Posted on 03/28/2006 7:09:20 AM PST by Toddsterpatriot
Imagine knocking on America's door and being told: "Americans don't live here any longer. They have gone away."
But isn't that what we are hearing, that Americans have gone away? Alan Shore told us so on ABC's "Boston Legal" on March 14:
"When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out not to be true, I expected the American people to rise up. They didn't. (That's because Americans know Saddam was a bad guy)
"Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced, and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.
"Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorist suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did. (How dare we lock up terrorists. It's not their fault they want to slaughter us. It's Bush's fault)
"And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.
"In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're OK with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.
"There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people even seem to notice. ...
"The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest. Stop for a second and try to fathom that. At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you're wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.
"This! In the United States of America."
Readers tell me that Americans don't live here anymore. They ask what responsible American citizenry would put up with the trashing of the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers, with wars based on deception and with pathological liars in control of their government. One reader recently wrote that he believes that "no element of the U.S. government has been left untainted" by the lies and manipulations that have driven away accountability. So-called leaders, he wrote, "talk a great story of American pride and patriotism," but in their hands patriotism is merely a device for "cynical manipulation and fraud."
The Bush regime acknowledges that 30,000 Iraqi civilians, largely women and children, have been killed as a result of Bush's invasion. Others who have looked at civilian casualties with greater attention have come up with numbers three to six times as large.
A Johns Hopkins study accounted for 98,000 civilian deaths. Patrick Cockburn, using a more sophisticated statistical analysis, concluded that 180,000 Iraqis died as a result of Bush's invasion. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says that Iraqi sectarian violence alone is claiming 50 to 60 deaths per day, or 18,000 to 22,000 annually, a figure that could quickly worsen.
Some Iraqis were killed by "smart bombs" that weren't very smart and dropped on hospitals, schools and weddings. Others were mistaken for resistance fighters and killed. Still others were killed by spooked, trigger-happy U.S. troops. And many died due to the breakdown of the Iraqi health system.
Now comes a report in the online edition of Time magazine that U.S. Marines went on a rampage in the village of Haditha and deliberately slaughtered 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes. The Iraqis were still in their bed clothes, and 10 of the 15 were women and children.
The Marines turned in a false report that the civilians were killed by an insurgent bomb. But the evidence of wanton carnage was too powerful. Pressed by Time's collection of evidence, U.S. military officials in Baghdad opened an investigation. Time reports that "according to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that, contrary to the military's initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19 died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which will conduct a criminal investigation."
If this story is true, under Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush's leadership, proud and honorable U.S. Marines have degenerated into the Waffen SS. Those of us raised on John Wayne war movies find this very hard to take.
A fish rots from the head. Clearly, deception in the Oval Office is corrupting the U.S. military. One reader reported that on March 19, his local PBS station aired a program that discussed the deaths of two young American soldiers in friendly fire incidents similar to Pat Tillman's death. In each case, he reports, "elements within the military falsified reports and attempted to shift blame to either enemy combatants or allied (Polish) forces."
The neocons have yet to tell us the real reason for their assault on Iraq, which has so far produced 20,000 dead, maimed and wounded U.S. soldiers, between 30,000 and 180,000 (and rising) dead Iraqis, and demoralized U.S. Marines to the point that they commit atrocities on women and children.
Would real Americans accept these blows for the sake of an undeclared agenda? Perhaps it is true that Americans don't live here any longer.
COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
Does Paul realize that Alan Shore is only a character on a TV show?
Paul Craig Roberts confusing TV with reality, again.
Where was all this Massachusetts outrage during the malfeasance, treason and corruption of the 1990s?
The rubbish printed in this article isn't even worth the bandwidth it uses.
Disgusting display.
In a recent article he wrote, the stated he thought President Bush was capable of nuking a small US city in order to justify bombing Iran.
The guy is Looney-Tunes!
What a worthless, treasonous POS.
They can only listen to him because he wrapped his tinfoil clockwise. If he wrapped his head counterclockwise, the NSA would be thwarted.
Where's Denny Crane when you need him?
If you hang out with liberals long enough, their idiocy rubs off on you.
No. He thinks it's the evening news.
Patrick Cockburn used an even more sophisticated analysis than Johns Hopkins University researchers, eh?
I suppose that Patrick Cockburn must have some serious credentials as an expert demographic statistician. After all, the JH researchers said that an exact number was impossible, but Cockburn has been able to conclude definitively that 180,000 died.
What's that? Patrick Cockburn is a tabloid journalist who hates America and President Bush and is a school dropout?
Thanks for the full disclosure, Paul Craig Roberts.
Ping!
Do you know if the Washington Times still prints his garbage?
It looks like the last time they published his ranting was in August.
Denny is only allowed to throw us a bone on occasion.
Otherwise, it's a massive leftist orgy replete with speeches that have nothing to do with the plot put in there to let Mr Michelle Pfieffer opine his and his writer's twisted limousine liberal logic.
Witty but too PC for me to stomach much of.
bttt
Please read this article and explain to us exactly why you'd want this whack-nut as Secretary of Commerce.
Paul Craig Roberts, sadly, has gone off the deep end. Before he had his breakdown, some of the things he wrote about the misinterpretation of Ricardian economics as applied in the globalized economy made sense and have not been refuted. I think he has just become bitter and is now lashing out in all directions.
What a piece of garbage rant.
So 30,000 people were killed, did we say it was mostly women
and children? And who killed them, was it us, or cause
we invaded Iraq, and their fellow Muslims killed them to
force them not to help us?
I wish this guy could prove the "domestic spying" was done
on him. He said the government spied on him, well it may been
because he could have terrorist connections. I think that
is all the government can "spy on". I have more businesses , and marketers spying on me while I am
on the internet, than the government.And where was he when
we were bombing innocents in Bosnia, etc? Also where was
he when Clintons "echelon" spying system was uncovered?
PCR needs to smell the asbestos at the WTC
to really understand what we are up against.
He doesn't understand that UBL knows how soft and complacent
we are and that in the grand scheme of UBL's mind, we will
soon wither and blow away, so UBL's dream of a caliphate
can be achieved. PCR is too solipsistic to be any kind of
pragmatic pundit.
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