Comments (0)

By Mark D, December 28, 2011 6:29 am

The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.

And so most American troops leave Iraq. But the lesson is already forgotten by the American public. Iraq joins a long list of wars in which we took part on false pretenses. The Spanish American War (USS Maine) and as a offshot the occupation of the Philippines, the Vietnam War and First Iraq War were all started because of lies. But the war drums started beating and everyone fell into line. No one asked questions, no one backed off the ledge despite one of the biggest anti-war demonstrations around the world at the time.

The time will come again that we will invade and occupy some country, and no one will bat an eye. The drums will beat, the talking heads will talk, and before we know it we’ll be in a war. When someone asks even the simplest questions like how it will be paid for? or just how a weapon of mass destruction could reach the mainland of the United States? The answer will be why aren’t you patriotic?

Even the “opposition” will fall into line and rally behind the flag. The questions will be unanswered, and no one will dare to look behind the curtain. It wouldn’t be supporting the troops if you dared to ask those questions. Forget the fact that some of them will die, some of them will never be able to live the life they had hoped. Forget the fact that thousands of human beings will end up dead. Nope, if you question anything the simple response will just be that your not supporting the troops.

The girl I was dating at the start of the 2nd Iraq War thought I was insane when I was against the war. She thought people were going to try to lynch me for what I was saying. A few years later she admitted all this to me, and admitted she couldn’t believe that I was actually right about so much of it. She thought at the time that Saddam Hussein was moments away from destroying the United States at anytime he wanted. Now she actually listens to me when I start rambling about politics.

It’s almost enough to make me wonder what is being taught in schools. I mean are kids learning that the explosion of the USS Maine was an accident, or just that it was suspicious. Are they told about the yellow journalism of the time and how Hearst wanted to start a war to increase paper circulation? Does it mention the long occupation of the Philippines which lead to the creation of the Anti-Imperalist league and had such highly regarded figures as Mark Twain, Grover Cleveland and Andrew Carnegie among others.

What does it say about the Vietnam War and the Gulf Of Tonkin incident now? With hindsight (and papers which were classified for 30 years) we now know that no incident took place that night. For that matter we know that the American ship in the area a few days before had opened fire on the North Vietnamese torpedo boats. And yet we not only have the loss of life of 50K Americans for no good cause, but a high estimate of nearly 4 million dead all told. For what?

So we look towards Iraq and wonder what the legacy will be. Will people find a way to say that American troops in Iraq somehow helped the Arab Spring? Despite the fact of the matter being that America had propped up most of the dictatorships which were taken down. The debate about the legacy will in the end most likely mask the reality of the situation for those who lived it. No one wants to admit when everything is over and done that their sacrifice was for nothing.

We the people are no better then the Proles in 1984. We will turn on a dime, our friends today will be our enemies tomorrow. Those who point out what is going on behind the curtain will be shouted down and beaten down by the drums. The lies that were used to get us into the war will no longer work. But it doesn’t matter after we’re already there, and the reasons change after the matter. So no longer was it to stop Hussein from having WMDs, but the spread of democracy.

The lies just get bigger and bigger and more blatant every time. If you have not stood up in the past, then when will you take a stand about what’s wrong? Now is the time for people to demand changes within the government. We shouldn’t have to wait 30 years or more for documents to become declassified. We the people are the base of power for the government, it answers to us.

But if we allow our representatives to do whatever they want without consequence, in the end we lose. In the end it is the boot stomping our own faces for eternity. The best part is that it will be the people we continually choose to Represent us. All the facades of democracy will still exist, but it won’t matter as both sides work together. Now is the time, between wars, to work on a lasting and true peace. To let the government know that it won’t get away with lieing to us again.

Over the horizon, the war drums echo their familiar beat…

Comments (4)

By Mark D, October 25, 2010 12:04 am

I was actually surprised to discover that conservative right wingers took the time to search through the latest wikileaks Iraq War documents. Instead of being horrified at the loss of civilian life (now thanks to these documents is considered much higher then W Bush admitted) they found a gem they could rally around. That’s right, there were WMDs in Iraq and the main stream media did nothing to report it. Another “Liberal Lie” bites the dust.

You can read all about it right here via Hot Air

While the invasion of Iraq didn’t find huge stockpiles of new WMDs, it did uncover stockpiles that the UN had demanded destroyed as a condition of the 1991 truce that Saddam Hussein abrogated for twelve years

To my shock even Wired is running the story that wikileaks unearthed WMDs They should at the very least know better.

While the Right wing has somehow discovered the internet for the first time, what they still haven’t found is Google. You see, I actually remember it being reported in independent news that these caches of old Mustard Gas had been found. The reason the main stream media never picked up on it? because George Bush Senior sold him the Mustard Gas and the turned a blind eye towards Saddam using these on his own people (especially the Kurds in 1991). It would have been embarrassing to have to explain where this mustard gas originally came from.

Going to google and searching for Mustard Gas Iraq finds the following News Stories:

Fox News Story from May 17 2004 Which includes this gem

It also appears some top Pentagon officials were surprised by the sarin news; they thought the matter was classified, administration officials told Fox News.

If the Bush Administration had found WMDs, why would it be classified instead of them shouting it from the roofs?

The Observer (UK) From Jan 11 2004

However, the find of a small amount of mortar shells is unlikely to satisfy a growing chorus of criticism that the much-touted weapons of mass destruction either never existed or were destroyed years ago. The Danish team has found only 36 mortar rounds buried in desert about 45 miles from Al Amarah, a southern town. But it added that up to a 100 more could still be hidden at the location. The rounds were in plastic bags and some were leaking. It seems they had been buried for at least 10 years.

That’s quite the imminent threat to American Security!

From the AFP via Breitbart June 22 2005

A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions “in such a degraded state they couldn’t be used for what they are designed for.”

The official, who asked not to be identified, said most were 155 millimeter artillery projectiles with mustard gas or sarin of varying degrees of potency.

Once again, not exactly the threat we were told of before the war.

Washington Post August 14 2005

Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from some time after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration cited evidence that Saddam Hussein’s government was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction as the main justification for the invasion. No such weapons or factories were found.

So it appears that Operation Iraqi Freedom actually INCREASED the number of labs producing Mustard gas in Iraq.

Defense.Gov from June 29 2006

The 500 munitions discovered throughout Iraq since 2003 and discussed in a National Ground Intelligence Center report meet the criteria of weapons of mass destruction, the center’s commander said here today.

“These are chemical weapons as defined under the Chemical Weapons Convention, and yes … they do constitute weapons of mass destruction,” Army Col. John Chu told the House Armed Services Committee.

The Chemical Weapons Convention is an arms control agreement which outlaws the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons. It was signed in 1993 and entered into force in 1997.

Spacewar.com July 1 2004

Rumsfeld said Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski told him about the find when they met earlier this week at a NATO summit in Istanbul.

“He pointed out that his troops in Iraq had recently come across — I’ve forgotten the number, but something like 16 or 17 — warheads that contained sarin and mustard gas,” Rumsfeld told Newradio 600 KOGO of San Diego, California, in an interview aired Wednesday.

Even the Poles knew about the Mustard Gas!

Look, it doesn’t take that much work to go to Google and type in Mustard Gas Iraq. If you are going to start tooting your horn about there being “WMDs in Iraq” then your going to have to find something better then this. Saddam was never going to use this stuff to attack America. For the most part it seems quite possible that poor bookkeeping had more to do with these handful of Mustard shells here and there still being around. In about ten minutes I found six articles from 2004 and 2006 which were published at the time. There is no claiming that the “Main Stream Media” swept this story under the rug. Please next time do a little research before you celebrate proving the “Liberal Lie” wrong.

Comments (0)

By admin, July 4, 2009 9:48 am

Seriously, why are we still there? Bush lied, killed and wounded thousands of American soldiers let alone the number of Iraqi dead and wounded. Yet seven months after his election there seems to be no movement out. Bush lied about WMDs, Bush lied about “spreading freedom” and Bush lied about Saddam working with Al-Quida. So lets bring everyone home. If the Kurds want their own country, let them fight for it. If the Shiites and Sunnis want their own country let them fight over it. Let the religious maniacs fight amongst themselves for the next twenty five years, I could care less. No reason for us being in the middle and keeping the peace.

Also, I find it humorous that Palin has resigned as Governor. Apparently she has faced fifteen ethics complaints and has spent 300,000 defending herself. She said she didn’t want to be a lame duck governor but its obvious that leaving office also saves her from facing anymore ethics charges and having to spend legal money. In the end this is the best move for her as she’ll disappear into the dustbin of history.

The reason I bring her up though is this little quote. “Thinking of our vets who kept us free & our troops keeping us free today: THANK YOU!”

Now maybe I’m missing something, but how are our troops keeping us free today? In the last ten years the one thing that has done more the anything to take our freedom was the PATRIOT ACT. Are the troops going into Washington DC to force the Congress to repeal the act? How do our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and across the world for that matter keep us free? Was there a huge contingent of Iraqi Transport Planes ready for Saddam to send his troops on an invasion of America? Was there some huge naval transport flotilla ready to take off from Iraq to land in California and take over the US to take away our Freedoms? Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems that as the American Armed forces has grown through the years our freedoms been more and more limited. Try getting some stats about the Military’s black budget. Then remember this is supposed to be a representative democracy in which the people truly hold the power. Yet the representatives do not answer to us unless we are wealthy enough to give to their campaigns. The Armed Forces has run away with their power, and so have our so called representatives, it is time for a new revolution.