Your Government Wants to Kill You
It seems that some people still don't want to face the fact that the government lies on a regular basis. And not white lies, or minor lies, or untruths, or something easier to face. I'm talking wholesale, massive, prime-cut, choice lies.
Nevermind the Downing Street Memo, that's milquetoast. There's an even more incriminating document; its existence has been confirmed by The New York Times as well as two other British officials. In it, George W. Bush (that's the president, mind you; he controls the nukes) says that one great pretext to be Iran would be to paint up a United States surveillance plane in United Nations colors and fly it around Iraqi airspace in hopes of drawing fire. Totally public, mainstream news, not debatable. But the White House just says it's not true, it's no big deal, your government loves you.
It's great - Bush was asked about it, and after denying it, he says that he did not want to go to war at all, and that it's the hardest thing he does as a president. This is in direct contradiction to the statements he made in private at these meetings with Tony Blair; furthermore, Bush loves sending troops into war. He told his biographer back in the late '90s that he wanted to be a war president, because you have unlimited power.
And another thing - of course the government is going to deny that what is said in this document is actually true (against all reason) - they're the guilty party! Can you imagine what would happen if Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush got up on television and said, "we totally staged all the pretexts so that we could artifically go to war for our benefit?" The United States would immediately turn into hundreds of lawless warring factions. But I guess for some people, the government denying it is enough.
Hell, this stuff dates back to way before Iraq - what about the Northwoods document? I'm not even going to bother putting in a link, you can go right to Wikipedia and there are multiple links to the document in .pdf and searchable .html format. Operation Northwoods was the official United States government plan to stage terror attacks in the US, blow up planes filled with US citizens, blow up ships, and so forth. This was to create a pretext to invade Cuba and perform some good old fashioned regime change. This plan got approved all the way up to Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense at the time.
Or what about the USS Liberty? That was when we wanted to invade Egypt. When the ship came under attack and fighters were launched to defend it in international waters, McNamara called Admiral Moorer, with a bunch of officers listening in, and told him to stand down. Moorer refused; told him that they know that they're attacking an American ship, and that they were broadcasting on emergency frequencies because the American ones were being jammed. Moorer hangs up on McNamara. Do you know who called back about a minute and a half later? The President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson. And he tells Moorer, "I want that goddamn ship going to the bottom." Eventually, a Russian ship unexpectedly showed up and they had to call off the attack. Moorer and multiple officers have all been interviewed and they confirm that this is the case.
Now, of course, we're supposed to believe the government that Iran is cooking up nukes. In reality, they're just insisting on their right to nuclear energy, but in doing so, they're walking into a trap. Troops are already positioned on the border of Iran, I'm sure that they've got maps out right now in Washington figuring out who gets what oil (not that it's primarily about oil, but that's beside the point)... basically, you can take it to the bank. We're going to invade Iran. Meanwhile, Chinese generals routinely threaten the US with nuclear strikes (1) (2) if we make a wrong move, bragging about what cities they're aiming at. But hey, who cares! Let's just export more capital and jobs to China as they gas their own people in mobile execution vans (I've seen articles from China's own state-controlled newspapers that brag about this) and take their organs. It's all part of freedom.
Nevermind the Downing Street Memo, that's milquetoast. There's an even more incriminating document; its existence has been confirmed by The New York Times as well as two other British officials. In it, George W. Bush (that's the president, mind you; he controls the nukes) says that one great pretext to be Iran would be to paint up a United States surveillance plane in United Nations colors and fly it around Iraqi airspace in hopes of drawing fire. Totally public, mainstream news, not debatable. But the White House just says it's not true, it's no big deal, your government loves you.
It's great - Bush was asked about it, and after denying it, he says that he did not want to go to war at all, and that it's the hardest thing he does as a president. This is in direct contradiction to the statements he made in private at these meetings with Tony Blair; furthermore, Bush loves sending troops into war. He told his biographer back in the late '90s that he wanted to be a war president, because you have unlimited power.
And another thing - of course the government is going to deny that what is said in this document is actually true (against all reason) - they're the guilty party! Can you imagine what would happen if Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush got up on television and said, "we totally staged all the pretexts so that we could artifically go to war for our benefit?" The United States would immediately turn into hundreds of lawless warring factions. But I guess for some people, the government denying it is enough.
Hell, this stuff dates back to way before Iraq - what about the Northwoods document? I'm not even going to bother putting in a link, you can go right to Wikipedia and there are multiple links to the document in .pdf and searchable .html format. Operation Northwoods was the official United States government plan to stage terror attacks in the US, blow up planes filled with US citizens, blow up ships, and so forth. This was to create a pretext to invade Cuba and perform some good old fashioned regime change. This plan got approved all the way up to Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense at the time.
Or what about the USS Liberty? That was when we wanted to invade Egypt. When the ship came under attack and fighters were launched to defend it in international waters, McNamara called Admiral Moorer, with a bunch of officers listening in, and told him to stand down. Moorer refused; told him that they know that they're attacking an American ship, and that they were broadcasting on emergency frequencies because the American ones were being jammed. Moorer hangs up on McNamara. Do you know who called back about a minute and a half later? The President of the United States, Lyndon B. Johnson. And he tells Moorer, "I want that goddamn ship going to the bottom." Eventually, a Russian ship unexpectedly showed up and they had to call off the attack. Moorer and multiple officers have all been interviewed and they confirm that this is the case.
Now, of course, we're supposed to believe the government that Iran is cooking up nukes. In reality, they're just insisting on their right to nuclear energy, but in doing so, they're walking into a trap. Troops are already positioned on the border of Iran, I'm sure that they've got maps out right now in Washington figuring out who gets what oil (not that it's primarily about oil, but that's beside the point)... basically, you can take it to the bank. We're going to invade Iran. Meanwhile, Chinese generals routinely threaten the US with nuclear strikes (1) (2) if we make a wrong move, bragging about what cities they're aiming at. But hey, who cares! Let's just export more capital and jobs to China as they gas their own people in mobile execution vans (I've seen articles from China's own state-controlled newspapers that brag about this) and take their organs. It's all part of freedom.
posted by GSJ at 4/24/2006 09:56:00 PM
3 Comments:
You make a pretty good point — a lot of that stuff is pretty easily verifiable. However, I should point out that there's a Wikipedia article on the USS Liberty incident which discusses the theory that it was intentional and seems to indicate that that theory isn't very well-supported at the moment. Your mileage may vary.
"basically, you can take it to the bank. We're going to invade Iran."
I'm not so sure. You may be right, but there is reasonable room for doubt here. I think Bush is going to play politics on this one. I for one think we need to confront Iran, but I don't believe it has to be an occupation, or nukes, or anything. We were actually suppose to do this with Iran when I was in the military but Clinton aborted at the last minute. It would involve a campaign similiar to that of Iraq (the actual 21 day campaign) but without ground troops.
The thing with Iran is that it would be a guerilla war. If you threaten a guerilla with nukes, or even napalm air strikes they'll laugh at you. Its why Iran has been so defiant. Helicopter gun ships however take away a guerilla's mobility, but that is the more expensive route. You can see where I'm going with this.
Yeah, I don't think Bush has the political capital at the moment to actually make good on any threats; even if he did, there's no reason to — MAD worked with China and Russia, and there's nothing to suggest that something similar won't work if Iran gets nuclear capabilities. It's not as though Israel is without defenses, either.
So basically, all we can dy by threatening nuclear strikes is get Iran to mock us, and maybe build their own nuclear weapons as a deterrent or a show of defiance or self-determinism.
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