The greatest service of historians when writing of the Bush-Cheney presidency would be to catalogue lies from the Oval Office that kept Americans misinformed for eight years.
Bush-Cheney lies come in two models--the outright fabricated lie and the lie created by altering official data.
Going to war in Iraq on a lie was outrageous. However, Congress has now learned that people in Vice President Cheney's office demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control distort planned congressional testimony linking national health issues to global warming.
The administration apparently preferred concealing threats to the health of Americans to leveling with the public with facts that could lead to a crackdown on cronies in industry.
Altering documents to accommodate industry pals has been rampant for the entire Bush-Cheney reign, which has been aided and abetted by spineless cabinet appointees who'd rather be complicit than offend their patron president.
And thanks to the collusion of the lackluster House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who gave Bush and Cheney a free ride by vowing no impeachment proceedings regardless of their culpability, and the dreary fecklessness of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the White House has romped over truth and the law.
Americans have lost their government to men and women of flagrant deceit. Until they're swept from government, Washington will resemble a Third World dictatorship where truth is regarded as poison to power.
