“George W. Bush is different, very different. Other presidents have misled, deceived, even lied. When Ike was asked his worst mistake, he candidly said, ‘The lie we told [about the U-2].’ LBJ and the Gulf of Tonkin were examples of both deception and self-deception.

The problem today is not simply that ‘Bush is a liar.’ While only he knows whether he’s intentionally saying untrue things, it is a provable fact that he says untrue things, again and again, on issues large and small, day in and day out. The problem is not ’16 words’ in last year’s State of the Union but 160,000 words on stem cells, global warming, the ‘death tax,’ the Iraq-9/11 connection and the Saddam-al Qaeda connection, the rise of deficits, cuts to Americorps, the air in downtown Manhattan after 9/11. On and on. It is beyond controversy that W ‘has such a high regard for the truth,’ as Lincoln said of a rival, ‘that he uses it sparingly.’

Why this penchant for falsehoods?” —Mark Green, co-author (with Eric Alterman) of The Book On Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (Viking 2004), AlterNet