Read How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Welfare State Online
Authors: Paul Craig Roberts
How America Was Lost: From 9/11 to the Police/Welfare State (63 page)
Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes have estimated that the current out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs of the Afghan and Iraq wars is at least $6 trillion.
In other words, it is the cost of these two wars that explains the explosion of the US public debt and the economic and political problems associated with it.
What has America gained in return for $6 trillion and one million injured soldiers, many very severely?
In Iraq there is now an Islamist Shia regime allied with Iran in place of a secular Sunni regime that was an enemy of Iran, one as dictatorial as the other, presiding over war ruins, ongoing violence as high as during the attempted US occupation, and extraordinary birth defects from the toxic substances associated with the US invasion and occupation.
In Afghanistan there is an undefeated and apparently undefeatable Taliban and a revived drug trade that is flooding the Western world with drugs.
The icing on these Bush and Obama “successes” are demands from around the world that Americans and former British PM Tony Blair be held accountable for their war crimes. Certainly, Washington’s reputation has plummeted as a result of these two wars. No governments anywhere are any longer sufficiently gullible as to believe anything that Washington says.
These are huge costs for wars for which we have no explanation. The Bush/Obama regimes have come up with various cover stories:
a “war on terror,” “we have to kill them over there before they come over here,” “weapons of mass destruction,” revenge for 9/11, Osama bin Laden (who died of his illnesses in December 2001 as was widely reported at the time).
None of these explanations are viable. Neither the Taliban nor Saddam Hussein were engaged in terrorism in the US. As the weapons inspectors informed the Bush regime, there were no WMD in Iraq. Invading Muslim countries and slaughtering civilians is more likely to create terrorists than to suppress them. According to the official story, the 9/11 hijackers and Osama bin Laden were Saudi Arabians, not Afghans or Iraqis. Yet it wasn’t Saudi Arabia that was invaded.
Democracy and accountable government simply does not exist when the executive branch can take a country to wars in behalf of secret agendas operating behind cover stories that are transparent lies.
It is just as important to ask these same questions about the agenda of the US police state. Why have Bush and Obama removed the protection of law as a shield of the people and turned law into a weapon in the hands of the executive branch? How are Americans made safer by the overthrow of their civil liberties? Indefinite detention and execution without due process of law are the hallmarks of the tyrannical state. They are terrorism, not a protection against terrorism. Why is every communication of every American and apparently the communications of most other people in the world, including Washington’s most trusted European allies, subject to being intercepted and stored in a gigantic police state database? How does this protect Americans from terrorists?
Why is it necessary for Washington to
attack the freedom of the press and speach
to run roughshod over the legislation that protects whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, to criminalize dissent and protests, and to threaten journalists such as Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, and Fox News reporter James Rosen?
How does keeping citizens ignorant of their government’s crimes make citizens safe from terrorists?
These persecutions of truth-tellers have nothing whatsoever to do with “national security” and “keeping Americans safe from terrorists.” The only purpose of these persecutions is to protect the executive branch from having its crimes revealed. Some of Washington’s crimes are so horrendous that the International Criminal Court would surely convict if those guilty could be brought to trial. A government that will destroy the constitutional protections of free speech and a free press in order to prevent its criminal actions from being disclosed is a tyrannical government.
One hesitates to ask these questions and to make even the most obvious remarks out of fear not only of being put on a watch list and framed on some charge or the other, but also out of fear that such questions might provoke a false flag attack that could be used to justify the police state that has been put in place.
Perhaps that was what the Boston Marathon Bombing was. Evidence of the two brothers’ guilt has taken a backseat to the government’s claims. There is nothing new about government frame-ups of patsies. What is new and unprecedented is the lockdown of Boston and its suburbs, the appearance of 10,000 heavily armed troops and tanks to patrol the streets and search without warrants the homes of citizens, all in the name of protecting the public from one wounded 19 year old kid.
Not only has nothing like this ever happened before in the US, but also such a massive intervention could not have been organized on the spur of the moment. It had to have been already in place waiting for the event. This was a trial run for what is to come.
Unaware Americans, especially gullible “law and order conserva- tives,” have no idea about the militarization of even their local police. I have watched local police forces train at gun clubs. The police are taught to shoot first, not once but many times, to protect their lives first at all costs, and not to risk their lives by asking questions. This is why a 13-year old kid with the toy rifle was recently shot to pieces. Questioning would have revealed that it was a toy gun, but questioning the “suspect” might have endangered the precious police who are trained to take no risks whatsoever.
The police operate according to Obama’s presidential kill power: murder first then create a case against the victim.
In other words, dear American citizen, your life is worth nothing, but the police whom you pay, are not only unaccountable but also their lives are invaluable. If you get killed in their line of duty, it is no big deal. But don’t you injure a police goon thug in an act of self-defense. I mean, who do you think you are, some kind of mythical free American with rights?
Further reading:
http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/john-geer-shot-by-police/
http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/john-pike-gets-compensation-for-emotional-suffering/
http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/13-year-old-shot-death-police-open-carrying-toy-rifle/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36833.htm
BIN LADEN’S OBITUARY NOTICE
November 20, 2013
A Funeral Notice for Osama bin Laden was published on December 26, 2001, in the Egyptian newspaper
al-Ward
. An English translation is provided below. Anyone fluent in Arabic is invited to verify or correct the translation. This item was sent to me from a reader abroad.
Also below is a CNN interview with its medical correspondent who examines the last non-faked video of bin Laden and concludes that bin Laden is seriously ill.
There is also below a 2002 report that Israeli intelligence has concluded that bin Laden is dead.
I cannot attest to the correctness of any of these reports, but it is unclear why there would be so much disinformation from such varied sources about bin Laden’s condition or what purpose is served by Israel, Fox News, Egyptian newspapers, Pakistani politicians, and CNN reporting bin Laden’s death a decade prior to Obama’s claim to have murdered him.
You can use this information to evaluate the Obama regime’s unsubstantiated claim that Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in Pakistan a decade later.
Try to identify a single event that the US government has not lied about. Weapons of mass destruction? Iranian nukes? Assad’s chemical attack? Spying on Americans? 9/11? The assassination of President John F. Kennedy? The unemployment rate?
Here is the translation of the funeral article on the death of bin Laden which appeared in the Egyptian newspaper,
al-Wafd
.
Osama Bin Laden is dead since December 26, 2001
.
al-Wafd
, Wednesday, December 26, 2001 Vol 15 No 4633 News of Bin Laden’s Death and Funeral 10 days ago Islamabad -
A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa’da organization, stating that bin Laden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death.
The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to
The Observer
of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa’da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taliban.
In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden.
Here is the CNN interview:
Dr. Sanjay Gupta:
Bin Laden would need help if on dialysis
(CNN) 1-21-02
– Speculation about the whereabouts and health of Osama bin Laden picked up over the weekend when Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said he thought bin Laden had likely died of kidney failure. CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta spoke Monday with CNN’s Paula Zahn about bin Laden’s appearance in recently released videotapes and the possibility that the accused terrorist leader was undergoing kidney treatment.
ZAHN: For a point of reference, I’d like for you to analyze pictures of Osama bin Laden that apparently were taken prior to September 11. Describe to us the color and the tone of his skin, and then I want you to contrast that with pictures we know to have been taken much later.
GUPTA: You can look [at pictures from a December 2001 video] and notice that he has what some doctors refer to as sort of a frosting over of his features—his sort of grayness of beard, his paleness of skin, very gaunt sort of features. A lot of times people associate this with chronic illness. Doctors can certainly look at that and determine some clinical features.
But even more than that, it’s sometimes possible to differentiate the specific type of disease or illness that he may be suffering from. The sort of frosting of the appearance is something that people a lot of times associate with chronic kidney failure, renal failure, certainly someone who is requiring dialysis would have that.
He’s also not moving his arms. I looked at this tape all the way through its entire length. He never moved his left arm at all. The reason that might be important is because people who have had a stroke—and certainly people are at increased risk of stroke if they also have kidney failure— he may have had a stroke and therefore is not moving his left side. And in the rest of the videotape, he does move his right side a little bit more than he does his left. So those are some of the things that are sort of “of note” here in this more recent videotape.
ZAHN: I think we need to remind the viewers once again that the president of Pakistan talked about [bin Laden] importing two dialysis machines into Afghanistan. Of course, no one other than the president of Pakistan right now is confirming that [bin Laden] in fact needed dialysis. GUPTA: That’s right. And again, renal dialysis—talking about hemodialysis—is something that really is reserved for patients in end-stage renal failure. That means their kidneys have just completely shut down.
The most common cause of something like that would be something like diabetes and hypertension. Once that’s happened, if you’re separated from your dialysis machine— and incidentally, dialysis machines require electricity, they’re going to require clean water, they’re going to require a sterile setting—infection is a huge risk with that. If you don’t have all those things and a functioning dialysis machine, it’s unlikely that you’d survive beyond several days or a week at the most.
ZAHN: If he had all these things you’re talking about to keep the dialysis machine running, how much help does he need around him to administer the treatment?
GUPTA: You certainly need someone who really knows how to run that dialysis machine. You have to have someone who’s actually assessing his blood, Osama bin Laden’s blood, to see what particular dialysate he would need, and to be able to change his dialysate as needed. So you’d need a kidney specialist, a technician — quite a few people around him.
Here is the Israeli article:
Israeli intelligence: Bin Laden is dead, heir has been chosen
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, October 16, 2002
TEL AVIV: Osama Bin Laden appears to be dead but his colleagues have decided that Al Qaida and its insurgency campaign against the United States will continue, Israeli intelligence sources said.
Al Qaida terrorists have launched a new campaign of economic warfare and are targeting shipping in the Middle East, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
