In this life there are consequences to our actions and certainly there are consequences to not telling the truth, either by lying or by omission of the truth. Occasionally, I am compelled to respond to an article written by my fellow columnist Maurice Carter.

The article referred to is "Just say no to the truthiness" published last Sunday, Oct. 21, 2012. Mr. Carter identifies our presidential candidates, Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama as liars.

First , I object to both men being painted with the same brush without addressing the differences when one lies. Mr. Obama has sworn a solemn oath of office to God as president of the United States to uphold the Constitution and discharge his office truthfully and for the good of the American people. I can not think of a more serious oath taken by a lay person or one with more serious obligations. Although Mr. Romney has not taken an oath I still hold him responsible for honesty in his statements to the American people.

In the past week Mr. Obama has proven over and over again that he is very willing to sacrifice truth for teamporary political gain. There have been a number of lies told by Mr. Obama regarding the Benghazi terrorist attacks in the last several weeks. In the debate, Mr. Obama defiantly insisted that on the morning following the attacks, during a press conference in the Rose Garden, that he had called the Benghazi attacks a terrorist attack. This was following Mr. Romney stating that it took the White House weeks to admit that it was not a spontaneous demonstration due to an obscure You Tube video.

The moderator, Candy Crowley, broke in to support Obama with a claim that the "fact checkers" confirmed Mr. Obama correct. By the time the debate was over the fact check claim was reversed. Mr. Obama had not recognized the murder of our ambassador as an act of terror. Furthermore, the president sent our ambassador to the U.N. to all the Sunday talk shows to make the statement that this attack was a demonstration that turned violent.

We now have proof that the president and his minions were lying and knew this was an organized and planned terrorist attack. Emails and cables were received within the White House alerting them of a terrorist attack on the consulate.

The president could not risk the perception that he was wrong in blindly supporting the rebels that fought Khadafy or his statement that al-Qaeda is fading away. He eagerly sacrificed honor and truthfulness for political gain to appear successful until election.

So much for Mr. Carter's fact checkers and truthiness.

Mr. Obama also insisted that he had moved the economy forward, turned around unemployment and had put forth a plan to turn around the plunge of our economy. Well, he certainly did not do that. This most certainly was an outrageous lie. Obama will be the first president in the history of the United States to have never passed a budget. This was with the first two years having a super majority in both houses of Congress. Obama has spent more money in his administration than the total of all presidents combined in U.S. history.

If you include those individuals who have given up looking for work and fallen out of the work force in the data for unemployment the real unemployment rate is nearer 15 percent. These facts are not funny, a subject for late night shows or situations subject to truthiness.
Now I have a tale to tell regarding one of these lies told by the president last week where I personally witnessed the consequences. Obama again insisted he had never made an apology tour overseas or compromised the position of the United States with a foreign nation.

I was on foreign assignment in Saudi Arabia when President Obama visited the king on this tour. Anything related to King Abdulaziz in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a national event and a state visit by the president of the United States to the king is huge. All TV stations in Saudi are government stations and highly regulated. This state visit was shown live on all stations.

I was watching the coverage on televisions in the office in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia with the Saudi engineers of my client. When President Obama was presented to the king he approached him, bowed down and touched the hem of his robe with his left hand. All the Saudi Arabs who were with me gasped in astonishment at this gesture. You see, bowing down to the King of Saudi and touching the hem of his robe is the symbol of your subservience to him.

The Saudi Arabs could not believe that the president of the great United States would pledge fealty to the king. So much for Obama's lie that he had never compromised the U.S. The gesture by Obama was very clearly seen on the coverage.

For weeks afterwards the State Department tried to deny that the president made the gesture and even went so far as to say he dropped a pieced of paper and was bending down to pick it up. This effort just reinforced the loss of face suffered by the U.S.

The president went on to describe the U.S. in later speeches in other countries on this tour as divisive and dismissive.

The behavior and truthfulness of the president is held to a much higher standard than anyone else in the federal government and with very grave and dangerous consequences from violations of that standard.

Soft pedaling whether the sitting President is a liar or not is not acceptable especially in a year when the destruction of our country is actually a possibility. We can not treat lightly the seriousness and impact of this election on the destiny of our freedom and our country.

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"

- Sir Edmund Burke, 1781

William Perugino is active in local and regional politics and can be reached at 3peruginos@bellsouth.net.