Maybe I'm only deluding myself, but I seem to remember stories during the Vietnam war when American reporters at least pretended to be outraged when U.S. troops were accused of sickening war crimes. I mean, the My Lai massacre was a big deal when it was revealed - accidentally, as I recall. At least a couple of officers were prosecuted and sentenced to long prison terms in country club jails, and TV and newspapers reporters at least wagged their fingers while proclaiming this was not the way Americans were supposed to behave.
But on the other hand, we noticed that recent exposé in the Toledo Blade newspaper in which it was revealed that many U.S. units in Vietnam were given carte blanche by their superiors to butcher women and children in a pathetic attempt to frighten the Vietnamese natives into supporting the froth-mouthed white-skinned invaders who were eviscerating their jungle paradise.
Wild as they were, the 1960s were a more innocent time in America. Doing the right thing and treating foreigners with respect had not yet been eliminated from the social repertoire of American behavior.
But that was then and this is now.
Savage terrorists who hold nothing sacred, least of all the precious lives of innocent civilians, are now running roughshod over the obliterated dump once known as the prosperous nation of Iraq - and they are wearing American uniforms.
But most Americans don't notice. They don't mention that stuff on TV anymore. The reporters are embedded with the troops, and those who try to report accurately from the battlefield - and there are numerous instances of this nowadays - wind up with an accidental bullet in their heads if they do. Another example of the new American way.
It isn't bad enough that no one in a position of authority in either the American government or practically all of American public life bothers to mention that the U.S. has absolutely no business being in Iraq, and that all these needless murders and corrupt business practices have created a 21st century America that makes Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union look humane by comparison. Just ask all those innocent people of Arab descent who remain in jail without access to their lawyers.
The stark fact is America has gone to war, demolished an entire nation, and squandered the lives of thousands of its own soldiers for reasons that are lies - proven, documented, and deliberate perversions of the truth - and nearly no one on the homefront in positions of authority has had the moxie to stand up and say America is now the most dangerous rogue nation in the world as it threatens to spread its economic coercion and radioactive rape to every country on the planet.
While the dapper Democratic candidates wax poetic in front of the TV cameras while gently chiding our demonstrably insane president for his bad manners and utter repression of government accountability, every day American soldiers are murdering innocent Iraqi families - and for what? For corporate thievery and dictatorial hegemony over the entire planet.
Those who aren't paying attention to the continuing atrocities being committed in our names might say I'm exaggerating.
Well, as a good example, I bid you consider a mere one day's news from Iraq, as reported by our premier American daily e-newspaper, Information Clearing House. And today (Friday, 1/9/04) was as good a day as any, very typical of the past ten months' daily news from Iraq.
Just consider what the American "liberators" did to its hapless victims in Iraq - just today, one single day.
* A 55-year-old Iraqi man had been removed from his house in August after a search by American soldiers found no weapons there. His family had been desperately searching for him for months, and they finally found him, brain dead in a Tikrit hospital.
After performing diagnostic tests, doctors told his family he had suffered massive head trauma, electrocution, and other beatings on his arms. The family was told he would be in a coma for the rest of his life from the obvious trauma suffered from torture.
It turns out that American soldiers had dropped him off at the hospital, saying he had had a heart attack.
* In a similar story, the Arab newspaper Al-Bawaba reported the presidential secretary of former leader Saddam Hussein died two days ago while in U.S. custody. He had been taken into custody in June. Reports in the Arabic press noted he was tortured by U.S. investigators to pressure him to provide information on weapons development programs.
* The New York Times reported the Bush administration has quietly withdrawn from Iraq a 400-member military team whose job was to scour the country for military equipment. So much for the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. The Times said "some military officials" said the administration might have lowered its sights and no longer expected to uncover the caches of chemical and biological weapons that the White House cited as a principal reason for going to war last March.
* The London Financial Times reported Bush administration officials "systematically misrepresented" the threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war, according to a new report to be published by a respected Washington think-tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. These distortions, combined with intelligence failures, exaggerated the risks posed by a country that presented no immediate threat to the US, Middle East or global security, the report says.
* The London Financial Times also reported U.S. intelligence bowed to political pressures in assessing the threat posed by Iraq, undermining a critical element of the Bush administration's national security doctrine. That same think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, concluded that U.S. intelligence was clearly unable to provide accurate information necessary for reliably acting in the absence of an obvious imminent threat.
Thursday's Information Clearing House report also included stories on a new investigation into a secret Pentagon intelligence unit that led the nation to war by pushing disinformation and faulty intelligence to produce wildly exaggerated threats posed by Iraq, quotes from Richard Perle's new book about how the U.S. should make a preemptive strike on North Korea, how nearly as many U.S. soldiers were wounded in Iraq last month as during the entire six-week period of major combat operations, an evocative piece on how an American father visited Iraq to mourn his dead son killed in combat, and a story on how a Spanish journalist was deliberately killed by coalition troops.
But the capper was this:
* An Iraqi mother has written to President Bush and other top politicos around the world to ask them to explain why her son was deliberately murdered by U.S. troops. In her heart-wrenching letter, she explained that her 19-year-old son, who was soon to be married, was returning home with friends when their truck broke down. After being confronted by an American patrol, they were searched and handcuffed, and led three kilometers to a nearby dam, then ordered to jump into the raging waters.
One of the three boys survived to tell the tale, but her son, who could not swim, was never found, only his jacket. Then as a final signature, U.S. soldiers flattened the boys' vehicle by running over it with heavy equipment.
The distraught mother, wrote: "To document the incident, my son's name is Zaydun Ma'mun Fadhil Hassun Al-Samarrai, born in the 1st of June 1984...Yes, they killed him and they broke my heart, try to imagine that dear sirs and ask your wives how hard it is for a mother to see her fruit ripen only to be thrown by sinful hands and to be swept away without any mercy or humanity. Those soldiers have turned everything America has ever stood for into one big lie. I was a victim, and there are and will be many more."
You need to read this whole story, and see the boy's photo, if you want to really cry
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/archives/2004_01_01_healingiraq_archive.html
Two thoughts:
1. Americans are wretched people. We should be long out of Iraq because the reasons we are there have been proved to be lies. That we are still there says a lot about the American people, that we are much farther down the road to hell than we thought.
2. Information Clearing House, the prodigious and informative compendium compiled daily by a single high-integrity gentleman named Tom, is the single most valuable daily newspaper in America, in my humble opinion. It is the one e-mail that I never fail to read every day, and you can get it, too, just by signing up at
www.informationclearinghouse.info/
If you're interested in supporting real journalism in the 21st century but can't afford to write more than one check, this would be the place to send it. I know of hundreds of other individuals and sites trying to tell the truth and fighting off the wolves at the door who could all use our support, but the first check should go here.
Now, if you want to spread the support around and have a lot more bread to spread, another very interesting (but relatively expensive) investment to make would be to get Bob Chapman's International Forecaster, a weekly financial newsletter that is sure to curl your hair with its pithy observations about the world's political situation in addition to level-headed insights about money matters, both personal and international.
Chapman's a retired financial consultant to the big boys with a fair and honest eye toward what's really happening in the world behind the scenes. Consider these two excerpts from his latest post.
"You are now warned that in the name of terrorism, the two Patriot Acts, Executive Order and Fatherland Security, that after the next elitist planned terrorist act your remaining freedoms will be taken from you. Undesirables such as us will be removed to concentration camps never to be seen again. We believe we'll be shot upon arrival, because we represent leadership, which the elitists must extinguish. Americans are in denial. They don't want to hear about what is being done to them. Many are simply brain-dead. We believe that what is ahead of us means millions of Americans will die at the hands of their own government. From almost a year before 9/11 we contended that the elitist Bush neocons were going to stage a tragedy and they did. The Bushes do business with the bin Ladens, and have for years. Bin Laden didn't cause U.S. air defenses to stand down. Only a halfwit would believe that bin Laden acted alone."
And ....
"2004 is an election year and we believe the possibility of a terrorist act is excellent. Not from the terrorists, but instigated by the Bush contingent and executed by the terrorists if Mr. Bush's run for re-election runs into trouble. As we said before he may miraculously discover Osama bin Laden in a cave appearing as a cave man should appear, something similar to Spiderman. A simple bombing at a sports event, airport or shopping mall will do the trick. There doesn't have to be a great loss of life. Just an event. That would send world financial markets into a spin; gold and silver would rocket and Mr. Bush could use martial law to reassure his re-election. There is no risk premium in this stock market, just smooth sailing with mega P/E ratios. We could also see an escalation of the insurgent warfare in Iraq and the escalation of US and UK battle casualities. We could have major events in the Middle East, particularly in Israel or over in Indonesia. The possibilities are endless. If we exit Iraq on July 1, it could be followed by civil war involving four different factions. North Korea just might go off the deep end. It now looks like Pakistan is in play again. This is an Islamic nuclear power that could easily fall into the hands of radical fundamentalists. We can assure you Fatherland Security is not going to stop any terrorist attack, they are there to suppress the American people. If a terrorist wants to do something, he is going to do it, and no one can stop him."
OK ... just one more excerpt - I don't want him to bust me for plagiarism, but everytime I read him I just want to stand up and applaud him for his clarity and his courage.
"We see little sign of sanity from George W. Bush nor his neocon hawks. The latest manifesto demands regime change in Syria and Iran and a Cuba-style military blockade of North Korea backed by planning for a preemptive strike on its nuclear sites. We are sure the Chinese are viewing this proposal with great interest. It recommends that France and Saudi Arabia be treated not as allies, but as rivals and possibly enemies. This is contained in a new book by famous neocon Richard Perle, and David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter. This is an effort to regain the initiative in Iraq and further their concept of perpetual war for perpetual peace. This tome is called "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror." It attacks Colin Powell who is on leave recovering from a prostate cancer operation. The book urges Mr. Bush to tell the truth about Saudi Arabians, some of whom back terror-tainted organizations. They say the EU should be forced to choose between Paris and Washington. These nutcases are bound and determined to incite a nuclear war. The Bush-neocon administration is a catastrophe that could cost all of us our lives."
Amen, Robert. To find out how to receive Chapman's International Forecaster, inquire at
international_forecaster@yahoo.com I'll let him tell you how much it costs, but if you can afford it, it's indispensable.
And to Tom and Robert, thank you for your continuing efforts to attempt to inform us how far America has fallen and how ugly and dangerous our nation has become.
John Kaminski is the author of "America's Autopsy Report," a collection of his Internet essays posted on hundreds of websites around the world. For more information, or to make a contribution to assure he continues writing his essays (from which he otherwise derives no income), click www.johnkaminski.com/
To read more of his essays, click www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html And one more thing: Kaminski will be the featured guest with Joyce Riley and Dave Von Kleist on "The Power Hour" radio program on Wednesday, Jan. 14, beginning at 7 a.m. Central Standard Time. Listeners call-in number is 1-800-861-7899. Call in or keep sleeping.
Last updated 11/01/2004
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