When It is Okay and Not Okay to Lie to Congress

Dissident Voice
by Kim Petersen / February 11th, 2009

Houston Astros shortstop Miguel Tejada was charged Tuesday with lying to the US Congress about taking a performance-enhancing substance. Tajeda is expected to plead guilty to lying to a Congressional investigation about taking steroids and about knowledge of other players taking steroids.

Tajeda’s alleged lies about the steroid usage did not result in one person, and certainly not 1.3+ million people, being killed.

Tajeda’s alleged lie was not a pretext to enable launching an assault on human beings. Moreover, his alleged steroid usage did not result in widespread destruction of another country’s economic infrastructure, hospitals, centers of worship, schools, the ransacking of a country’s historical artifacts, the littering of a country with depleted uranium. It did not result in war crimes being committed with glaring impunity. It did not result in the erasure of habeas corpus, the humiliation and torture of captives, and setting up of gulags around the world. Tajeda did not occupy another person’s land.

Apparently, nowadays when the president and vice-president and their coterie lie to Congress, then everything is kosher.

Unsportsmanlike and deceitful though it is, there is something perverse in considering a lie about seeking an unfair advantage over opponents in a game that causes no direct harm to anyone else a greater crime than the willful destruction of a nation state and its people. That is the logical conclusion flowing from the action against Tajeda and the inaction against George W. Bush and his neocon and Zionist collaborators.

The lies of George W. Bush, a former substance abuser himself, have been exposed. The Downing Street Memos provide sterling evidence that the intelligence and facts were fixed around the administration’s desire to invade Iraq. The alleged existence of weapons-of-mass destruction was just a pretext. Bush’s lies resulted in the excess mortality of over 1.3 million Iraqis, yet he managed to serve out two terms without being brought up for impeachment.

Congress’s double standards in the seeking of justice are manifest. The outstanding crimes of George Bush and his administration stand as a test of Congress and now for president Barack Obama.

What are Obama’s principles? Is justice worth seeking? Does justice apply to everyone?

For justice applied unequally is a denial of justice.