As any successful dissembler knows, the only way to get away with telling a lie is to repeat it. By repeating it, by virtue of repetition, the lie becomes to the liar “the truth”. One cannot hope to fool a lie detector if what one is saying is a lie. The only possibility of appearing truthful is to BELIEVE with all your heart that your lie is the truth.

What’s all this about lying and the truth and believing your lie? Iraq, obviously. “Iraq has WMDs.” “Iraq is working with al Qaeda.” “Iraq will greet US troops as liberators.” “The Iraqi insurgency is in its final throes.” “There is no civil war in Iraq.” If any of these statements look familiar to you, it is because they are the lies of our times. These pieces of falsehood, misinformation, and outright untruths will be recorded in history for all future generations to see and judge. That so many of the individuals that tell these lies dismiss history as the ultimate arbitor of truth only goes to show what disregard they have for honesty and intergrity. Donald Rumsfeld must think that every future citizen of Earth will be as dumb as the average FOX News viewer when he talks about national security and America’s full military strength the way he does. Good luck with that, Donny.

What’s important in the endgame of playing out this lie is the characters. After all, it’s unseemly for a President to be constantly defending something he decided to do three years ago. When the President is required for other, newer lies, then you need to change the cast. Heck, why not, it’s worked for ER and Law & Order for decades now. So that is why, while his countrymen fight and die on a daily basis and he’s enjoying meals at the White House, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki stood before Congress today and told them that Iraq is the front line in the war on terror. Now, it says something about a country and its leader when the prime minister LEAVES HIS COUNTRY during a time of increasingly violent activity nationwide to go and beg for money from the country that invaded his land. What does it say, you might ask? I don’t know for certain, but the phrase “puppet regime” certainly comes to mind.

Americans have heard it all from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice. They’re so used to the lies that they barely listen to them anymore. That’s why it’s so important to have newer, fresher faces working to keep this lie alive. Because for all the wrongs in America, that’s the standard operatin procedure to remove the blaims from ourselves. Americans use cocaine? Columbia is the front line in the War on Drugs, because expecting people to follow the law here is just outrageous. Americans live in poverty? Free trade negotiations with South America and China are the front lines in the War on Poverty, because allowing American companies to skip paying American workers a decent wage by outsourcing all their work to Asia is the only way to make Americans less poor. (The trade-off is that poor Americans who can’t find work can’t afford to eat, so they starve to death, die, and *voila* less poor people, apparently.) And now Iraq is the front line in the War on Terror.

Just because someone says it doesn’t make it true.