Today marks the third anniversary of the beginning of the Syrian rebellion, a popular uprising that started as a protest movement and degenerated into a civil war that has already claimed more than 146,000 lives. As the White House has come to enumerate the various reasons why it has balked at arming the rebels—they’re fragmented, they’re farmers, they’re al Qaeda—it’s worth remembering that even before the opposition picked up weapons to defend itself against a regime shooting at unarmed protestors, it took Obama nearly half a year before he called for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step aside.

The administration’s Syria policy has been incoherent from the outset. Instead of pursuing actions calibrated to advance American interests while preventing a humanitarian disaster affecting not just Syrians but U.S. allies on Syria’s borders, the White House has engaged in a three-year long messaging campaign meant to protect the president’s flank. The question that three years worth of evasion and disinformation from the White House raises is simply this: why the lies?