"We Were Lied To"

My new novel of the post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is available at all booksellers.
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     This meme, which has been the mantra among supposed political "progressives" for years now, was reignited over the weekend with the publication of a memoir by former Bush press secretary Scott McLellan claiming that President Bush and his cronies wove a spell of lies to get a war in Iraq underway. This is the narrative that Americans tell themselves to prove that, if it weren't for bad leaders, we would be a morally upright nation.
     I don't think so. And, remember, I write the following as a registered Democrat (and an Obama voter in my primary state). Warning: many readers are not going to like this.
     The chanters of this mantra seem to forget what the 9/11/01 attack on US targets represented: a grievous act which in any other moment of history and any other place on earth would have been construed as an act of war. Roughly three thousand people were killed, many choosing to jump out the windows of skyscrapers to avoid roasting to death.
     Setting aside the crank theories (which I've always regarded as utter paranoid nonsense) that the attacks were somehow orchestrated by the US government itself, it became clear quickly that the nineteen airplane hijackers were Arab nationals, mostly from Saudi Arabia. It also became clear that their acts were not directly sponsored by any legitimate Arab government, but rather by a trans-national Islamic extremist network. So the question for the US, after the morning of 9/11/01, was: what to do about this act?
     Well, the first response, weeks later, was a US attack on the supposed headquarters of the the trans-national Islamic extremist network (which came to be known as al Qaeda, "The base") in Afghanistan. The rather robust campaign necessitated the occupation of this threadbare nation, but it failed to accomplish its chief aim, which was to capture the charismatic leader and financial sponsor of the 9/11 attack, the Saudi Arabian rogue millionaire fanatic Osama bin Laden. It did accomplish its other chief aim: to evict the extremist Taliban government from control of the capital, Kabul.
     What happened after that is what has provoked the now-familiar mantra: it became evident that evicting the Taliban and occupying Afghanistan was not enough. It was not a sufficient response to the grievous injury of 9/11. Why? The Afghans were not Arabs.  
     From a strategic point-of-view, 9/11 required a severe punitive response against the people responsible (casualties were higher than the attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941). That meant against an Arab people. Since the act was not perpetrated by any Arab nation per se, this left the US in a quandary. And of course, it begs the question: why was such a response even required?
     Because 9/11 was the most recent of a spate of attacks, occurring over a period of years, by the same group of people, and the one to most severely damage important targets within sovereign US territory itself. It is important to emphasize the significance of this. The other acts in the series included the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 which killed six people and injured over a thousand. The next was the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed nineteen Americans. This was followed in 1998 by the simultaneous bombing of two US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 223 people (mostly African employees) and injured over 4000 others. The next, in October, 2000, was the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, which killed seventeen American sailors. The US response to all these acts was little more than hand-wringing which, in retrospect, was thought to have emboldened the further and far more traumatic injury of 9/11.
     Now, it might be argued that even if 9/11 was an act of war by any normal definition, it was an act of what is called these days "Fourth Generation War," the new decentralized warfare carried on by small units symptomatic of the breakdown of nation-states and enabled by high tech weaponry in which a very few individuals can create tremendous carnage. For good or for ill, the US military still operates on the basis of the previous generation of warfare, involving large massed units on land, sea, and air. Our response was geared to that manner of warfare.
      And the response was determined to be a grievous strike against an Arab nation. Why? To demonstrate that acts of any generation-type warfare against sovereign US territory perpetrated by Arab people would be answered by the type of warfare still practiced by the US. So the next question was: which Arab Nation?
     The answer was Iraq, for a number of strategic reasons. Iraq had the largest untapped oil reserves outside Saudi Arabia and it would benefit the oil-guzzling US to have something to say about its disposition. Iraq was geographically positioned between two of the most troublesome nations in the Middle East, Iran and Saudi Arabia and a US military presence between them would influence their behavior. Iraq was ethnically Arab. Iraq's leader, Saddam Hussein, had a long record of mischief-making in that unstable region and it was believed that getting rid of him would be beneficial (hindsight, at that point, was not yet operational).
     I believe that the decision to punish an Arab nation for 9/11 was probably made very soon after the event. Whether Iraq specifically had anything to do with 9/11 was not part of the equation. It didn't matter one way or the other anymore than it would have mattered if the 9/11 hijackers had decided to strike the Empire State Building and the US Capitol instead of the WTC and the Pentagon. And arguments made on the basis of Iraq's involvement or non-involvement are therefore specious. As a strategic matter, it was necessary to make the "statement" that attacks on US territory would provoke a response that Islamic extremists could not fail to understand -- something along the lines of "an eye for an eye...." In short, we set out to kick the ass of an Arab nation. Iraq was by far the best candidate.
     Being Americans, however, we also decided to finesse it, to provide a theoretically ideal outcome, which in this case would be the ouster of the dictator Saddam Hussein and his replacement with a sleek democratic government for which the Iraqi masses would be eternally grateful -- thus allowing us to kick their ass and then pick them up off the ground, dust them off, give them some pocket money, and teach them the benefits of government of-by-and-for the people.
      The run-up to this project involved some dissembling. It was preceded by an elaborate ceremonial dance with a UN weapons inspection team to ascertain whether Saddam Hussein possessed any weapons of mass destruction, WMDs. Their efforts were inconclusive. Remember this. It is a key point. A lot of people remember it differently. They mis-remember that the UN team reported that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs for certain. This was not the case. Among other things, the Iraqi leader had designated all kinds of installations as "presidential palaces," and placed them off-limits to inspectors. There he could easily have hidden a cache of fissionable material in a bathroom-sized space, not to mention stores of other exotic weapon-grade materials such as smallpox viruses, anthrax spores, etc. You didn't need a whole lot of storage space for these things. And the collapse a few years earlier of the Soviet Union had, it was widely suspected, loosed an orgy of kleptomania in Russia commencing a black market trade in everything from bomb-grade uranium to weapons-grade bio-organisms.
      In any case, the UN search was a frustrating and basically inconclusive exercise, and the bottom line of it all was this: in order to find out if anything was there, we had to search the place ourselves, including the "off-limits" areas. So, the argument was made by the Bush administration that this would be the basis of an ultimatum to Iraq. A lot of intelligence (spywork) was gathered from many sources -- Europe, Israel, Russia -- and not all of it was verifiably truthful. Some of it, such as rumors of a transfer of yellowcake uranium ore from Africa to Iraq, proved to be erroneous, even though it was used as the basis for our ultimatum. This is the kernel of the argument that "we were lied to."
      War is an inexact art. In the history of nations, lies and exaggerations are almost universally employed by heads-of-state to engage in wars even when causes are righteous. In all wars, the contestants believe that God is on their side, and that acts justifying war are justified by God. Anyway, the search for WMDs was used as the justification for America's invasion of Iraq in 2003. Another important point uniformly ignored by the "we were lied to" faction is that just because no WMDs were found, does not prove that we didn't have to look. The truth is, nobody knew for certain what was there or not there, and to this day nobody knows if anything was moved out of Iraq to some to some other nation (Syria being the usual choice) in the long interim of the UN search.
     However, the true objectives of the action were still as stated above: to punish an Arab nation for 9/11, to establish a military presence between Iran and Saudi Arabia, and to "secure" a large reserve of oil (not to steal it, but to assure access to buying it). This was an extremely ambitious program in which an awful lot of things could go wrong.
     And they certainly did. The Iraqis were not grateful for the American occupation. They proved uneducable in the ways of American-style democratic governance. They reverted to a persistent diet of religious-ethnic-and territorial warfare within their own artificially-drawn borders. They regarded their American teacher-protectors as detestable interlopers and blew them up whenever possible. They ran what was left of their economy into the ground, including their oil industry. The incompetence of the US military occupation, its reliance on mercenary security thugs, it's "out-sourcing" important tasks to venal corporations such as KBR, its ineptitude in carrying out the mission of restoring basic electric and water services -- all contributed to the disastrous quagmire that Iraq turned into.
     But all the backward-looking crybaby complaints that "we were lied to" still doesn't answer the basic question: what should have been the appropriate response to the extreme injury of 9/11? A diplomatic protest? Another investigation by the UN? The surreptitious assassination of Arab troublemakers all around the world? I don't think the "we were lied to" contingent has a credible answer to this question.
     There's another hugely important realm of inquiry that the "we were lied to" folks have never addressed: who lied to us about the way we live in this country? About the amount of oil we consume in the service of all our comforts and conveniences? About our extreme car dependence and what is required in our relations with the rest of the world to sustain it. All these years, Frank Rich and all his whining colleagues at the New York Times barely acknowledged the domestic fiasco of the suburban sprawl economy that placed us in such jeopardy to begin with. Even now, with the airlines disintegrating and gasoline over $4 (diesel over $5) I haven't heard any of these crybabies even raise the issue of restoring the US railroad system. How many of these crybabies live suburban lives themselves, in places like Louden County, Virginia, or Westchester, or Long Island, or the San Fernando Valley? Who lied to us about that?
     For my money, the "we were lied to" chorus only represents the obdurately self-righteous cluelessness in every band of the American political spectrum. We lied to ourselves. We continue to lie to ourselves every day. The US public barely understands the first thing about the energy predicament we're in, and what it means for how we live in this country -- or how we get along with the rest of the world -- and the news media tragically reflects that ignorance. We fantasize about being "energy independent" and still being able to drive to the mall three times a day to eat caesar salads grown on the other side of North America. Get this: we deserve exactly what is happening to us. We might as well keep on lying to ourselves to pretend that we are not descending into a dark phase of our own history. After all, the true basis of American life these days is to feel good about yourself no matter what you do.

Comments

[rubbersoul45]

James,

I rarely ever post on this blog, but I read your Monday morning posts every week religiously (for years now). I'm not sure if you read your bloggers comments every week (and I'm sure it's almost impossible to do so because there are so many), but I just wanted to say how thankful I am of your words and message. You are only one of few who separate fiction/fantasy from reality and who can do so, so cogently. Thanks for being honest Jim!

[JJackson]

Jim,

Love you to death, but you have to categorize yourself under your own tag for this post. To believe that your own government would not harm you as they did on 9/11 is to suffer from the 'Jiminy Cricket Syndrome', as you so elegantly put it.

You've done a wonderful job of explaining your own interpretation of the reasons for us going in to Iraq as a way soothing your inability to accept reality. 911 was an inside job and a perfunctory review of the evidence would lead any logical person to that conclusion and certainly not to the more ludicrous one; that being a guy in a cave orchestrating the greatest terrorist attack on this country with a handful of complete idiots, and somehow being lucky enough to have it happen without any response from the greatest military in the world. To accept the mainstream story is extremely illogical and intellectually childish.

[JJackson]

Jim,

Love you to death, but you have to categorize yourself under your own tag for this post. To believe that your own government would not harm you as they did on 9/11 is to suffer from the 'Jiminy Cricket Syndrome', as you so elegantly put it.

You've done a wonderful job of explaining your own interpretation of the reasons for us going in to Iraq as a way soothing your inability to accept reality. 911 was an inside job and a perfunctory review of the evidence would lead any logical person to that conclusion and certainly not to the more ludicrous one; that being a guy in a cave orchestrating the greatest terrorist attack on this country with a handful of complete idiots, and somehow being lucky enough to have it happen without any response from the greatest military in the world. To accept the mainstream story is extremely illogical and intellectually childish.

[umass82]

The ineptitude of the US government in pursuing its Iraq policy and the willingness of the American public to largely look the other way as they drive their petrol fueled SUV's to the mall to buy their crap made in china while munching on the happy meals is indicative of the response to peak oil and foreshadows an problematic future of hard crash landing from the euphoric high of cheap oil.

[rubbersoul45]

Jim,

I posted my last comment without reading your post this week. Are you nuts?

Haven't you ever read or at least come in contact with Michael C. Ruppert's astounding unraveling of 9/11/01 in his book:

"Crossing the Rubicon"

Yikes, pick it up man!

Ruppert is a freakin visionary!

[Movenonup]

Hi,

That took a lot of honest inward reflection, research, and hard work to write. Thanks. We need our collective asses kicked.

My husband has been spending a lot of time with William Lind and Global Guerrilla. It is chaos theory, postmodern, Buddhism, and more, for war. The 4th Generation warfare paradigm is very illuminating.

[David Mathews]

JHK is a neocon and this week's column is more-or-less nothing worse than the tripe that JHK was writing years ago as he was promoting a war with Iran.

JHK asks an idiotic question:

"But all the backward-looking crybaby complaints that "we were lied to" still does not answer the basic question: what should have been the appropriate response to the extreme injury of 9/11?"

Well, capturing Osama Bin Laden would constitute an appropriate response to 9/11. Yet our incompetent and/or evil neocon government prefers Osama to remain alive (as the bogeyman provoking an eternal war against innocent Muslim civilians for the sake of their oil) and this is the reason why Osama is alive & comfortable while there are 150,000 dead Iraqi civilians and 4100 dead soldiers.

Invading Iraq didn't address the terrorism problem at all. Whether or not it addresses the Peak Oil problem is another question altogether. Yet, even if it does, it comes at a tremendous price in blood.

JHK is sounding more and more like George W. Bush. Doesn't JHK know that George Bush is a lame duck?

[steve duncan]

So, lots of "Arabs" for many years waged Fourth Generational War on the U.S. For this reason we had to view 9/11 as the last straw. I guess we should all be glad the most devastating, calamitous attack in that string of aggression was by Middle Eastern Arabs. I imagine were it committed by some other aggrieved party the nation, and Bush, would have felt just as justified in launching a war somewhere to demonstrate our loss of patience with terrorists and other ne'er-do-wells. Manila would obviously have had to been carpet bombed if The Twin Towers had been razed by Abu Sayyaf.

[Peak Observer]

I had a feeling this post would generate a firestorm of bickering about 9-11. Like Jim Jackson, I'm a bit puzzled by Kunstler's failure to question 9-11 -- blithely dismissing the idea as "paranoid nonsense." It took me some time digging into it, but the evidence stacked up pretty quickly that, at a minimum, something was terribly wrong with the official story. That Kunstler would swallow it so readily is strange. He's so good at uncovering delusions when it comes to our energy predicament -- yet on this topic, seems to have a rare blindspot.

[JackRyan]

Jim,

Your columns are usually entertaining and thought-provoking, but I must agree with rubbersoul45 and Jim Jackson regarding 9/11. Have you never heard about the PNAC report written in 2000? Crossing the Rubicon is the best book on 9/11, and Zeitgeist is entertaining and quick (part 2 deals specifically with 9/11).
I look forward to your 'take' on Ruppert's book and the movie Zeitgeist!

[Movenonup]

I take the point of the post to be that we are all corrupt and all responsible. Everything else, 9-11, conspiracy or not, is a distraction from this fact that we do not want to look at because it makes us uncomfortable with who we are. If we look at who we are, we might have to own it that we have been irresponsible stewards for the resources of the USA. If we look at who we are we would be filled with self loathing and couldn't get behind the wheel of a car again. If we look at who we are, we'd want to kill us.

We were lied to is bullshit. That is the point. Many posters here are getting lost in the details of JHK's post.

[theroachman1]

OH Gawd! You done it with this post. We all ready have seen several blame George Bush people. It is easy to do, he is the worst leader in US history and a total failure in the business world.

To think that the Necons actually were actively behind the 9/11 attacks is bullshit. And I have read the above mention books. They are bullshit too. The George Bush led US government complicity in this is when told to by Sandy Berger that there was a planed attack on US soil was to do nothing. That does not mean they were planning the attack. Heck they may have even wanted and welcome the attack but that again does not mean they planned it.

The other thing George Bush failed at was his response. If he had not in less then a year dismantled Clinton rearranged military which had been redesigned for more rapid responses (done with billions of USDs) We would have had Osama Been Forgotten by Christmas 2001. And gas prices today would only be $3.25 per gallon!

[FARfetched]

JHK, I both like and don't like this week's column. I like it because it isn't a rehash of your usual themes (although they get a mention at the end). What I don't like about it is that two facts blow huge gaping holes in the central argument.

1) The Bush-league administration had started drawing up plans for an Iraq invasion even before 9/11 happened. One could see 9/11 as their opportunity, or as a distraction (we have to go after bin Laden before we can get Saddam). Things might have been different in Iraq if we hadn't gone into Afghanistan first, but probably not. "We" screwed up the occupation in just about every possible way (including not securing huge caches of conventional explosives, which have likely provided the active ingredient in all those IEDs).

2) The average American assumes Muslim=Arab. Making fine distinctions between Saudis, Afghanis, and Persians is way beyond most of the J6P types. Invading Afghanistan was a reasonable response — the Taliban government was giving alQ the run of the country, after all. The quid pro quo was that bin Laden was essentially funding them since the Taliban had done a fair job of choking the opium trade, a traditional income producer for Afghanistan. Getting bin Laden's head on a platter would have been a huge PR coup for the Bush-league administration, and could have perhaps clinched the "permanent Republican majority" game for them. Iraq ended up being a distraction from the real goal (eliminating alQ).

OTOH, even the average American would not automatically associate alQ, or any terrorist outfit, with a foreign (read: Arab) government. They know that Timothy McVeigh may have had a little help from his friends, but those friends weren't in high places.

Yes, we lie to ourselves. We also choose to believe the constant lies told to us by advertisers, knowing they're lying to us. We choose to believe that technology will save our lifestyle, because that's easier than facing the necessary changes we'll all have to make — but the longer we put it off, the harder it's going to be when we can't put it off anymore.

[MemeMonkey]

Jim,

While it is much easier to dimsiss 911 conspiracy as paranoia, I suggest you take your reasonably formidible intellect and actually examine the facts involved and the relevant sources. I too dismissed US Government complicity untill troubled by certain anomomolies, I took the time and trouble to closely examine the evidence, discarding misinformation, the everpresent lunatic fringe, and morons such as Alex Jones, who, while they have certain facts right, are insuffurably caught up in Bilderburger, CFR paranoia. Look for yourself at the slowmotion video footage of building 7 you can actually see the squib charges sequentially firing off.

Understand the basic physics of objects in free fall and the timing and improbable collapse profiles of three buildings. etc etc.

Yes it was a conspiracy and it was executed like a David Copperfield Illusion, Everybody sees the planes crashing, towers collapsing and swarthy Arab highjackers photos instantly on the news. the origins of Al Queda, the involvment of the Pakastani ISI etc are less obvious, but clearly the attacks were either facilitated or at a minimum amplified by rogue elements within our governemnt. Now connect the dots to the PNAC agenda for a 'new pearl harbor' to motivate American intervention in the ME Oil sandbox.

I don't presume to know the exact players (cheney, Meyers, Rummy springs to mind though) but it is clear there is much more than the official explanation. You should have the intellectual courage and honesty to examine the facts for yourself. An honest appraisal and you will be stunned at the implications.

So while I agree with your point that Americans are ignorant greedy, and clueless and deserve what they are getting that still does not dimish the legitimate rage people feel from this straussian manipulations to war.

The correct answer to the question you proffer: What should our response to 911 have been? Is
we should have the FBI and the AFF etc thorughly investigate all aspects, and attempt to bring the perpetrators, both in Pakistan, Afghanaistan and Langely to justice.

Normally love your stuff, but seriously Jim, you need to pull your head out of your ass on this.

Pete

[LaughingAsRomeWasBurningDown]

I'm going to have to get some popcorn. A little Vanderslice for your enjoyment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNNzGhzIAVo

[cybernaught]

Jim,

This is the most disappointing column I have ever read by you.

So it doesn't matter to you that the US led the world into an illegal war -- against a defenceless Arab nation, killing perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians, making the world a more dangerous place, and severely harming America's prestige and moral standing (not to mention the economy) -- on the basis of a web of lies?

It was all revenge and you are okay with that. Shameful.

So does 9/11 also justify the torture, the secret prisons, the disappearances, the murders? Does it justify attacking Iran?

Does the US blood lust for revenge have a limit?

I am disappointed that you would buy the nonsense of US exceptionalism. Is it the nation founded on the hill or the nation blessed by God that makes the US both untouchable and at the same time brutally violent?

You asked, Jim, "what should have been the appropriate response to the extreme injury of 9/11?"

Easy. A nation founded on the rule of law uses the law to exact justice for crimes committed. A nation that engages in lying, subverting the truth, undermining legal bodies and institutions, engages in illegal practices with the cover of self-serving legal opinions is no longer a nation of laws. It is a rogue nation no different and no better than those over which it would claim superiority.

If the basis of the illegal US war against Iran is an eye-for-an-eye as you suggest, and you agree with that barbaric logic, than I assume you also agree and do not take any issue with the idea that the US now owes the Arab world many, many eyes. When is it your turn, Jim, to make a payment on that debt?

Oh, and the WMDs, Jim. Give me a freakin' break. Every observer with a half a brain knew it was utter bullshit.

The narrative being spun by Bush and Co., who should be before Nurmeburg type trials, was not only that Saddam had WMDs, but that he had improved on them and the delivery systems.

So to understand it all properly, we were to believe that a nation with a smashed military (ten years of war in Iran followed by the first Gulf War and a decade of punitive sanctions that destroyed the economy and killed 1.5 million people, mostly children, still, like a James Bond villain, not only managed to maintain its military capability but to improve it to the point it was a genuine threat to the most heavily armed nations in the world. What a laugh.

Sorry, Jim. Truth is important to me. I come here because that is what I expect to get from you" the truth on a host of issues.

To hear you now justify lies that led to a war of aggression that borders on genocide against a civilian population is just too deep disturbing.

I won't be back Jim. I prefer a simple truth to a long rationalization in the defence of lying.

[umass82]

9/11 conspiracy theories are popping up in P.O. related sites as a way to discredit P.O. realists by associating them with 9/11 conspiracy theorists, the rational behind this misinformation campaign is to discredit P.O. theory by associating the one with the other and thereby attempting to push P.O. to the lunatic fringe.

Since the end of the cold war the CIA's disinformation Boyz at Langly are having to justify their existence so they come up with this total crap, using the internet to discredit P.O. Because the internet allows for the free flow of information they can no longer censor it so they muddle up the facts instead. As P.O. is a major unfolding crises the disinformation boys will do what it takes to keep it under the RADAR.

The concept that 9/11 was the result of a government conspiracy is very common on P.O. web sites.

The concept is not only delusional it is hard to explain which government set this up? GWB 9 months in, his administration did not have the time and has proven too incompetent in any event. Was it set up by Bill Clinton to take place after he left office? to what end he was trying to reduce the military. Was it the military itself? Would the US military attack its own HG without having the alternative C and C site at Raven Rock mountain up and operational? not a chance.

So why don't you CIA - NSA - NRO - DIA boyz give it a rest, the cat is out of the bag with $4.00 a gallon gas, take the summer off go to the eastern shore read the latest James Bond thriller and let the rest of us get on with a serious discussion w/o your meddling.

[Holmes, I presume]

“To think that the Necons actually were actively behind the 9/11 attacks is bullshit. And I have read the above mention books. They are bullshit too.” -- theroachman1

I agree. Moreover, after almost seven years, there is no way credible evidence if it actually existed would not have leaked by now.

“Manila would obviously have had to been carpet bombed if The Twin Towers had been razed by Abu Sayyaf.” -- steve duncan

Attacking Iraq never felt like the correct response to 911 (to me anyway). But still, given all things and pondering the potential extent of a true Roman-style response, you make a strong point that ousting SH and occupying Iraq was indeed a measured if not overinclusive and simultaneously misdirected response. Measured also, as JHK suggests, to secure the continued flow of oil from that part of the world.

[jeffj]

"...what should have been the appropriate response to the extreme injury of 9/11?"

Taking a deep breath, counting to ten, then actually talking to the perpetrators. Find out why they hate our culture.

Of course, that's an impossibility because we already know the answer (and it's not that they 'hate our freedom'). Their answer would largely consist of the things you preach here: our culture is overconsumptive and colonialist. Accepting those truths is just not an option for our leadership, be it one party or the other.

After the tragedy, we were told not to grieve but to go shopping. The lie might be an indirect one, but isn't this saying that there is nothing wrong with this culture of consumption? That's a pretty big lie.

[American]

That the Bush administration "lied to me" is not a revelation. I've assumed everything they've communicated since 2000 -- economic statistics, policy arguments, war rationales -- is basically a crock of shit. So, at the margin, I regard nothing I've heard about McClellan's book as revelatory or marginally disturbing.

But I'm not the decider, and I have no influence over the great mass of NASCAR knuckleheads who support Bush and think kicking some Arab ass is a good thing to do.

In order to gain the support of these knuckleheads, Bush et al. LIED to them. And then, based on the support of knucklehead nation, went ahead and spent a bunch of my money kicking Arab ass, pissing away more and more of our nation's moral standing with each bomb dropped, each testicle crushed.

For those lies, not to me (I try to be aware enough to know the difference) but to my dumbfuck countrymen, there needs to be justice.

As for the "lies" about American ways of living, I don't see the point of conflating the criminal attack on Iraq with our country's general clusterfuckiness. Collectively, we are a bunch of hypocritical, obnoxious, resource hogs. But that doesn't make the particular shame and criminality of our Iraq war go away.

As for 9/11, Jim, why wouldn't Bush and Cheney testify separately? I'd ask why not under oath, but again, I know they always lie anyway.

Also, it sure seems to me like the authors of "Rebuilding America's Defenses" couldn't have been too upset over the occurrence of a Pearl-Harbor type event they regarded as necessary for furthering their plans.

[theroachman1]

Posted by: umass82 | June 02, 2008 at 11:03 AM

Well said.

Now forget all these problems and lets go SHOPPING!

[Peak Observer]

For those how haven't delved in yet, a bit of evidence to chew on:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2073592843640256739&q=wtc7+smoking+gun

From my perspective, 9/11-as-inside-job and the "elite's" awareness of Peak Oil fit together nicely. Makes sense that you need to go get that oil -- or at least secure it for purchase -- and you also need justification for going in there.

[theroachman1]

As for 9/11, Jim, why wouldn't Bush and Cheney testify separately? I'd ask why not under oath, but again, I know they always lie anyway.

Posted by: American | June 02, 2008 at 11:22 AM

Because they fucked up. They knew they should have listen to Sandy Berger (a liberal, BTW which is bad) and they chose not to.

[robert magill]

Jim,
What a can of worms! Good luck wrangling.
I concur on the conspiracy thing with you with one exception.
Reports that the Mossad was on to those 19 guys from the git-go and did nothing strikes home and Christopher Hitchens told me Gore Vidal thought it was them in December, 2001.
We are not competent enough for such a huge coverup. They are.

[theroachman1]

Oh no robert magill!!!

You may have just woken EO from his coffen with that post. (He is a racist, name calling, anti semite troll for any who may not know who he is)