THE DEFINITION OF "IS"
Administration: Bush uranium statement accurate

Although I'm certainly not the first person to make this observation today, it's difficult to keep my mouth shut about it.

In August of 1998, almost five years ago, President Bill Clinton was very, very nervous. He was testifying before a grand jury about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. According to the BBC, Clinton's "defence against the accusations [of perjury] relied on elaborate definitions of certain words." This is when Clinton made the now infamous utterance, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If 'is' means 'is and never has been' that's one thing - if it means 'there is none', that was a completely true statement."

Poor Bill must have felt like he'd been sent to the principal's office for making out in a broom closet: ever the honors student, he imagined futilely that he could wiggle out of his jam with snakey logic.

We all know how the story ended. Clinton, in fact, did commit perjury. Instead of the slap on the wrist with a ruler that he deserved, however, the Republican Congressional majority went mad with self-righteous blood lust and dragged the entire nation through bullshit impeachment proceedings. Fortunately, sanity prevailed in the Senate, but Clinton had learned a valuble lesson: presidents do not lie to the American people without dire consequences.

Or do they?

Flash forward to today:

In the speech, Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

And

"It is ludicrous to suggest that the president of the United States went to war on the question of whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium from Africa," [national security advisor Condoleezza] Rice said on "Fox News Sunday." "This was a part of a very broad case that the president laid out in the State of the Union and other places.

"But the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate," a classified document compiled by U.S. agencies, she said.

So...Rice is saying that Bush's statement was correct because he was...what? Simply quoting the Brits? Condi would have us believe that the content of the statement is irrelevant--Bush gets a pass on this one because of a weaseling technicality.

This easily outdoes Clinton at his sleaziest best.

Granted, this was not a president perjuring himself before a grand jury about oral sex. It is a far more serious situation. The President was trying to literally scare up public support for his imminent unprovoked war against a relatively weak Iraq. The "major combat phase" (whatever the hell that means) is now over, but the war rages on. Our soldiers keep dying. Bush is responsible.

His lies convinced the American people that it would be worth it.

Unlike Clinton's perjury, Bush's lies, in fact, are "high crimes" against the nation. The President's trangressions truly call for his impeachment, conviction, and, ultimately, imprisonment. Anything less would be a gross miscarriage of justice. We do still believe in justice, don't we?

The man who pledged to "restore honor" to the Oval Office has wholly failed to do so. Indeed, he has made the presidency a thousand times more dishonorable. He must pay for his crimes.

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