Bush Administration Just Can't Stop Smearing and Lying

White House spokesmodel Dana Perino (image via Memestream)

President Bush smeared a fellow American while traveling abroad, accusing Barack Obama of trying to appease America's enemies, just as many attempted to appease Hitler before World War II:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)

It was a ridiculous attempt to discredit Obama, for four reasons:



1) It's silly to compare Nazi Germany, a great power allied with two other great powers, to Iran. Iran is not allied to any great power, and it spends less than 1% of what the United States does on arms. And Iran has not invaded another country since 1739.

2) While it's true that Barack Obama has said that we should negotiate with Iran, it's also true that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said, just yesterday in fact, that the US ought to do more to engage Iran diplomatically. And it was Winston Churchill, the man who famously warned against appeasement of Hitler, who said "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

3) Bush's own grandfather went beyond appeasement, and helped Hitler build his war machine.

4) Bush's State Department is currently engaged in negotiations with Sudan, Syria, Libya, North Korea, and, yes, Iran.

In fact, the attempt was so ridiculous that White House spokesmodel Dana Perino was trotted out to assure the American people that Bush had not meant to refer to Obama when he spoke of appeasement, and even mixed some condescension in with her lies:

I would think that all of you who cover these issues and have for a long time have known that there are many who have suggested these types of negotiations with people that President Bush thinks we should not talk to. I understand when you're running for office you sometimes think the world revolves around you -- that is not always true and it is not true in this case.

Unfortunately for Ms. Perino, White House officials had already acknowledged that Bush's barb was intended for Senator Obama:

CNN’s Ed Henry reported, “White House aides are acknowledging that this was a reference to the fact that Sen. Obama and other Democrats have publicly said that it would be ok for the U.S. President to meet with leaders like the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.” And NBC’s John Yang also spoke with a White House official who said Obama was one of Bush’s intended targets.

As if we really needed proof that Perino was lying. So far, she's proven to be even more dishonest than Ari Fleischer, and even more airheaded than Scott McClellan. But she is an improvement over Tony Snow, in that she doesn't engage in petty bickering with the press, and has so far managed to get through all of her briefings without uttering a single racial slur.

For those keeping track, Perino's last provable lie was when she claimed that the White House did not know of the Pentagon's program to feed propaganda to the American people through military analysts. Internal emails show that Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, and President Bush all met with Pentagon officials to discuss the program.

(cross posted at Liberal Avenger and appletree)