THE LIE OF THE CENTURY
(UPDATED)
"All war is based on deception." -- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a
war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and
horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war
usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for
the war is the only possible choice they can make.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President McKinley told the American people that the USS Maine had
been sunk in Havana Harbor by a Spanish mine. The American people,
outraged by this apparent unprovoked attack, supported the Spanish
American War. The Captain of the USS Maine had insisted the ship was
sunk by a coal bin explosion, investigations after the war proved that
such had indeed been the case. There had been no mine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hitler used this principle of lying to his own people to initiate an
invasion. He told the people of Germany that Poland had attacked
first. The Germans, convinced they were being threatened, followed
Hitler into Poland and into World War 2.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FDR claimed Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. It wasn't. The United
States saw war with Japan as the means to get into war with Germany,
which Americans opposed. So Roosevelt needed Japan to appear to strike
first. Following an 8-step plan devised by the Office of Naval
Intelligence, Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into the attack.
Contrary to the official story, the fleet did not maintain radio
silence, but sent messages intercepted and decoded by US intercept
stations. Tricked by the lie of a surprise attack, Americans marched
off to war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
President Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to send Americans off
to fight in Vietnam. There were no torpedoes in the water in the Gulf.
LBJ took advantage of an inexperienced sonar man's report to goad
Congress into escalating the Vietnam
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is inescapable historical reality that leaders of nations will lie
to their people to trick them into wars they otherwise would have
refused. It is not "conspiracy theory" to suggest that leaders of
nations lie to trick their people into wars. It is undeniable fact.
This brings us to the present case.
Did the government of the United States lie to the American people,
more to the point, did President Bush and his Neocon associates lie to
Congress, to initiate a war of conquest in Iraq?
This question has been given currency by a memo leaked from inside the
British Government which clearly indicates a decision to go to war
followed by the "fixing" of information around that policy. This is,
as they say, a smoking gun.
But the fact is that long before this memo surfaced, it had become
obvious that the US Government, aided by that of Great Britain, was
lying to create the public support for a war in Iraq.
First off is Tony Blair's "Dodgy Dossier", a document released by the
Prime Minister that made many of the claims used to support the push
for war. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of
it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years
old!
The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good
case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated.
This use of material that could not possibly be relevant at the time
is clear proof of a deliberate attempt to deceive.
Then there was the claim about the "Mobile biological weapons
laboratories". Proffered in the absence of any real laboratories in
the wake of the invasion, photos of these trailers were shown on all
the US Mainstream Media, with the claim they while seeming to lack
anything suggesting biological processing, these were part of a much
larger assembly of multiple trailers that churned out biological
weapons of mass destruction.
The chief proponent of this hoax was Colin Powell, who presented
illustrations such as this one to the United Nations on February 5th,
2003.
This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were
nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather
balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a
British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.
Colin Powell's speech to the UN was itself one misstatement after
another. Powell claimed that Iraq had purchased special aluminum tubes
whose only possible use was in uranium enrichment centrifuges. Both
CIA and Powell's own State Department confirmed that the tubes were
parts for missiles Saddam was legally allowed to have. Following the
invasion, no centrifuges, aluminum or otherwise were found.
Powell also claimed to the United Nations that the photo at left
showed "Decontamination Vehicles". But when United Nations inspectors
visited the site after the invasion, they located the vehicles and
discovered they were just firefighting equipment.
Powell claimed the Iraqis had illegal rockets and launchers hidden in
the palm trees of Western Iraq. None were ever found.
Powell claimed that the Iraqis had 8,500 liters (2245 gallons) of
Anthrax. None was ever found.
Powell claimed that Iraq had four tons of VX nerve gas. The UN had
already confirmed that it was destroyed. The only VX ever found were
samples the US had left as "standards" for testing. When the UN
suspected that the US samples had been used to contaminate Iraqi
warheads, the US moved quickly to destroy the samples before
comparison tests could be carried out.
Powell claimed that Iraq was building long-range remote drones
specifically designed to carry biological weapons. The only drones
found were short-range reconnaissance drones.
Powell claimed that Iraq had an aggregate of between 100 and 500 tons
of chemical and biological warfare agents. Powell gave no basis for
that claim at all, and a DIA report issued the same time directly
contradicted the claim. No biological or chemical weapons were found
in Iraq following the invasion.
Powell claimed that "unnamed sources" confirmed that Saddam had
authorized his field commanders to use biological weapons. No such
weapons were ever used by the Iraqis to defend against the invasion
and, of course, none were ever found in Iraq.
Powell claimed that 122mm warheads found by the UN inspectors were
chemical weapons. The warheads were empty, and showed no signs of ever
having contained chemical weapons.
Powell claimed that Iraq had a secret force of illegal long-range Scud
missiles. None were ever found.
Powell claimed to have an audio tape proving that Saddam was
supporting Osama Bin Laden. But independent translation of the tape
revealed Osama's wish for Saddam's death.
Colin Powell's UN debacle also included spy photos taken from high
flying aircraft and spacecraft. On the photos were circles and arrows
and labels pointing to various fuzzy white blobs and identifying them
as laboratories and storage areas for Saddam's massive weapons of mass
destruction program. Nothing in the photos actually suggested what the
blobby shapes were and inspections which followed the invasion, all of
them turned out to be rather benign. In at least one case, the
satellite Powell claimed had taken one of the pictures had actually
been out of operation at the time. And many questioned why Powell was
showing black and white photos when the satellites in use at the time
over Iraq took color images.
Another piece of evidence consists of documents which President Bush
referenced as in his 2003 State of the Union Speech. According to
Bush, these documents proved that Iraq was buying tons of uranium
oxide, called "Yellow Cake" from Niger. Since Israel had bombed Iraq's
nuclear power plant years before, it was claimed that the only reason
Saddam would have for buying uranium oxide was to build bombs.
This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a
great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to
import any from Niger or anywhere else. The I.A.E.A. then blew the
cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used
were not only forgeries, but too obvious to believe that anyone in the
Bush administration did not know they were forgeries!
In the end, the real proof that we were lied to about Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction is that no weapons of mass destruction were ever
found. That means that every single piece of paper that purported to
prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was by default a
fraud, a hoax, and a lie. There could be no evidence that supported
the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because Iraq did
not have weapons of mass destruction. In a way, the existence of any
faked documents about Iraq's WMDs is actually an admission of guilt.
If one is taking the time to create fake documents, the implication is
that the faker is already aware that there are no genuine documents.
What the US Government had, ALL that they had, were copied student
papers, forged "Yellow Cake" documents, balloon inflators posing as
bioweapons labs, and photos with misleading labels on them. And
somewhere along the line, someone decided to put those misleading
labels on those photos, to pretend that balloon inflators are portable
bioweapons labs, and to pass off stolen student papers as contemporary
analysis.
And THAT shows an intention to deceive.
Lawyers call this "Mens Rea", which means "Guilty Mind". TV lawyer
shows call it "Malice aforethought". This means that not only did the
Bush Administration lie to the people and to the US Congress, but knew
they were doing something illegal at the time that they did it.
All the talk about "Intelligence failure" is just another lie. There
was no failure. Indeed the Army agents who erroneously claimed that
missile tubes were parts for a uranium centrifuge received bonuses,
while the Pentagon smeared Hans Blix, and John Bolton orchestrated the
firing of Jose Bustani, the director of the Organization for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, because Bustani was trying to send
chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad.
The President of the United States and his Neocon associates lied to
the people of the United States to send them off on a war of conquest.
Defenders of the government will point to the cases listed at the top
of the page as proof that lying to the people is a normal part of the
leader's job and we should all get used to it. And because "Everybody
does it" that we should not single out the present administration. But
this is madness. We do not catch all the murderers, yet when we catch
a murderer, we deal with them as harshly as possible, in order to
deter more murderers.
Right now, we have the criminals at hand. and, while other leaders in
history have lied to start wars, for the first time in history, the
lie stands exposed while the war started with the lies still rages on,
to the death and detriment of our young men and women in uniform. We
cannot in good moral conscience ignore this lie, this crime, lest we
encourage future leaders to continue to lie to use to send our kids
off to pointless wars. Lying to start a war is more than an
impeachable offence; it the highest possible crime a government can
commit against their own people. Lying to start a war is not only
misappropriation of the nation's military and the nation's money under
false pretenses, but it is outright murder committed on a massive
scale. Lying to start a war is a betrayal of the trust each and every
person who serves in the military places in their civilian leadership.
By lying to start a war, the Bush administration has told the military
fatalities and their families that they have no right to know why they
were sent to their deaths. It's none of their business.
Our nation is founded on the principle of rule with the consent of the
governed. Because We The People do not consent to be lied to, a
government that lies rules without the consent of the governed, and
ruling without the consent of the governed is slavery.
You should be more than angry. You should be in a rage. You should be
in a rage no less than that of the families of those young men and
women who have been killed and maimed in this war started with a
lie.You need to be in a rage and you need to act on that rage because
even as I type these words, the same government that lied about Iraq's
nuclear weapons is telling the exact same lies about Iran's nuclear
capabilities. The writing is on the wall; having gotten away with
lying to start the war in Iraq, the US Government will lie to start a
war in Iran, and after that another, and after that another, and
another and another and another because as long as you remain silent,
and as long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop.
As long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop.
None.
It is time to fire the liars.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
for good men to do nothing" .
--Edmund Burke
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S.C. TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 47 § 1001.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, WHOEVER, in any
matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or
judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and
willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by ANY trick, scheme, or device
a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or
representation; or
(3) makes or USES any false writing or document knowing the same to
contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or
entry; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5
years, or both.
(b) Subsection (a) does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding,
or that party's counsel, for statements, representations, writings or
documents submitted by such party or counsel to a judge or magistrate
in that proceeding.
(c) With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the
legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to—
(1) administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter
related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or
employment practices, or support services, or a document required by
law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office
or officer within the legislative branch; or
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority
of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress,
consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SO HERE IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO
The Bush administration and their friends in the media want this story
to go away. More than want it to go away, they are in a panic, and
will do everything they can to stop it. They will use every dirty
trick, every paid shill, every presstitute that they can. Already
there is a report that the Michael Jackson jury is "expected" to reach
a verdict just before the Conyers hearings.
So, I want YOU to copy this article off, post it everywhere. This
article is placed in the public domain. Mail it to your friends. Then
send it to your local media and your Congresscritters and have
everyone you know do the same. Get on the phones. Flood their offices.
The term is "Viral Marketing" where you get the people who need a
product to market it for you. Well, this nation NEEDS this "product".
It needs to know that this war was started with lies. INTENTIONAL
lies. And they need to know there is something they can do about it,
and that is to start pounding on the doors of power.
Because when a flood of such messages reaches the Congress and the
media, what they will hear is that there is no more time. Either they
will deal with these lies and the liars, in full, or they will lose
all credibility as a government and as media.
A government that lies to the people cannot be the legal government of
this land. Make sure that they understand that YOU understand that the
Constitution does not allow the government to lie to the people.
Calling themselves the government does not make it so if they act
unconstitutionally and illegally. The Constitution is the original
"Contract with America" and a government that lies stands in clear
breach of that contract.
MORE MEDIA CONTACTS MORE CONGRESSIONAL CONTACTS
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 Declaration of Independence"
.
|
