Bush Or Your Lying Eyes?

A reader writes:

The ease with which the Bush administration generally, and its spokespeople in particular, lies still manages to astonish me, even after six and a half years. Take a look at this story from Reuters about the theft of Bush's watch in Albania:

Albanian police say the reports of President Bush's watch being stolen while greeting the crowd in Tirana are untrue. However, video from the presidential visit shows that while he began to work the crowd with a timepiece on his left arm, within seconds it was gone. "The story is untrue and the president did not lose his watch," a spokesman for the embassy in Tirana said.

The article is accompanied by footage clearly showing that the watch was stolen, yet a spokesman for the U.S. embassy echoed the statements of the Albanian police (who are clearly embarrassed by the episode).

I don't know which possibility is most frightening: 1) that the administration has so little respect for the intelligence of the American public that it thinks it can get away with saying literally anything, no matter how untrue, and no matter how strong the evidence against it; 2) that the administration knows that 70% of the American public won't believe them, but only cares about the 30% that will believe them; or 3) that the administration actually believes its own lies.

Personally, I think it's all three:  they started out believing their own lies, then moved on to thinking that they could say anything whether it was true or not, and have now reached the point where they only care about the 30% of the American public who will always believe whatever they say.