[R-G] [Anti-Empire Report] Read this or Dubya will be president the rest of your life

[Richard Menec]

http://killinghope.org/aer53.htm

The Anti-Empire Report
Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

January 13, 2008

by William Blum
www.killinghope.org


An Unreasonable Man

I recommend the new documentary about Ralph Nader, which was recently shown 
on PBS television, "An Unreasonable Man". Its primary focus is on Nader's 
argument for having run in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections despite 
the alleged harm done to the Democratic Party candidates. As I've written 
earlier: The choice facing people like myself was not Ralph Nader or Albert 
Gore or John Kerry. The choice facing us was Ralph Nader or not voting at 
all. If Nader had not been on the ballot, we would have stayed home. It's 
that simple. The film shows a clip of a TV network newscast just after the 
2000 election in which star news anchors Katie Couric and Tom Brokaw are 
discussing this very question, and much to my surprise they both come to 
this same conclusion -- Nader did not cost the Democrats many votes at all. 
If he had not been on the ballot, the great bulk of his supporters would NOT 
have voted Democratic instead.

This escapes Nader's critics, such as the two featured in the film, Nation 
magazine columnist Eric Alterman and author and 60s icon Todd Gitlin. NASA 
should check them out -- just mention "Ralph Nader" and they go ballistic. 
They engage in an orgy of angry name calling, labeling Nader an egomaniac, 
irrational ... "prefabricated purity" ... "borders on the wicked" ... 
responsible for the Iraq war and the destruction of the environment ... They 
don't directly challenge anything of substance amongst the views of Nader or 
his supporters. They're not at all impressed with what I find most 
exhilarating -- the unique phenomenon of a noted public political figure 
consistently standing on principle. Nader's critics can't admit that there's 
principle involved in all this, for fear of revealing their own lack of that 
quality, as they cling to defending the indefensible -- the idea that the 
Democratic Party is a force for even liberal change, never mind progressive.

The film also gives time to other Nader critics, amongst them Michael Moore, 
whom I admire more than the likes of Alterman or Gitlin. However, it shows 
Moore speaking during the 2000 campaign in behalf of Nader, telling the 
audience not to be afraid to vote their conscience; it then shows him in 
2004, making fun of those who call for voting for one's conscience -- Yes, 
the hypocrisy is that blatant. Moore is indeed a strange political animal. 
The maker of "Fahrenheit 911" and "Sicko" was until not long ago a 
super-avid supporter of Hillary Clinton (admitting to even a sexual crush on 
her), and he has supported General Wesley Clark for president, a genuine war 
criminal for his merciless 78-day bombing assault upon Yugoslavia.

Defenders of the Democrats now ask: "Would Al Gore have invaded Iraq?" Maybe 
not. He might have invaded Iran instead; that apparently was the first 
choice of Israel and their American lobby. Remember that the Clinton-Gore 
administration imposed eight years of heartless and needless sanctions upon 
the people of Iraq, simultaneously bombing them hundreds of times, costing 
the lives of more than a million people, ruining the lives of millions more. 
Al Gore has already invaded Iraq.

It's an old and painful story. Democrats can not be trusted ideologically, 
not even to be consistently liberal, and certainly not progressive or 
radical, no matter how much we wish we could trust them, no matter how awful 
the Republicans may be. In 1968 Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy of 
Minnesota was the darling of the left. He ran in the Democratic presidential 
primaries on an anti-Vietnam war platform that excited a whole generation of 
young people. Peaceniks and hippies, the story goes, were getting haircuts, 
dressing like decent Americans, and forsaking dope, all to be "clean for 
Gene" and work in his campaign. Yet, in 1980, Gene McCarthy came out in 
support of Ronald Reagan against Jimmy Carter.[1]

It's most often foreign policy which separates liberals from those further 
to the left. In the post World War Two period, one of the most revered 
American liberals was Senator Hubert Humphrey. But he was at the same time a 
fanatical anti-communist. In 1954 he introduced a bill to outlaw the 
Communist Party on the grounds that it was "an illegal conspiracy to 
overthrow the Government of the United States by force and violence and not 
a legitimate political party." When he became Lyndon Johnson's 
vice-president in 1965 he supported the Vietnam War. Two years later he was 
actually moved to declare to American troops in Vietnam: "I believe that 
Vietnam will be marked as the place where the family of man has gained the 
time it needed to finally break through to a new era of hope and human 
development and justice. This is the chance we have. This is our great 
adventure -- and a wonderful one it is."[2]

It was the administration of the liberal Jimmy Carter that instigated the 
Soviet intervention into Afghanistan in 1979, leading to Washington's 
decisive role in the overthrow of a government which, compared to what 
replaced it, was extremely progressive.[3]  It was also Carter who gave Iraq 
the OK to invade Iran in 1980, with terrible consequences for the two 
countries.[4]

No, I don't know what we should do about our leaders. The US electoral 
process which we're all suffering through right now, which feels like it's 
been going on non-stop forever, is replete with continual cries from the 
leading candidates about some kind of "change". Whatever can they mean? They 
mean nothing. And the media treats it all like some kind of horse race, a 
spectator sport. Is there any election system in this world as lacking in 
intellectual discussion, as hopelessly corrupted by money, and as 
undemocratic as the one Americans are blessed with? Where else in the world 
is the candidate with the most votes not necessarily the winner? If we could 
interview each and every American voter to determine exactly why they voted 
for a particular candidate, compared to what the actual facts are about that 
candidate, and the results were widely publicized, it would be such a 
national embarrassment the next election might be called off. What does 
winning an election mean other than that the sales campaign was successful? 
An outright auction for the presidency would be more efficient, and more 
honest.


Another tale of a liberal

Gilbert Harrison, former editor and publisher of the influential Washington 
magazine, New Republic, departed this world on January 3. I never met the 
man, but in 1975, while living in London, I submitted a review of former CIA 
officer Philip Agee's new book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary", to the 
magazine. The book was a shocker, providing more detail about CIA covert 
operations in Latin America than any book ever written, revealing the names 
of hundreds of CIA officers, agents, and front organizations. The book had 
not yet appeared in the United States and the New Republic was pleased to 
have what would be one of the first reviews. At that time the magazine was 
still firmly in the liberal camp. At last my writing résumé would list 
something other than the alternative press.

A couple of weeks later, another letter arrived from the magazine's literary 
editor. She was sorry to inform me that the Editor-in-Chief, Gilbert 
Harrison, had vetoed publication of my review at the last moment. The 
article was returned to me, already edited for publication, even with an 
issue date marked on it. Some years later, I came to appreciate that 
Harrison was a typical Cold-War, anti-communist liberal -- no matter how 
progressive their views concerning the individual and society, the basic 
tenets, assumptions, and objectives of American foreign policy were held 
sacrosanct.  In 1961 the New Republic obtained a comprehensive account of 
the preparations by the CIA for its upcoming invasion of Cuba.   Harrison 
was a friend of President Kennedy and he dutifully submitted the magazine's 
planned article to the White House for advice. We thus have a case here of 
the United States about to initiate what the International Military Tribunal 
at Nuremberg called "a war of aggression ... not only an international 
crime, it is the supreme international crime."   And an American journalist 
did not know whether he should expose this.   When Kennedy asked that the 
story not be printed, Harrison complied.[5] If the story had been published, 
it might have led to the cancellation of the invasion, and thus the saving 
of a few thousand lives on the two sides.

Ironically and sadly, just four days after Harrison's death, Philip Agee 
died. We had been friends since I met him in England in 1975, shortly after 
his book came out. Phil was truly a hero. He gave up his career, his 
financial security, a normal family life, and his safety to work against the 
CIA in one country after another that was threatened by the Agency -- Cuba, 
Jamaica, Grenada, Chile, Nicaragua, Venezuela. The CIA revoked his US 
passport, spread all manner of false stories about him (such as his being in 
the pay of the KGB), and hounded him in Europe, getting him expelled from 
the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, and other countries. The Agency had him 
under surveillance for much of the rest of his life. The extreme strain this 
put on him may well have contributed to the perforated ulcer which led to 
his death.

The CIA was, as it still is, a force for dreadful things. What could a man 
of principle and idealism, with so much inside knowledge of the workings of 
the Agency, do but devote his life to fighting such a force?


Oh, by the way, the Iraqis don't really want us

Did you miss this? It should have been the lead story in every newspaper and 
radio and TV program in America. In the Washington Post it was on page 14. 
In virtually all of the rest of the media it was on page zero, channel zero, 
0000 AM or 00.0 FM.

The US military in Iraq hired firms to conduct focus groups amongst a cross 
section of the population. A summary report of the findings was obtained by 
the Post. Here are some of the highlights of the report as disclosed by the 
newspaper:

Until the March 2003 US occupation Sunnis and Shiites coexisted peacefully.

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the US military 
invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them.

After the United States leaves Iraq, national reconciliation will happen 
"naturally."

A sense of "optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups ... and far 
more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse 
groups of Iraqis."

Dividing Iraq into three states would hinder national reconciliation. (Only 
the Kurds did not reject this option.)

Most would describe the negative elements of life in Iraq as beginning with 
the US occupation.

Few mentioned Saddam Hussein as a cause of their problems, which the report 
described as an important finding, implying that "the current strife in Iraq 
seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many Iraqis would 
have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly four decades --  
as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for five years."

The Washington Post added this note: "Outside of the military, some of the 
most widespread polling in Iraq has been done by D3 Systems, a 
Virginia-based company that maintains offices in each of Iraq's 18 
provinces. Its most recent publicly released surveys, conducted in September 
for several news media organizations, showed the same widespread Iraqi 
belief voiced by the military's focus groups: that a U.S. departure will 
make things better. A State Department poll in September 2006 reported a 
similar finding."[6]

This just in: The US has found the perfect way to counteract such foolish 
attitudes of the Iraqi people. On January 10, the Associated Press reported: 
"U.S. bombers and jet fighters unleashed 40,000 pounds of explosives on the 
southern outskirts of Baghdad within 10 minutes Thursday in one of the 
biggest air strikes of the war, flattening what the military called safe 
havens for al-Qaida in Iraq." There was no mention of whether the planes had 
also dropped pamphlets saying: "We bomb you because we care about you."

On December 20, the legislature of Panama declared the date to be a day of 
"national mourning" in memory of the American invasion on that day in 1989. 
"This is a recognition of those who fell on Dec. 20 as a result of the cruel 
and unjust invasion by the most powerful army in the world," said Rep. Cesar 
Pardo, of the governing Democratic Revolutionary Party, which holds a 
majority in the legislature. U.S. officials downplayed the issue. "We prefer 
to look to the future," said a U.S. Embassy spokesman. "We are very 
satisfied to have a friend and partner like Panama, a nation that has 
managed to develop a mature democracy."[7]  As with their attack on Iraq on 
March 19, 2003, the United States, with no provocation or international 
legality (yes, another war of aggression), first bombed Panama, then staged 
a ground invasion, killing as many as a few thousand, while offering no 
believable reason for their psychopathic behavior.[8]

Will we some day see in a free and independent Iraq the setting of March 19 
as a day of national mourning?


Some further thought re the 9/11 truth movement

When I say, as I did in last month's report, that I don't think that 9-11 
was an "inside job", it's not because I believe that men like Dick Cheney, 
George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, et al. are not morally depraved enough to 
carry out such a monstrous act; these men each has a piece missing, a piece 
that's shaped like a social conscience; they consciously and directly 
instigated the current Iraqi and Afghanistan horrors which have already cost 
many more American lives than were lost on 9/11, not to mention more than a 
million Iraqis and Afghans who dearly wanted to remain amongst the living. 
In the Gulf War of 1991, Cheney and other American leaders purposely 
destroyed electricity-generating plants, water-pumping systems, and sewage 
systems in Iraq, then imposed sanctions upon the country making the repair 
of the infrastructure extremely difficult. Then, after twelve years, when 
the Iraqi people had performed the heroic task of getting these systems 
working fairly well again, the US bombers came back to inflict devastating 
damage to them all once more. My books and many others document one major 
crime against humanity after another by our America once so dear and 
cherished.

So it's not the moral question that makes me doubt the inside-job scenario. 
It's the logistics of it all -- the incredible complexity of arranging it 
all so that it would work and not be wholly and transparently unbelievable. 
That and the gross overkill -- they didn't need to destroy or smash up ALL 
those buildings and planes and people. One of the twin towers killing more 
than a thousand would certainly have been enough to sell the War on Terror, 
the Patriot Act, and Homeland Security. The American people are not such a 
hard sell. They really yearn to be true believers. Look how they scream 
hysterically over Hillary and Obama.

To win over people like me, the 9/11 truth people need to present a scenario 
that makes the logistics reasonably plausible. They might start by trying to 
answer questions like these: Did planes actually hit the towers and the 
Pentagon and crash in Pennsylvania? Were these the same four United Airline 
and American Airline planes that took off from Boston and Newark? At the 
time of collision, were they being piloted by people or by remote control? 
If people, who were these people?

Also, why did building 7 collapse? If it was purposely demolished -- why? 
All the reasons I've read so far I find not very credible. As to the films 
of the towers and building 7 collapsing, which make it appear that this had 
to be the result of controlled demolitions -- I agree, it does indeed look 
that way. But what do I know? I'm no expert. It's not like I've seen, in 
person or on film, numerous examples of buildings collapsing due to 
controlled demolition and numerous other examples of buildings collapsing 
due to planes crashing into them, so I could make an intelligent 
distinction. We are told by the 9/11 truth people that no building 
constructed like the towers has ever collapsed due to fire. But how about 
fire plus a full-size, loaded airplane smashing into it? How many examples 
of that do we have?

But there's one argument those who support the official version use against 
the skeptics that I would question. It's the argument that if the government 
planned the operation there would have to have been many people in on the 
plot, and surely by now one of them would have talked and the mainstream 
media would have reported their stories. But in fact a number of firemen, 
the buildings' janitor, and others have testified to hearing many explosions 
in the towers some time after the planes crashed, supporting the theory of 
planted explosives. But scarce little of this has made it to the media. 
Likewise, following the JFK assassination at least two men came forward 
afterward and identified themselves as being one of the three "tramps" on 
the grassy knoll in Dallas. So what happened? The mainstream media ignored 
them both. I know of them only because the tabloid press ran their stories. 
One of the men was the father of actor Woody Harrelson.


NOTES [1] San Francisco Chronicle, October 24, 1980, p.7

[2] United Press International (UPI) dispatch from Saigon, October 31, 1967

[3] See interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's national security 
adviser -- http://members.aol.com/bblum6/brz.htm

[4] http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile5.html

[5] Victor Marchetti and John Marks, "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" 
(1975), p.307; Peter Wyden, "Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story" (1979), p.142-3

[6] Washington Post, December 19, 2007, article plus accompanying sidebar; 
see also the Anti-Empire Report of August 18, 2006, last item, for another 
Post article demonstrating the belief of the Iraqi people, as well as 
American military personnel, that things would be better if the US left the 
country.

[7] Associated Press, December 20, 2007

[8] For the full details, see William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 50.


William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA 
Interventions Since World War 2 Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only 
Superpower West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir Freeing the World to 
Death: Essays on the American Empire Portions of the books can be read, and 
signed copies purchased, at <www.killinghope.org > Previous Anti-Empire 
Reports can be read at this website at "essays". To add yourself to this 
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