Hewitt: A lying liar

Digby has an excellent post holding up right-wing pundit Hugh Hewitt as an example of the pathology of movement conservatives, particularly their open mendaciousness in dealing with the uproar over The Path to 9/11.

Digby pretty much says it all ("Nobody in this entire episode has behaved with less integrity, less dignity or less probity"), and the Hewitt post that he focuses on is indeed a festering pile of falsehoods and distortions. But this one particularly stood out for me:

It isn't like we don't know that Monica was a distraction and Madeleine Albright a less-than-brilliant Secretary of State (how about that late lurch towards North Korea?) John O'Neill was in fact fired; there were warnings that were ignored about the African embassy bombings, and no response followed the Cole attack and the American ambassador to Yemen was an obstruction to that investigation, Massoud was assasinated by al Qaeda. These are not debatable subjects. They are facts.

Actually, the facts are that John O'Neill wasn't fired; he retired:

O'Neill Decides to Retire from FBI

He hears about a job opening as head of security at the World Trade Center. It would mean a significant salary increase, but also it would mean leaving the FBI. By this point, however, O'Neill realizes his chances for a promotion were severely hurt by the briefcase incident. In addition to career problems, entertaining foreign visitors and O'Neill's lifestyle had left him in debt. The job at the World Trade Center would give him a chance to pay off that debt.

When did this happen?

In July 2001.

When George W. Bush was the president.