- The latest joke making the rounds on the internet is
that truth has become so valuable that the government has embarked on a
conservation program.
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- Lying is something we normally take very seriously.
Certainly we ourselves are exhorted by schools and clergy to always be
truthful. We demand truthfulness of those around us and those we employ,
and while we may wink tolerantly at the "white" lie, most of
us realize that society as a whole cannot function smoothly without a certain
assurance of honesty. We therefore punish children who lie. We fire employees
who lie. We choose to not associate with, listen to, or trust people who
lie. We are most demanding for the truth in the matter of commerce. We
demand that products and services we spend our hard-earned money on function
exactly as promised by the salesperson. We generally tolerate nothing less.
For most Americans, government is the single largest expense in our lives.
Combined taxes and fees for all levels of government devour roughly half
of all that we ever earn. Most Americans spend more money on the government
than on their homes. Yet for this particular "product" and these
particular "salespeople", we the consumers seem strangely reluctant
to demand the same honesty we expect of, for example, the people we buy
our cars from. Somehow, We The People have been lured into accepting a
double standard; that the government which takes so much of our money is
exempt from the normal requirement for truth upon which at least in part
our civilization is built.
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- I don't know where this acceptance of lies by the government
came from. It is certainly not in the Constitution of the United States.
The Constitution lays out exactly what the government is allowed to do.
The Tenth Amendment makes it very clear that the government may not assume
a right or power. If something isn't in the Constitution, then the government
may not legally do it. Now, I've read the Constitution, many times. Nowhere
in that document is the government explicitly given the right and power
to lie to the people. It isn't in there. That means that when a government
official does lie, he or she is acting unconstitutionally and exceeding
the legal limits of their office. When a government official, ANY official,
lies, they cease to be legally a part of the government of the United States.
And just as the Constitution does not authorize the government to lie to
the people, the Constitution does not bind the people to accept ay lies
by the government, or to follow any dictates by the government built on
that lie. In short, the Constitution mirrors the values of the society.
Truth is required of the government. Nothing less will serve.
While we have all grown up more or less used to the idea that politicians
lie to us, never before in US history have the lies been as bold, in-our-faces,
arrogant, or unrepentant. The American people can no longer pretend that
lying politicians are just a joke. It is real. The government has been
caught lying to us, and lying to us on a matter of utmost seriousness,
a war of conquest.
Those who would defend the liars when they are caught lying usually resort
to one of three arguments. The first is that we must assume that the lie
is for our own good. This is nonsense. If it is for our own good then tell
us the truth and we will likely agree with anything that is for our own
good. The use of a lie by a government official is an open admission a
priori that the official is up to something the people would NOT agree
with, such as spending our tax money for things that benefit the official
but not the people.
The second argument used by those trying to defend the liars is that
so many others have lied who were not caught and punished that it would
"be unfair" to single out the one who was caught lying. But do
we stop arresting muggers because of all the muggers who were never caught?
Or do we catch and punish those that we can to deter others from a life
of crime?
The third argument used by those who defend the liars is to claim that
it was "only one lie" and to consider all the times the official
told the truth. But again, do we free the murderer for all those whom he
or she did not kill, or do we jail the murderer for the one victim that
died?
A lot of people, afraid of the government, found comfort in the illusion
that government lies happened long ago, or far away, or somehow didn't
really impact them and therefore require no response. No more. The present
morass of lies regarding the wars in the Mideast touches us all, impoverishes
us all, and has brought death to many Americans who would otherwise be
alive today.
Current headlines surround the claim made in George Bush's State of the
Union Speech that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger. CIA Director
George Tenet has fallen on his sword for the President, but only for not
trying hard enough to remove the claim from the speech. Left unexplained
is just how the claim was put into Bush's speech in the first place, and
why if the CIA did in fact remove the claim from a previous Bush speech
in October of 2002, the White House felt justified in using the same claim
again three months later. The claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium
from Niger was based solely on documents since revealed to be forgeries,
and clumsy ones at that, laundered through Italy and Great Britain before
arriving at the US. Iraq hardly needs to buy uranium ore from Niger, having
naturally occurring uranium mines of its own. This claim was not only a
lie, it was an obvious one.
But while the present focus is on this one lie, the fact is that most,
indeed maybe ALL, of the claims made to justify the invasion and conquest
of Iraq have failed to withstand close scrutiny. Prudence demands that
we not forget these other examples of mendacity, because the war in Iraq
was not built on just one lie, but on a great many lies, deceptions, and
falsehoods.
Let us be clear, there were no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq.
Many Americans may not be aware of that fact because of a little game the
US mainstream media played, in which suspected WMDs were given constant
play throughout the day, with the retraction and admission of a benign
explanation issued late at night when few people would see it. The swindle
worked like this. All day long barrels of white powder "suspected"
of being chemicals used for biological weapons would be the lead story
on all the news shows. Then late at night, there would be a single report
on how the barrels turned out to be pesticide. The media could claim to
have reported the facts truthfully, yet most viewers were left with the
impression that weapons of mass destruction had indeed been found in Iraq,
thereby justifying the war.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this media spin involved the trailers
claimed by Colin Powell to be mobile biological weapons labs in photos
shown to the United Nations. When the actual trailers were captured by
US Forces, photos, captioned as suspected mobile biological weapons labs,
were omnipresent no the network news and major newspapers. When experts
studying the photos pointed out that the trailers lacked essential components
needed to be biological weapons labs, the Bush administration then claimed
that the trailers were used on conjunction with other, not-yet-discovered
trailers, to form the weapons labs. This too was given a great deal of
play on the networks and major newspapers. But when the trailers were positively
identified as part of a weather balloon system sold to Iraq by Great Britain,
the network news barely noticed!
A major portion of the case for invading Iraq were the two "Dossiers"
provide by Great Britain. The second Dossier, and more recently the first,
have both been revealed to have been assembled from material collected
from the internet, including a plagiarized student paper based on 12 year
old data! The revisions history contained in the original Word Document
of the second Dossier confirms that it was being edited and revised by
Tony Blair's staff.
Why was Blair's staff writing their own dossier from 12 year old material?
Because the intelligence Blair was getting from British Intelligence,
just like the intelligence that Bush was getting from the CIA, did not
support the need for immediate war. Blair went back to 12 year old data,
and so did Rumsfeld, because there was no current data that supported the
claim that Iraq posed a threat to the United States of America.
That claim, that Iraq posed any kind of threat to the United States,
is also a lie. Iraq has never posed a threat to the United States, which
is why the United States had no problems PROVIDING weapons of mass destruction
to Iraq in the first place. Iraq had no missiles able to reach across the
Atlantic Ocean to the United States. And even if it had, Iraq would not
have used them.
You see, the thing the US Government and the media is hoping you have
forgotten is that $5 trillion dollar "investment" your parents
were forced to make in nuclear weapons, and the silo-launched missiles,
nuclear subs, and bombers to deliver them anywhere on Earth. The promise
was that this horrific assemblage of monster weapons would deter an attack.
That has to apply to Iraq. Saddam was many things, but he wasn't crazy,
and he had an ego of the huge size one finds in a head-of-state. He wasn't
going to attack the US when such an attack would destroy Iraq and all those
Iraqis Saddam expected to revere his memory after he was gone. So, if
the US nuclear deterrent works, then neither Saddam nor anyone else is
going to attack us. The cost is too high. If, on the other hand, the nuclear
deterrent does not work, then the taxpayers have all been the victims of
a $5 trillion dollar swindle by the US Government.
In fact, given the existence of the US Nuclear deterrent, it only makes
sense to attack the United States if the attacker plans to plant the blame
for the attack on an innocent nation, for the express purpose of bringing
down the military wrath of the US on that innocent nation.
Which brings us to those anthrax letters sent out just after 9-11.
For weeks after the anthrax letters appeared, the media focused on Arab
Muslims as the prime suspect, based on the letters included with the anthrax,
written to appear to be from semi-literate Arab Muslims. But this too turned
out to be a lie. The letters contained a strain of Anthrax that traced
back to a US Government laboratory! As of now, there are only two real
suspects in the anthrax letters case. One is Dr. Stephen Hatfill, famed
by constant TV reportage of his being a "person of interest"
to the FBI. The other suspect is Dr. Philip Zack, who was caught by the
security system entering the storage area where the anthrax was kept, after
being fired from his job.
The key point is that neither of these men are Arab, or Muslim. Therefore,
the letters enclosed with the anthrax, written to appear to be from Arab
Muslims, are incontrovertible proof of a plan to frame Arab Muslims for
terror attacks in the United States. Just how far that plan to frame Arabs
may reach is still unknown. But that it exists is beyond doubt.
Lie after lie after lie. It's probably simpler to wonder what if anything
we have been told about Iraq is the truth. But now that the government
has been caught in multiple lies, only a fool and idiot would assume that
anything we have been told by the US Government or the media is true. The
burden of proof is not on We The People to prove the government lies from
this point on, the burden of proof is on the government and media to prove
that they are telling the truth.
The US Government lied to justify an invasion of Iraq and its oil fields.
There were no weapons of mass destruction. Had there been, Saddam would
have used them to save himself during the invasion. All the lies about
WMDs fail on this point, that at the time and place where Saddam had everything
to gain and nothing left to use by employing such weapons, he clearly had
none to use.
Trust is a delicate thing. It can take decades to build and a single
careless moment to destroy. To judge by the current polls, the people of
the United States have lost all trust in the government. And that is a
fatal affliction for a government, because were a real emergency to occur
now, the government would be unable to lead the people who, wary of being
made fools of yet again, will not accept what the government says at face
value.
Just think what it means knowing that the government lies to you. Is
that tax really legal, or necessary? The government says so, but now you
know that this does not mean it is true. Maybe that tax you pay isn't really
legal at all. How do you know that a leader you liked really died because
of an accident, or a "crazed lone assassin"? You don't know it.
You cannot know it. Not when you live under a government and media that
lies, as this government and this media provably do.
Science fiction movies portray mind control as a zombie like state involving
drugs and flashing lights and lots of special effects. But in truth all
mind control means is controlling the brain by controlling what it knows,
by lying, by feeding the brain of the citizen only those bits and pieces
of information that would cause that brain to decide to do what the government
wants it to decide, and of its own supposed free will. In a nation of total
information control, one could be a slave and not even realize it.
How did we get into this mess? Yes, because officials lie and the media
has abandoned their role to watch for lies. But in the end, WE THE PEOPLE
must share the blame for the degeneration of our government, because we
saw the lies and chose not to act. Because as long as We The People tolerate
lies in government, we will live under a government that lies to us. But
when we decide to have the courage to make the cost of a single lie immediate
expulsion from office, when we have the will to make the cost of a lie
outweigh its benefit by throwing the liars into the streets in the most
humiliating manner possible, then officials will discover that truth is
a virtue.
It's still out country. The government is our employee, and we have caught
our employee lying to us. What happens next is up to you.
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