Almost.

The two faces of George W. Bush

From the time George W. Bush started building his propaganda campaign to justify the invasion of Iraq, he insisted his administration had “conclusive evidence” of a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the masterminds of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

A Central Intelligence Agency report sent to the White House last week, however, affirms what the agency has said all along – that no “conclusive evidence” exists of such a link.

Yet Vice President Dick Cheney continued to preach the company line Tuesday night in his debate with challenger John Edwards.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld changed two stories over the weekend and then changed them back again. First he said he never saw any proof of a link then said he was “misunderstood” in the speech where he said the proof did not exist. He also said in a TV interview on Sunday that Iraq’s mysterious weapons of mass destructions did not exist then claimed on Monday that they did.

The President said earlier this year that there was “never any question” that aluminum tubes sought by Hussein were to be used for production of weapons grade uranium. But National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice said over the weekend that there were doubts all along about the real purpose of the tubes.

Bush told the American people over and over that there were enough troops in Iraq to “get the job done.”  But Paul Bremer, the first man put in charge of Iraq’s reconstruction, says we never did.

"We paid a big price for not stopping it because it established an atmosphere of lawlessness.  We never had enough troops on the ground," Bremer said Monday at a conference in West Virginia.

This pattern of lies doesn’t stop with Iraq. The White House ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to withhold the truth about health hazards in the air in Manhattan after the World Trade Center towers collapsed. The Bush administration withheld the true cost of so-called Medicare reform from Congress to make sure the bill passed. And the President has lied consistently about progress, or lack thereof, of his “war on terror.”

Bush has a pattern of lying, a pathology as deep as Bill Clinton’s inability to tell the truth. His pathological lies, however, are far more dangerous. Clinton lied about banging interns. Bush lies about issues that send Americans into harm’s way and has, to date, brought more than 1,000 of them home in body bags.

His lies have torn our country apart, placed us in a war we probably can’t win, destroyed American credibility with its allies and left most of us as helpless as any victim of a con game.