Read these important and insightful words.
They are not just relevant to Americans. . .
Andy Worthington is a superb reporter who has specialized in
providing the facts of the US government’s illegal abuse of
“detainees,” against whom no evidence exists.
In an effort to create
evidence, the US government has illegally resorted to torture.
Torture produces false confessions, plea bargains, and false
testimony against others in order to escape further torture.
For these reasons, in Anglo-American law self-incrimination
secured through torture has been impermissible evidence for
centuries. So also has been secret evidence withheld from the
accused and his attorney. Secret evidence cannot be confronted.
Secret evidence is distrusted as made-up in order to convict the
innocent. The evidence is secret because it cannot stand the
light of day.
The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against
alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be
threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject
nonsense. It is an absurd claim that presenting evidence against
a terrorist jeopardizes the national security of the United
States.
To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the
security of each and every one of us. Once the government can
convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the
concept of a fair trial will disappear. Fair trials are already
history, but the concept lingers.
Secret evidence murders the concept of a fair trial. It murders
justice and the rule of law. Secret evidence means anyone can be
convicted of anything.
As in Kafka’s The Trial, people will cease to know the crimes for which they are being
tried and convicted.
This extraordinary development in Anglo-American law, a
development demanded by the unaccountable Bush/Obama Regime, has
not resulted in impeachment proceedings; nor has it caused an
uproar from Congress, the federal courts, the presstitute media,
law schools, constitutional scholars, and bar associations.
Having bought the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory, Americans
just want someone to pay. They don’t care who as long as someone
pays. To accommodate this desire, the government has produced
some “high value detainees” with Arab or Muslim names.
But instead of bringing these alleged malefactors to trial and
presenting evidence against them, the government has kept them
in torture dungeons for years trying to create through the
application of pain and psychological breakdown guilt by
self-incrimination in order to create a case against them.
The government has been unsuccessful and has nothing that it can
bring to a real court. So the Bush/Obama Regime created and
recreated “military tribunals” to lend “national security”
credence to the absolute need that non-existent evidence be kept
secret.
Andy Worthington in his numerous reports does a good job in
providing the history of the detainees and their treatment. He
deserves our commendation and support. But what I want to do is
to ask some questions, not of Worthington, but about the idea
that the US is under terrorist threat.
By this September, 9/11 will be eleven years ago. Yet despite
the War on Terror, the loss of Americans’ privacy and civil
liberties, an expenditure of trillions of dollars on numerous
wars, violations of US and international laws against torture,
and so forth, no one has been held accountable. Neither the
perpetrators nor those whom the perpetrators outwitted, assuming
that they are different people, have been held accountable.
Going on 11 years and no trials of villains or chastisement of
negligent public officials. This is remarkable.
The government’s account of 9/11 implies massive failure of all
US security and intelligence agencies along with those of our
NATO puppets and Israel’s Mossad.
The government’s official line also implies the failure of the
National Security Council, NORAD and the US Air Force, Air
Traffic Control, Airport Security four times in one hour on the
same morning. It implies the failure of the President, the Vice
President, the National Security Adviser, the Secretary of
Defense.
Many on the left and also libertarians find this apparent
failure of the centralized and oppressive government so hopeful
that they cling to the official “government failure” explanation
of 9/11. However, such massive failure is simply unbelievable.
How in the world could the US have survived the cold war with
the Soviets if the US government were so totally incompetent?
If we attribute superhero powers to the 19 alleged hijackers,
powers in excess of V’s in V for Vendetta or James Bond’s or
Captain Marvel’s, and assume that these young terrorists,
primarily Saudi Arabians, outwitted Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, The
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Tony Blair, along with the CIA, FBI,
MI5 and MI6, Mossad, etc., one would have expected for the
President, Congress, and the media to call for heads to roll.
No
more humiliating affront has ever been suffered by a major power
than the US suffered on 9/11. Yet, absolutely no one, not even
some lowly traffic controller, was scapegoated and held
accountable for what is considered to be the most
extraordinarily successful terrorist attack in human history, an
attack so successful that it implies total negligence across the
totality of the US government and that of all its allies.
This just doesn’t smell right. Total failure and no
accountability.
The most expensively funded security apparatus
the world has ever known defeated by a handful of Saudi
Arabians. How can anyone in the CIA, FBI, NSA, NORAD, and
National Security Council hold up their heads? What a disgraced
bunch of jerks and incompetents.
What do we need them for?
Consider the alleged hijackers. Despite allegedly being caught
off guard by the 9/11 attacks, the FBI was soon able to identify
the 19 hijackers despite the fact that apparently none of the
alleged hijackers’ names are on the passenger lists of the
airliners that they allegedly hijacked.
How did 19 passengers get on airplanes in the US without being
on the passenger lists?
I do not personally know if the alleged hijackers were on the
four airliners. Moreover, defenders of the official 9/11 story
claim that the passenger lists released to the public were
“victims lists,” not passenger lists, because the names of the
hijackers were withheld and only released some four years later
after 9/11 researchers had had years in which to confuse victims
lists with passenger lists. This seems an odd explanation.
Why
encourage public misinformation for years by withholding the
passenger lists and issuing victims lists in their place? It
cannot have been to keep the hijackers’ names a secret as the
FBI released a list of the hijackers several days after 9/11.
Even more puzzling, if the hijackers’ names were on the airline
passenger lists, why did it take the FBI several days to confirm
the names and numbers of hijackers?
Researchers have found contradictions in the FBI’s accounts of
the passenger lists with the FBI adding and subtracting names
from its various lists and some names being misspelled,
indicating possibly that the FBI doesn’t really know who the
person is. The authenticity of the passenger lists that were
finally released in 2005 is contested, and the list apparently
was not presented as evidence by the FBI in the Moussaoui trial
in 2006.
David Ray Griffin has extensively researched the 9/11
story. In one of his books, 9/11 Ten Years Later, Griffin
writes: “Although the FBI claimed that it had received flight
manifests from the airlines by the morning of 9/11, the
‘manifests’ that appeared in 2005 had names that were not known
to the FBI until a day or more after 9/11. These 2005
‘manifests,’ therefore, could not have been the original
manifests for the four 9/11 flights.”
The airlines themselves have not been forthcoming. We are left
with the mystery of why simple and straightforward evidence,
such as a list of passengers, was withheld for years and mired
in secrecy and controversy.
We have the additional problem that the BBC and subsequently
other news organizations established that 6 or 7 of the alleged
hijackers on the FBI’s list are alive and well and have never
been part of any terrorist plot.
These points are not even a beginning of the voluminous reasons
that the government’s 9/11 story looks very thin.
But the American public, being throughly plugged into the
Matrix, are not suspicious of the government’s thin story.
Instead, they are suspicious of the facts and of those experts
who are suspicious of the government’s story. Architects,
engineers, scientists, first responders, pilots, and former
public officials who raise objections to the official story are
written off as conspiracy theorists.
Why does an ignorant
American public think it knows more than experts?
Why do
Americans believe a government that told them the intentional
lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction despite
the fact that the weapons inspectors reported to President Bush
that Hussein had no such weapons?
And now we see the same thing
all over again with the alleged, but non-existent, Iranian
nukes.
As Frantz Fanon wrote, the power of cognitive dissonance is
extreme. It keeps people comfortable and safe from threatening
information.
Most Americans find the government’s lies
preferable to the truth. They don’t want to be unplugged from
the Matrix. The truth is too uncomfortable for emotionally and
mentally weak Americans.
Worthington focuses on the harm being done to detainees. They
have been abused for much of their lives. Their innocence or
guilt cannot be established because the evidence is compromised
by torture, self-incrimination, and coerced testimony against
others. They stand convicted by the government’s accusation
alone. These are real wrongs, and Worthington is correct to
emphasize them.
In contrast, my focus is on the harm to America, on the harm to
truth and truth’s power, on the harm to the rule of law and
accountability to the people of the government and its agencies,
on the harm to the moral fabric of the US government and to
liberty in the United States.
As the adage goes, a fish rots from the head. As the government
rots, so does the United States of America.
Paul
Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal.
He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service,
and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments.
His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following.
Click
here
to support his
work.
*
*
No Thanks!
By Gary D. Barnett
It
would be
very difficult for me to think of any term that disgusted me
more than those words uttered continuously in the presence of
virtually any soldier in the United States: "Thank you for your
service."
What service
is actually being praised by those conditioned to say these
empty words? Why are they thanking and praising nearly every
soldier they see?
-
Is it
because hatred of the U.S. is increasing, and new enemies
are being created in the Middle East and all around the rest
of the world?
-
Is it
because thousands and thousands of innocent people are being
killed now in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan,
Libya, Syria, Yemen, and many more are being threatened?
-
Is it
because 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 foreigners, mostly innocent
civilians, have died just since World War II due to U.S.
interference and war?
-
Is it
because indefinite detention without due process, torture,
assassination, and rendition are now common and accepted
practices?
-
Is it
because suicide rates among American soldiers have increased
80% since the Iraq War began?
-
Is it
because mental problems now send more military personnel to
the hospital than any other cause?
-
Is it
because destruction and separation of military families is
rampant?
-
-
Is
it because civil liberties have all but disappeared due
to so-called terrorism legislation? (terror legislation
would be more accurate)
-
Is
it because of the creation of the USA PATRIOT Act,
Military Commissions Act, NDAA, TSA, and Department of
Homeland Security (DHS)?
-
Is
it because of the massive buildup of killer drones
abroad and at home?
-
Is
it because the huge deficit spending to support multiple
aggressive wars is causing economic chaos?
-
Is
it because of the surging number of double amputees of
American soldiers?
-
Is
it because of increasing energy costs due to the United
States unwarranted presence in the Middle East region?
-
Is
it because the domestic police have now become a brutal
militarized force, bent on controlling the entire
population?
I could
of course go on, but the picture is clear. Those who
continue to believe the propaganda about all U.S. wars
leading to the protection of freedom, and to our national
security, are blinded by ignorance, and consumed by pathetic
false patriotism.
No U.S. wars have ever served the purpose
of freedom; they have only served to destroy it.
Due to
these wars of aggression and occupation, our freedoms are
virtually non-existent today. We are spied upon, tracked,
searched without warrant, sexually assaulted, and radiated.
There are now checkpoints in many parts of the country where
it is demanded that we "show our papers," and killer spy
drones are filling our skies. Government agents and the
military are patrolling all U.S. borders, and Blackhawk war
helicopters sporting heavily armed soldiers hanging on
tethers are flying over our cities.
Because
of these wars, the government has gained enormous power, and
continues its assault on liberty. A police state environment
has taken hold, and if not curbed soon, will lead to Martial
Law in the near future.
The DHS has purchased enough killing
ammunition to murder more than twice the population, and on
the say so of one man, Americans can and are being
assassinated. Why?
In order
for our national security to be defended, we first have to
be attacked. That has not happened. In order to protect
freedom here at home, all foreign wars must cease, and all
the government agencies and "terrorism" legislation created
since 9/11 should be abolished immediately!
Every U.S. base
on foreign soil should be closed, and every troop stationed
in another country should come home and enter the private
sector. At least that would be a good start.
There is
a reason that the young are sent as cannon fodder to die in
the wars of the politicians, bankers, and corporations. They
are less likely to challenge the orders they are given;
orders meant to be obeyed regardless of the immoral nature
of those demands, and regardless of the horrible
consequences they will most certainly face.
Those who
"serve" do not serve the people who falsely praise them;
they only serve one master, and that master is the nation
state and its benefactors. It is not "we the people."
Thank
you for your service? Absolutely not! We can’t afford any
more of this kind of service!
Gary
D. Barnett is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc.,
in Lewistown, Montana. Visit
his website.
Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com.
