After all this wheezing and whining and cussing and discussing, what it all boils down to is this:

Bush probably didn't lie per se.   He did what his advisors told him to do and said what his advisors told him to say. He may very well have believed most of it. But when he wasn't really sure, he accepted it. After all, he was doing God's Work. And that justifies anything. Even—well—lying, if need be.

Anybody see the 1972 movie, "The Candidate?" At the very end of the movie [Spoiler Alert], when, after a hard campaign, Bill McKay (Robert Redford) learns that he has won, he stands there among his advisors, looking like a deer caught in the headlights, and says

"What do we do now?"

The man is incompetent. Always has been. Always will be.

Don Firth