[Bret L]

The Waning Power of Truth

By Paul Craig Roberts

"June 19, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- David Ray Griffin, the nemesis of the collection of disinformation known as the 9/11 Commission Report, has taken up the question of Osama Bin Laden, Dead or Alive?

On the basis of the available evidence, Griffin concludes that bin
Laden died in December 2001, most likely of kidney failure. He has
been kept alive in the media by US government PSYOPS as a useful
bogyman to justify America’s illegal wars of aggression. The messages
received from bin Laden since his death appear to be conveniently
timed fabrications designed to advance US government purposes.

Osama bin Laden is likely to become a mythical person, like the
Georgia Tech student, George P. Burdell, who will be sighted from time
to time over a period that exceeds the length of a human life.

It was less than one year ago that Americans were subjected to PSYOPS
disinformation from their government concerning the Russia-Georgia
conflict over South Ossetia.

Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin incorporated South Ossetia, formerly a part
of Russia, into his home province of Georgia. When the Soviet Union
broke up, Georgia became independent and retained South Ossetia.
Secession movements arose in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia. These
secession movements were the reason European members of NATO rejected
the US government’s attempt to make Georgia a NATO member in order to
extend the US/NATO military presence on Russia’s borders in
contravention of previous US government agreements with Russia.

To terminate the secession movement and, thereby, remove the barrier
to Georgia becoming a NATO member, the US, with Israel’s help, trained
and equipped the Georgian military and gave the American puppet ruler,
installed in the aftermath of one of the US-orchestrated color
revolutions, the green light to attack South Ossetia.

Under mutual agreement, Russia and Georgia both provided peace-keeping
troops in South Ossetia to prevent violence by secessionists. On the
night of August 7-8, 2008, Georgian troops attacked South Ossetia,
destroying a town and killing many Russian Ossetians and some Russian
soldiers who were part of the peace-keeping force. Large numbers of
South Ossetians fled across the border to Russia.

The US government, in its hubris, assumed that Russia would accept the
ethnic cleansing of Russians from South Ossetia. Instead, Russian
troops arrived and quickly destroyed the American trained and equipped
Georgian army and could easily have taken control of Georgia, but
refrained.

Defeated in its aim, the US government unleashed a PSYOPS
disinformation war against the Russian government, claiming falsely
that Russia had initiated the conflict by attacking Georgia. The US
government’s blatant and transparent lies were force-fed to the
American public by the US media.

British disinformation services cooperated with their American
masters, but the rest of the world blew the whistle. The real facts
emerged, and an American disinformation campaign experienced a rare
failure.

Now ten months later, US “black ops” is at it again, pumping out
disinformation about the “stolen” Iranian election. The US media is
again serving the government’s disinformation campaign. This despite
the fact that on May 23, 2007, Brian Ross and Richard Esposito
reported on ABC News: “The CIA has received secret presidential
approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the
Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence
community tell ABC News.”

On May 27, 2007, the London Telegraph independently reported: “Mr.
Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a
propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and
eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.”

A few days previously, the Telegraph reported on May 16, 2007, that
Bush administration neocon warmonger John Bolton told the Telegraph
that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after
economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had
failed.”

On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last
year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major
escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and
former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These
operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million
dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and
are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”

The Iranian election protests, essentially by the westernized youth of
Tehran who wish to be free of Islamic moral codes, have the hallmarks
of orchestration. The protesters are color-coded with green
wristbands. Their protest signs are in English and are obviously
directed at the western media. Their chants are propagandistic and
bear no relation to facts known by every Iranian.

And again, the US media and various experts, whose ambitions depend on
government-related careers, are force-feeding the American public the
disinformation designed to further isolate and weaken, if not
overthrow, the Iranian government.

Until 1978 the US ruled Iran through the Shah. The US intends to again
rule Iran through puppets. The only two remaining independent
governments in the region are Iran and Syria. If the US doesn’t first
bankrupt itself, both countries will fall to US black ops
destabilization.

The limitless gullibility of the American people guarantees carte
blanche to the US government’s schemes. Americans seemingly cannot put
two and two together. They have already forgotten the lies about
weapons of mass destruction that have resulted in the destruction of
Iraq. They have forgotten Secretary of State Colin Powell’s publicly
expressed remorse at the lies he told the UN. Americans blithely
accept the conflation of Talliban with al Qaeda and terrorists and the
new war that the Obama regime has started in Pakistan, a war that has
already produced 2 million refugees.

It can fairly be said that there is not much difference between the
American public and the fictional one under Big Brother in George
Orwell’s 1984. The few independent voices that do exist are simply
drowned out by the constant flow of disinformation.

The US government’s success in spinning 9/11 guaranteed the
government’s success in pursuing a hegemonic agenda under a cloak of
lies. Although a large percentage of the US population does not
believe the government’s account and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
experts and informed and well-connected people have challenged the
government’s tale, the US media has shown no interest despite the
official account of 9/11 bearing every known hallmark of a coverup.

High-ranking fire marshals have complained that legally required
forensic procedures were not followed by authorities entrusted with
investigation.

The testimony of more than 100 policemen, firemen, and maintenance
personnel who were in the towers at the time and report hearing and
experiencing a series of explosions was ignored and withheld from the
public until the government got its story in place.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology studiously avoided
testing for evidence of explosives. The severed steel beams were
quickly collected and sold abroad as scrap.

As a number of observers have complained, the crime scene was
destroyed, not investigated.

The government’s story of the destruction of the towers is based on
computer simulations that produce results in keeping with the
assumptions.

The collapse of the third building is not even mentioned in the 9/11
Commission Report.

No one abroad believes the US government’s story. Europeans have
produced documentary films that laugh at the official explanation.

Recently, an international team of scientists reported on their two
year examination of dust samples from the debris. They report that
they found nano-thermite in the samples. To my knowledge no mainstream
US media reported the finding.

One would think that such a finding would lead to a real
investigation. Instead, within the US the finding is dismissed by
debunkers of “conspiracy theories” (except of course the government’s
own conspiracy theory) with the charge that the dust samples have not
been in controlled environments since collected and could have been
contaminated by those who volunteered the samples. In other words, the
nano-thermite, if actually in the samples, was planted.

One wonders how residents of lower Manhattan obtained nano-thermite
with which to contaminate the dust. Indeed, who has access to nano-
thermite other than government ?

Why doesn’t the National Academy of Science choose a team to examine
the samples? If the finding of nano-thermite is verified, the issue of
contamination can be investigated. If it turns out that the people who
volunteered the samples have no possible access to nano-thermite, the
case for a real investigation is established.

There is little prospect of such a development in the US. American
science and the careers of scientists are heavily dependent on US
government funding. It would be a career-ending event for American
scientists to get involved with this matter other than as a
contributer to a cover-up. Professor Steven Jones, a physicist at BYU
who first raised the issue of explosives being used to bring down the
three WTC buildings, was terminated, despite his tenure, by BYU. Many
believe Jones was terminated because of political threats to the
university’s funding.

In the US truth is an ineffective means by which to hold government
accountable. Consider, for example, the fate of whistleblowers. Daniel
Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers was perhaps the last
successful whistleblower and that was three decades ago. Since then
the government has put in place many defenses against whistleblowers.

The American public has looked to government for its salvation since
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Government provides education,
health care (Medicare, Medicaid), pensions (Social Security), food
stamps, housing subsidies, child care and protects Americans from a
long list of demonized villeins ranging from spouse abusers and child
molesters to terrorists. Americans see themselves and their government
as the salt of the earth, an image supported by American generosity to
other peoples who suffer natural calamities. Most Americans believe
that their government does stupid things, but not evil things except
perhaps by accident.

The right-wing believes that America was attacked on 9/11 because we
are so good, hubris to which Bush successfully played with his
statement that “they hate us for our freedom and democracy.”

The left-wing finds emotional satisfaction in its belief that 9/11 was
deserved blow-back from peoples oppressed by US foreign policy who
rose up and struck back.

Truth is so impotent in America that the Israeli attack on the USS
Liberty 42 years ago is still covered up by the US government despite
the best efforts of Admiral Tom Moorer, who was Chief of Naval
Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and by decades
of effort by the Liberty survivors.

This raises the question: Why do some people blow whistles? Why do
those few write books and columns that challenge the lies and
deceptions? There is probably more than one answer. For some, hope
springs eternal. Others naively destroy their careers thinking that
truth will be honored. Still others speak from a sense of
responsibility to truth and not from a hope that anything will
actually change.

In October 1987 John Stockwell, a former CIA covet operative who ran
the CIA’s covert war in Angola, gave a lecture [
http://www.informationclearinghouse....rticle4068.htm ] in which he
said he abandoned his career when he realized that CIA covert
operations resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent
people and were totally unconnected to any US national security
interests. “I concluded that I just couldn’t see the point.”

Nothing has changed. What was the point of the US invasion of Iraq?
Even President Bush eventually conceded that there were no weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq.

What was the point of the US invasion of Afghanistan and what is the
point of Obama’s escalation of the war there? The Taliban is not al
Qaeda and was totally focused on unifying Afghanistan under an Islamic
government. The US was not on the Taliban’s radar screen.

What is the point of the war that the US has started in Pakistan?

What is the point of the destabilization of the Iranian government?
After the stolen elections of the Karl Rove/Bush era, why does the US
think it must overthrow the Iranian government because of allegations
that Ahmadinejad stole an election?

If the answer is that these wars and interventions serve the interest
of US hegemony, the obvious reply is that US hegemony is more likely
to be lost from the massive red ink in the government’s budget that is
likely to be monetized, thus destroying the dollar as reserve
currency, the main source of US hegemony.

If the US wants to have an empire in the Middle East or elsewhere, the
government should come out and say so. At least then Americans could
revel in the glories of empire. As it is, the pleasure must be gained
surreptitiously under the table, pretending that we are protecting the
world from evil-doers while we do evil ourselves."

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22867.htm