Daily Kos :: White House Retracts Newsweek Accusations

White House Retracts Newsweek Accusations
by Louise at Kos

Tue May 24th, 2005 at 23:09:59 CDT

In yesterday's presser with Karzai, McClellan had the following exchange:

Q: One other question. Karzai was quite definite in saying that he didn't believe that the violence in Afghanistan was directly tied to the Newsweek article about Koran desecration. Yet, from this podium, you have made that link. So --

McCLELLAN: Actually, I don't think you're actually characterizing what was said accurately.

So far, the response to this has been: Look! McClellan lied to the press! But this exchange shows exactly how badly the Bush facade is slipping.

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From E&P:

At a White House press briefing Monday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan, pressed by reporters and with Afghan President Karzai in disagreement, retreated on claims that Newsweek's retracted story on Koran abuse cost lives in Afghanistan.

He also claimed that he had never said it did, even though a check of transcripts disputes that. On May 16, for example, he said, "people have lost their lives." On May 17, he said, "People did lose their lives," and, "People lost their lives" due to the Newsweek report.

McClellan also stated, "As I said last week, and as President Karzai said today, and as General Myers had said previously, the protest may well have been pre-staged."

In other words, Scott, and the White House, have had to back down on their charges against Newsweek because the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, as well as the Afghani President, have stated that the charges are essentially wrong. The White House knew that the charges were lies, but made them anyway.

And then yesterday, the White House again lies to the very same people - the press corps - that it had originally lied to. The only response that McClellan can make is simply to repeatedly deny that he ever said that Newsweek was responsible for deaths. But the people that he is making these denials to know exactly what he is doing - lying directly. And he knows that they know.

We aren't talking about a lie that was about statements made a year or two ago - we are talking about about statements that were made last week.

Facts on the ground are so bad that the Bush administration is now forced to utter lies that are patently obvious on their face. There are two possibilities for why they would do this. Either they know that no one will believe them, but have no other alternative but to muddle ahead with their SOP. or they themselves believe that they can fool the public, in which case they are delusional and the majority of the public will see it.

Either way, there is no plausible facade of explanations for them to hide behind anymore. And apparently the press is beginning to realize that the cover stories are simply not going to work.

Daily Kos :: White House Retracts Newsweek Accusations