Cohen: When U.S. presidents lie, the damage can be devastating

WASHINGTON – Walter B. Jones was a 12-term Republican congressman from North Carolina. He was so enthusiastic about the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 – and so angry with France for opposing it – that he wanted to rename French fries “Freedom Frees.”
But not long into the war, Jones began to question it. He came to recognize that the assumptions that had led to the war – that Iraq was linked to al-Qaeda, that it had weapons of mass destruction – were fabr