Liar, liar

Poor old Bill Clinton told one little lie, a lie any gentleman would tell, and he faced impeachment. George W. Bush tells lies like it was a presidential perk and no one outside of Harper's Magazine whispers the word "impeach."

Consider the latest example. Four days after Katrina devastated New Orleans, the president declared, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." It has now been revealed that the day before the storm, Bush and his Homeland Security chief were briefed, according to The Globe and Mail, "in dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms" that "the storm could breach levees, risk lives in the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelm rescuers."

That shouldn't have come as a surprise. New Orleans major newspaper, the Times-Picayune, ran a 5-part series in 2002 warning that the levee system was inadequate, concluding, "a major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time." Bush's vaunted Homeland Security could have and should have been fully prepared for the worst. Their excuse? They were blinded, they said, by the "fog of war." And by a foggy president.