Censroship, Traitors, War & The Bush Junta

3/14/03

From the streets of Little Beirut

By Glen Yeadon
 

Traitor. No other word in the English language carries so many negative connotations. Two hundred years after the fact, Americans still despise Benedict Arnold. Two thousand years later, Christians still despise Judas. For forty pieces, Judas gained a legacy as one of the most despised men in history. No sane individual associates himself or herself with a traitor. Even the enemy despises them.

So what is a traitor doing in the White House, as the Bush Junta prepares for war? Only a regime as corrupt as the Bush junta that voided the results of an election --and has placed almost every indicted and convicted felon from the Reagan-Bush era into positions of power-- would have the audacity to parade a traitor in front of the news cameras and call him a “patriot.” However, that is just what they did in letting Richard Perle lash out against author Seymour Hersh and label Hersh as a terrorist. Such an attack on a well-respected journalist who has been reporting the facts ever since the My Lai slaughter can only serve to deter journalist from reporting the truth. In short, it is censorship. However, Perle’s past leaves no doubt of his guilt as a traitor. He was expelled from Senator Henry Jackson’s office in the 1970s for passing highly classified documents to the Israeli Embassy. Perle has never distanced himself from Israeli causes and may very well be an Israeli agent today.

The real terrorists are Richard Perle and others like him in this administration. The truth is an antithesis to this administration. Imagine turning on a light in a cockroach-infested tenement and watching them scurry across the floor for a hiding place. The truth cannot be heard about this junta. If it ever saw the light of day, the junta would be facing a world court on charges of war crimes. Thus, journalists such as Hersh, who has a distinguish career of accurate reporting, are being labeled “terrorists” to silence them. Meanwhile, the media finds it convenient to overlook Perle’s treason.

There is no reason for a war on Iraq except to seize control of their oil fields. If this administration had any proof of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, such proof would have been presented to the UN by now, instead of all the lies we have been fed. America’s lap dog Tony Blair cited a 12-year-old’s paper as proof. Meanwhile, the Bush Junta ripped out over 800 pages from the UN report that implicated American corporations in supplying Iraq with equipment that could be used to produce weapons of mass destruction. The lies have only become more ridiculous as the administration frantically tries to justify its war for oil.
The American media are nothing more than the propaganda mouthpiece for the Bush Junta. While this Junta has made a large claim that it is embedding journalist in combat units, it fails to mention that these embedded journalist must first send their reports through a censor. Independent journalists have been threatened with death by the Pentagon.

Veteran BBC war correspondent Kate Adie reported that the Pentagon has threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists in Iraq. Adie further charges that the Pentagon attitude is "entirely hostile to the free spread of information." When questioned about the potential of deadly actions, a senior Pentagon officer said, "Who cares…. They've been warned." Another war reporter, Phillip Knightley, reported that the Pentagon also said that they "may find it necessary to bomb areas in which war correspondents are attempting to report from the Iraqi side.”

It would appear that the Pentagon is ready and willing to deploy as many weapons against independent journalists as they are willing to deploy against Iraq. At home, the picture is even bleaker. Congressmen Bernie Sanders has introduced the Freedom-To- Read Protection Act in Congress. This bill would prevent the FBI and Tom Ridge’s Gestapo from forcing libraries and bookstores to reveal what books you read or bought. Under the Patriot Act, reading an unapproved book can get you arrested for terrorism.

It was reported just a few days ago that we had reached an agreement with Iraq by which the intelligence over-flights would be suspended and the U2s grounded. Just a few days later, ABC news reported that Iraq may launch the first attack. The report claimed they had rigged the oil wells to explode and had moved artillery forward that could threaten our troops in Kuwait. Now, how did the US administration obtain this information if the intelligence flights were cancelled? And what possible reason would anyone have for  canceling intelligence flights on the eve of a war? There is but one reason: before the announcement, the surveillance data and photos were shared with the UN inspection team. The alleged cancellation of those flights prevents the UN inspection team of ever verifying the US claim. The Bush Junta is using this lie as an excuse to launch attacks within days.

What the hell has happened to America? Since when is our military allowed to kill journalists with impunity? Since when are our literary tastes subject to approval by the Gestapo? How many more lies are we going to listen to? This is what has become of America under the Bush Junta. Like cockroaches, they must hide in darkness. Yet, we already have reports of prisoners in Afghanistan being tortured to death. Other reports inform us of the wholesale murder of Afghan prisoners left to suffocate in locked unventilated cargo containers –some even machine-gunned through such locked containers. Additional reports indicate that these cargo containers were then taken into a remote desert location where the survivors were executed and buried in trenches. According to still other reports, in some instances civilian homes and centers were bombed and shelled just for sport. Sixty-one years ago in June, words were written of another bloodthirsty tyrant that are as true today as they were then:
 

 "Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be "governed" without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. It is certain that today every honest German is ashamed of his government. Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day? If the German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in lawful order in history; if they surrender man's highest principle, that which raises him above all other God's creatures, his free will; if they abandon the will to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road toward turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass - then,  yes, they deserve their downfall."
 

Those words came from the members of the White Rose Society. Hitler had them executed by beheading after conviction for treason. The readers will now have to ask themselves whether they are going to stand by and let another tyrant murder journalists and writers while he conducts a war for oil.

Patriots in America are not waving the flag today.