- Does anyone remember the "cakewalk war" that
would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi
oil revenues?
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- Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence
Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war
could cost as much as $200 billion?
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- Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war
that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times
more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.
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- Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion
of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?
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- Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading
Iraq was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the
US government knew did not exist?
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- Are Americans aware that the same neoconservarives who
made these fantastic mistakes, or told these fabulous lies, are still in
control of the government in Washington?
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- The "war on terror" is now in its tenth year.
What is it really all about?
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- The bottom line answer is that the "war on terror"
is about creating real terrorists. The US government desperately
needs real terrorists in order to justify its expansion of its wars against
Muslim countries and to keep the American people sufficiently fearful that
they continue to accept the police state that provides "security from
terrorists," but not from the government that has discarded civil
liberties.
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- The US government creates terrorists by invading Muslim
countries, wrecking infrastructure and killing vast numbers of civilians.
The US also creates terrorists by installing puppet governments to rule
over Muslims and by using the puppet governments to murder and persecute
citizens as is occurring on a vast scale in Pakistan today.
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- Neoconservatives used 9/11 to launch their plan for US
world hegemony. Their plan fit with the interests of America's ruling oligarchies.
Wars are good for the profits of the military/security complex, about which
President Eisenhower warned us in vain a half century ago. American hegemony
is good for the oil industry's control over resources and resource flows.
The transformation of the Middle East into a vast American puppet state
serves well the Israel Lobby's Zionist aspirations for Israeli territorial
expansion.
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- Most Americans cannot see what is happening because of
their conditioning. Most Americans believe that their government is the
best on earth, that it is morally motivated to help others and to do good,
that it rushes aid to countries where there is famine and natural catastrophes.
Most believe that their presidents tell the truth, except about their sexual
affairs.
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- The persistence of these delusions is extraordinary in
the face of daily headlines that report US government bullying of, and
interference with, virtually every country on earth. The US policy is to
buy off, overthrow, or make war on leaders of other countries who represent
their peoples' interests instead of American interests. A recent victim
was the president of Honduras who had the wild idea that the Honduran government
should serve the Honduran people.
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- The American government was able to have the Honduran
president discarded, because the Honduran military is trained and supplied
by the US military. It is the same case in Pakistan, where the US government
has the Pakistani government making war on its own people by invading tribal
areas that the Americans consider to be friendly to the Taliban, al Qaeda,
"militants" and "terrorists."
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- Earlier this year a deputy US Treasury secretary ordered
Pakistan to raise taxes so that the Pakistani government could more effectively
make war on its own citizens for the Americans. On October 14 US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton ordered Pakistan to again raise taxes or the US
would withhold flood aid. Clinton pressured America's European puppet states
to do the same, expressing in the same breath that the US government was
worried by British cuts in the military budget. God forbid that the hard-pressed
British, still reeling from American financial fraud, don't allocate enough
money to fight America's wars.
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- On Washington's orders, the Pakistani government launched
a military offensive against Pakistani citizens in the Swat Valley that
killed large numbers of Pakistanis and drove millions of civilians from
their homes. Last July the US instructed Pakistan to send its troops against
the Pakistani residents of North Waziristan. On July 6 Jason Ditz reported
on <http://antiwar.com>antiwar.com that "at America's
behest, Pakistan has launched offensives against [the Pakistani provinces
of] Swat Valley, Bajaur, South Waziristan, Orakzai,and Khyber."
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- A week later Israel's US Senator Carl Levin (D,MI) called
for escalating the Obama Administration's policies of US airstrikes against
Pakistan's tribal areas. On September 30, the Pakistani newspaper, The
Frontier Post, wrote that the American air strikes "are, plain and
simple, a naked aggression against Pakistan."
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- The US claims that its forces in Afghanistan have the
right to cross into Pakistan in pursuit of "militants." Recently
US helicopter gunships killed three Pakistani soldiers who they mistook
for Taliban. Pakistan closed the main US supply route to Afghanistan until
the Americans apologized.
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- Pakistan warned Washington against future attacks. However,
US military officials, under pressure from Obama to show progress in the
endless Afghan war, responded to Pakistan's warning by calling for expanding
the Afghan war into Pakistan. On October 5 the Canadian journalist Eric
Margolis wrote that "the US edges closer to invading Pakistan."
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- In his book, Obama's Wars, Bob Woodward reports that
America's puppet president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, believes that
terrorist bombing attacks inside Pakistan for which the Taliban are blamed
are in fact CIA operations designed to destabilize Pakistan and
allow Washington to seize Pakistan's nuclear weapons.
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- To keep Pakistan in line, the US government changed its
position that the "Times Square Bombing" was the work of a "lone
wolf." Attorney General Eric Holder switched the blame to the "Pakistani
Taliban," and Secretary of State Clinton threatened Pakistan with
"very serious consequences" for the unsuccessful Times Square
bombing, which likely was a false flag operation aimed at Pakistan.
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- To further heighten tensions, on September 1 the eight
members of a high-ranking Pakistani military delegation in route to a meeting
in Tampa, Florida, with US Central Command, were rudely treated and detained
as terrorist suspects at Washington DC's Dulles Airport.
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- For decades the US government has enabled repeated Israeli
military aggression against Lebanon and now appears to be getting into
gear for another Israeli assault on the former American protectorate of
Lebanon. On October 14 the US government expressed its "outrage"
that the Lebanese government had permitted a visit by Iranian President
Ahmadinejad, who is the focus of Washington's intense demonization efforts.
Israel's representatives in the US Congress threatened to stop US military
aid to Lebanon, forgetting that US Rep. Howard Berman (D,CA) has had aid
to Lebanon blocked since last August to punish Lebanon for a border clash
with Israel.
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- Perhaps the most telling headline of all is the October
14 report, "Somalia's New American Prime Minister." An American
has been installed as the Prime Minister of Somalia, an American puppet
government in Mogadishu backed up by thousands of Ugandan troops paid by
Washington.
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- This barely scratches the surface of Washington's benevolence
toward other countries and respect for their rights, borders, and lives
of their citizens.
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- Meanwhile, to silence Wikileaks and to prevent any more
revelations of American war crimes, the "freedom and democracy"
government in DC has closed down Wikileaks' donations by placing the organization
on its "watch list" and by having the Australian puppet government
blacklist Wikileaks.
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- Wikileaks is now akin to a terrorist organization. The
American government's practice of silencing critics will spread across
the Internet.
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- Remember, they hate us because we have freedom and democracy,
First Amendment rights, habeas corpus, respect for human rights, and show
justice and mercy to all.
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- Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street
Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. His latest book, HOW
THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press.
He can be reached at:PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
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