What War Brings: lies, lies, lies and MORE LIES

Photos: US Marines storm through villages during the launch of Operation Germinate into the restive Bhuji Bhast Pass in Farah Province, southern Afghanistan. (AFP/David Furst)

What War Brings: lies, lies, lies, and more LIES

This is another topic that could fill many books, or possibly an entire library. We are all familiar with the lies about WMDs and ties to al Qaeda that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Anyone with any honesty and half a brain figured that out before the invasion ever started. Anyone who claims they did not know is either a TOOL or a FOOL. So, I am not going to address that particular aspect of the tsunami of lies that we have been subjected to over the years (with one exception). I am going to cover an Iraqi’s perspective on those lies and the hopes that those deceptions led to. I am going to cover some of the lies about Afghanistan.

But, here are two things I know are true:

ALL WARS START WITH LIES. ALWAYS.

And here is the second one:

THE ONES STARTING THE WARS ARE THE ONES DOING THE LYING.

“We have been lied to...far and wide, high and low, sea to shining sea. Our history is a veritable cornucopia of lie after lie after lie.” – from OPOL on Daily Kos

Of course, that does not mean the other side (or sides) won’t join in on the lying.

And, here is only one aspect of the many lies about Iraq – that the Bush administration used torture to obtain more lies to promote the war and occupation.

IraqTortureGate: Powell Denies Knowing He Used Tortured Evidence for UN Case

The most damning credible allegation to emerge regarding the Bush Administration is arguably that Dick Cheney and other Bush Administration officials ordered the use of torture to produce false evidence of a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

AFGHANISTAN

Recently, we have seen a bit of honesty on Afghanistan: the military is now calling the troops there ‘trigger-pullers’ which is exactly what they are. They are not there to free the Afghans from the Taliban, they are there to promote geocorporate interests, and the Afghans who get in the way will be ….. killed by the trigger-pullers. This ‘hearts and minds’ stuff or ‘protecting Afghan civilians’ is just a load of crap.

U.S. officials are planning to add as many as 14,000 combat troops to the American force in Afghanistan by sending home support units and replacing them with "trigger-pullers," Defense officials say.

Of course, we don’t know what the final number of US troops (or US contractors) who will be sent off to Afghanistan will be (at least when I wrote this I didn’t know).

The big lie of Afghanistan

My country hasn't been liberated: it's still under the warlords' control, and Nato occupation only reinforces their power. ~ Malalai Joya

Almost eight years after the Taliban regime was toppled, our hopes for a truly democratic and independent Afghanistan have been betrayed by the continued domination of fundamentalists and by a brutal occupation that ultimately serves only American strategic interests in the region.

….. So far, Obama has pursued the same policy as Bush in Afghanistan. Sending more troops and expanding the war into Pakistan will only add fuel to the fire. Like many other Afghans, I risked my life during the dark years of Taliban rule to teach at underground schools for girls. Today the situation
of women is as bad as ever.

But the lies of Afghanistan, and it’s wars and occupations start before any US/NATO troops ever landed there. I am not a conspiracy-theory person. I am a fact-based person. I believe in the truth. And here is some truth about the attacks on 9/11:

1. OBL was armed, funded and trained in the 1980s under the CIA and paid for by US taxpayers. I am not sure when paying him and his group actually stopped.

2. The evil ones who decided on funding OBL and his group did so to have a proxy war with the USSR and did not give a rat’s ass who they harmed or how badly.

3. The US government sent funds to the Taliban in 2001, including in September 2001. They did not give a rat’s ass about education for Afghan girls or human rights at the time. (And they still don’t.)

4. The ones who did the attack on 9/11 were mainly from Saudi Arabia, according to the ‘official’ story. At one point, they might have been in Afghanistan. Their funding was claimed to be from Afghanistan. The planning for the attack was done in Hamburg, Germany and the training was done in Florida. The Afghan people had nothing to do with it, just like the Iraqi people had nothing to do with it.

5. All the attackers on 9/11 are dead.

6. The most expensive fucking military in the world did not stop any of the attacks, and they could not even stop an attack on the fucking Pentagon.

7. The only attacks that were stopped happened when ordinary American citizens took action, after they figured out what was really going on. No hijacker on a US plane will ever reach his/her destination for the next fifty years. We will take that plane down.

8. Eight years after the 9/11 attacks, the guy that the US government claims is responsible for these attacks STILL HAS NOT BEEN CAUGHT by the most expensive fucking military in the world.

9. NO ONE has been fired for failing to do their job to protect the American people, and NO ONE in the CIA was fired for failing to detect this attack before it happened.

10. The crime scene was extensively tampered with. A recent attempt by NYC residents to get a referendum on the ballot to re-investigate the attacks was struck down by the NY Supreme Court. Democracy can go to hell.

I think it is safe to say that there is something very, very wrong with this picture.

We have been bombing and occupying Afghanistan for over eight years, and all we are getting is more violence and instability. We have seen terrorists attacks go up around the world and have seen al Qaeda wanna-bes spread across two continents.

We are supposedly there to catch al Qaeda, and it was recently admitted that there are less than 100 al Qaeda in Afghanistan at this time. What was not mentioned is the lucrative opium trade that is now flourishing under US/NATO occupation, which did not exist when Afghanistan was under Taliban rule. Another unmentionable fact is that the US DOD wants bases in Afghanistan, as a way to target or strike at the two largest powers in the region – Russia and China.

We have been lied to and lied to and lied to…. And are still being lied to today.

In Pakistan, we have been doing drone bombings for years now, and all we are seeing is more violence and instability….. and that the ones in Pakistan who call themselves ‘al qaeda’ are claiming they want to get their hands on the nuclear bombs, while they are infiltrating the police and the military and security services. Let’s hope they are not successful. Here is a bit of information on how the Pakistan people really feel:

With friends like the US, Pakistan doesn’t need enemies

"Poll after poll shows Pakistanis increasingly do fear the threat posed by Islamic extremists ... but they believe the US is an even bigger danger to their country," Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution was quoted as saying this week. Many Pakistanis rated the threat posed by the US to their independence and security above that from historical foe India, he said. "Any time you out-poll India as the bad guy in Pakistan you are in deep trouble."

IRAQI PERSPECTIVE

Below is a post sent to me by an Iraqi-Ameircan, about the lies that lead to war in Iraq, and how it impacted him and his relatives:

Inside Tales

I have to confess that I was pro war not for the sake of the war, not because I hate my people and wanted them to die. Not at all, it was because I believed that Saddam Hussein was the creation of the U.S foreign policy. There was no other choice to get rid of him and his sons and the entire family but this war. Please don’t yell at me and don’t hate me, just bare with me till the end.

When you have a hopeless ailing horse, what would you do? You will give him the shot of mercy. I loved my people and cared about them. I wanted to free them from the brutal dictator who denied their right as human beings to express their opinion or even joke about it. They were jailed inside their country and banned from watching, reading or listening to anything or anyone from outside. When I left the country most of the people did not hear about the Internet nor did they know the meaning of the word “email”. Half of the people had not seen a computer or fax, not to mention the satellite or cell phone which were nothing but some kind of science fiction for them. I was looking for their freedom. I was hoping for their better future. Does anyone think that my willing to share the prosperity with my unfortunate people is a crime?

During the first few days of the invasion, I called my aunt, the dearest one to my heart, and asked about her feelings and if she was fine or not. The answer that is still ringing bells in my mind about how people over there viewed this war and how did they look ar it. She was happy and relaxed in spite of all the bombing and shelling that they were living in. She told me that my second cousin got married two months ago before the war but “they are going to have another wedding very soon”. I got the message that she tried to pass. There was no other wedding but the Iraqis wedding. They believed that the day that witnessed the toppling of Saddam Hussein, is their big wedding day.

Yes, Iraqis dreamed of that day. Yes, Iraqis greeted Americans as “liberators”. Yes, Iraqis welcomed them with rice and flowers. They were watching the crawling troops with joy. They were happy and they were dancing in the road. Every body remember that guy “ Ubo Alwan” the slipper guy who was smacking the the poster of Saddam with his old cheap slipper. April 9, 2003 was a remarkable day in our lives, Iraqis’ lives. No one believed that there is going to be a day when you wake up and there is no Saddam Hussein on the TV or in the news or anywhere in the country, no one believed that. He was like Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights who was so hateful and scary that no one believed that they were going to get rid of him even when he was dead and had gone for ever.

However, the wedding did not last for ever and the honeymoon was over before it starts. The ugly marital relationship between the Iraqis and American troops had started by leaving the looters free and without control and Donald Rumsfeld defended their act by saying that they were practicing their freedom. Excuse me! But this is not an act of freedom but chaos. When you, American troops, had assigned yourself as an occupation authority then you would have supposed to control the situation and protect the properties and treasures of your occupied territory. It was part of your job. It was not expected from you to stand still or, in some cases, help in the looting job as what happened to the University of Technology when its president closed all the exits to the University complex and then saw the American tanks crashing those metal doors and telling looters “Go Ali Baba Go”. There was one question buzzing the Iraqis head and kept them in bewilderment; “Was that a trap?”, or “Was it a nightmare?”

And here is how it ended up making him feel:

I feel ashamed. Yes, I have a pain in my heart and a reproach upon my mind of being one of those who supported the war, to be one the fools who believed that bringing “Democracy” was true, to be one of the blinds who followed the Satan down the road. I am ashamed, reading all about torturing civilians to justify the war. I am ashamed, finding out that the Bush administration hired mercenaries whose mission was to supply armed protection to the American officials and working on ending Islam faith and killing Muslims and destructing Iraqis lives at the same time.

If you have hated me from my previous blog, then you have all the right to do so and I will not excuse myself or forgive her for being such a fool. I will not forgive myself and excuse her for thinking that bringing the change can be done through a war. And again, I will not forget that American troops are like any other troops no exception and no exclusion. Some of them can act dumbly or wickedly like any others especially when it is supported and encouraged by vicious authority like Bush Administration.

I am not covering what lies are promoting the violence in Pakistan – because I really don’t have a handle on it. I do know what I see – the more violence we use, the more violence it begets. And I know that we are not doing those drone bombings for the reasons stated. I am going to close with a poem by Carl Sandburg and quote from Mark Twain.

The Liars

by Carl Sandburg

A liar goes in fine clothes.

A liar goes in rags.

A liar is a liar, clothes or no clothes.

A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.

And the stonecutters earn a living—with lies—on the tombs of liars.

A liar looks ’em in the eye

And lies to a woman,

Lies to a man, a pal, a child, a fool.

And he is an old liar; we know him many years back.

A liar lies to nations.

A liar lies to the people.

A liar takes the blood of the people

And drinks this blood with a laugh and a lie,

A laugh in his neck,

A lie in his mouth.

And this liar is an old one; we know him many years.

He is straight as a dog’s hind leg.

He is straight as a corkscrew.

He is white as a black cat’s foot at midnight.

The tongue of a man is tied on this,

On the liar who lies to nations,

The liar who lies to the people.

The tongue of a man is tied on this

And ends: To hell with ’em all.

To hell with ’em all.

It’s a song hard as a riveter’s hammer,

Hard as the sleep of a crummy hobo,

Hard as the sleep of a lousy doughboy,

Twisted as a shell-shock idiot’s gibber.

The liars met where the doors were locked.

They said to each other: Now for war.

The liars fixed it and told ’em: Go.

Across their tables they fixed it up,

Behind their doors away from the mob.

And the guns did a job that nicked off millions.

The guns blew seven million off the map,

The guns sent seven million west.

Seven million shoving up the daisies.

Across their tables they fixed it up,

The liars who lie to nations.

And now

Out of the butcher’s job

And the boneyard junk the maggots have cleaned,

Where the jaws of skulls tell the jokes of war ghosts,

Out of this they are calling now: Let’s go back where we were.

Let us run the world again, us, us.

Where the doors are locked the liars say: Wait and we’ll cash in again.

So I hear The People talk.

I hear them tell each other: Let the strong men be ready.

Let the strong men watch.

Let your wrists be cool and your head clear.

Let the liars get their finish,

The liars and their waiting game, waiting a day again

To open the doors and tell us: War! get out to your war again.

So I hear The People tell each other:

Look at to-day and to-morrow.

Fix this clock that nicks off millions

When The Liars say it’s time.

Take things in your own hands.

To hell with ’em all,

The liars who lie to nations,

The liars who lie to The People.

"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." ~ Mark Twain - from The Mysterious Stranger 1916.

If you support the continued occupation of Iraq or Afghanistan, or the bombing of Pakistan, then you support WHAT WAR BRINGS: lies, lies, lies and MORE LIES.

Tell me president tell me if you will
How many people does a smart bomb kill?
How many of them do you think we got?
The general says we never miss shot
And we never ever ever keep a body count
We're killing so efficiently we can't keep count
In the afghan hills the rebels still fighting
Opium fields keep on providing
The best heroin that money can buy and
No body knows where Osama bin hiding
The press conferences keep on lying
Like we don't know

The war for oil is a war for the beast
the War on terror is a war on peace

~ Michael Franti