By David Swanson
"...You know, some people feel like idiots for having believed the Iraq lies. Imagine how they're going to feel when they find out they believed a nation had been invaded when it hadn't..."
How did they imagine they'd get away with it, claiming that Iraq had vast stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and even nuclear weapons?
Defectors had made clear the chemical and biological weapons (some of them provided by the United States) had been destroyed. Inspectors had searched almost every inch of Iraq and said they'd get to the last few inches if given a few more days. Iraq was screaming that it had no such weapons. Numerous nations around the world were agreeing with Iraq. Colin Powell's own staff warned him that his claims would not be deemed plausible.
And yet, they got away with it to such an extent that most well-intentioned people in the United States to this day maintain that nobody can possibly be sure that Bush, Cheney, et alia, knew their statements were false when they made them.
"All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true within itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." —Adolf HitlerThe U.S. media has repeatedly been claiming that Russia has invaded Ukraine. They claim it for a while, and there's obviously been no invasion, so they pause. Then they claim it again.
Or they claim that a convoy of aid trucks constitutes an invasion. But the aid trucks look like aid trucks in all the photographs, and yet nobody has taken similar photographs of any invasion.
When Ukrainian tanks rolled into eastern Ukraine and were surrounded by civilians, we saw photographs and videos. Now there's just a Colin-Powellesque satellite photo from NATO supposedly showing Russian artillery in Ukraine.
The major Russian invasion that apparently comes complete with some sort of muggle-and-photographer-repellant charm is said to consist of 1,000 troops -- or roughly as many troops as the U.S. has now sent back into Iraq in no sort of invasion to worry about whatsoever.
But where are the 1,000 Russian troops invading Ukraine? Ukraine claims to have captured 10 of them, but the captured troops don't seem to have agreed to the story.
And what happened to the other 990? How did someone get close enough to capture 10 but not photograph the other 990?
Meanwhile Russia says it's all lies and publicly urges the United States to engage with Ukraine diplomatically and urge the Ukrainian government to stop bombing its own citizens and work out a federalist system that represents everyone within its borders.
But NATO is busy announcing a counter-invasion to the invisible Russian invasion.
How do they imagine they'll get away with it?
Well, let's see.
Not a single individual responsible for the lies that launched the destruction of Iraq and the death of some million people and the predictable and predicted chaos now tormenting Iraq's whole region has been held accountable in any way.
The lie that Gadaffi was about to slaughter innocents, the lie that facilitated the attack on Libya and the hell that has now been established there -- No one has been held accountable for that lie in any way whatsoever.
The lie that the White House had proof that Assad had used chemical weapons -- No one has been held accountable. No one has even had to recant as they switch targets and propose bombing Assad's enemies.
The lie that drone strikes don't kill innocents and don't kill those who could easily have been arrested instead -- No one has been held accountable.
The lie that the United States had proof Russia had shot down an airplane over Ukraine -- No one has been held accountable, and the United States is opposing an independent investigation.
The lie that torture makes us safe, a lie that led to the United States torturing some folks -- No one at the level of air-conditioned office work has been held responsible at all.
Why do they think they can get away with it?
Because you let them.
Because you don't want to believe they commit such atrocities. Because you don't want to believe they tell big lies.
You know, some people feel like idiots for having believed the Iraq lies. Imagine how they're going to feel when they find out they believed a nation had been invaded when it hadn't.
David Swanson is author of War Is A Lie.
ISIS is America’s New Terror Brand
Endless Propaganda Fuels “War on Terror”
By James F. Tracy
"In the wake of World War I, erstwhile propagandist and political scientist Harold Lasswell famously defined propaganda as “the management of collective attitudes” and the “control over opinion” through “the manipulation of significant symbols.”[1] The extent to which this tradition is enthusiastically upheld in the West and the United States in particular is remarkable...
A case in point is the hysteria Western news media are attempting to create concerning the threat posed by the mercenary-terrorist army now being promoted as the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria, or “ISIS.”... they usefully serve as another raison d’ểtre for America’s terminal “War on Terror.”...
...ISIS is well-financed, militarily proficient, and equipped with modern vehicles and weaponry. It also exhibits an uncanny degree of media savvy in terms of propagating its message in professional-looking videos and on platforms such as YouTube and Twitter...
The overt support of ISIS, combined with the fact that it is battling the same Syrian government the Obama administration overtly sought to wage war against just one year ago, strongly suggest the organization’s sponsorship by Western intelligence and military interests...
...Yet as coverage of the events of September 11, 2001 and subsequent state-sponsored terrorism indicates, such media are essentially a component of the national security state, their reports and broadcast scripts all but overtly written by intelligence and military organizations.
In the wake of 9/11 US news media seldom asked about the origins of Al Qaeda—particularly how it was a product of US intelligence agencies. With the history of Al Qaeda omitted, the Bush administration was permitted to wage war on Afghanistan almost immediately following those staged attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon...
As the United States and world approach the thirteenth anniversary of the most momentous false flag in modern history, the American public would be well-served to remind itself that ISIS is the new Al Qaeda—in other words, the new pretext that will in all likelihood be used to take police state measures at home and military aggression abroad to new, perhaps unprecedented, levels.
With the above in mind, it is telling that one of the US government’s greatest fears isn’t ISIS at all. “The FBI’s most recent threat assessment for domestic terrorism makes no reference to Islamist terror threats,” the Washington Free Beacon reports, “despite last year’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 Fort Hood shooting—both carried out by radical Muslim Americans.”
Instead, the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency is preoccupied with what it deems “domestic extremism” exhibited by its own subjects.[7] A primary manifestation of such “extremism” is possessing the curiosity to discern and seek out truths and information amidst the barrage of manipulated symbols the government and corporate-controlled media use to undermine a potentially informed public.
James F. Tracy Ph.D., Tracy’s work on media history, politics and culture has appeared in a wide variety of academic journals, edited volumes, and alternative news and opinion outlets. http://memoryholeblog.com
Click to read the entire article, and public comments
U.S. Intelligence Veterans Warn Chancellor Merkel About "Russian Invasion.”
By Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (U.S.)
MEMORANDUM FOR: Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Ukraine and NATO
We the undersigned are long-time veterans of U.S. intelligence. We take the unusual step of writing this open letter to you to ensure that you have an opportunity to be briefed on our views prior to the NATO summit on Sept. 4-5.
You need to know, for example, that accusations of a major Russian “invasion” of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the “intelligence” seems to be of the same dubious, politically “fixed” kind used 12 years ago to “justify” the U.S.-led attack on Iraq...
...This is precisely why the situation demands a concerted effort for a ceasefire, which you know Kiev has so far been delaying. What is to be done at this point?
In our view, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk need to be told flat-out that membership in NATO is not in the cards – and that NATO has no intention of waging a proxy war with Russia – and especially not in support of the rag-tag army of Ukraine. Other members of NATO need to be told the same thing.
Via - Consortiumnews
Read the entire Memorandum to Merkel
Who’s Telling the ‘Big Lie’ on Ukraine?
By Robert Parry
If you wonder how the world could stumble into World War III – much as it did into World War I a century ago – all you need to do is look at the madness that has enveloped virtually the entire U.S. political/media structure over Ukraine where a false narrative of white hats vs. black hats took hold early and has proved impervious to facts or reason.
The original lie behind Official Washington’s latest “group think” was that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis in Ukraine as part of some diabolical scheme to reclaim the territory of the defunct Soviet Union, including Estonia and other Baltic states. Though not a shred of U.S. intelligence supported this scenario, all the “smart people” of Washington just “knew” it to be true.
Yet, the once-acknowledged – though soon forgotten – reality was that the crisis was provoked last year by the European Union proposing an association agreement with Ukraine while U.S. neocons and other hawkish politicos and pundits envisioned using the Ukraine gambit as a way to undermine Putin inside Russia...
...You might think that unleashing Nazi storm troopers on a European population for the first time since World War II would be a big story – given how much coverage is given to far less significant eruptions of neo-Nazi sentiment in Europe – but this ugly reality in Ukraine disappeared quickly into the U.S. media’s memory hole. It didn’t fit the preferred good guy/bad guy narrative, with the Kiev regime the good guys and Putin the bad guy...
Even more disturbing, the mainstream U.S. news media and Washington’s entire political class continue to ignore the Kiev government’s killing of thousands of ethnic Russians, including children and other non-combatants. The “responsibility to protect” crowd has suddenly lost its voice...
And now there’s the curious case of Russia’s alleged “invasion” of Ukraine, another alarmist claim trumpeted by the Kiev regime and echoed by NATO hardliners and the MSM.
While I’m told that Russia did provide some light weapons to the rebels early in the struggle so they could defend themselves and their territory – and a number of Russian nationalists have crossed the border to join the fight – the claims of an overt “invasion” with tanks, artillery and truck convoys have been backed up by scant intelligence.
One former U.S. intelligence official who has examined the evidence said the intelligence to support the claims of a significant Russian invasion amounted to “virtually nothing.” Instead, it appears that the ethnic Russian rebels may have evolved into a more effective fighting force than many in the West thought. They are, after all, fighting on their home turf for their futures...
Indeed, Americans [or anyone else] who rely on these powerful news outlets for their information are as sheltered from reality as anyone living in a totalitarian society.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com .
How can U.S. citizens stop the insane War Machine?
How can they take back the political
"power of the people" from the criminals and 'dead people' who now
control the U.S. Congress?
Well, consider this interesting idea from Dennis Morrisseau, 2LT US Army [Vietnam era] retired:
Lieutenant Morrisseau's Rebellion
America’s Memory of the Vietnam War in the Epoch of the Forever War
By H. Bruce Franklin
WHILE WASHINGTON PONDERS the ifs and wheres of our next military adventures, the hawks are shrieking against America’s “war weariness” and croaking that Americans have no right to be weary. Robert Samuelson writes in The Washington Post that our unending wars have “posed no burdens, required no sacrifices, and involved no disruptions” for us civilians. William Kristol, who promised us in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq would be a “two month war, not an eight year war,” raves that the “war-weary public” must again be “awakened and rallied.” Sounding her familiar alarm, Condoleezza Rice urges us to “heed the wake-up call of Ukraine” before it’s too late. “Of what exactly are you weary,” demands an irate Wall Street Journal correspondent, arguing that those with an authentic right to weariness are just “those who have suffered severe physical and mental wounds or lost a loved one.” War-weary citizens seem to be just a gaggle of selfish, spoiled brats, traitors to the heroes fighting our wars.
Maybe we have no right to be weary of our young service people getting maimed and killed, weary of the slaughter and devastation we have been inflicting on peoples in dozens of nations, or selfishly weary of having trillions of dollars sucked out of health care, education, infrastructure, and the environment to pay for these wars. Whatever the reason, it’s true that the American people are fed up with our nonstop wars, even the proxy ones. Polls show 61 percent of Americans opposed to any US intervention of any kind in Ukraine. During the run-up to Washington’s planned military intervention in Syria in the fall of 2013, polls revealed 63 percent of Americans opposed to any form of military action, even to risk-free missile strikes on Syrian air bases.[i]
And the hawks better watch out before calling on the troops to applaud their war cries and tirades against war weariness. For obvious reasons, the soldiers are even sicker of this endless combat than we civilians. When the Military Times polled active-duty service people during Washington’s threat to intervene in Syria, the troops opposed any form of intervention by a three-to-one margin. Eighty percent said that any intervention was not in the US national interest.
Teaching students in the 21st century — including the combat veterans, National Guard soldiers, and reservists in my classes at Rutgers University, Newark — I have to keep reminding myself that they have lived their entire conscious lives during America’s endless warfare. For them, that must seem not just normal, but how it has always been and always will be. Is that also true for the rest of us?
I had to rethink this question a few months ago, when I woke one day to discover that I was 80 years old. For more than half a century I’ve been involved in struggles to stop wars being waged by our nation or to keep it from starting new ones. Before that, in the late 1950s, I had spent three years in the US Air Force flying in Strategic Air Command operations of espionage and provocation against the Soviet Union and participating in launches for full-scale thermonuclear war. Some of these launches were just practice, but a few were real war strikes that were recalled while we were in flight just minutes before it would have been too late. (I recall with embarrassment that I never had a flicker of doubt about whether I should be participating in the start of a thermonuclear Armageddon.) And before that were four years of ROTC, which I joined during the Korean War, a war that had started when I was 16. From age 11 to 16, I had bounced right from the Victory Culture at the end of World War II into the repression and militarization of the early Cold War years.
So it dawned on me that living one’s life during America’s Forever War is hardly unique to those millennials I’m teaching. How many people alive today have ever lived part of their conscious lives in a United States of America at peace with the rest of the world? Would someone even older than I am have any meaningful memory of what such a state of peace was like? How many Americans are even capable of imagining such a state? I can remember only two periods, bracketing World War II, when I believed I lived in a nation at peace. And even these were arguably just childish illusions. . . .
The day after our celebration of V-J Day, 8,000 miles away another people celebrated the surrender of Japan quite differently. That day was the beginning of the August Revolution, when the Vietnamese people rose up and in less than three weeks swept away Japanese and French control and established the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
As the movement against the Vietnam War surged between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, it discovered some of that early history. The movement had thought that it began in the 1960s and was unaware of its own birth within the first few months of the life of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The American people’s struggle against our nation’s war against Vietnam began, we came to learn, just a few months after our celebration of victory and peace in August 1945.
On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence to half a million Vietnamese people jam-packed before him in Hanoi, the old capital of a new nation that had been fighting for its independence for more than 2,000 years. “`All [people] are created equal,’” he read. “`They are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.’ This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.” Suddenly two warplanes appeared overhead. The crowd gazed up. They saw two of those weird-looking P-38 Lightning fighter-bombers. When they recognized the US insignia on the planes, those half-million people, acting like a single being, let out an earthshaking cheer. Just as we kids in the truck believed in America’s peaceful future, the Vietnamese believed that we Americans were their friends and allies, that we would be the champions of their freedom and independence from colonialism.
At that very moment, Washington was planning with the French government to launch an invasion of Vietnam designed to overthrow the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and restore French colonial rule. . . .
Although cultural memory is the sum of individual memories, a society’s collective cultural memory can reshape or overwhelm individual memory. Perhaps this is what convinced President Obama in 2012 to issue his “Presidential Proclamation — Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Vietnam War” calling for a 13-year campaign of thousands of events throughout the nation to honor the three million “proud Americans” who “upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces […] fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans.” The Proclamation began by defining 2012 as the 50th anniversary, but how did he calculate this? On Memorial Day that year, speaking at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the President explained that although “historians cannot agree precisely when the war began,” 1962 marked the beginning of “major operations.” Choosing this date conveniently consigned to a black hole of historical and cultural memory the previous 17 years of proxy operations, the creation of a puppet regime in Saigon, the covert operations (including the beginning of chemical warfare designed to obliterate South Vietnam’s rainforests), and the active combat by thousands of US “advisors.” . . .
Recognizing the divisiveness of the Vietnam War, the President chose a neutral, disinterested, objective organization to organize and run the commemoration: the Department of Defense. The Pentagon has already organized, in collaboration with state and local governments, hundreds of events designed to carry out the mission proclaimed in the Presidential Proclamation. These are just the beginning of a campaign that will climax in 2025 when we officially commemorate the end of the war. Will that, then, become a victory celebration? Or will we have learned the real reasons for the Vietnam War, and the real lessons of that war, and thus put an end, if not to war forever, at least to our ongoing Forever War?
By H. Bruce Franklin
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKSJuly 16th, 2014
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