Steely Lies

In lifting steel tariffs today, President George W. Bush [aka a miserable failure (why?)] said "these safeguard measures have now achieved their purpose, and as a result of changed economic circumstances, it is time to lift them."

What a bald-faced lie.
What a complete evasion of reality.

Would it have been too frightening for him to be honest, to say that lifting these sanctions is the only way to avoid a trade war?

I suppose I must be too partisan.
I must be too naïve.

...because it occurs to me that every time this President opens his mouth out he restates some small defeat as if it were victory. Anyone who's paid their dues in corporate America knows this double-speak all too well -- how the language of optimism in the face of the facts has to be used with the utmost care -- lest the speaker be regarded as a know-nothing who will toe the corporate line at all costs.

...even at the cost of seeming more than a little disingenuous.