Negotiating ‘lie’
On The Media: Transcript of “Secrets & Lies” (May 4, 2007)
BOB GARFIELD: The issue in question was Saddam’s aluminum tubes and whether they were meant for centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel. If, as you say, the administration briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee that it was uncertain about those tubes but then hid that uncertainty in public statements to the American people and to the world, then the President and the Vice President and the Secretary of State Colin Powell are liars, and their lies led us to war. Have I overstated this?DICK DURBIN: You may have overstated it, but not by much. I remember the debate on the aluminum tubes. I would sit there and listen – this has all been declassified, now I can talk about it – I would sit there and listen to the Department of Energy in full-throated debate with the Department of Defense over whether these aluminum tubes were going to be used for nuclear weapons.
When Eve Sweetser published her seminal work on ‘lie’ she uncovered a complex conceptual structure. However, she was silent on the process through which determination of what can be labeled ‘lie’ in public discourse. This entire discussion (not just the above excerpt) is an vivid illustration of it. It dances around the taboo of calling politicians liars and debating acceptable social action in the face of a lie. Evoking analogies is another common strategy:
BOB GARFIELD: I take a risk of overstating the case, but I’m thinking of a situation on the ground in the military where an officer tells a subordinate to do something that the subordinate knows is actually illegal, against Army regulations and against the Geneva Convention, and immoral and wrong, and the soldier may not obey that order. Just following orders is not a sufficient excuse.
