The Longer The War, The Larger The Lies
Sunday, September 17th, 2006 by RLRFrom The NY Times
By Frank Rich
Rarely has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s Path to 9/11 so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.
No kidding: The Path to 9/11 was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them. Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a truce and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.
You’d think that after having been caught concocting the scenario that took the nation to war in Iraq, the White House would mind the facts now. But this administration understands our culture all too well. This is a country where a cable news network (MSNBC) offers in-depth journalism about one of its anchors (Tucker Carlson) losing a prime-time dance contest and where conspiracy nuts have created a cottage industry of books and DVD’s by arguing that hijacked jets did not cause 9/11 and that the 9/11 commission was a cover-up. (The fictionalized Path to 9/11, supposedly based on the commission’s report, only advanced the nuts’ case.) If you’re a White House stuck in a quagmire in an election year, what’s the percentage in starting to tell the truth now? It’s better to game the system.
The untruths are flying so fast that untangling them can be a full-time job. Maybe that’s why I am beginning to find Dick Cheney almost refreshing. As we saw on Meet the Press last Sunday, these days he helpfully signals when he’s about to lie. One dead giveaway is the word context, as in the context in which I made that statement last year. The vice president invoked context to try to explain away both his bogus predictions: that Americans would be greeted as liberators in Iraq and that the insurgency (some 15 months ago) was in its last throes.
The other instant tip-off to a Cheney lie is any variation on the phrase I haven’t read the story. He told Tim Russert he hadn’t read The Washington Post’s front-page report that the bin Laden trail had gone stone cold or the new Senate Intelligence Committee report(PDF) contradicting the White House’s prewar hype about nonexistent links between Al Qaeda and Saddam. Nor had he read a Times front-page article about his declining clout. Or the finding by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency just before the war that there was no evidence of resumed nuclear activities in Iraq. I haven’t looked at it; I’d have to go back and look at it again, he said, however nonsensically.
These verbal tics are so consistent that they amount to truth in packaging — albeit the packaging of evasions and falsehoods. By contrast, Condi Rice’s fictions, also offered in bulk to television viewers to memorialize 9/11, are as knotty as a David Lynch screenplay. Asked by Chris Wallace of Fox News last Sunday if she and the president had ignored prewar intelligence that contradicted your case, she refused to give up the ghost: We know that Zarqawi was running a poisons network in Iraq, she insisted, as she continued to state again that there were ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda before the war.
Ms. Rice may be a terrific amateur concert pianist, but she’s an even better amateur actress. The Senate Intelligence Committee report released only two days before she spoke dismissed all such ties. Saddam, who issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with Al Qaeda, saw both bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as threats and tried to hunt down Zarqawi when he passed through Baghdad in 2002. As for that Zarqawi poisons network, the Pentagon knew where it was and wanted to attack it in June 2002. But as Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News reported more than two years ago, the White House said no, fearing a successful strike against Zarqawi might undercut its case for going to war against Saddam. Zarqawi, meanwhile, escaped.
It was in an interview with Ted Koppel for the Discovery Channel, though, that Ms. Rice rose to a whole new level of fictionalizing by wrapping a fresh layer of untruth around her most notorious previous fiction. Asked about her dire prewar warning that a smoking gun might come in the form of a mushroom cloud, she said that it wasn’t meant as hyperbole. She also rewrote history to imply that she had been talking broadly about the nexus between terrorism and a nuclear device back then, not specifically Saddam — a rather deft verbal sleight-of-hand.
Ms. Rice sets a high bar, but Mr. Bush, competitive as always, was not to be outdone in his Oval Office address. Even the billing of his appearance was fiction. It’s not going to be a political speech, Tony Snow announced, knowing full well that the 17-minute text was largely Cuisinarted scraps from other recent political speeches, including those at campaign fund-raisers. Moldy canards of yore (Saddam was a clear threat) were interspersed with promising newcomers: Iraq will be a strong ally in the war on terror. As is often the case, the president was technically truthful. Iraq will be a strong ally in the war on terror — just not necessarily our ally. As Mr. Bush spoke, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, was leaving for Iran to jolly up Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Perhaps the only way to strike back against this fresh deluge of fiction is to call the White House’s bluff. On Monday night, for instance, Mr. Bush flatly declared that the safety of America depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad. He once again invoked Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, asking, Do we have the confidence to do in the Middle East what our fathers and grandfathers accomplished in Europe and Asia?
Rather than tune this bluster out, as the country now does, let’s try a thought experiment. Let’s pretend everything Mr. Bush said is actually true and then hold him to his word. If the safety of America really depends on the outcome of the battle in the streets of Baghdad, then our safety is in grave peril because we are losing that battle. The security crackdown announced with great fanfare by Mr. Bush and Mr. Maliki in June is failing. Rosy American claims of dramatically falling murder rates are being challenged by the Baghdad morgue. Perhaps most tellingly, the Pentagon has nowstopped including in its own tally the large numbers of victims killed by car bombings and mortar attacks in sectarian warfare.
And that’s the good news. Another large slice of Iraq, Anbar Province (almost a third of the country), is slipping away so fast that a senior military official told NBC News last week that 50,000 to 60,000 additional ground forces were needed to secure it, despite our huge sacrifice in two savage battles for Falluja. The Iraqi troops standing up in Anbar are deserting at a rate as high as 40 percent.
Even the most sanguine optimist cannot yet conclude we are winning, John Lehman, the former Reagan Navy secretary, wrote of the Iraq war last month. So what do we do next? Given that the current course is a fiasco, and that the White House demonizes any plan or timetable for eventual withdrawal as cut and run, there’s only one immediate alternative: add more manpower, and fast. Last week two conservative war supporters, William Kristol and Rich Lowry, called for exactly that — substantially more troops. These pundits at least have the courage of Mr. Bush’s convictions. Shouldn’t Republicans in Congress as well?
After all, if what the president says is true about the stakes in Baghdad, it’s tantamount to treason if Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and John Boehner fail to rally their party’s Congressional majority to stave off defeat there. We can’t emulate our fathers and grandfathers and whip today’s Nazis and Communists with 145,000 troops. Roosevelt and Truman would have regarded those troop levels as defeatism.
The trouble, of course, is that we don’t have any more troops, and supporters of the war, starting with Mr. Bush, don’t want to ask American voters to make any sacrifices to provide them. They don’t want to ask because they know the voters will tell them no. In the end, that is the hard truth the White House is determined to obscure, at least until Election Day, by carpet-bombing America with still more fictions about Iraq.
If you want to watch a video on what really happened on 911 then watch these.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7143212690219513043&q=911+Mysteries+-+Demolitions
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-999558027849894376&q=911+Mysteries+-+Demolitions
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1162851149755261569&sourceid=zeitgeist
Great article! what scares me is after the “elections” we will have a draft to provide the much needed troops to continue “the War on Terror”. Sounds improbable and politically impossible, but I’m afraid the American people are too dumbed down to resist..JJ
Somehow Frank Rich ‘forgot’ about the biggest LIE, 9/11. 9/11/2001 was an inside job. 9/11 was the reason for clamping down on rights by conducting warrant-less wire-taps, caging protestors, banning books like “America Deceived” from Amazon, stealing private lands and starting 2 illegal wars based on said lies. Who knows what Mr. Rich’s agenda really is. Maybe he’s the ‘opposition’ so we never look into the BIGGEST LIE OF THE CENTURY, that 19 cave-dwelling Arabs pulled off 9/11. Don’t fall for it. Research 9/11 and join us.
Final link (before Google Books caves to the gestapo and drops the title):
http://www.iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?&isbn=0-595-38523-0
What most people fail to understand, is that the Bush cabal does not want to win the war in Iraq, but to create chaos and generate genocide. This is the all divide and conquer, control through chaos agenda. Let them kill each other, then we go in and pick up the pieces. They are doing the same with all of us through this control and suppresed media. What we Americans need to realize is, the devil will give you everything you asked in exchange for wealth and glory, but at the end he will come back for your soul. The end game is to eliminate population and perpetuate the slave system of the super wealthy crooks. If America does not wake up and stop this madness, we will be responsible for the world and our own destruction, to include the ignorant ruling elite.
The deaths of our sons,
Caused by the sins of our fathers,
Are half-mourned on occasion,
By a public divided.
Yet while these crimes go unheeded,
And our Leaders are lauded,
Not a voice is sustained
To put an end to this carnage.
Since this war is for Israel
As our Congress attests,
Hold both responsible,
Our Congressmen and those
Neoconservative wretches.
The evidence pointing to MOSSAD, Israel’s CIA, as the primary culprit in 9/11 is overwhelming; the five celebrating Israelis with video cams and radio controlled detonators, the URBAN MOVING SYSTEMS celebration, the ODIGO warning, MOSSAD being in the Apartment next door to the hijackers in Miami, the seven identity thefts, the initial denial by Bin Laden, the confessions from the fake one. The MOSSAD attack on Mexico…see vitaltruths.blogsource.com
To whom it may concern;
My fellow Americans;
The more things change, the
more they stay the same. It’s
time for impeachment or face
self-destruction sooner then we
ever going to imagine!
S.D.Bob Plisken
Calling 40% of the population (according to recent polls) “conspiracy nuts” makes me question your agenda. Calling Firemen, Policemen, Scientists, Engineers, Doctors, Aircraft Pilots, government insiders (past, present and foreign) and a huge and growing number of “regular” people like me “nuts” is just obnoxious.
It is YOU who are not informed and you expect us to read an article written by a person who is obviously either incredibly ill-informed or another media shill for the corporate, zionist, neocon cabal. You go into great detail about the media’s stupid behaviour and government lies, and call incredibly detailed, painstakingly researched (with many, many provable facts) the product of “nuts”. You my friend either need to get started with some heavy research or be very afraid for your side’s future. You can’t just pass us off as “nuts”, it hasn’t worked nor will it.
I suspect it’s pretty suspect to many of us that your will yammer on endlessly about government and media lies, but you are totally unwilling to believe this same crew could possibly be involved in the inside job that was 9/11? To the point of calling the millions of believers “nuts”? I smell “agenda”.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5946593973848835726&q=loose+change
Godspeed!
Frank, how did WTC 7 collapse in 6 seconds from only fire?
Which conspiracy nuts are you talking about? The ones who claim 19 flight school dropouts pulled off the greatest attack in history? All directed by some guys in caves?
Why did you support Bush for President of America, you see he is murderer and lies, thief, scandal, conspirary, malice, betray, love of money; He support for Israeli and mossads and zionist. I am not support anyone because Lord Jesus said no trust anyone, that is means you are not christian because you want him to stay as President of USA or you better wake up and think
There has to be a truly independent investigation of 911. At least there should be answers provided for the hundreds of unanswered questions about how our military could allow that event to occur. Never before has such incompetence existed. One has to be totally ignorant to believe the official commissions report. Common sense alone is all that is needed. But that is something that is lacking in this country lately. Mass Media is the controller of public opinion. Mind Control seems to work through TV and Major Newspapers. This country has been highjacked and we are in big trouble. The government has the same regard for us as they do for Iraquis. It is becoming a police state and nobody seems to notice ( not all ). What can be done to stop the madness?
Self Destruction is not a myth, and if 40% believe in the conspiracy theories, please don’t call them Nuts, apart from that your article makes a good point.
More important is to ask ourselves: why nothing is done? How long will we accept Bush’s and his mobs action? When will we do something about it?
If you were walking on the street and witnessed a crime, you are guilty to inform the police. What if the police themselves committed the crime? Then you need to contact who is bigger then the police, in this case the Mass. Show them the crime, convince them and awake there conscious.
I live in the Middle East, I can’t do much about what is happening (I’m trying), but you can. I was in the states long time ago and still believe that Americans are peaceful people, I still have American friends and don’t see them as an enemy, but you are letting your president running the world like he is still in a ranch in Texas, you need to act before it’s too late!!!
EMPIRE STATE BUILDING SURVIVED A 10 TON BOMBER CRASH
Those experts who think a 757 can bring down a steel re-enforced building be it the two main towers of the WTC or building # 7 – the
latter a steel frame building that was not hit by any aircraft but fell several hours after the two towers collapsed – are woefully
reseach challenged.
At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday July 28, 1945, an American Army Airforce ten ton B-25 Mitchell bomber flying in a thick fog accidentally
crashed into the north side of the EMPIRE STATE BUILDING between the 79th and 80th floors. One engine (weight about 2 tons)
shot through the side opposite the impact and another plummeted down an elevator shaft. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes.
14 people were killed in the accident. Cleanup cost a million dollars.
I would not place too much reliance on what a potential architect of a new WTC would have to say about the sturdiness of steel framed
buildings. He/she or his company might be at risk of not getting the contract.
As far as Popular Mechanics attempt to explain away the obvious regarding WTC #7 – what can you expect from a publication who regularly features the latest in military technology that is so loved by those whom President Eisenhower warned about when he left office – anmely the military/industrial complex. Ike waa a true American Hero.
Croft Woodruff
6417 Fraser Street
Vancouver BC V5W 3A6
604 502 9277
604 421 1951
An invitation for the world to join the real human race
This is an invitation for all interested persons to come out of the
caves, throw of the chains of oppression and join the real human race.
This proposal is trying to give humanity an alternative to the hellbound road they are on. We hope this letter can illuminate the difference between the modern caveman and the evolved human being, and convince freethinking people to become collectively evolved worldwide and join the real human race.
Becoming an evolved human being does not take millions of years to
accomplish, [unlike the other evolution theory.] A person can become an evolved human being in a day, in an hour, in a minute. It merely requires that they release their full brain potency by understanding a few principles outlined in this letter, and then evolve into free and happy human beings.
The first basic principle of becoming an evolved human, is to understand that God and religion have nothing to do with man-made wars. The evolved human understands that any religious rhetoric that justifies war between nations and races are merely some ancient interpolated creations of man-made doctrines, coming from ancient priestly classes, concocting their own perverted theological ideas, which do not originate from God and His true religions.
The evolved human understands that God does not create one religion, or one race, to attack and subjugate and dominate all other religions and races of the world.
The evolved human understands that God has sublime qualities befitting
that of a Supreme Being, and the caveman category of men have base
qualities, such as greed, avarice, envy, and revenge, qualities which are exactly opposite to those of God, which lead them into their own wars.
The evolved human understands that God does not enjoy the suffering of
man, brought about by his own man-made wars. God is not like some
sadistic little kid who blows up anthills with firecrackers and delights in seeing them burn and run amuck. God is not like that. The Supreme Being takes pleasures in His own sublime creations, He does not want any of His creations to suffer. He does not create one race to inflict suffering on all other races. This is man’s perverted idea. God cannot be compared to sadistic greedy leaders who will sacrifice nations for their own selfish motives. The evolved human implores his fellow man to stop blaming our wars on God and religion, and rise above caveman consciousness.
God gives us all free will, He never interferes with our free will,
rather, we create our own wars due to choosing the consciousness of
cavemen, instead of choosing to become evolved humans. He does not force us to do anything, He gives us free will to help or destroy our fellow creatures. The cavemen classes are the only ones who try to force others to their will, by means of atomic bombs and missiles, and attacking with armies, etc.
We attempt herein to give a hope for men to attain the evolved state of existence by suggesting a few steps to take, and illuminating the
differences of the modern caveman, and that of the evolved human being:
1. The ancient caveman served the tribal master without any second
thoughts. He always obeyed his leader without considering the
ramifications of blind following. Modern cavemen make the same mistake of blindly following greedy masters, who use religion and God to justify their own wars. The evolved human thinks in terms of the whole of humanity, not just his tribe. The evolved human promotes a change for the good of the whole of humanity, not for the profit and agendas of the smaller greedy groups who dominate and exploit humanity.
2. The caveman always reaches for his club to solve the problems of life, without using his brain. Cavemen never think for themselves, but always follow dictates of the tribal leaders. The evolved human opts for philosophy and intellect, instead of might makes right, and questions any kind of authority whose agendas prove to be detrimental to humanity, by dragging innocent men into their man-made wars. To resist such madness is the definition of a free and happy human race. To blindly follow greedy leaders is the definition of an enslaved caveman race.
3. If you ask most people of the world, they do not want these wars. They are being tricked into these wars by only a few. They are being tricked into caveman consciousness by a mass media propaganda, justifying war by blaming it on religion and God. Evolved humans can become the majority.
Evolved humans can collectively unite and tell the greedy leaders to take their wars to some small island and kill themselves and leave us out of it.
4. When enough of us become evolved humans, we can stand up to them and tell them, “hell no, we won’t go. Fight your own dirty wars. Our God and our own particular religion have nothing to do with your insatiable greed and avarice and wars. We refuse to cooperate with your plans. You deserve to eat your own poison, and leave other men to their own freedom and happiness.â€
Sincerely hoping this will help free the minds of fellow man, yours
truly, the evolved human beings of planet Earth.
This artical should have been named, “THE LONGER THE WAR, THE MORE TIME TO PLAN THE NEXT ONE”
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.†The Miranda rights. Quite possibly the strongest pillar on which the US legal system is built on. The United State’s brilliantly written constitution rests on these words. You, as an individual, have your rights, and you are innocent until proven guilty.
Until September 11, 2001, that is. The attacks on New York where as tragic as any that target civilians, whether they are in Bali, Beirut, Gaza, Madrid, Mumbai and Tel Aviv. However, the tragedy of that day has sadly created a monster: legitimate state oppression. Now, thanks to primarily the Patriot Act, individuals are liable to be arrested under the most tenuous of links, held indefinitely without charge in prisons like Guantanamo and other secret detention cells, without a legal defense, and most astonishing of all, under the threat of receiving a life sentence, or even the death penalty, without being privilege to the evidence being used against them. So not quite innocent until proven guilty, then. In fact it is safe to say, that civil liberties have taken an absolute battering since that fateful day five years ago.
Can you imagine the outcry if in this day and age someone refused to share a bus ride with a black person? And yet it has become a common occurrence, relatively speaking of course, for dark skinned people to be removed from planes because they make other passengers ‘uncomfortable’, and I say this fully aware that those feelings of discomfort are not without reason.
But wait, I hear you say, where are these civil liberties in the Arab world? What about the oppressive regimes like Saddam’s and others that have ruled in this part of the world? People in glass houses and all that. And you would be absolutely correct. These oppressive regimes are just as responsible. But that is a different argument for a different day.
Our concern here is how 9/11 has facilitated the abuse of nations, and individuals, to the point that outright racism is now widely tolerated under the ideal of ‘War on Terror’.
If individuals’ rights have been abused, then what of the carte blanche that the events of 9/11 have given certain governments, to carry out their long term agendas in the Middle East. Speculating on what the US foreign policy would have been like if 9/11 hadn’t happened is surely a moot point. September 11 did happen and merely, and at the risk of sounding callous, conveniently, crystallized for the American government and people the notion of this ‘War on Terror’. Terror, now, had an easily identifiable face: Osama bin Laden. Terror is dark, it has a beard, and of course, it is Muslim. But let’s make this even easier to grasp by giving terror its very own brand: Al Qaeda.
And here lies the true genius of the ‘War on Terror’: it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Suddenly, every little disenfranchised gang of terrorists (Of course they exist, no one is denying that) has a raison d’etre. Now they are legit. And the more terror incidents occur the more vindication for the ‘War on Terror’. Of course there were many horrific terrorist activities carried out before 9/11, but can anyone honestly say that the situation has not become infinitely worse with the advent of the ‘War on Terror’? Are there more terrorist activities now because of the ‘War on Terror’, or does the ‘War on Terror’ need to be so sweeping just to be able to deal with the mushrooming terrorism? What came first, the chicken or George W Bush?
Unless I’ve missed it, no concerted effort has ever been made, by the US government or media, to truly understand why terrorism was on the rise, culminating in 9/11? Is it because American foreign policy has for 50 years oppressed, politically, militarily and economically, many of these breeding grounds for terrorists? Is it a by-product of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the US’s blatant support for the Zionist state? Or is it because many western governments’ fickle support for certain Middle Eastern regimes was very likely to later turn to outright hostility. (At various times the US has supported the Taliban and Saddam’s regime, among others)?
Or is it because, as George W and his gang of neo-cons would have you believe, these terrorists simply “hate our way of life� Put simply, what 9/11 has done is to allow the US government, and by extension many of its allies (Hello, Tony!), to carry out draconian measures under the, lets face it, politically ambiguous notion of ‘War on Terror’, safe in the knowledge that they have become completely and utterly unaccountable for their actions.
Want to attack a country using the flimsiest evidence of existence of weapons of mass destruction? Sure, no need for UN resolutions any more because this is an attack on “terrorâ€. And what about Israel’s unlawful, criminal attacks on Lebanon and the Occupied Territories? That of course comes under the classic “Israel has the right to defend itself against terrorists†and no amount of resolutions condemning it will make any difference. Afghanistan? That’s Osama’s neighborhood, don’t you know? All terrorists will be brought to justice, but will there be any justice for mothers of dead Iraqi, Palestinian and Lebanese children?
So many question marks litter this page and that is simply because so many questions remain unanswered about 9/11, the ‘War on Terror’, and the generally dismal state of the world today.
So what’s next? Iran? What do you think?
All three WTC buildings collapsed in exactly the same manner at practically free-fall speed dammit! Don’t you think this means something? Because it certainly means a lot to professors, scientists etc. who know a lot more about this stuff than you do.
If wanting to know HOW this happened (in the absence of an official explanation that makes any sense) makes me a ‘conspiracy nut’, then yeah, I’m a conspiracy nut and proud of it – and you’re the ‘coincidence nut’.