- US War Secretary Robert Gates has condemned the Associated
Press and a reporter, Julie Jacobson, embedded with US troops in Afghanistan,
for taking and releasing a photo of a US Marine who was wounded in action
and died from his injury.Americans have lost their ability for introspection,
thereby revealing their astounding hypocrisy to the world.
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- The photographer was on patrol with the Marines when
they came under fire. She found the courage and presence of mind to do
her job. Her reward is to be condemned by the warmonger Gates as "insensitive."
Gates says her employer, the Associated Press, lacks "judgment and
common decency."
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- The American Legion jumped in and denounced the Associated
Press for a "stunning lack of compassion and common decency."
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- To stem opposition to its wars, the War Department hides
signs of American casualties from the public. Angry that evidence escaped
the censor, the War Secretary and the American Legion attacked with politically
correct jargon: "insensitive," "offended," and the
"anguish," "pain and suffering" inflicted upon the
Marine's family. The War Department sounds like it is preparing a harassment
tort.
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- Isn't this passing the buck? The Marine lost his life
not because of the Associated Press and a photographer, but because of
the war criminals Gates, Bush, Cheney, Obama, and the US Congress
that supports wars of naked aggression that serve no American purpose,
but which keeps campaign coffers filled with contributions from the armaments
companies.
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- Marine Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Bernard is dead because the
US government and a significant percentage of the US population believe
that the US has the right to invade, bomb, and occupy other peoples who
have raised no hand against us but are demonized with lies and propaganda.
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- For the American War Secretary it is a photo that is
insensitive, not America's assertion of the right to determine the fate
of Afghanistan with bombs and soldiers.
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- The exceptional "virtuous nation" does not
think it is insensitive for America's bombs to blow innocent villagers
to pieces. On September 4, the day before Gates' outburst over the "insensitive"
photo, Agence France Presse reported from Afghanistan that a US/Nato air
strike had killed large numbers of villagers who had come to get fuel from
two tankers that had been hijacked from negligent and inattentive occupation
forces:
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- "'Nobody was in one piece. Hands, legs and body
parts were scattered everywhere. Those who were away from the fuel tanker
were badly burnt,' said 32-year-old Mohammad Daud, depicting a scene from
hell. The burned-out shells of the tankers, still smoking in marooned wrecks
on the riverbank, were surrounded by the charred-meat remains of villagers
from Chahar Dara district in Kunduz province, near the Tajik border. Dr.
Farid Rahid, a spokesperson in Kabul for the ministry of health, said up
to 250 villagers had been near the tankers when the air strike was called
in."
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- What does the world think of the United States? The American
War Secretary and a US military veterans association think a photo of an
injured and dying American soldier is insensitive, but not the wipeout
of an Afghan village that came to get needed fuel.
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- The US government is like a criminal who accuses the
police of his crime when he is arrested or a sociopathic abuser who blames
the victim. It is a known fact that the CIA has violated US law and international
law with its assassinations, kidnappings and torture. But it is not this
criminal agency that will be held accountable. Instead, those who will
be punished will be those moral beings who, appalled at the illegality
and inhumanity of the CIA, leaked the evidence of the agency's crimes.
The CIA has asked the US Justice (sic) Department to investigate what the
CIA alleges is the "criminal disclosure" of its secret program
to murder suspected foreign terrorist leaders abroad. As we learned from
Gitmo, those suspected by America are overwhelmingly innocent.
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- The CIA program is so indefensible that when CIA director
Leon Panetta found out about it six months after being in office, he cancelled
the program (assuming those running the program obeyed) and informed Congress.
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- Yet, the CIA wants the person who revealed its crime
to be punished for revealing secret information. A secret agency this unmoored
from moral and legal standards is a greater threat to our country than
are terrorists. Who knows what false flag operation it will pull off in
order to provide justification and support for its agenda. An agency that
is more liability than benefit should be abolished.
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- Accusing the truth-teller instead of the evil-doer is
the position that the neoconservatives took against theNew York Times when
after one year's delay, which gave George W. Bush time to get reelected,
the Times published the NSA leak that revealed that the Bush administration
was committing felonies by violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. The neocons, especially those associated with Commentary magazine,
wanted the New York Times indicted for treason. To the evil neocon mind,
anything that interferes with their diabolical agenda is treason.The agency's
program of assassinating terrorist leaders is itself fraught with contradictions
and dangers. The hatred created by the US and Israel is independent of
any leader. If one is killed, others take his place. The most likely outcome
of the CIA assassination program is that the agency will be manipulated
by rivals, just as the FBI was used by one mafia family to eliminate another.
In order to establish credibility with groups that they are attempting
to penetrate, CIA agents will be drawn into participating in violent acts
against the US and its allies.
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- This is the way many Americans think. America über
alles! No one counts but us (and Israel). The deaths we inflict and the
pain and suffering we bring to others are merely collateral damage on the
bloody path to American hegemony.
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- The attitude of the "freedom and democracy"
US government is that anyone who complains of illegality or immorality
or inhumanity is a traitor. The Republican Senator Christopher S. Bond
is a recent example. Bond got on his high horse about "irreparable
damage" to the CIA from the disclosures of its criminal activities.
Bond wants those "back stabbers" who revealed the CIA's wrongdoings
to be held accountable. Bond is unable to grasp that it is the criminal
activities, not their disclosure, that is the source of the problem. Obviously,
the whistleblower protection act has no support from Senator Bond, who
sees it as just another law to plough under.
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- This is where the US government stands today: Ignoring
and covering up government crimes is the patriotic thing to do. To reveal
the government's crimes is an act of treason. Many Americans on both sides
of the aisle agree.
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- Yet, they still think that they are The Virtuous Nation,
the exceptional nation, the salt of the earth.
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- Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the
US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has
been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A
new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with
Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection
of law, has been released by Random House.
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- Copyright © 2009 Creators Syndicate
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