darethefuture.us

Assassination Inc.

Threatens Us All

by Fred Branfman

The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America’s military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people.

The Muslim World

Conducting assassination operations throughout the 1.3 billon-strong Muslim world will inevitably increase the murder of civilians and thus create exponentially more “enemies.”

This mass assassination program is being sold to the public as a program designed to defend Americans.

The U.S. has conducted assassination programs in the Third World for decades, but the actual killing-though directed and financed by the C.I.A.-has been largely left to local paramilitary and police forces.

This has now changed dramatically. [Please see our articles, "The Death Squads: Bringing in the Kingdom of God through Terror, Torture and Death" and "The Horror of John Dimitri Negroponte and Everything He Stands Represents."]

What is unprecedented today is the vast number of Americans directly assassinating Muslims - through greatly expanded U.S. military Special Operations teams, U.S. drone strikes and private espionage networks run by former CIA assassins and torturers. Most significant is the expanding geographic scope of their killing. For example, CENTCOM (US Central Command) has received secret and unprecedented permission to unilaterally engage in Phoenix-type assassination operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran, former Russian Republics, Yemen, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, the Horn of Africa, and wherever else it deems necessary. [For information on the Phoenix Program, please see addendum attached to the article, "About S.R. Shearer."]

Never before has a nation unleashed so many assassins in so many foreign nations around the world (9,000 Special Operations soldiers are based in Iraq and Afghanistan alone - i.e., Phoenix-type operatives) as well as implemented a policy that can be best described as unprecedented, remote-control, large-scale “mechanized assassination.” As the N.Y. Times noted in December 2009:

“For the first time in history, a civilian intelligence agency is using robots to carry out a military mission, selecting people for killing in a country where the United States is not officially at war.”

This combination of human and technological murder amounts to a worldwide “Assassination Inc.” that is unique in human affairs.

The increasing shift to direct U.S. assassination began on Petraeus’s watch in Iraq, where targeted assassination was considered by many within the military to be more important than the “surge.” The killing of Al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was considered a major triumph that significantly reduced the level of violence. As Bob Woodward reported in The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008:

Locate, target and kill

“Beginning in about May 2006, the U.S. military and the U.S. intelligence agencies launched a series of top secret operations that enabled them to locate, target and kill key individuals in extremist groups.

“A number of authoritative sources say these covert activities had a far-reaching effect on the violence and were very possibly the biggest factor in reducing it. Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) responsible for hunting al Qaeda in Iraq, (conducted) lightning-quick and sometimes concurrent operations.”

Woodward’s finding that many “authoritative sources” believed assassination more important than the surge was buttressed by Petraeus’ appointment of McChrystal to lead U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

McChrystal’s major qualification for the post was clearly his perceived expertise in assassination while heading JSOC from 2003-’08 (where he also conducted extensive torture at “Camp Nama” at Baghdad International Airport, successfully excluding even the Red Cross).

Another key reason for the increased reliance on assassination is that Petraeus’ announced counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan obviously cannot work. It is absurd to believe that the corrupt warlords and cronies who make up the “Afghan government” can be transformed into the viable entity upon which his strategy publicly claims to depend-particularly within the next year which President Obama has set as a deadline before beginning to withdraw U.S. troops. Petraeus is instead largely relying on mass assassination to try and eliminate the Taliban, both within Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A third factor behind the shift to mass assassination is that Petraeus and the U.S. military are also determined to attack jihadi forces in nations where the U.S. is not at war, and which are not prepared to openly invite in U.S. forces. As the N.Y. Times reported on May 24, “General Petraeus (has argued) that troops need to operate beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to better fight militant groups.”

The most significant aspect of this new and expanded assassination policy is the Pentagon’s authorizing clandestine U.S. military personnel to conduct it. The N.Y. Times has also reported:

“In roughly a dozen countries-from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife-the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists (Military) Special Operations troops under secret ‘Execute Orders’ have conducted spying missions that were once the preserve of civilian intelligence agencies.”

Particularly extraordinary is the fact that these vastly expanded military assassination teams are not subject to serious civilian control. As the N.Y. Times has also reported, Petraeus in September 2009 secretly expanded a worldwide force of assassins answerable only to the military, without oversight by not only Congress but the president himself:

“The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents. The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa. Unlike covert actions undertaken by the C.I.A., such clandestine activity does not require the president’s approval or regular reports to Congress.” [Emphasis added]

Although sold to the American public and Congress as targeted, selective assassination aimed only at a handful of “high value” insurgent leaders, the program has in fact already expanded far beyond that. As personnel and aircraft devoted to assassination exponentially increase, so too do the numbers of people they murder, both “insurgents” and civilians.

While it is reasonable to assume that expanding the number of Special Operations commandos to its present worldwide level of 13,000 will result in increasing assassinations, the secrecy of their operations makes it impossible to know how many they have murdered, how many of those are civilians, and the effectiveness of their operations. It is not known, for example, how many people U.S. military assassins murder directly, and how many they kill indirectly by identifying them for drone strikes.

More information, however, has emerged about the parallel and unprecedented mass mechanized assassinations being carried out by the C.I.A. drone programs. It is clear that they have already expanded far beyond the official cover story of targeting only “high-level insurgent leaders,” and are killing increasing numbers of people.

The CIA, of course, is no novice at assassination. Former CIA Director William Colby’s Operation Phoenix program in South Vietnam gave South Vietnamese police quotas of the number of civilians to be murdered on a weekly and monthly basis, eventually killing 20-50,000 people. CIA operatives such as Latin American Station Chief Duane “Dewey” Clarridge also established, trained and operated local paramilitary and death squads throughout Central and Latin America that brutally tortured and murdered tens of thousands of civilians, most notably in El Salvador where CIA-trained and -directed killers murdered Archbishop Romero and countless other Salvadorans.

But the present CIA assassination program in Pakistan and elsewhere is different not only because it is Americans who are themselves the assassins, but because of the unprecedented act of conducting mechanized mass assassination from the air. The CIA, as Nick Turse has reported for TomDispatch.com, is exponentially increasing its drone assassination program:

“(Drone) Reapers flew 25,391 hours (in 2009). This year, the air force projects that the combined flight hours of all its drones will exceed 250,000 hours. More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing.”

There were already signs in 2009, when drone strikes were a fraction of what they are now, that they were striking large numbers of civilians.

Since then drone strikes have increased exponentially and the scope of the killing has likewise increased far beyond the claimed “high-level insurgent leaders.” The N.Y. Times reported on Aug. 14:

“[The CIA has] broadened its drone campaign beyond selective strikes against Qaeda leaders and now regularly obliterates suspected enemy compounds and logistics convoys, just as the military would grind down an enemy force.”

Reuters reported on May 5 that:

“The CIA received approval to target a wider range of targets in Pakistan’s tribal areas, including low-level fighters whose identities may not be known, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Former intelligence officials acknowledged that in many, if not most cases, the CIA had little information about the foot soldiers killed in the strikes.”

What this means is clear: the CIA is assassinating an expanding number of “low-level” people, labeling them as “fighters,” but has little if any idea of who they really are.

Numerous moral, legal and ethical objections have been raised to this program of mass assassination. Philip Alston, the United Nations special representative on extrajudicial executions, has stated that -

“… this strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability is not an entitlement which the United States or other states can have without doing grave damage to the rules designed to protect the right to life and prevent extrajudicial executions.”

Clarridge

The notion that a handful of U.S. military and CIA officials have the right to unilaterally and secretly murder anyone they choose in any nation on earth, without even outside knowledge let alone oversight, is deeply troubling to anyone with a conscience, belief in democracy, or respect for international law. It was precisely such behavior that made the Gestapo and Soviet secret police symbols of evil.

Nonetheless, this program of assassination continues - and so much so that Duane ‘Dewey’ Clarridge, one of the masterminds behind the present U.S. policy of assassination, says:

“We’ll intervene whenever we decide it’s in our national security interest. AND IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, LUMP IT. GET USED TO IT WORLD!”

IRAQ WAR … 2010

THE DEADLIEST YEAR YET

BLOOD FLOWS IN AFGHANISTAN AS OBAMA PROCLAIMS 'END' TO IRAQ WAR
2010 THE DEADLIEST YEAR YET
 
By Michael Prysner
 
As the month of August came to an end, it seemed that something may
happen in Afghanistan for the first time in 2010: that the month would
not surpass the previous year's record-setting number of U.S.
troop fatalities.
 
By Aug. 27, only 31 U.S. troops had been killed in combat; 20 shy of
the 51 deaths in August 2009.
 
It was during the last week of August 2010, that the Obama
administration began prodding us to cheer the "end" of the
Iraq war-a key campaign promise that helped propel Obama to the
presidency, after people in the United States turned against the
senseless, constant death of U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians.
 
But while the White House pumped out cheery statements, photo-ops, and
a dramatic "exit" with manufactured fanfare, the blood
started flowing much more heavily from Afghanistan.
 
On Aug. 27, four U.S. troops were killed. Three of the dead were only
20-years-old.
 
Between Aug. 28 and 29, eight more troops lost their lives, bringing
the month's total to 43 deaths-still short of the previous
year.
 
Then, in one of the deadliest days of the war, seven U.S. troops were
killed on Aug 30. Six more died on Aug. 31 to close out the month.
 
What looked like a month that would end with fewer deaths ended with a
flurry of violence that again broke the previous year's record.
Fifty-six U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in August 2010.
 
For eight consecutive months, U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have
shattered the number of deaths for the same month in every previous
year of the war.
 
And with 25 fatalities in just the last five days of the month, yet
another milestone of death and destruction in Afghanistan was reached:
2010 is now the deadliest year of the entire war. A total of 326 U.S.
troops are dead so far, up from 317 in 2009. Many more bloody months
lie ahead.
 
Nothing changes for GIs
 
As veterans and active duty members of the U.S. military, the
escalating death in Afghanistan should make it quite obvious why we
are not celebrating the supposed "end" of the war in Iraq.
We will still be sent on deployment after deployment to a bloody
battlefield, for an indefinite number of years, in a war we have no
reason to fight; with the same inadequate care when we return. Our
children will continue to grow up without us while we are gone on
repeated year-long deployments.
 
The war in Iraq is not over. It was just been re-branded by the White
House and Pentagon. We will still be abusively deployed to Iraq while
suffering from PTSD and TBI, and will continue to be shot and blown-up
there.
 
The re-positioning of U.S. forces in the region means that most of us
will be taken from the criminal war in Iraq, where U.S. casualties
have dropped, to the criminal war in Afghanistan, where U.S.
casualties are higher than ever.
 
This is why March Forward! will continue to fight, both inside and out
of the military, for the complete and immediate withdrawal of all U.S.
troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. This is why GIs questioning their
deployment to these senseless wars should refuse their orders and join
the ranks of the anti-war movement. And this is why all the
progressive people who have fought shoulder-to-shoulder with us
throughout the years should continue to struggle.
 
The Obama administration has not changed the United State's warpath.
It has pumped more money into the Pentagon than ever before. The needs
of big capital still drive U.S. foreign policy. The blood continues to
flow from innocent civilians and U.S. troops. Education, jobs, and
social services continue to be slashed to fund the further extension
of U.S. military might. Escalating threats against other countries
reveal plans for future imperial wars of aggression.
 
The U.S. government is desperate for anger over the wars to subside
because they know that we have the power to stand in the way of the
crimes they commit to reap super-profits for a few.
 
They tried to quell that anger by forcing down our throats the false
"end" of a war that should have never started.
 
But how could any of us feel any relief over a sudden, and not
decisively permanent, lull in U.S. fatalities, when the backdrop to
Obama's address from the Oval Office was a tidal wave of blood
from Afghanistan?
 
The longest war in U.S. history is now in its deadliest year-and
the generals tell us it will only get worse. Just like the war in
Iraq, it is a war based on lies and deception. We have no reason to
fight this war, and every reason to fight against it.
 
The "end" of the war in Iraq should fall on deaf
ears-because the colonial-type war on the entire region is
escalating and expanding. We are paying with our blood, our limbs, our
loved ones and our money.

September 1, 2010

by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Things which don’t go away.

Things the American government

and media don’t let go of.

And neither do I.

Iraq

“They’re leaving as heroes. I want them to walk home with pride in their hearts,” declared Col. John Norris, the head of a US Army brigade in Iraq. ¹

It’s enough to bring tears to the eyes of an American, enough to make him choke up.

Enough to make him forget.

But no American should be allowed to forget that the nation of Iraq, the society of Iraq, have been destroyed, ruined, a failed state. The Americans, beginning 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, killed wantonly, tortured … the people of that unhappy land have lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lie in wait for children to pick them up … an army of young Islamic men went to Iraq to fight the American invaders; they left the country more militant, hardened by war, to spread across the Middle East, Europe and Central Asia … a river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

No matter … drum roll, please … Stand tall American GI hero! And don’t even think of ever apologizing. Iraq is forced by the United States to continue paying reparations for its own invasion of Kuwait in 1990. How much will the American heroes pay the people of Iraq?

“Unhappy the land that has no heroes …
No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes.”
– Bertolt Brecht, Life of Galileo

“What we need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war; something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be incompatible.”
– William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Perhaps the groundwork for that heroism already exists … February 15, 2003, a month before the US invasion of Iraq, probably the largest protest in human history, between six and ten million protesters took to the streets of some 800 cities in nearly sixty countries across the globe.

Iraq. Love it or leave it.

PanAm 103

The British government recently warned Libya against celebrating the one-year anniversary of Scotland’s release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who’s the only person ever convicted of the 1988 blowing up of PanAm flight 103 over Scotland, which took the lives of 270 largely Americans and British. Britain’s Foreign Office has declared: “On this anniversary we understand the continuing anguish that al-Megrahi’s release has caused his victims both in the U.K. and the U.S. He was convicted for the worst act of terrorism in British history. Any celebration of al-Megrahi’s release would be tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive to the victims’ families.”

John Brennan, President Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser, stated that the United States has “expressed our strong conviction” to Scottish officials that Megrahi should not remain free. Brennan criticized what he termed the “unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision” to allow Megrahi’s return to Libya on compassionate grounds on Aug. 20, 2009 because he had cancer and was not expected to live more than about three months. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a statement saying that the United States “continues to categorically disagree” with Scotland’s decision to release Megrahi a year ago. “As we have expressed repeatedly to Scottish authorities, we maintain that Megrahi should serve out the entirety of his sentence in prison in Scotland.” ² The US Senate has called for an investigation and family members of the crash victims have demanded that Megrahi’s medical records be released. The Libyan’s failure to die as promised has upset many people.

But how many of our wonderful leaders are upset that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi spent eight years in prison despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that he had anything to do with the bombing of flight 103? The Scottish court that convicted him knew he was innocent. To understand that just read their 2001 “Opinion of the Court”, or read my analysis of it at killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm.

As to the British government being so upset about Libya celebrating Megrahi’s release — keeping in mind that it strongly appears that UK oil deals with Libya played more of a role in his release than his medical condition did — we should remember that in July 1988 an American Navy ship in the Persian Gulf, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian passenger plane, taking the lives of 290 people; i.e., more than died from flight 103. And while the Iranian people mourned their lost loved ones, the United States celebrated by handing out medals and ribbons to the captain and crew of the Vincennes. ³ The shootdown had another consequence: It inspired Iran to take revenge, which it did in December of that year, financing the operation to blow up PanAm 103 (carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine –- General Command).

Why do they hate us?

Passions are flying all over the place concerning the proposed building of an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from 9/11 Ground Zero in New York. Even people who are not particularly anti-Muslim think it would be in bad taste, offensive. But implicit in all the hostility is the idea that what happened on that fateful day in 2001 was a religious act, fanatic Muslims acting as Muslims attacking infidels. However — even if one accepts the official government version of 19 Muslims hijacking four airliners — the question remains: Why did they choose the targets they chose? If they wanted to kill lots of American infidels why not fly the planes into the stands of packed football or baseball stadiums in the midwest or the south? Certainly a lot less protected than the Pentagon or the financial center of downtown Manhattan. Why did they choose symbols of US military might and imperialism? Because it was not a religious act, it was a political act. It was revenge for decades of American political and military abuse in the Middle East. ⁴ It works the same all over the world. In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s in Latin America, in response to continuous hateful policies of Washington, there were countless acts of terrorism against American diplomatic and military targets as well as the offices of US corporations; nothing to do with religion.

Somehow, American leaders have to learn that their country is not exempt from history, that their actions have consequences.

Afghanistan

In their need to defend the US occupation of Afghanistan, many Americans have cited the severe oppression of women in that desperate land and would have you believe that the United States is the last great hope of those poor ladies. However, in the 1980s the United States played an indispensable role in the overthrow of a secular and relatively progressive Afghan government, one which endeavored to grant women much more freedom than they’ll ever have under the current government, more perhaps than ever again. Here are some excerpts from a 1986 US Army manual on Afghanistan discussing the policies of this government concerning women: “provisions of complete freedom of choice of marriage partner, and fixation of the minimum age at marriage at 16 for women and 18 for men”; “abolished forced marriages”; “bring [women] out of seclusion, and initiate social programs”; “extensive literacy programs, especially for women”; “putting girls and boys in the same classroom”; “concerned with changing gender roles and giving women a more active role in politics”. ⁵

The overthrow of this government paved the way for the coming to power of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, followed by the awful Taliban. And why did the United States in its infinite wisdom choose to do such a thing? Mainly because the Afghan government was allied with the Soviet Union and Washington wanted to draw the Russians into a hopeless military quagmire — “We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War”, said Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser. ⁶

The women of Afghanistan will never know how the campaign to raise them to the status of full human beings would have turned out, but this, some might argue, is but a small price to pay for a marvelous Cold War victory.

Cuba

Why does the mainstream media routinely refer to Cuba as a dictatorship? Why is it not uncommon even for people on the left to do the same? I think that many of the latter do so in the belief that to say otherwise runs the risk of not being taken seriously, largely a vestige of the Cold War when Communists all over the world were ridiculed for following Moscow’s party line. But what does Cuba do or lack that makes it a dictatorship? No “free press”? Apart from the question of how free Western media is, if that’s to be the standard, what would happen if Cuba announced that from now on anyone in the country could own any kind of media? How long would it be before CIA money — secret and unlimited CIA money financing all kinds of fronts in Cuba — would own or control most of the media worth owning or controlling?

Is it “free elections” that Cuba lacks? They regularly have elections at municipal, regional and national levels. Money plays virtually no role in these elections; neither does party politics, including the Communist Party, since candidates run as individuals.⁷ Again, what is the standard by which Cuban elections are to be judged? Most Americans, if they gave it any thought, might find it difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic election, without great concentrations of corporate money, would look like, or how it would operate. Would Ralph Nader finally be able to get on all 50 state ballots, take part in national television debates, and be able to match the two monopoly parties in media advertising? If that were the case, I think he’d probably win; and that’s why it’s not the case. Or perhaps what Cuba lacks is our marvelous “electoral college” system, where the presidential candidate with the most votes is not necessarily the winner. If we really think this system is a good example of democracy why don’t we use it for local and state elections as well?

Is Cuba a dictatorship because it arrests dissidents? Thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. Many have been beaten by police and mistreated while incarcerated. And remember: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. (This is documented by Cuba in a 1999 suit against the United States detailing $181.1 billion in compensation for victims: the death of 3,478 Cubans and the wounding or disabling of 2,099 others. The Cuban suit has been in the hands of the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the United Nations since 2001, a committee made up of all 15 members of the Security Council, which of course includes the United States, and which may account for the inaction on the matter.)

Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds from al Qaeda and engaging in repeated meetings with known members of that organization? In recent years the United States has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents’ ties to the United States. Virtually all of Cuba’s “political prisoners” are such dissidents. While others may call Cuba’s security policies dictatorship, I call it self-defense.⁸

The terrorist list

As casually and as routinely as calling Cuba a dictatorship, the mainstream media drops the line into news stories that “Hezbollah [or Hamas, or FARC, etc.] is considered a terrorist group by the United States”, stated as matter-of-factly as saying that Hezbollah is located in Lebanon. Inclusion on the list limits an organization in various ways, such as its ability to raise funds and travel internationally. And inclusion is scarcely more than a political decision made by the US government. Who is put on or left off the State Department’s terrorist list bears a strong relation to how supportive of US or Israeli policies the group is. The list, for example, never includes any of the anti-Castro Cuban groups or individuals in Florida although those people have carried out literally hundreds of terrorist acts over the past few decades, in Latin America, in the US, and in Europe. As you read this, the two men responsible for blowing up a Cuban airline in 1976, taking 73 lives, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, are walking around free in the Florida sunshine. Imagine that Osama bin Laden was walking freely around the Streets of an Afghan or Pakistan city taking part in political demonstrations as Posada does in Florida. Venezuela asked the United States to extradite Posada five years ago and is still waiting.

Bosch and Posada are but two of hundreds of Latin-American terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over the years. ⁹ Various administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have also provided close support of terrorists in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, including those with known connections to al Qaeda. Yet, in the grand offices of the State Department sit learned men who list Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism”, along with Syria, Sudan and Iran. ¹⁰ That’s the complete list.

Meanwhile, the five Cubans sent to Miami to monitor the anti-Castro terrorists are in their 12th year in US prisons. The Cuban government made the very foolish error of turning over to the FBI the evidence of terrorist activities gathered by the five Cubans. Instead of arresting the terrorists, the FBI arrested the five Cubans (sic).

Steroids

“Hall of Shamer: Clemens Indicted” — page one headline in large type about fabled baseball pitcher Roger Clemens charged with lying to Congress about his use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. ¹¹ Of all the things that athletes put into their bodies to improve their health, fitness and performance, why are steroids singled out? Doesn’t taking vitamin and mineral supplements give an athlete an advantage over athletes who don’t take them? Should these supplements be banned from sport competition? Vitamin and mineral supplements are not necessarily any more “natural” than steroids, which in fact are very important in our body chemistry; among the steroids are the male and female sex hormones. Moreover, why not punish those who follow a “healthy diet” because of the advantage this may give them?

Notes

1. Washington Post, August 19, 2010 ^?
2. Associated Press, August 21, 2010 ^?
3. Newsweek, July 13, 1992 ^?
4. See chapter one of Blum’s book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower^?
5. US Department of the Army, Afghanistan, A Country Study (1986), pp.121, 128, 130, 223, 232 ^?
6. See Brzezinski’s Wikipedia entry ^?
7. See Anti-Empire Report of September 25, 2006, 3rd item, for more information about the Cuban election process ^?
8. For a detailed discussion of Cuba’s alleged political prisoners see article ‘Cuba and the Number of “Political Prisoners”‘, Huffington Post, August 24th 2010 ^?
9. Rogue State, Chapter 9 ^?
10. See State Department: www.state.gov/s/ct/c14151.htm ^?
11. The Examiner (Washington, DC), August 20, 2010 ^?

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with “add” in the subject line. I’d like your name and city in the message, but that’s optional. I ask for your city only in case I’ll be speaking in your area.

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The Last Hiccups Of

The Falling Empire

Posted on 28. Jul, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in Pak-US Relations

Pakistan Warned; Noose Being Tightened

“There is no doubt in anyone’s mind that should an attack against the United States be traced to be Pakistani it would have a very devastating impact on our relationship” Hillary Clinton

By Raja G Mujtaba

Wiki leaks, Hillary threats, Mike Mullen’s parrot repeats, Holbrooke’s Viceroy authority all in one chorus sounds like a band show going on the in front of Metropolitan Museum of Art on Madison Avenue in full glare of the media spot lights, CNN, Fox News in the forefront.

Why this sudden change and surge of media statements, leaks, open threats in every conceivable way to threaten Pakistan as a reward for her all out support and participation in the so called ‘War on Terror.’ I knew it from day one, that American arrival in Afghanistan with complete involvement of NATO was basically a buildup against Pakistan. I had said it repeatedly in my articles and talks that I delivered at various forums. America wanted to be here to denuclearize, deislamise and delink Pakistan from China; a Zionist dream.

Hillary, am not surprised, behind the soft skin of your face I could always see a devil smiling. It had to, after all you have been awarded for your commitment to the Zionist cause. It’s well known that when you were contesting the senate election, Pakistani Americans had raised funds for you that you very conveniently returned after having been elected to the office saying that you would not be able to support the Muslim world against Israel. So you were committed, you lost the presidential race but the Zionists did not lose you; very promptly they brought you as Secretary of State so you could deliver.

Your last visit to Pakistan where you did some PR exercise, was a total farce, people were showering praises on you but I knew you were just charming them to betray them after they had reposed trust and faith in you. You could not have betrayed and hit back had they not fallen for your charms.

All the media slender that has unleashed after your opening salvo from the Pakistan soil is no less than a diplomatic terrorism; through your statements, you have tried to intimidate the people of Pakistan. You are proving a bigger terrorists, Osama is not even a shadow of yours if he was a terrorist. After your opening round the rest of the guns fired like at the Normandy landings, all well planned and rehearsed. There is no slip of even a coma or a full stop in their texts.

What is mind boggling that you as first lady of America could not spot Monica Lewinsky playing games with Bill Clinton right under your nose in the Whitehouse basement but you had a very sharp vision to locate Osama in the mountains of Pakistan where even mules can’t reach. Lady you must remember that it has been your state office and other agencies that have been releasing statements about Osama’s death. Now how all of a sudden you have brought to life the carcass that has been moth and worm eaten if any pieces were left after Daisy Cutters that must have blown him into dust or at best he could have been buried somewhere deep in the hills of Tora Bora. Bravo Lady Clinton bravo.

Before this final assault on Pakistan to cover your defeat in Afghanistan at the hands of ill equipped Taliban who have literally made you eat dust, you started a series of events to zero Pakistan with some profiling. Of such events, there is a long list that can be quoted but would just mention  a last few like Faisal Shahzad in Times Square, dispatching of five American youths to Sargodha in Pakistan where the biggest air base is located, raising a false flag in Chili where again a Pakistani was involved for his clothes smelled. The Chili police released him but the American fugitive got him arrested again thereafter never heard of him. What happened in London bombing, Spain were all links of the same chain.

A media campaign to profile Pakistan as the next evil doer has been going on since 9/11. At various intervals and various locations around the world, some false flag has been raised to profile Pakistan in some terror activity. Immediately after 9/11, two Mossad agents were arrested in Mexico with Pakistani passports on an assumed charge of some terror activity there. Jeff Gates, Gordon Duff and Wayne Madsen are but a few names who have written enough on the subject. Now that James Mel Rockefeller has also come out in the open, he has lot more to add and expose you false flag operations.

A few days back, Omar bin Laden, one of the sons of the alleged Al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden has said that he believes his father is still alive, and that he still loves him in spite of his links to various terror-related tragedies around the world. This is a statement that has clear signature of have been prompted by putting words in his mouth. Hillary wanted to have a ground accuse Pakistan for harbouring Osama Bin Laden so that grounds are prepared to attack. If this be true, then Hillary should be looking in the basement of Whitehouse where Monica too found a safe heaven.

Hillary is not the first secretary of state to have terrorised Pakistan, the former iron lady Condolisa Rice, commonly known in this part of the world as Queen Sheeba is on record to have given some very serious threats to terrorise Pakistan. Richard Armitage wanted to take us into stone age; these are just a few names.  I can go back to Henry Kissinger era too or that of Madeline Albright but don’t want to run out of space.

It has been reliably learnt from high credibility sources in DC that now in the power corridors, whisper campaign is going on that balkanisation of Pakistan is fate accomplice. They see it as their necessity like Kissinger thought it necessary to disintegrate Pakistan in 1971. Pakistani public is well aware as to how and for what purpose the present set of government has been brought in. They have their compulsions, they have billions of plundered money stacked in your banks, thus you hold them by the tails. They have no option but to do what you wish them to else they lose all the money. The people know it well that be it PPP, PMLs, ANP, MQM and some other elements are on board to that affect.

It must be kept in mind, in case of any adventurism 180 million people would stand steadfast with complete disregard to what the installed puppets may think to protect and play your game. In that case they would risk their lives at the hands of the public lest they are pulled out by you.

It is evident that now the focus has been lifted off Iran, the spotlight is on Pakistan. This is also a talk in Washington DC that America cannot misadventure in Iran but she thinks that through her installed puppets in Islamabad she can take on Pakistan. Thus for this purpose, Blackwater and other such elements had been pushed in here.

It’s no secret that the key figures of BLA and some dissident tribes like the Bugtis and Marris are in their safety being looked after and fed to be launched as freedom fighters. Recently as reported in the press, one such political asylum has been granted to Dawood Suleman, the Khan of Kalat by the British Government at the behest of the US administration. This is how friends are rewarded by buying out a few traitors to be used as propaganda material against Pakistan.

America is sadly mistaken, Pakistan is not the few puppets installed by them, but 180 million who would shred to pieces any collaborators that dare to side the enemies of Pakistan. At this critical juncture, Pakistan has a very committed leadership of the Armed Forces that is very professional and loyal to the soil. The forces are very professional and well trained. They have given ample demonstration of their professional competence in clearing out the miscreants launched by America and her proxies Israel and India. Americans must know, Pakistan is not Iraq, it’s a country armed with all the technologies and mostly indigenous therefore in any given theatre America would get the run for its money.

There is no secret why America is behaving so desperate; the war has been lost, it was Bush’s war that Obama  has owned, the people back home are sick and tired of the lies emanating from Whitehouse, Capitol Hill etc. The body bags are on the rise but are kept hidden from the American public. Bodies are trickled back home in silence so that these don’t become a media stock. Americans want war trials of Bush, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld etc. People of Pakistan would like to include Parvez Musharraf too in the list of war criminals, so do the British who want Bush’s poodle Tony Blair to be tried.

Talking to Karen Kwiatkowski, a retired Lieut Col of the US Air Force on the subject said, “I know that we have a history of turning against past friends and allies — but I don’t understand the point of any attack on Pakistan – even diplomatic attacks as Hillary has been doing — when our best chance of finding any remaining bad guys relating to 9/11 (if you believe the story that those bad guys did 9/11) would lie with Pakistan’s government/local leaders.

Unless we are looking for a backlash — and I heard that mentioned on antiwar.com radio this morning, it could be that in provocation the politicians and generals feel they can sustain their presence in Afghanistan.  Of course, it is an unpopular war here, but Americans don’t feel the war in a personal way.”

She further stated, “If so, this indicates an amazing amount of stupidity on the part of our generals and politicians, and also desperation.”

This is a high risk gamble that Obama is playing that only fools play to save his own and the necks of his predecessors. Stakes are very high, Obama would be a loser all the way down, this ambitious misadventure would burn America inside out. Her collapse like that of Soviet Union would become inevitable. It’s true that no power has lasted for ever and its equally true that all powers have vanished in pursuit of their mad dreams. Germany, Soviet Union, Great Britain are all examples from the recent history. Now it is a writing on the wall that America’s innings is over. America cannot avert her defeat by expanding the war, in fact it’s destruction under its own weight will be expedited.

Its about time that Nuremberg trials be reenacted and save the innocent people from the wrath of these war perpetrators both in the US and elsewhere.

Raja Mujtaba is the Managing Editor of Opinion Maker that was established in 2007. In this short span, Opinion Maker has made a name for truth with quality where foresight has insight.

He has over 2 decades of writing experience, he has been writing for newspapers and blogs both national and international.

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Sayanim — Israeli Operatives in the U.S

Posted on 23. Jul, 2010 by Editor in Israel

By Jeff Gates

Americans know that something fundamental is amiss. They sense—rightly—that they are being misled no matter which political party does the leading.

A long misinformed public lacks the tools to grasp how they are being deceived. Without those tools, Americans will continue to be frustrated at being played for the fool.

When the “con” is clearly seen, “the mark” (that’s us) will see that all roads lead to the same duplicitous source: Israel and its operatives. The secret to Israel’s force-multiplier in the U.S. is its use of agents, assets and sayanim (Hebrew for volunteers).

When Israeli-American Jonathan Pollard was arrested for spying in 1986, Tel Aviv assured us that he was not an Israeli agent but part of a “rogue” operation. That was a lie.

Only 12 years later did Tel Aviv concede that he was an Israeli spy the entire time he was stealing U.S. military secrets. That espionage—by a purported ally—damaged our national security more than any operation in U.S. history.

In short, Israel played us for the fool.

From 1981-1985, this U.S. Navy intelligence analyst provided Israel with 360 cubic feet of classified military documents on Soviet arms shipments, Pakistani nuclear weapons, Libyan air defense systems and other intelligence sought by Tel Aviv to advance its geopolitical agenda.

Agents differ from assets and sayanim.  Agents possess the requisite mental state to be convicted of treason, a capital crime. Under U.S. law, that internal state is what distinguishes premeditated murder from a lesser crime such as involuntary manslaughter. Though there’s a death in either case, the legal liabilities are different—for a reason.

Intent is the factor that determines personal culpability. That distinction traces its roots to a widely shared belief in free will as a key component that distinguishes humans from animals.

Agents operate with premeditation and “extreme malice” or what the law describes as an “evil mind.” Though that describes the mental state of Jonathan Pollard, Israeli leaders assured us otherwise—another example of an evil mind as the U.S. was played for the fool.

Played for the Fool, Again

Pollard took from his office more than one million documents for copying by his Israeli handler. When those classified materials were transferred to the Soviets, reportedly in exchange for the emigration of Russian Jews, this spy operation shifted the entire dynamics of the Cold War.

To put a price tag on this espionage, imagine $20 trillion in U.S. Cold War defense outlays from 1948-1989 (in 2010 dollars). The bulk of that investment in national security was negated by a spy working for a nation that pretended throughout to be a U.S. ally.

Pollard was sentenced to life in prison. Israel suffered no consequences. None. Zero. Nada. Not then. Not now. Then as now, we were played for the fool.

At trial, Pollard claimed he wasn’t stealing from the U.S.; he was stealing secrets for Israel—with whom the U.S. has long had a “special relationship.” He thought we should have shared our military secrets with them. That’s chutzpah. That also confirms we were played for the fool.

Looking back, it’s easy to see how seamlessly we segued from a global Cold War to a global War on Terrorism. In retrospect, the false intelligence used to induce our invasion of Iraq was traceable to Israelis, pro-Israelis or Israeli assets such as John McCain (see below).

Even while in prison, Pollard’s iconic status among Israelis played a strategic role. Was it just coincidence that Tel Aviv announced a $1 million grant to their master spy less than two weeks before 911? Is that how Israel signaled its operatives in the U.S.?

Did that grant have any relationship to the “dancing Israelis” who were found filming and celebrating that mass murder as both jets smashed into the World Trade Center?

Absent that provocation, would we now find ourselves at war in the Middle East? Surely no one still believes that America’s interests are being advanced in a quagmire that has now become the longest war in U.S. history.

“I know what America is,” Benjamin Netanyahu told a group of Israelis in 2001, apparently not knowing his words were being recorded. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.”

Let’s face it: the U.S. was again played for the fool.

With oversight by Israeli case officers (katsas), Israeli operations proceed in the U.S. by using agents, assets and volunteers (sayanim). Let’s take a closer look at each.

The Sayanim System

Sayanim (singular sayan) are shielded from conventional legal culpability by being told only enough to perform their narrow role. Though their help may be essential to the success of an Israeli operation, these volunteers (sayanim also means helpers) could pass a polygraph test because their recruiters ensure they remain ignorant of the overall goals of an operation.

In other words, a sayan can operate as an accomplice but still not be legally liable due to a lack of the requisite intent regarding the broader goals—of which they are purposely kept ignorant. Does that intentional “ignorance” absolve them of liability under U.S. law? So far, yes.

Much like military reservists, sayanim are activated when needed to support an operation. By agreeing to be available to help Israel, they provide an on-call undercover corps and force-multiplier that can be deployed on short notice.

How are sayanim called to action? To date, there’s been no attempt by U.S. officials to clarify that key point. This may explain why Pollard was again in the news on July 13^th with a high-profile Israeli commemoration of his 9000^th day of incarceration.

To show solidarity with this Israeli-American traitor, the lights encircling Jerusalem were darkened while an appeal was projected onto the walls of the Old City urging that President Obama order Pollard’s release from federal prison.

Pollard has long been a rallying point for Jewish nationalists, Zionist extremists and ultra-orthodox ideologues. In short, just the sort of people who would be likely recruits as sayanim. The news coverage given this Day of Adoration may help explain how Israel signals its helpers that an operation is underway and in need of their help.

Are pro-Israelis once again playing Americans for the fool?

When not aiding an ongoing operation, sayanim gather and report intelligence useful to Israel. This volunteer corps is deeply imbedded in legislative bodies, particularly in the U.S.

Thus far, this Israeli operation has advanced with legal impunity as the Israel lobby—though acting as a foreign agent—continues even now to pose as a “domestic” operation.

Morris Amitay, former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, explains how this invisible cadre aids the Israel lobby in advancing its geopolitical agenda:

“There are a lot of guys at the working level up here [on Capitol Hill]…who happen to be Jewish, who are willing…to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness…These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators…You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.”

What sayanim are not told by their katsas is that an Israeli operation may endanger not only Israel but also the broader Jewish community when these operations are linked to extremism, terrorism, organized crime, espionage and treason. Though sayanim “must be 100 percent Jewish,” Ostrovsky reports in By Way of Deception (1990):

“…the Mossad does not seem to care how devastating it could be to the status of the Jewish people in the Diaspora if it was known. The answer you get if you ask is: “So what’s the worst that could happen to those Jews? They’d all come to Israel. Great!” [Mossad is the intelligence and foreign operations directorate for Israel.]

Assets, Agents and Sayanim

Assets are people profiled in sufficient depth that they can be relied upon to perform consistent with their profile. Such people typically lack the state of mind required for criminal culpability because they lack the requisite intent to commit a crime.

Nevertheless, assets are critical to the success of Israeli operations in the U.S. They help simply by pursuing their profiled personal needs—typically for recognition, influence, money, sex, drugs or the greatest drug of all: ideology.

Thus the mission-critical task fulfilled by political assets that the Israel lobby “produces” for long-term service in the Congress—while appearing to represent their U.S. constituents.

Put a profiled asset in a pre-staged time, place and circumstance—over which the Israel lobby can exert considerable influence—and Israeli psy-ops specialists can be confident that, within an acceptable range of probabilities, an asset will act consistent with his or her profile.

Democrat or Republican is irrelevant; the strategic point remains the same: to ensure that lawmakers perform consistent with Israel’s interests. With the help of McCain-Feingold campaign finance “reform,” the Israel lobbyattained virtual control over the U.S. Congress.

The performance of assets in the political sphere can be anticipated with sufficient confidence that outcomes become foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. How difficult was it to predict the outcome when Bill Clinton, a classic asset, encountered White House intern Monica Lewinsky?

Senator John McCain has long been a predictable asset. His political career traces its origins to organized crime from the 1920s. It was organized crime that first drew him to Arizona to run for Congress four years before the 1986 retirement of Senator Barry Goldwater.

By marketing his “brand” as a Vietnam-era prisoner of war, he became a reliable spokesman for Tel Aviv while being portrayed as a “war hero.” No media outlet dares mention that Colonel Ted Guy, McCain’s commanding officer while a POW, sought his indictment for treason for his many broadcasts for the North Vietnamese that assured the death of many U.S. airmen.

As a typical asset, it came as no surprise to see McCain and Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a self-professed Zionist, used to market the phony intelligence that took us to war in Iraq. McCain’s ongoing alliance with transnational organized crime spans three decades.

His 1980’s advocacy for S&L crook Charles Keating of “The Keating 5” finds a counterpart in his recent meetings with Russian-Israeli mobster Oleg Deripaska who at age 40 held $40 billion in wealth defrauded from his fellow Russians.

McCain conceded earlier this month in a town hall meeting in Tempe, Arizona that he met in a small dinner in Switzerland with mega-thief Deripaska and Lord Rothschild V.

For assets such as McCain to be indicted for treason, the American public must grasp the critical role that such pliable personalities play in political manipulations. McCain is a “poster boy” for how assets are deployed to shape decisions such as those that took our military to war. In the Information Age, if that’s not treason, what is?

The predictability of a politician’s conduct confirms his or her qualifications as an asset. They are routinely developed and “produced” over lengthy periods of time and then—as with John McCain—maintained in key positions to influence decision-making at key junctures.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was candid in his assessment four weeks after 911. He may have been thinking about John McCain when he made this revealing comment:

“I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it.” [October 3, 2001]

Indictments for Treason

Are assets culpable? Do they have the requisite intent to indict them for treason? Does John McCain possess an evil mind? Did he betray this nation of his own free will or is he typical of those assets with personalities so weak and malleable that they can easily be manipulated?

As federal grand juries are impaneled to identify and indict participants in this trans-generational operation, how many sayanim should the Federal Bureau of Investigation expect to uncover in the U.S.? No one knows because this subtle form of treason is not yet well understood.

Victor Ostrovksy, a former Mossad katsa (case officer) wrote in 1990 that the Mossad had 7,000 sayanim in London alone. In London’s 1990 population of 6.8 million, Israel’s all-volunteer corps represented one-tenth of one percent of the residents of that capital city.

If Washington, DC is ten times more critical to Israel’s geopolitical goals (an understatement), does that mean the FBI should expect to find ten times more sayanim per capita in Washington?

What about sayanim in Manhattan, Miami, Beverly Hills, Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa, Toledo?

No one knows. And Tel Aviv is unlikely to volunteer the information. This we know for certain: America has been played for the fool. And so has our military.

This duplicity dates back well before British Foreign Secretary Alfred Balfour wrote to an earlier Lord Rothschild in 1917 citing UK approval for a “Jewish homeland.” In practical effect, that “homeland” now ensures non-extradition for senior operatives in transnational organized crime.

To date, America has blinded itself even to the possibility of such a trans-generational operation inside our bordersand imbedded inside our government. Instead the toxic charge of “anti-Semitism” is routinely hurled at those chronicling the “how” component of this systemic treason.

Making this treason transparent is essential to restore U.S. national security. That transparency may initially appear unfair to the many moderate and secular Jews who join others appalled at this systemic corruption of the U.S. political system.

Yet they are also concerned that somehow they may be portrayed as guilty by association due to a shared faith tradition. That would be not only unjust to them but also ineffective in identifying and indicting those complicit.

This much is certain: a Democrat as president offers no real alternative to a Republican on those issues affecting U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Today’s corruption predates the duplicity in 1948 that induced Harry Truman to extend recognition to this extremist enclave as a legitimate nation state. Our troubles date from then.

That fateful decision must be revisited in light of what can now be proven about the “how” of this ongoing duplicity—unless Americans want to continue to be played for the fool.

A Vietnam veteran, Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant togovernment, corporate and union leaders worldwide. He served for seven years as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance. He is widely published in the trade, popular and academic press. His latest book is Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War. His previous books include Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street From Wall Street and The Ownership Solution: Toward a Shared Capitalism for the 21st Century. Topical commentaries appear on the Criminal State website.

He blogs at Criminal Sate and also contributes to www.opinion-maker.org

BIN LADEN’S DEATH

AND PERCEPTIONS

OF THE PRESS

Posted on 27. Jul, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in Opinion

Commentary: Elvis bin Laden  (and editorial response from Veterans Today)

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE FOR UPI AND GORDON DUFF FOR VETERANS TODAY

“WASHINGTON, July 26 (UPI) — The “Veterans Today” Network, a one-man show on the Internet created and run by Gordon Duff, a 100 percent disabled Marine Vietnam veteran, states flatly that 9/11 was a CIA/Mossad conspiracy and that Osama bin Laden wasn’t involved and died in 2001.This can easily be dismissed as yet another example of deliberately disseminated disinformation riddled with intentionally false or inaccurate data designed to confuse the adversary. But some key intelligence officials are taking bin Laden’s reported demise seriously.  CIA Director Leon Panetta said in early July that the intelligence agency hadn’t been able to positively confirm any specific information on the uber-terrorist since “late 2001.” And all those audio and video tapes broadcast by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera global television network? Clever Israeli forgeries, says Duff.”

Arnaud,

Thank you for you semi-kind words though only roughly accurate in some ways and less accurate in others.  Please note that I have never considered the “Bin Laden Studios” forgeries as “clever.”  Considering the thousands who have died because of them, terms like “tragic” apply but, from a technical standpoint, “inane” or “amateurish” is more accurate.

Arnaud, yes, you are right.  I killed Osama bin Laden.  Too many Americans had died hunting a ghost.  It had to stop, the Bush era “Where’s Waldo” game, branding a phony terrorist mastermind for the lazy media hacks had destroyed too many American families.  As Wiki-Leaks has pointed out, those drone attacks, some supposedly chasing bin Laden, are responsible for more than a bit of “collateral damage,” the term we now apply to children we kill out of carelessness and intolerance.

I am hardly the founder of Veterans Today. Our editorial staff includes Jeff Gates, Dr. Alan Sabrosky, Colonel Eugene Khruschev, Major Bobby Hanifin, Mike Leon, Khalil Nouri, Major Denise Nichols, Colonel James Hanke, Raja Mugtaba, Jim W. Dean, Carol Duff and John Allen. We have over 30 active staff writers and over a dozen guest writers including your good friends Lt. General Hamid Gul, Admiral Sirohey, General Beg and all those other Pakistanis you write about.

We provide a home for those willing to answer to the truth only and not spend their lives as lapdogs to the corporations that now control 95% of the major media outlets, dictating fact into fiction and myth into disinformation for public consumption.

I am far from our most popular writer. I am surrounded by people with genuine talent, something I lack.

The idea that you dismiss Israel’s role in everything on a regular basis is an indication of how ill informed you are. I am certain that you, of all people, have a detailed and accurate knowledge of Israeli history but I am equally certain that you are unfamiliar with much of the subtext.

We would gladly help you in this area.

You are talking to people here, many, of whom, have fought in the wars you write about. When I sit and talk to my friend Hamid Gul, among others, we share some things in common you may not.  We are patriots and nationalists, hardly neutral.  Gul sides with Pakistan.  I support the United States.

Some on our staff, particularly those from Afghanistan, are deeply suspicious of Gul. I appreciate his intelligence and enjoy his company.  History will tell, if we live long enough to have a history.

You are certainly right to, finally, so many years later, catch on that bin Laden has gone the way of Elvis. You could also start catching on about the Indo-Israeli nexus in Afghanistan, the role of the CIA in drug running there or the long history of false flag operations our Israeli friends have been involved in and still are.

Jeff Gates will gladly brief you on Israel and get you a copy of his book. Col. Khrushchev will glady brief you on CIA drug running in Afghanistan. I can arrange for you to discuss Hamid Gul’s personal proclivities with him if you wish.

Alan Sabrosky can tell you why he believes Israel is responsible for 9/11. Jim Hanke, former attache to Israel, can do the same. Not everyone is terrified of AIPAC and the ADL or having their tea poisoned.

Phillip Tourney can tell you what it was like to be on the USS Liberty, napalmed and strafed by Israelis and spending years hearing it lied about. He is one of my friends also.

Ken O’Keefe can tell you about the attack on the Mavi Marmara. First person accounts are so much more “journalistic” than press releases. Ken is a friend also.

Khalil Nouri can tell you about Afghanistan and the reality of Karzai’s rule.  I hope you are following his work.

Admiral Sirohey can tell you about America’s rendition program and Dr. Aafia, kidnapped, tortured and then convicted in a rigged trial in an American court.

I am simply glad to see someone begin catching on. It would be better were you to examine what your own article means. If bin Laden is dead and Israel is keeping him alive, what does it mean?

I think you understand what it is like working on the “dark side” of journalism. As Oliver Stone recently mentioned, well, can we even discuss that. Mentioning that the media is controlled by Israeli’s with a proclivity for obfuscation can be dangerous to one’s career? Is this why you keep quiet on such things?

As for our readership, yes, we have 310,000 daily subscribers, thousand more daily at Veterans Today. As with your work, we have a few mirror sites. A quick scan of Google will reveal the numbers.  Our mirror subscribers take the numbers a bit further, so much so it is clear why I am being addressed today.  It is a reasonable guess that your article will receive much more readership here than elsewhere.  We are glad to include your voice with our own.

What we need to ask ourselves is why we do what we do? Is it worth turning down the free vacations to Israel, the fat jobs with defense contractors or suffering continual threats simply to tell a truth so many others choose to ignore for a paycheck?  Why would so many writers choose to work for free?  Is it possible that the only real “free press” left is the one that doesn’t have to dance with the devil for pay?  Can you think of a commercial news outlet that isn’t stained by something much worse than bias, we aren’t just talking Fox News here?

Our primary job is to speak for 27 million veteran families in the United States and 1.4 million members of our military. We have a relatively large readership overseas, with most readers in Israel and India for some reason. Don’t ask me why.  Much of our expertise in these areas and others comes from our readers who communicate with us constantly.  This is the great advantage of the Internet.  The email trails between our writers and editors include top members of our government and defense establishment on a daily basis.

What is “guff” to you is “gold” to them.  Even the Pentagon “Earlybird” is crippled by its dependence on the “useless news.”

Take our recent stories about missing nuclear weapons. You really think we aren’t well informed? I am certain you have wonderful contacts in the UK. Why would “people” want to make sure we knew that North Korea had exploded a nuclear weapon identical to the September 22, 1979 Indian Ocean test by South Africa and Israel?

What does this mean?

What does it have to do with the murder of Dr. David Kelly? How can a story this big be buried?

Why do Alan Hart and I see things the same way and you see them so differently? Do we have different agendas? Do we have different beliefs? Is one of us delusional? I am certainly less polite. You are, if anything, polite.

Are you too polite to the wrong people?

What I advocate is that you take a new look at people who see things differently than you do. You have already gone out on a limb over Osama bin Laden, though your story has failed to deal with the fallout of 9 years of lies.

If Osama bin Laden had nothing to do with 9/11, then why is the United States in Afghanistan at all? Why is nothing written of the $65 billion dollar drug industry? When Sibel Edmonds reported the US was shipping narcotics on rendition flights, why was that not reported? She is on this email also. It seems my “one man show” has a lot of co-conspirators.

If you want to look at something today, take a look at the Wiki-Leaks story. Why were the documents leaked? Who does it serve? What does the timing mean? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to pick up an agenda, one the MSM has missed. Wiki-Leaks got a ton of “chicken-feed” and some carefully crafted disinformation or this is what my “conspiratorial-self” is telling me.

It is also what members of the intelligence community will tell you. Why isn’t it being reported or even being suggested? I can’t imagine why the question isn’t even mentioned? Why has that kind of power? Is everyone that stupid? Consider the last question less than rhetorical.

Thus we head back to common ground, the death of Osama bin Laden, something I have discussed with many as you have. If you hear what I hear, and I suspect we talk to the same people, they have long been telling you they “suspect” bin Laden has been dead since 2001.

Carry this further to “dead in 2001?” and “not involved in the planning and execution of 9/11.” Then I suggest you review the testimony before the 9/11 Commission, in particular that of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.  Most of the press missed it.  We didn’t.

You won’t need to ask about nano-thermite, mysterious WTC7 or the dancing Israelis. You won’t have to recheck those long supposedly “debunked” stories about how many Israeli passport holders missed work that day. Check the edits on Wikipedia last week. When Wikipedia showed no Israeli passport holders among the 9/11 dead, why was it altered?  If you aren’t aware, a staggering number of Israeli passport holders worked in the WTC.  Conspiracy theory or statistical anomaly? I don’t know anything of people being warned of 9/11, I only know that those who claimed there was no warning lied about the numbers.  We caught them.  As for the truth, we may never know the truth.  And so it goes.

Oh, sorry, this crosses the line into areas members of the press are destroyed over.

When John McCain ran for president, were you aware of his connections to organized crime or his presidential pardon? The recent exchange in Tempe (on video) between Jeff Gates and McCain is quite amusing. I would ask why it is never reported but I suggest you know. The last journalist who carried the story had his car blown up with him in it.

Again we return to Osama bin Laden. If he was dead and we knew, and I have been assured by “trusted sources” that we knew, why did we lie? Look at Afghanistan today and guess.

When America found it lost nearly $300 billion in Iraq, why was nothing done? When Iraq found their oil revenues more than a bit shy, ships loaded from the Ceyhan pipeline but nothing paid, why wasn’t it reported? There was a conference on this in Iraq. If you attended, did you note where I was sitting?

I assume we are all good people, or believe we are. Many of the finest people I have met in my life are on this email. We don’t always agree but all are friends.

Gordon Duff

Senior Editor

www.veteranstoday.com

Commentary: Elvis bin Laden

By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE

UPI Editor at Large

WASHINGTON, July 26 (UPI) — The “Veterans Today” Network, a one-man show on the Internet created and run by Gordon Duff, a 100 percent disabled Marine Vietnam veteran, states flatly that 9/11 was a CIA/Mossad conspiracy and that Osama bin Laden wasn’t involved and died in 2001.

This can easily be dismissed as yet another example of deliberately disseminated disinformation riddled with intentionally false or inaccurate data designed to confuse the adversary. But some key intelligence officials are taking bin Laden’s reported demise seriously.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said in early July that the intelligence agency hadn’t been able to positively confirm any specific information on the uber-terrorist since “late 2001.” And all those audio and video tapes broadcast by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera global television network? Clever Israeli forgeries, says Duff.

Many other voices in cyberspace claim the bin Laden myth is kept “alive” to justify the Afghan war and the global war on terror.

Angelo Codevilla, who teaches international relations at Boston University, is a former U.S. intelligence officer who studied Soviet disinformation techniques during the Cold War. He says a close examination of all the alleged bin Laden tapes, including the videos, have convinced him that Elvis Presley is more alive than Osama bin Laden.

By all accounts from those who knew him prior to 9/11, bin Laden was a deeply religious man and his early tapes after 9/11 were sprinkled with references to God and the Prophet Muhammad. Not so the later ones, which were subsequently analyzed by some experts who said they were professional forgeries.

The last time credible intercepts of bin Laden’s voice were made by overhead satellites in early December 2001 as he was escaping through the Tora Bora mountain range from Afghanistan to the sanctuary of Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The late Ajmal Khattak, the head of the Khattak tribe, who had half a million followers in the region, advised this reporter and his Pakistani assistant Ammar Turabi, and our multilingual security, to rent horses and proceed to an exit from Tora Bora in the Tirah Valley. We got there Dec. 11. Local villagers told us bin Laden and some 50 fighters had emerged Dec. 9 and were met by a convoy of utility vehicles that sped off in the direction Peshawar.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton evidently had more recent intelligence on her last visit to Pakistan July 21. She said she believes “elements” of the Pakistani government know bin Laden’s whereabouts. Those with the knowledge, she added, are in the “bowels” of the bureaucracy, not the “top levels of government.” She was clearly referring to some members of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Former ISI chief Gen. Hamid Gull is a personal friend of both bin Laden and Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and bin Laden’s no. 2, the Egyptian doctor Adman al-Zawahiri. Gul is an advocate of Pakistan’s politico-religious extremists and self-declared enemy of the United States.

There are “retired” ISI officers who still see bin Laden as a hero of the joint campaign against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Gul and his followers are also working to hasten an end to the U.S. presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the now growing numbers who believe bin Laden is dead, there is only one valid message from bin Laden. It was his open letter to the “Pakistani people,” on Al Jazeera, dated Sept. 24, 2001, 13 days after 9/11, in which he said:

– “I have already stated that I was not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.

– “Neither had I any knowledge of these attacks nor do I consider the killing of innocent women and children and other humans, as an appreciable act … Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent … people. Such a practice is forbidden even in the course of a battle.

– “All that is going in Palestine … is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.”

Those who believe Osama Bin Laden is alive, and guilty of killing almost 3,000, quote his 2004 talk in which he said he thought of attacking U.S. skyscrapers when he saw Israeli aircraft bombing tower blocks in Lebanon in 1982.

“God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the twin towers,” he said then, “but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind.”

While Duff is mostly guff for those whose job is to keep tabs on all the twists and turns since 9/11, there is also the post 9/11 generation that doesn’t read newspapers or weekly magazines and gets its news fix online. The conspiracy theory coupled with disinformation from all sides makes for more interesting reading. It also gives youngsters a leg up on their “naive” elders.

Bin Laden was suffering from a kidney ailment and some experts say he died Dec. 13, four days after his escape from Tora Bora. Videos since then, neutral experts say, show bin Laden writing with his right hand but he is well known as left-handed. They also detected differences in the shape of the nose, skin color and speech.

Duff does commentary on his conspiracy theories for radio and TV news programs; his provocative articles are carried the world over and his Web site gets 22 million page hits a month. Some of his recent “Top 10 Stories of the Week”: “The CIA: Beyond Redemption and Should Be Terminated”; “Does Event Honoring Israeli Spy Suggest Another Israeli Operation?”; “Wikipedia Revisionism to Israeli Pressure Groups.”

Duff’s “Corporate Profile” says, “We are a full service Network of 63 Web sites that service the U.S. Military Veterans’ Community,” which claims “over 310, 000 plus unique visitors per month” and recently grew 39 percent in one month.

On the World Wide Web, there are no red lines between information, misinformation and disinformation.

The Crime of American Militarism

Duty to Warn

Hiroshima and the Mythological Glorification of American Militarism

Gary G. Kohls, MD

This August 6, 2010 is the 65^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, an event that has been mythologized by millions of Americans who were happy that the awful war was finally over. Of course most Americans were also willing to swallow the post-war propaganda about the end of the war, false information that was orchestrated by a multitude of war-justifying militarists, starting with General Douglas MacArthur and his attempts at total censorship of post-war information coming out of Japan, especially the photographic documentation of the horrors of the atomic bombs.

Back in 1995, the Smithsonian Institute was preparing an honest, historically-accurate display dealing with the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings. Amid much right-wing reactionary wrangling from various ultrapatriotic veterans groups all the way up to the Newt Gingrich/GOP-dominated Congress at the time, the Smithsonian was forced to eliminate all of the painful but contextually important parts of the story, especially the Japanese civilian stories. So again we had another example of politically powerful conservative groups heavily influencing public policy - and altering real history - because they were afraid of revealing unpleasant and potentially “unpatriotic” historical truths.

The historians did have a gun to their heads, of course, but in the melee, the mainstream media - and therefore the public - ignored a vital historical point. And that is this: The war could have ended quickly without the atomic bombs, and therefore there would not have been a bloody American land invasion of Japan as the subsequent propaganda campaigns (that tried to justify the use of atomic weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations) had claimed. American intelligence, with the full knowledge of President Truman, was fully aware of Japan’s desperate search for ways to honorably surrender weeks before Truman gave the fateful order to incinerate, without warning, the nearly 100,000 innocent and unarmed civilians of Hiroshima.

American intelligence data, revealed in the 1980s, shows that the contingency plans for a large-scale US invasion (planned for no sooner than November 1, 1945) would have been unnecessary. Japan was working on peace negotiations with the Allies through its Moscow ambassador as early as April of 1945. Truman knew of these developments, the US having broken the Japanese code years earlier, and all of Japan’s military and diplomatic messages were being intercepted. On July 13, 1945, Foreign Minister Togo said: “Unconditional surrender (giving up all sovereignty) is the only obstacle to peace.”

Truman knew this, and the war could have ended through diplomacy by simply conceding a post-war figurehead position for the emperor – who was regarded as a deity in Japan. That reasonable concession was - seemingly illogically - refused by the US in their demand for unconditional surrender. Still, the Japanese continued searching for an honorable peace through negotiations but the devastating bombs were dropped anyway. And after the war, interestingly, the emperor was allowed to remain in place as spiritual head of Japan, the very condition that made the Japanese leadership refuse to accept the surrender terms of the Potsdam Declaration. So the questions that need answering to figure out what really happened are two.  1) Why did the US refuse to accept Japan’s only concession concerning their surrender, and 2) with the war already at an end without needing to use the bombs, what were the reasons to proceed?

Shortly after WWII, military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote: “The Japanese, in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time the Potsdam Declaration (insisting on Japan’s unconditional surrender) was made on July 26, 1945.”

Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, sai in his war memoirs, I Was There: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

And General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a personal visit to President Truman a couple of weeks before the bombings, urged him not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower said: “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.”

Truman proceeded with the plans to use the bombs, but he never officially ordered the Nagasaki bomb that followed Hiroshima only three days later. There are a number of factors that contributed to Truman’s decisions.

1) The US had made a huge investment in time, mind and money ($2,000,000,000 in 1940 dollars) to produce three bombs, and there was no inclination - and no guts - to stop the momentum.

2) The US military and political leadership – as did many ordinary Americans - had a tremendous appetite for revenge because of Pearl Harbor. Mercy wasn’t in the mindset of the US military or the war-weary populace, and the missions against Hiroshima and Nagasaki were accepted – no questions asked - by those who only knew the sanitized, national security version of events.

3) The fissionable material in Hiroshima’s bomb was uranium and Nagasaki’s was plutonium. Scientific curiosity was a significant factor that pushed the project to its completion, even if the peace was at hand. The Manhattan Project scientists and US Army director of the project, Leslie Groves, wanted answers to the multitude of questions raised by the project, including “what would happen if an entire city was leveled by a single nuclear bomb?” The decision to use both bombs had been made well in advance of August 9. The three-day interval was unconscionably short. Japan’s communications and transportation capabilities were in shambles, and no one, not even the US military, much less the Japanese high command, fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima on August 6. The Manhattan Project was so top secret that even General Douglas MacArthur, commanding general of the entire Pacific theatre, had been kept out of the loop about the existence of the bombs until five days before Hiroshima.

4) The Russians had proclaimed their intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days after V-E Day (Victory in Europe, May 8), which would have been Aug. 8, two days after Hiroshima was bombed. Indeed, Russia did declare war on Japan on August 8 and was advancing eastward across Manchuria when Nagasaki was incinerated. The US didn’t want Japan surrendering to Russia (soon to be fingered as a future enemy) so the first nuclear “messages” of the infantile Cold War were sent. Russia indeed received far less of the spoils of war than they had anticipated, and the two superpowers were instantly mired in the Cold War stalemate that eventually resulted in their mutual moral and economic bankruptcies that happened a couple of generations later.

An estimated 80,000 innocent and defenseless civilians, plus 20,000 essentially weaponless young Japanese conscripts died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds of thousands more suffered slow deaths from agonizing bums, radiation sickness, leukemias and infections for the rest of their shortened lives, and generations of the survivor’s progeny inherited horrible radiation-induced illnesses, cancers and premature deaths. What has been covered up is the fact that 12 American Navy pilots, their existence well known to the US command, were instantly incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on Aug. 6.

The 75,000 Nagasaki victims who died in the August 9 carnage were virtually all civilians, except for the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki’s ground zero. They were incinerated, carbonized or instantly vaporized by a scientific experiment carried out by obedient, unaware scientists and soldiers who were just doing their duty. The War Dept. knew of the existence of the POWs and, when reminded, simply replied: “Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (code name for the Kokura/Nagasaki mission) remain unchanged.”

So the official version of the end of the war in the Pacific contained a new batch of myths that took their place among the long lists of myths that Americans are continuously fed by our corporate, military, political and media opinion leaders, the gruesomeness of war being altered to glorification in the process. Some of the other censored out realities, of course, include what really happened in the US military invasions and occupations of the countries of North Korea, Iran, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Granada, Panama, the Philippines, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc. This list doesn’t cover the uncountable Pentagon/CIA covert operations and assassination plots in the rest of the known world, where 135 nations host American military bases (usually paid for by bribery or threats of economic violence).

But somehow most of us still hang on to our shaky “my country right or wrong” patriotism, desperately wanting to believe the cunningly-orchestrated myths that say that our nation only works for peace, justice, equality, liberty and spreading democracy while being blind to the obvious reality that the US mainly supports right-wing quasi-military dictatorships that make the world safe fo exploitive predatory capitalism.

While it is true that the US military has faced down the occasional despot, with necessary sacrifice from dead and dying American soldiers, more often than not our methods of rationalizing the atrocities of war are identical to those of the “godless communists” or “evil empires” on the other side of the battle line. August 6 and 9, 1945 are just two more examples of the brutalization of a “total war” political agenda, which is always accompanied by the unforgivable human slaughter that is euphemistically called “collateral damage” and “friendly fire”.

It might already be too late for Americans to stand up for real justice and real peace to effectively confront the usually well-hidden ruling elite. Rather than being silent about the bankrupting and insurgency-provoking war-making that our conscienceless multinational corporations (with the eager assistance of the Pentagon and the heavily-lobbied Congress) are provoking all over the planet, people of conscience need to start acknowledging, and then courageously teaching, the whole truth of history. We need to start owning up to the innumerable international war crimes that have been orchestrated in our names by the multitude of war profiteers, both foreign and domestic, that have been in positions of power and influence during the last 65+ years. And then we need to go to the streets, publicly protesting and courageously confronting the criminals and their Hiroshima-caliber crimes against humanity.

Doing what is right for the whole of humanity for a change, rather than just doing what is advantageous for our over-privileged, over-consumptive and unsustainable American way of life, would be real honor, real patriotism and an essential start toward real peace.

________________________________________________________________________

Dr. Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic mental health care, dealing extensively with the totally preventable and difficult to treat reality known as posttraumatic stress disorder, which is always a consequence of violence. He is also a student of European fascism and writes about issues of war, peace, mental health, brain nutrition, the dangers of many psychotropic drugs and the power and practicality of nonviolence. He is a member of the Community of the Third Way (a local Every Church A Peace Church affiliate) and the Just Peace Committee of Peace Church UCC in Duluth, MN. On August 8, 2010, these two organizations will be sponsoring a public showing of “White Light Black Rain” the powerful documentary about the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings as told from the perspective of the hibakusha, the survivors of the bombs.

“War is a racket”

Powered By YouTube

Because we are possibly days away from an Israeli attack on the Sovereign nation of Iran, which will involve a decision by President Obama and the Congress and the American people to oppose or support such a war, we find it is most important to take heed of the words of General Smedley Butler.

“One of the most important speeches in American history . . . and one you never heard in school or on TV.”

Brasscheck

To see more videos why

War is a racket

A very profitable war (4:36)

Afghan “War” reality check (2:37)

Afghanistan a mineral
treasure trove (6:14)

Afghanistan and Vietnam (18:22)

America’s Growth Industry (3:17)

Banks, drugs and US-sponsored terrorism (10:00)

Bio warfare lab in Boston? (26:33)

Going on Patrol (22:00)

Heroin Inc. (10:00)

Iraq for sale (1:15:40)

Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers (3:07)

Is this what we’re fighting for? (7:59)

Just how corrupt
are these guys? (7:00)

Remembering Panama (60:00)

Some truth about Afghanistan (9:00)

Telling it like it is (1:00)

The revolution continues (4:00)

The root of all war (2:00)

War and finance (53:33)

War Inc. (3:02)

“War is a racket” (8:50)

War is theft (9:40)

911 Truth… Is it a YOU Do or Die?

By WJ Anthony

In less than two and a half months, we voters will be expected to elect officials who will follow the purposes and ideals that we believe are appropriate for our government to follow. Recently another book is being offered that will claim that the founders of the United States intended to construct this country as a Christian nation. The claim is made that the colonial settlements of the English on the eastern coast were following the teachings of Jesus, as did the men who later designed the Constitution of the United States.

It seems that books of that theme apparently intend to convince the readers that our dismal US future as a nation can be changed if we cause our government to adhere to the premises and practices of the colonial governments back then.

Do you remember reading about those governments? Were they following the teachings of Jesus? When the first colony landed on Plymouth Rock and tried to assemble the means to avoid starvation and survive the upcoming winter, the record shows that the native people recognized their predicament and generously taught the immigrants, how to plant crops that would save them from extinction.

It wasn’t long, however, before the gunpowder and colonial traditions of their European origins surfaced and induced the immigrants at Plymouth and those at other colonies to reject and disdain the occupancy traditions of the native people as their neighbors, using the physical and deadly forces to scalp and kill the natives who refused to be uprooted and removed from their native ancestral home lands.

That colonial behavior wasn’t a singular unwitting aberration of one or a few English immigrants. It was a defined and practiced conviction in which they believed before they had chosen to depart from their fatherland.

The early settlements were structured, as a rigid command by elite men who dominated the formation of all practices in the colonies. The male elite soon recognized that the intuition of women had the potential to make women self-sufficient and able to compete with the established authority of men. To preserve their advantage, the elite male preachers used portions of Old Testament scripture to adopt and justify the sanctioned controls of earlier European Churchianity. In behalf of the name of God, they condemned women as witches, who were independent believers, and burned some as heretics – as had been the custom in Europe’s Roman Churchanity.

Were the leaders of the colonists, who revolted against the English king George, faithful followers of the teachings of Jesus? Is it true that those founding fathers kept their sight fixed on the teachings of Jesus or pursued and obeyed the meanings of the parables and sermons of Jesus?

The term Christian is derived from the word Christ and can only be attached to the life and teachings of Jesus. To be known as a follower of Jesus, or a Christian, a person would need to be inclined to try to live among other people in a personal relationship that respects the lives and rights of others. It is true, that, the Declaration of Independence, was written by American men, and it is also true that the beginning statement of that document, effectively supports the teachings of Jesus, when it said:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

And then it continues:

“That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

As destructive as our past and present governments have been and might be, the Declaration goes on to warn:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The author of the book seems to claim that the current Government of the United States has abandoned its foundation as a Christian country. But why, we might ask, did each of the administrations of US Government in some way or other become Despots who ordered one or more or some of the hundreds of horrible wars to slaughter the native peoples, who sought to defend their occupancy of their homelands and defend themselves from being subjugated or liquidated? Why did so many US Governments, during their terms, act as Despots, to slaughter the millions of innocent people in countries throughout the world, when they refused to be subjugated by a US tyrant? Were these US governments exemplifying the teachings of Jesus, the Christ?

Who did these presidents of Government follow? Who did the men of Congress and the courts follow? Jesus said, “By their deeds you shall know them.” What were their deeds? Are they known to this day, by their wars, conquests, and subjugation of native peoples? Were they known for the enslavement first of the Irish and then the African people, shipped in chains to the plantations of the US? Did Jesus teach his followers to propose the Monroe Doctrine or preach “our country right or wrong”?

President Obama created a stir, when he said, “The United States is no longer a Christian country.” What proof is there that the US ever followed the teachings of Jesus, the Christ? Have we been a godless country?

Many Americans believe the Constitution gave them the right to Free Speech, probably meaning the Bill of Rights – which, were not originally intended to be part of the Constitution. Did the president, George W. Bush, shock you, with his reply to a reporter, who accused Bush of violating a person’s Constitutional right to Free speech: “That’s just a god-dammed piece of paper!” sneered Bush, adding in his following words, that he determines the rights of people. G W B claimed to be a Christian, while he said he would hunt down and capture Osama bin Laden, be he dead or alive.

“My kingdom is not of this world,” said Jesus to Pilate. Would the Government, described in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, be acceptable, according to the teachings of Jesus?

Would Jesus “… hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”?

How about the rest of the second paragraph? “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”?

Why doesn’t the Constitution say or express the concept that we “are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.”?

Why doesn’t the Constitution say the words “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”?

Look at the meaning of the word ‘unalienable’ now spelled as ‘inalienable’. It has a profound meaning: “incapable of being transferred or given up.”

It means those rights are yours, as an individual person, here or at anywhere in this world; you cannot sell them or give them to anyone else, for a period of time or permanently, because every other person also has been given those rights.

Jesus said his kingdom is different from the government of this world. If we were to live with and love our neighbors and enemies and “do good to those who despitefully use” us and if we were to consent to institute Governments to secure those rights among Men and those Governments would derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed”; does that mean that we are the Government if we consent to give the Government the powers … –

What powers? The just powers; What are they? “Those, which are reasonable, correct or proper, morally legal or deserved.” Are those the powers that our Government is using in the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq? Did they use those powers in Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Bosnia, Panama, etc.? Were they reasonable, correct or proper, morally legal or deserved?

Those wars were all based on the lies that George W. Bush and the Congress blamed on 19 Arab hijackers who supposedly flew two aircraft into Buildings One and Two of the World Trade Center and flew another plane into the Pentagon.

The evidence, however, proves that the 91l attacks were perpetrated by people in the US Government in collusion with interested parties in foreign governments to deceive American people to believe the lies that were claimed within hours of the staged events by President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, members of Congress and others in the media, in the US and Britain.

Thousands of us now know the story and the reasons for the events. Members of the federal government had written a plan, based on the PNAC report, years before, which told how a Pearl Harbor type event could trigger the sympathies and beliefs of American people to change their opposition to war into a crusade to destroy the perpetrators of 911.

We are now almost 8 years since the malicious 911 calumny of the US Presidency and Congress caused the American people to ignorantly support the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and threaten other Islamic people of the Mideast nations of Asia. Is our Government guilty?

If our elected representatives in the Bush Presidency and the elected members of Congress are guilty of the two million deaths and the destruction that were caused by the criminal collusion of the President and Congress to use the powers of Government to deceive the consent of the People? The trial by the people should be overwhelming supported!

To this day, the Congress has refused to conduct a genuine investigation of all evidence that now exists, pertaining to the events of 911. Why do the 535 members of Congress do nothing to demand an investigation? Why do all of the political parties of this country avoid any promise that they will investigate this greatest crime of American history?

Which brings us back to the assumption that the US is a Christian nation.

If the conservative Christian Right were genuinely true to their claim as Christians, they would enlist their Tea Party troops and the Evangelicals to join a mass surround of the US Capitol and the White House – like Jericho - with millions of their men, women and children demanding the trial, prosecution, and punishment of President George W Bush and the members of his cabinet; and all members of government at all levels, who had anything to do with the planning or destruction of 911 and the consequential wars and crimes that ensued from their evil.

If you and your believers do that, then you can claim it is possible that the Founders had intended the United States to be founded as a Christian Government.