Exclusive Interview with Pres. Bush: "If I Had Lied About Iraq, Here's How I Would Have Done It"

In what came as perhaps the biggest shock of my life, I was contacted by the office of the President of the United States a few weeks ago. Naturally, in light of my outspoken criticism of George W. Bush and the large number of articles published at Associated Content and elsewhere that have asked tough questions about his policies and statements, my first reaction was that the Patriot Act gestapos were gunning for me. Imagine my surprise when it was revealed that Pres. Bush actually wanted to schedule a very special interview with me.

My first inclination was to turn it down. After all, a Bush interview is the journalistic equivalent of a Bizarro World Superman adventure: you can't be completely sure of what you'll get, but you know going in that anything you hear has to be reversed 180 degrees in order to understand the real world veracity. Then I thought maybe I could make it interesting by pulling a Chris(tina) Wallace pussified hatchet job on him. Finally, it was revealed to me exactly why this would be a special interview, and I realized I had no choice but to say yes.

The interview was conducted last week at an unspecified location. There were only three people allow in the room: me, Pres. Bush and some shadowy figure I've never seen before. I'm not allowed to even describe him. The following are the highlights from the interview, which actually took almost an hour.

Timothy: Mr. Bush, you have asked for this interview for a special reason. Would you please tell us exactly what that reason is?

Pres. Bush: Well, where I come from - East Texas, or is it West Texas, you know I can never remember East from West…do you have the problem? No. Well, good for you. Back home in Maine we have a saying, if it walks like a duck then it probably tastes like chicken. Well, the situation in Iraq is the duck, and I'm the chicken…you understand what I'm saying?

Timothy: No.

Pres. Bush: Good, good. Well, we're on the same ball. Okay, here's the thing, you see. There's been a lot of talk…a lot, um, what you might call speculation, you see, that I may have…oh, I don't know…misrepresented the danger of Iraq leading to the war. Now I could have done that. Didn't need to. Didn't have to. But if I did have to…you see, what I'm saying, is that if I did lie and mislead the public about the war…here's how I would have done it.

Timothy: Did you know going in there weren't any WMDs?

Pres. Bush: Well, now you see…no…but let's say that I did know that? Okay, lets say I knew there weren't any WMDs. But I couldn't get justification to invade if that were so. So, well, if by chance it HAD been I knew there weren't any WMDs…well the first thing I would have done is try to get Rummy and Pres. Chen-Dick…um…to go out there an say they were there. What's that line from Hamlet…I think it's Hamlet…it might be My Fair Lady…anyway, the line says something like people believe a guy who looks you in the eye and lies more than they believe a guy who looks away and tells the truth. Maybe that was Seinfeld. I don't know. The point is, if I was going to get my guys to lie about Iraq, the best way to do it would have been to simply go out there and make the lies as outrageous as possible.

Timothy: The bigger the lie the more people will believe it?

Pres. Bush: Well, I don't follow you there. What I was trying to say is that if we knew all along Saddam posed no threat, we would have made darn sure to make everybody believe he was the biggest threat. You don't build consensus for a war by saying a guy like Saddam has a pop gun. You make people believe he's got a nucular weapon.

Timothy: Nuclear.

Pres. Bush: Right. Yes. Nucular weapons, you see-

Timothy: No. I meant it's pronounced nuke-lee--ur. You keep saying it like nuke-ya-ler.

Pres. Bush: Well, that's just my Texas accent.

Timothy: But you're not from Texas. You were born in Connecticut.

Pres. Bush: That's true. But my momma and daddy moved us to Texas when I was two. I grew up there. And that's how I developed my accent.

Timothy: But you spent most of your youth away at an exclusive private school in Massachusetts.

Pres. Bush: They have Texans there.

Timothy: So how would you have tried to convince the world that Saddam had nuclear weapons?

Pres. Bush: If I was aiming to do that…to convince them he had them when he didn't…you get what I'm saying…I wouldn't have come right out and say, listen this guy has big missiles pointed at us. Because nobody would believe it. Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh. You know? Who would believe that? Nobody. So I would have made, I don't know, less so. Less that way. Not so…what's the word…what's that word that guy always uses? You know, that guy from that movie? I don't know. Maybe it was a television show. Anyway, I would have made it less big. Bigger believable. So I would maybe have seen if we could get somebody to make up a document that showed proof Saddam was trying to buy nucular materials. People believe that you see? They want to believe Saddam was bad. Was a threat to us.

Timothy: What about the fact that Iraq couldn't even win a war against Iran?

Pres. Bush: That wouldn't be a problem?

Timothy: Why not? I mean you were trying to build a case for a war against a country with less firepower than Canada. Do you think you could ever build a case that Canada was a threat?

Pres. Bush: Sure. Listen, my mamma used to read this book all the time. I loved to just sit there in bed and make her read over and over again. Listening to her soft voice. And she'd read it in character. I tell you, the way she could read the part of that mean old Grinch…terrifying…mamma could do that mean old Grinch so well that a lot of times after kissed me on the forehead and went downstairs, me and Laura would have a hard time getting to sleep. Eventually, I always did but many a time Laura would be up all night. Anyway, what I learned from that book my mamma used to read me was this: if you have enough fumboozles and slapgroodles then you can steal anyone's Christmas tree.

Timothy: I see.

Pres. Bush: So, anyway, if I was going to lie about Iraq, I would also have made the connection between Saddam and 9/11. Of course, we know this is one, so I didn't have to lie, but if I was going to lie I wouldn't have come right out and said, hey, listen, this is a bad guy…this guy paid those hijackers to fly planes into our buildings. I would have been smarter. I just wouldn't have denied it. Maybe I would let Mr. Cheney let slip once or twice that we knew there was a connection. But it's always better to leave a mystery. Karl has taught me over the years a lot of lessons, but I'd have to say the best one is to not spell it out in black and white. You see, that's why I contradict myself so much. That's why I say we've got a stay the course policy in Iraq and then I have Tony Snow saying we haven't had a stay the course policy for months. It confuses people. I guess my point is that if I was going to lie about everything in order to get support for this war, what I would have done is just try to confuse everybody by never giving the same answer more than a few times. Like I would have kept saying this war is about WMDs, then I would said it's about liberating the Iraqi people, then I would have said it's about bringing democracy to the region, then I would have said it's about keeping Iraq unified and not split into three regions. But I didn't have to do that. Because we always had the truth on our side. And now we're reaping the benefits of my decision. We're winning the war, we removed the WMD threat, we got rid of Saddam, Iraq is a democracy now and there is no civil war.