Well, myself I was never taken in by the spin. But then I've been fortunate enough to be able to devote some time to paying attention ever since the late nineteen-sixties. I well saw what was coming when the Shrub was Selected; then again in relation to his 'government's' rejection of the Kioto accords and Cheney's secret Big-Energy Forum; again post-Sept 11th 2001 ("there's going to be a huge, very dumb, reaction", I remember predicting); and in the late summer of 2002 I could definitively see that there was going to be an invasion of Iraq, with-or-without the UN and that the justification was already being cooked-up. This just from reading the Guardian (international ed.) and selected Spanish press, listening to the BBC (World Service Radio) and browsing not-so-intensively the internet. Ah, and again following the clearly fraudulent re-Selection of Shrub in November 2004, when I became a member of DU. I don't watch TV.
Politics has been defined as the Art of the Possible. Much Art has so far been invested in making the execution of the fundamentally fascist PNAC plan for world domination possible. Many powerful and influential people have been bought or otherwise signed-up to the project, and many, many more have simply been deluded into blind acquiescence.
However, as time goes by, I am seeing more and more signs that more and more people are waking up to reality. This applies not only in non-US countries, cultures and societies (where, however, open opposition to US policy has always been dangerous: more subtle approaches have to be employed), but also in the US itself. In large measure, indeed, given the current balance of overt military and covert, even more sinister, power, it's up to you citizens and voters and defenders of the rule of law in the USA to expel these creatures from the positions they have usurped and to bring them to genuine justice.
The example below, from the UK 'center-left' publication "The New Statesman","The Epic Crime That Dares Not Speak Its Name" by John Pilger, 27 Oct 2005 (and, note, the BLiar UK Downing Street cabal is far from innocent) gives a fine example of a clear-eyed international perspective on these issues.
The above said, I would like to observe that, so far, it would seem that most people who perceive today just how grave these matters are, that concern the USA and the whole world, are of the political center and left-of-center. The natural supporters of what the Democratic Party in the US and social-democratic parties in Europe and the rest of the Americas, as well as non-dictatorial options further to the left and newer constituencies such as Greens and other environmentalists and non-partisan, rational libertarians and neo-anarchists represent. But I believe the time is increasingly upon us when it will be necessary to draw the more traditional, the more sincere right-leaning voters, as well as ordinary loyal administration officials and servicepeople, into the fold of truth. It will be necessary to split the right, to assist those with eyes to see the light. The truly conservative right has been betrayed by a cabal of neo-fascist, highly dishonest, manipulative and authoritarian extremists who in the end will offer only one alternative: obedience or (torture and) death. This is the message to get across. You can be sure there are already blacklists drawn up. There will be many moments of individual epiphany as understanding sweeps across the land. And many people will require deep counselling, a hand of friendship, and spiritual succour.
(
Let this count as a first draft towards a draft of an essay I am working on for eventual publication as a stand-alone thread here in DU and elsewhere. Any comments much appreciated: this no doubt requies plenty of expansion and editing...).
The New Statesman, John Pilger article:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10785.htm<snip>
At the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership, counts one and two, "Conspiracy to wage aggressive war and waging aggressive war", refer to "the common plan or conspiracy". These are defined in the indictment as "the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances". A wealth of evidence is now available that George Bush, Blair and their advisers did just that. The leaked minutes from the infamous Downing Street meeting in July 2002 alone reveal that Blair and his war cabinet knew that it was illegal. The attack that followed, mounted against a defenceless country offering no threat to the US or Britain, has a precedent in Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland; the lies told to justify both are eerily similar.
The similarity is also striking in the illegal bombing campaign that preceded both. Unknown to most people in Britain and America, British and US planes conducted a ferocious bombing campaign against Iraq in the ten months prior to the invasion, hoping this would provoke Saddam Hussein into supplying an excuse for an invasion. It failed and killed an unknown number of civilians.
At Nuremberg, counts three and four referred to "War crimes and crimes against humanity". Here again, there is overwhelming evidence that Blair and Bush committed "violations of the laws or customs of war" including "murder... of civilian populations of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war".
Two recent examples: the US onslaught near Ramadi this month in which 39 men, women and children - all civilians - were killed, and a report by the United Nations special rapporteur in Iraq who described the Anglo-American practice of denying food and water to Iraqi civilians in order to force them to leave their towns and villages as a "flagrant violation" of the Geneva Conventions.
In September, Human Rights Watch released an epic study that documents the systematic nature of torture by the Americans, and how casual it is, even enjoyable. This is a sergeant from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division: "On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC
tent. In a way it was sport... One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal bat. He was the fucking cook!"
The report describes how the people of Fallujah, the scene of numerous American atrocities, regard the 82nd Airborne as "the Murdering Maniacs". Reading it, you realise that the occupying force in Iraq is, as the head of Reuters said recently, out of control. It is destroying lives in industrial quantities when compared with the violence of the resistance.
</snip>
Note 1. On 'Conspiracy to wage aggressive war and waging aggressive war' see eg. "John W. Dean: 'A Cheney-Libby conspiracy, or worse?" - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x170559
Note 2. On the illegality of same, see: "US Navy JUDGE: Iraq war ILLEGAL" - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5273365
Note 3. On the US policy of torture, see: "Another Thunderbolt from Wilkerson" - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5265905
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