A VERY SIMPLE TEST

Is G W Bush's foreign policy ethical or is it just murderous blather? (Joe Siracusa, August 28, 2003, Online Opinion)

Other times, politicians are indeed obliged to lie to us.

During World War II, for example, John Curtin never told the Australian people how bad things were in February 1942.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, for his part, kept on lying to the American people until the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbour finally got America into the war with Hitler.

In my own time, I can still remember Dwight Eisenhower telling us that there were no U2 flights over the Soviet Union until of course the Russians shot down Gary Powers and put him on trial.

I can also remember John F. Kennedy telling the world that he did not cut a secret deal (US missiles out of Turkey) with Moscow to get Soviet missiles out of Cuba.

These were state secrets at the time and therefore acceptable.

What is not acceptable is the murderous blather of politicians who put their own people in harm's way, for political ambitions.

If you failed to predict the gist of the essay based on the title please slap your own wrist. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 1, 2003 2:02 PM