Damned: The Bloody Lies That Condemn Us All

The Center for Public Integrity has compiled an infinitely searchable catalog of the 935 lies told by the president and seven other top administration officials in order to instigate war between the United States and Iraq.

These deliberate (and in most cases, scripted) lies were told over a two-year period and were built on two basic fictional building blocks: [1] that Iraq threatened us with weapons of mass destruction, and [2] that Iraq supported al Qaeda and therefore bore responsibility for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the intelligence community, and in the well-informed segment of the general populace, both claims were widely known to be false, yet they were used and re-used and denied and debunked and embroidered and pasted together and used and re-used again, until the Mission was Accomplished and the United States was involved in a foreign war it couldn't get out of.

The eight administration officials indicted by this compilation are: the twice unelected President George W. Bush, the twice unelected Vice President Dick Cheney, current Secretary of State and former National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, and former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

The deliberately deceitful actions of these eight people (and the many others who followed their lead) have resulted directly and immediately in the unwarranted deaths of at least a million people, and the unnecessary destruction of the lives of millions more. And it will kill and ruin many more, no matter how or when it ends.

By any civilized standard, all eight officials listed above are obviously guilty of mass murder, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

By any civilized standard, all eight should be arrested immediately and given speedy trials, which if fair would surely result in their convictions and public executions.

People of goodwill everywhere could only hope for the executions to be as slow and as painful as possible -- and seen and understood by billions.

But we all know that will never happen. We all know nothing even remotely like that will ever happen. And by failing to make that happen -- by failing to stop everything for as long as necessary in order to force that to happen -- We The People of the United States hereby forfeit any claim to being a civilized nation.

The lies in the database condemn the eight individuals listed above, and all their sycophants. But the failure to oppose them in any meaningful way condemns the rest of us.

We could stand shoulder-to-shoulder by the millions and shut down every big city. We could sit bumper-to-bumper in far smaller numbers and shut down the whole country.

We could. But we won't. And why not? Because we don't know enough? Or because we don't care enough?

It seems to me we know more than we ever did, so we must care less than ever. And the current political races seem to bear me out.

In the Democratic party there is one presidential candidate who would stop the war in Iraq immediately and whose platform is based on letting the people make the laws of the land. And he can't get into a debate and he can't get on TV and he can't raise any money and he can't get his poll numbers above 1%.

And that's in the so-called opposition party! Damn!

Beyond The Mirror -- The 9/11 Funhouse, Part IV

In this series, I've been discussing some of the most transparently false arguments concerning 9/11 and the Global War On Terror that are still in circulation (starting here, then parts one, two and three). In this installment, a few fallacies concerning the so-called "conspiracy theorists" who say "9/11 was an inside job": more personal forms of attack, and a more personal defense.

Conspiracy Theorists Need Something To Believe In

Like all good propaganda, the most enduring lies about 9/11 are difficult to disentangle. One of the most complex is the one that says:

The people who see a conspiracy behind 9/11 are basically paranoid conspiracy theorists who see conspiracies everywhere. They can't accept the fact that the world is chaotic -- they need to believe unseen forces are at work behind everything happening around them. These people would have seen a conspiracy behind 9/11 no matter what they saw, no matter what they were told, no matter what actually happened.

This is difficult to refute because there's a grain of truth to it. There are people who see unseen forces behind everything. But I'm not one of them.

I have no need to believe unseen forces are at work, anywhere. I would be quite content to believe that everybody was playing by the same rules, just like in checkers or something, and get on with it. But I seem to be driven by a more powerful force -- a need to make sense of the world.

I'm an empiricist: I grew up reading Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes and absorbing wisdom such as "It is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts." Even now, I have no interest in simply theorizing about things; I want to see the details. I'm not the type to fix the intelligence around the policy. I want to base the policy on a coherent analysis of the intelligence.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time thinking about the famous line from Holmes that runs: "When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." As a student I specialized in math and science. For fun I played chess and music. Later on I taught math. Now I program computers for a living.

All these activities keep me thinking about what is true and what is false. They've taught me to eliminate the impossible and to accept the truth, no matter how improbable it might seem. And it's become a vital life-skill. In prior days, my math had to be solid or the college would have booted me out. Nowadays, my code has to be solid or my clients will go elsewhere. When the day comes that I can't separate the true from the false, I'm out of a job. I've always known that.

So in a very hand-to-mouth sense, I need to believe in the truth -- both on a low level (my code is good; this math is right; that move is solid; this note is correct) and on higher levels as well (I know my kids are lying to me if their explanation doesn't fit the facts, and the same goes for clients and students and the television and the internet and everything else).

I'm happy if a story holds together. I'm happy if something is true. And it doesn't matter to me whether the truth is expressed as Bach or The Clash, whether it's beautiful architecture or witty graffiti, whether it's the sort of chess Bobby Fischer used to play, or Capablanca before him, or Paul Morphy before either of them! ... or Gauss or Newton or my favorite math teachers, or any of the other people who see how things work and describe them in ways that make sense.

And that's why I can't believe the official story of 9/11. It's not that I'm a conspiracy theorist by nature. It's just that the official story doesn't make any sense. It didn't make any sense on the day it happened, it's made even less sense as the years have gone by, and that's why I don't believe it.

I don't expect geopolitics to make sense in the way that Bach or Morphy did. I understand that we have a multitude of players, playing under multiple sets of rules -- or not playing under any rules at all! -- moving at the same time, deliberately cutting across one another's plans, and leaving a mess in their wake. I don't expect that wake to be simple, or easily untangled.

In other words, I might buy the story if there were only one or two incredible details. I would probably be satisfied with the idea that the attack was complex and bound to leave a few "loose ends", even if those "loose ends" were absolutely bizarre ... if there were only a few "loose ends" left over.

But it's not just a few loose ends. It's massive contradictions, clear evidence of lying, conflict of interest all over the place, advance warnings ignored, investigations shut down, evidence destroyed, official stories changed -- and changed again! -- and much more besides, including magical violation of the laws of physics.

For a single example of this magic in action, consider the "collapse" of the South Tower. As shown in the photos, the top third of the building broke off and started to topple over.

Part of it extended beyond the perimeter of the building, as we can clearly see.

If it had been a gravity-driven event, with no explosives involved, we would expect at least part of this block to continue falling, since there is no tower beneath it -- nothing to crush it but thin air. It should have landed in the street, or on an adjacent building. Instead this part of the tower turned to dust before it ever hit the ground. All because of gravity? Sorry! That can't happen in real life.

In other words, there's not necessarily anything wrong with me, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with anyone who agrees with me; there's something wrong with the story we've been told.

That's why I'm a "conspiracy theorist".

And I resent the constant media push to question my sanity, and that of others like me -- from people who won't even examine the facts of the case because they're so busy attacking those who do so. Some very well-known writers have lost all my respect for this very reason (and if I were less of a gentleman I might mention names such as Alexander Cockburn, George Monbiot, and Gwynne Dyer).

Conspiracy Theorists Find Their Bizarre Theories Comforting

Just in case it's not obvious yet, I don't speak for anybody but myself. I'm not a member of any 9/11-related organization, I don't hang at any 9/11-related websites, I'm not in any formal alliance with any group or individual. I do correspond with a few people who I support in various ways, and a few other people who help me too, but I have never discussed any of this with any of them. So I don't know what they think about it. I only know what I think.

I don't find any comfort in the belief that American democracy is over. I don't find any comfort in knowing that my country is fighting multiple wars based on gigantic and deliberately-crafted lies; that it has killed and/or maimed and/or rendered homeless millions and millions of people, in "revenge" for what amounts to nothing more than a bit of political "street theater".

There are already billions of people suffering through every day of their lives, dying from easily preventable diseases, starving to death, all kinds of horrible things going on in a world that's got enough natural cruelty to last a lifetime, without my country -- the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen -- dropping bombs on people while they sleep, kidnapping them and taking them away to be tortured, destroying their hospitals, cutting off their water and electricity, and poisoning their landscape with depleted uranium -- all to separate them from their oil.

Anyone who has a heart and a moment to think about these things can see that there is nothing even remotely comforting about any of this -- nothing whatsoever. And I am more than a little bit offended by this particular transparently false argument about 9/11.

Conspiracy Theorists Hate America

This is possibly the biggest red herring there ever was. It's also a conflation of endless very different entities into a single ball of nonsense.

I've loved most of the American people I've ever met, most of the American landscape I've ever seen, too many individuals and places and things to mention, and let's not forget the principles on which the country was founded. I hate the violence; I hate the pollution; I hate the propaganda; I hate the endless war against the rest of the world; I hate the relentless glorification of rich idiots and serial killers; I hate the marginalization of the poor and the demonization of the gentle; I hate the racism and the intolerance and the hatred; I hate the national leadership of both major parties. Does this mean I hate America? Not at all -- and what if it did?

There are plenty of things to love about America, and plenty of things to hate. The truth or falsehood of the official 9/11 story doesn't depend on any of them.

Conspiracy Theorists Blame Bush For 9/11 Because They Hate Him

This is a reversal of cause and effect. Conspiracy theorists blame Bush because they can see so many ways in which he deserves to be blamed.

His reaction to the attack was inappropriate, every step of the way. He sat in the classroom and listened to the kids read the story about the goat, even though he knew the country was under attack. What sort of commander in chief is this?

Then he declared endless limitless war against the rest of the world. What sort of a statesman would do that?

Bush resisted any official investigation for as long as possible. Then when he was forced to empower one, he assigned the monstrous war criminal Henry Kissinger to run it. Kissinger had to resign to avoid the exposure of a blatant conflict of interest. He realized this when he was asked whether he had any Saudi Arabian clients named "Bin Laden".

So then Philip Zelikow was handed the assignment. He had previously written a book with Condoleeza Rice. He had also written a treatise on catastrophic terror and the political uses to which it could be put. He's a specialist in public myth-making. Bush put him in charge of the investigation.

When his turn came, Bush refused to testify in public, or under oath, or without Dick Cheney at his side. Bush and Cheney refused to allow any records of their "testimony" to be kept. All this was designed to make us trust them?

Then we found out that before 9/11, Bush ignored counter-terrorism officials who tried to warn him about the coming attack. We found out that investigations into certain families and certain countries had been systematically shut down. We found out that members of the Bin Laden family were allowed to leave the country in the immediate wake of the attacks. We found out that the Bush family and the Bin Laden family have done business together for a long time. We found out a lot more, too, that traces directly to the president, and his father.

Conspiracy theorists hate George Bush because of all this. They didn't make all this up in order to support some baseless, irrational, pre-determined hatred of him.

This deliberate reversal of cause and effect is so transparent; it's more an assault on the fabric of reality than on the "inside job" argument.

In other words, "If you'll believe this, you'll believe anything!"

And that's exactly what they're hoping for.

Condoleezza Rice’s Right-Hand Man Is Retiring For Personal Reasons

Here's another late-Friday news release about the resignation of a top level diplomat.

AP via the New York Times:

R. Nicholas Burns, the country’s third-ranking diplomat and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s right-hand man, is retiring for personal reasons, the State Department said Friday.

The White House said that it was nominating William J. Burns, the United States ambassador to Russia, to replace him as under secretary of state for political affairs. The two men are not related. Like R. Nicholas Burns, William Burns is a career Foreign Service official. He has served as assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs as well as ambassador to Jordan.

“This is a very bittersweet time for us because Nick Burns has decided that it is time for him to retire,” Ms. Rice said in announcing Mr. Burns’s resignation in the State Department’s ornate Treaty Room. “He has decided that it’s the right moment to go back to family concerns.”

R. Nicholas Burns, 51, has led the administration’s efforts on Iran, serving as the United States negotiator with the five other countries — Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — that have been seeking to rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Mr. Burns has thrived under a succession of administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

He was the lead negotiator on an India nuclear agreement, and has had a role in almost all of the Bush administration’s major foreign policy initiatives. A senior administration official close to Mr. Burns said that he was retiring so that he could focus on getting his three daughters through college.

Mr. Burns has not lined up his next job, but has dismissed talk of running for office in Massachusetts, his home state.

During an interview, Mr. Burns said he was proud of the administration’s offer in 2006 to hold talks with Iran if it agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment. “It’s very important that we continue the effort to find a way toward negotiations with Iran,” he said.

He said that he believed that the United States and NATO still had some distance to go in managing the military presence in Afghanistan, where forces from the United States and several allies are working to end the Taliban-led insurgency. “I’ve spent a lot of time trying to help organize our efforts in Afghanistan, and that is a singular challenge for us,” he said.

They're dropping like flies, all on Friday afternoons; this one for personal reasons with no job lined up. What do you know?

Theater Of The Absurd: Condi Sends Negroponte To Poke Musharraf

[For more about Fatima Bhutto, click here!]

In the old days, when I cared about baseball, I used to read a lot of books about it.

Oh, unseeing youth!
How can it be so shallow and short-sighted?

from "Experience" by Gentle Giant
(watch them play it here!!)

One of those books, by former American League umpire Ron Luciano, described an "argument" between then-Orioles manager Earl Weaver and another umpire. A call had gone against the Orioles, and suddenly the umpire who had made that call found Weaver in his face, jumping and shouting and poking him in the chest.

All the jumping and shouting and poking was standard procedure for Weaver; it never surprised the umpires. But in this case the call hadn't even been close! And instead of berating the umpire who'd made it, Weaver was saying "I just want YOU [poke] to know that if I was ever in a FIGHT [poke] I would want YOU [poke] on my SIDE [poke], because you're like a BROTHER [poke] to me!"

So the umpire says, "What's the problem, Earl?" and Weaver [still poking] says, "We haven't played well in a week. My guys are lethargic. The crowd is just sitting there. And I need to get thrown out of a ballgame!"

So the ump throws him out, the crowd goes wild, the Orioles wake up and go on a winning streak; mission accomplished.

I couldn't help thinking of that when I read this:

LAHORE: The American pressure on General Pervez Musharraf to scrap the state of emergency will reach its climax on Saturday when Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte reaches Islamabad to warn the General either to get in line or face the consequences...

Perhaps it's not a very good analogy. But when it comes to analogies, the bar's been set quite low around here lately, since we've been discussing Professor Keith Seffen and his explanation of the destruction of the World Trade Center in terms of blowing up a party balloon.

My point is not that Negroponte needs to be thrown out of a ballgame, but that there's more theater here than meets the eye. And less democracy.

If you listen to Benazir Bhutto, or George Bush, or Condi Rice, you'll hear all kinds of talk about "restoring democracy". As if Pakistan were a democracy two weeks ago. In the theater of the absurd these people get top billing.

As Amir Mir wrote for India's DNA [same link]:

The official said the Americans wanted Musharraf to give Bhutto a level-playing field in which she could win the next polls.

Apparently the theater works, according to Pakistani journalist (and crown princess?) Fatima Bhutto, who explains:

Pakistanis follow American elections very closely, because they affect us so much. But, if you ask most Pakistanis, they believe earnestly that Republicans are the best...

Why, you ask?

... because they'll give us a lot of money, aid and weapons. The average person forgets that, in return, we have to do the American's dirty work for them. I think what a lot of people are most upset about is right now is that Americans are threatening to cut aid. The average Pakistani doesn't think about what we have to do to get that money.

This is from an interview with Celeste Fremon at Huffington Post, in which Fatima Bhutto makes an important observation regarding political theater and her aunt Benazir, "daughter of the East (read: West)":

Q: Now that your aunt's again under house arrest, and has ratcheted up her calls for General Musharraf to step down, the media is reporting that the Bush-brokered power sharing deal between her and the general is now off.

A: A lot of this is theater. Actually, it seems very much still on. Her corruption cases remain withdrawn -- as per the arrangements of the deal. all her supporters and her party members are allowed into the compound with her. She addresses her supporters outside through a megaphone. And she is granted amazing access to the media here, while other political parties have been given a blanket ban. If they want to hold a press conference they're not allowed. Only the Islamic party is given similar freedoms. And it isn't Benazir's supporters getting arrested by the thousands. It's the lawyers who have been charged with treason, and the journalists.

I think you should read the whole piece. I got there from Jenkin's Ear, which also mentioned Fatima Bhutto's "Iraq Redux?", and quoted some of it, and linked to my coverage of it, but doesn't "particularly recommend" my blog. As Jenkin's Ear explains:

I also read and recommend the Huffington Post, which follows a generally Hollywood liberal line; but do not usually link to its blog posts because they are widely read. I do not particularly recommend the Winter Patriot blog, which contains extensive discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories, etc.

9/11 conspiracy theories? Oh, right. That's what it looks like to Jenkin's Ear.

But what we've been discussing here lately has been a very clear instance of major media telling obvious lies to propagate the conclusions of an "academic paper" (though not the paper itself) which hasn't even been published!

I would expect "a blog focusing mainly on press reports relevant to the US international position, from foreign sources" to be attracted by such a story, not repelled by it. Oh well. Maybe interested, but not in such a critical way.

Someday, somewhere, I am going to find somebody who can tell me how it's possible to understand what's happening in Pakistan, and the obvious media tendency to paint an entirely different picture of it, without understanding what happened on 9/11, and the obvious media tendency to paint an entirely different picture of that. And when I do, I will tell you all about it.

And somewhere else I will meet someone else who will help me to understand how all these tendencies miraculously work together, all pulling in the same direction at every possible opportunity, without any conspiracy. That'll be a good one, and I'll be sure to tell you about that, too.

But then again, perhaps it's not so much the "conspiracy theories" but the "etc" that makes Jenkin's Ear so comfortable with Huffington Post and so nervous about the Winter Patriot blog. The old "etc" will do you in every time, won't it, Jenk?

Of course in this case the "etc" refers to such things as how false-flag terror can be used to create an enemy against whom war can be waged; or how the war can then be made to last forever, or how it can be used to "justify" all manner of abuses.

It's so easy a bunch of idiots could do it.

It's just like blowing up a balloon.

As Fatima Bhutto told Celeste Fremon:

[Benazir Bhutto] addresses her supporters outside through a megaphone. And she is granted amazing access to the media here, while other political parties have been given a blanket ban. If they want to hold a press conference they're not allowed. Only the Islamic party is given similar freedoms.

A tip of the cold cap to Jenkin, and best of luck with that ear.

~~~

For more about Fatima Bhutto, click here!