I hear lots of people (just yesterday, Joe Scarborough), wanting to sound worldly and mature, saying that the issue of the talking points, etc., is a distraction (and that lying in this context is in fact to be expected) -- that what really matters is the security of our embassies. That is profoundly wrong and here's why (and this is neither a left wing nor a right wing argument). 1. Yes -- Administrations mislead the public. But, no, that's not something that can be blithely dismissed as "the way things are." Anyone familiar with the history of our involvement in Vietnam knows that Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all lied us into (and into staying in) Viet Nam. If only we had known that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was BS, maybe 60,000 Americans and a million Vietnamese wouldn't have died. 2. As with any lie/crime/deception -- you only catch 1 out of 20, or maybe 1 out of 200. Again, as in Vietnam, if we could have known that the GOT incident was just part of lying, about the South...(Read Full Post)