Lies, Damned Lies And Rice

I speak (as you might guess) of those masters of deceit in the Bush administration. A few months ago they told our senators and representatives that their bogus Medicare prescription drug bill would cost $400 billion over the next 10 years. Now that the bill has become law, they've revised their estimate: Now it's $724 billion.

Two questions: Why is the difference in estimates important, and why do I call the drug bill "bogus"?

The bill barely squeaked through Congress. The biggest objection to it was its cost. In the end, it passed only because it was deemed, at $400 billion, affordable. Had its cost been higher, it almost certainly would have failed.

What is bogus about the law? Three things: It prohibits the importation of drugs from Canada and other countries; it prohibits the government from negotiating with drug companies for lower prices; and it provides benefits for everyone, regardless of income or financial status. Do the heirs of Sam Walton really need our help buying their prescription drugs?

That drug law should be repealed immediately. It's not an effort to help seniors at all. In fact, it's nothing more than a scam designed to enrich pharmaceutical companies. Sen. John McCain, the one Republican who acts like a Republican, calls it "outrageous." He's right.

By the way, almost immediately after the drug benefit bill became law, the price of prescription drugs went up. These people have no shame.

In vaguely related news, the Queen of Chutzpah, our lovely secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has just completed a whirlwind tour of the known world in which she tried to convince everyone she met to fear and loathe the nation of Iran.

From all appearances, the Bushies are developing plans to take over Iran and kill a lot of beautiful Persian women and handsome Persian men in the process. The reason (which has nothing to do with oil, wink-wink) is that Iran has a nuclear energy program that could evolve into weapons production, making Iran as much as a threat to the United States as other nations with nuclear weapons, say, like Pakistan or Israel.

The Bush propaganda campaign against Iran is under way. At the moment, it lacks one Iranian leader who we can learn to hate, but you can be assured one will be identified soon. Already we're being told that Iran is stubbornly pursuing its nuclear energy program, in spite of our wishes to the contrary.

The American press, compliant to the end, will dutifully spread the Bushies' propaganda. The liberals in the media, fearful of being called unpatriotic, or worse, liberal, will give the Bushies the slant they crave. The conservatives in the media will cheerfully continue on their flag-waving, apple-polishing way. They'll parade their red, white and blue "patriotism" much like a hooker with a cross around her neck parades her virtue.

To prove to the world how virtuous they are, the Bushies will soon go to the United Nations and ask for its cooperation in letting us throttle Iran. Their request will be couched in terms making it impossible for the U.N. to comply. When the U.N. rejects the insincere entreaty, the Bushies will badmouth it, and then declare that circumstances have become so dire that America must once again go it alone.

And then the bombs will burst in air, and the rockets will red glare.

I dearly hope I am wrong in my predictions, but it seems that history, and the pathological predilections of the Bush administration, make an attack on Iran inevitable.

But we were talking about Condoleezza Rice.

The thing I admire most about her, I think, is her brazenness. When Sen. Barbara Boxer pointed out Rice's dishonesty at a committee confirmation hearing, Rice stiffened and, with as much self-righteousness as I've ever seen in a person, attacked Boxer for questioning her integrity.

(Bill Clinton tried to affect the same kind of self-righteousness when he told us he did not have sex with "that woman," but Clinton is an amateur compared with Rice when it comes to righteous indignation.)

Rice is as brazen and as cagey as her boss. She put her brazenness to work again over the past fortnight by urging our former allies in Europe and elsewhere to put the past behind us. It's time to move on, she said.

You gotta love it! For four years the Bushies been sticking it to the rest of the world, and now that they want some help they're asking the people they dissed to "get over it."

The image this brings to my mind is a cartoon image of a bank robber pleading his case before a judge. The robber is saying something like, "We can't wallow in the past, Your Honor. It's time for us to put the past behind us. I recommend you dismiss the charges, so we can all start over with a clean slate."

Why is it that only the guilty want the past forgotten?

Rice displayed her caginess when a reporter asked about the possibility of a pre-emptive U.S. strike against Iran. Her response: "The question is simply not on the agenda at this point in time."

"Point in time"? In other words, we're not going to attack Iran at this moment, but circumstances change ... and perhaps at a future "point in time," like maybe 10 minutes from now, we'll have a new agenda and be forced to go to war again.

The lies never stop.

Harley Sorensen is a longtime journalist. His column appears Mondays. E-mail him at harleysorensen [at] yahoo.com.