Liars are everywhere

Wow, this case study really struck me as suprising. Never have I seen, or even have imagined so much deception and lying revolving around a couple of situations. Lies everywhere, to key officials, congress, the public, and from even the president. It really seems like there is nothing you can do in this situation however. Sure, people were punished in the end, but what is there to prevent it? There are certain laws against lying(such as in the court of law), but it would seem ridiculous to put a ban on lying in general. I think this really does tie into the dirty hands argument though.

In this case, there are so many persons with dirty hands it is hard to determine who is responsible. Is it the public for electing those who appointed North and Poindexter? Most likely not, it would seem foolish to put the blame on us not seeing why our officials chose these certain people for their jobs. Should we blame North and Poindexter themselves, as well as Casey, for directly doing the harm? How about Reagan, should he be blamed for directly aiding the actions of North? It really seems hard to point a single blame, or even a handful of blames, without determining why the lying is bad.

In the case of the Contra, it would seem that the lying occurred not only to the international community and ourselves, but to congress specifically. However, congress "knew" of this lying and aid happening. They showed their knowledge of the situation by putting direct bans on aiding the Nicuraguan Contra. Should the congress be to blame for not taking more strict action?(assuming they even had the option of a stricter approach) However, why is this lying bad? The goal was the create peace in the end by stopping the Nicuraguan insurgence. There was an ultimate goal of saving lives, and in this case, lying merely deceives for this purpose, so why not permit it? The same goes for the Iranian hostage situation.

We supplied them with arms in order to save one of our own. We weighed(i.e. proportionality) the outcomes, and this was the best solution given the circumstance. The fact that American lives are top priority in any foreign policy decision(or so it seems) is what drives people to lie like this, there really is no other benefit other than praise.(but that really seems like a motivation debate, what motivates people to do what they do?)

Thus, I pose a question to you guys...
1. Does the public view of lying, a very negative view, deter people from lying?

In this case it really doesn't seem like it does. I mean, obviously people do not want to be lied to, and in the Contra case, there really is no American benefit other than good international relations(which it really wasn't anyways). It seems the public has a utilitarian approach when it comes to lying in most cases, but it is coming to the point these days where we are not even certain that the results of lying were what was aimed at.