Columnist – John Sammon
Invented by Ronald Reagan, plausible deniability is a wonderful phrase. How George Orwellian it is. It’s such a bureaucratic, nonsensical, otherworldly, ivory tower, paranoiac phrase. It’s perfect for the age of dishonest government that we live in. How fitting for a president like Bush was.

Plausible deniability, the secret credo of the Republic Party for getting things done when legality proves to be messy; That’s what George Bush used to commit crimes and to walk away from them.

But what is plausible deniability?

It’s simple. Much simpler than it sounds. I tell you to commit a scheme, an illegal plot, but don’t tell me the details of how you’re going to do it, to carry it out, so that if it comes to light, if we get caught doing it, I can claim (rightly) that I had no knowledge of it.

It’s a perfect form of dishonest honesty. During an investigation of Iran Contra, a trial, Reagan claimed he didn’t know, or couldn’t remember, anything about the plan. In truth, he couldn’t. He’d told his boys not to tell him the details.

He made them take the heat instead of him.

The power of the presidency and ignorance of orders given, after they’re given. The perfect scam. It’s foolproof, even though it was concocted by a fool (Reagan).

Plausible deniability will be used again. By the next Republican president, if there ever is one.

It’s a perfect plan, because even though the president gives the order to carry it out (a dishonest plan); in fact the president has no knowledge of how it was carried out.

Reagan used this dodge to exchange arms for hostages in Iran and also to fund Contra Rebels in South America in the Iran Contra Scandal of the 1980s.

   Reagan, Nixon and Wives

Bush used it again, although he put a different spin on it. Instead of telling cronies to carry out a plan to attack Iraq without his knowledge, he cherry-picked the evidence to justify the attack, and then lied to the American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Bush simply threw out every bit of evidence that ran contrary to what he wanted to do (attack Iraq). He needed an excuse, because if he told you the truth, if he said, “we don’t know if there are weapons of mass destruction, but we’re invading Iraq anyway because we want to do a regime change, and we want to re-make the Middle East, and we want their (Iraq’s) oil, and we want a puppet state there.”

If he told you that, he knew you might not support the war. So, he made up a lie, and did so in a way to convince himself it was the truth, believing it was in the best interest of the American people.

The perfect scam. A form of plausible deniability. If Bush can convince himself it’s the truth, then he’s not lying, even though it’s a lie.

I believe Bush really believed that he was doing the right thing. It might even be seen as a form of rational bureaucratic insanity.

Since he believed he was doing the best for the American people, Bush can “plausibly deny” that he did wrong. Under this scenario, you can do just about any obscenity and escape justice because as president you can claim you did it in the interest and for the good of the American people.

It’s the perfect alibi.

It will be used again. I don’t believe it will be used by Obama, because I suspect he’s an honest man. But the next crooked president we have will surely use plausible deniability or a variant.

Bush knew there were doubts Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He knew he had to come up with a justification that would gain your support for the war. He knew he had to only listen to those reports that agreed with his already-formed plan, to attack Iraq no matter what the situation. He decided on the plan years before 9-11. But 9-11 gave him his alibi, the excuse he needed. Bush and his henchmen sold the false idea that Iraq was connected to 9-11.

The American people bought it.

Bush also had to cynically carry out the plan while going through the motions of appearing to be honestly looking at the evidence and evaluating it.

In the best tradition of the Reaganesque, plausible deniability is bulletproof. Because the office of the president is to be respected, and because anything you do is supposedly for the good of the country, you can do anything. Almost anything, and get away with it.

Richard Nixon never used plausible deniability. He remained in charge of the Watergate scheme right up to the end. He never told his boys, carry this out, but don’t tell me what you’re up to. He was kept informed all along.

But Nixon must be happy.

Somewhere in the great beyond, Nixon watched Bush pull off Iraq. And he’s smiling. The imperial presidency is safe, healthy.

Wrong is right. Nixon is smiling.

Copyright 2009 Sammonsays.

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