will we.". He talked a good fight, but it was all lies. He had approved selling them thousands of weapons. He then turned around and violated a congressional edict that stated that the Contras in Nicaragua were not to be funded and used the money he got from the sale of the weapons to Iran to fund them. When Regan was caught in this lie he said, "I'm afraid that I let myself be influenced by other's recollections, not my own." Yeah sure.

President Clinton
Photo Source: CIA

Well I guess that we all know of the lies by President Clinton. "I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again: I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.". Well this lie sort of pales in the face of other lies by other presidents that were responsible for getting us into wars and such, but it is still a lie never the less. We all know that it wasn't long after this that the truth came out. It is said that Clinton first thought about coming clean immediately, but then he and his advisor decided to conduct a poll to see whether Americans were prepared to forgive him. Wow talk about politics! This scandal had followed on the heels of a previous scandal with a woman named Paula Jones, where Clinton had denied sexual relations and finally had to say that he was only using the definition of sexual relations given to him by the court when she sued him.

President Bush Sr.
Photo Source: National Park Service

President Bush Sr. wanted us to invade Iraq. He had claimed that Saddam had his army ready to invade Saudi Arabia. Supposedly there were top secret satellite photos to prove this. We were told that the Iraqis had 250,000 troops and 1,500 tanks on their border. We know that this was a lie because Soviet satellite photos were obtained by a Florida news paper that showed there were no troops there at all. Again the Lyndon Johnson syndrome was rearing its ugly head. I call it that, because that is where you lie to start a war. To make matters even worse, a Kuwait hospital patient, a 15 year old girl, testified before congress that she was in the hospital when Iraqi troops broke in and took all the incubators leaving over 300 babies on the floor to die. This convinced the senate to vote for the war. It turned out the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and had nothing to do with the hospital. I wonder how many members of congress knew this before voting yes figuring this gave them deniability?

Moving on to President Bush Jr., the current president, we discover that he wanted to not only invade Iraq again, but catch Saddam and have him executed. He convinced us to do this by lying about Saddam having weapons of mass destruction. Bush said, "And so I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building.", and yet isn't that exactly what we are doing? In 1998 a letter was sent to President Clinton asking him to remove Saddam Hussein . The letter was signed by Donald Rumsfeld, Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, and Robert B. Zoellick. He was smart enough not to comply. The worst part of the lie was the fact that since we had been the main arms suppliers to Iraq we knew that they had no weapons of mass destruction, as a matter of fact we probably knew every weapon in their arsenal. This lie has cost thousand of American lives and ten times that amount in injuries and yet he is still president, that doesn't say much for us.

I don't want to leave the impression that it is only presidents that lie, nothing could be further from the truth. The congress and local politics seems to be the training ground. Many politicians supported the president on the war and yet they knew the war was based on a lie, but they had no trouble sending our boys and girls to their deaths in a foreign country, so that revenge could be taken, huge amounts of money made and security enforced in a troubled region for our allies. We just don't seem to matter in this equation. In the eyes of these politicians we are just sheep that are easily led by any lie. Our elected representatives certainly are not sticking up for us. That puts us in a tough position, we have to be not only able to discern what is a lie and what isn't that is being told us by the politicians, but we also have to have some way to pressure our representatives to prevent things like invasions. It is almost an impossible position for us. I don't have the answer to this problem, but I do know that some laws have to be changed here and when these lies are discovered then presidents must be impeached and anyone else connected with these things that is intentionally misleading the public should have criminal charges pressed against them. It is a little strange when you think about it, we send people to jail for not paying a traffic ticket and yet we allow murder on a grand scale without punishment.