Friday, November 25, 2005

Americans are angry





  Panorama

Americans are angry: White House in crisis


The people of America are furious over the course their government is taking them and they are speaking up in unprecedented terms and language
Revelations that imply an administration in disarray and a see-through game of shifting blames in Washington but yet retaining the central theme of keeping the truth away from the public have added fuel to the fury.
Charges that whoever is questioning the administration's policy is dishonest and unpatriotic seem to have been the proverbial straw and given rise to a flurry of indignant and angry responses from the American people.
The mainstream corporate media would not give them a platform to air their grievances and vent their anger at the policies of their government. They have to confine themselves to the cyberspace, but their voice is now being heard. And it is only a matter of time before the corporate media would be forced to remove their self-imposed veils and try to do what they were supposed to do in the first place: Speak the truth and be objective. If they don't, then they would be out and haunted for having been party to one of the grossest deception which has come to be called the "lie of the century." (www.whatreallyhappened.com).
At this given point in time, the Bush administration is reeling back from pointed accusations that include:
The administration lied to American people and Congress into accepting that Iraq was linked to the Sept.11, 2001 attacks and had weapons of mass destruction that posed a threat to American national security. When it was proved that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden had no links (and thus no Iraq/Sept.11 link either) and Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, the war was justified as aimed at "liberating" the people of Iraq and leading them into democracy. And the "liberated" people -- or at least some of them -- are hitting back and killing Americans, and Iraq is termed as the den of international terrorism, "liberation" or no liberation.
(That the administration knew that there was little substance to the charge that Iraq had no links with 9/11 has come out in a recently declassified Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) document (DITSUM 044-02).
Robert Scheer observes in The Nation: "This smoking-gun document proves the Bush administration's key evidence for the apocryphal Osama Bin Laden-Saddam Hussein alliance, said by Bush to involve training in the use of weapons of mass destruction, was built upon the testimony of a prisoner who, according to the DIA, was probably 'intentionally misleading the debriefers'.")
The administration has yet to provide a clear answer to the American people why the US military went to war against Iraq.
Another grave charge is that the administration prevented the "truth" of the 9/11 attacks from the American people and deliberately suppressed information citing national security and imperatives of intelligence gathering.
The administration resorted to aggressive vendetta against anyone who spoke up against the war and questioned Washington's motivations in invading and occupying Iraq. That is the net scenario emerging from the Valerie Plame affair, where people as high as Vice-President Robert Cheney and even the president himself could be implicated for having been party, directly or indirectly, to outing a secret operative of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), one of the very same people the administration was supposed to protect and defend.
The administration has no compassion for American lives and could not care less about the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and elsewhere as long as they are kept away from American television screens and newspapers.
These are the key points being raised by commentators, analysts and observers as well as honest-to-God American people without any political agenda.
Hit from many sides with such accusations, the Bush administration is fighting back, but the arguments it makes are deemed by most critics to be steering away from the core issue of American national interests.
The administration is not dissuaded. It is continuing to follow an aggressive approach by trying to discredit and silence critics.

Patriotism and criticism

A simple but clear reflection of the seething American anger over these issues -- not to mention the administration's handling of hurricane Katrina and Rita and the economic problems within the US -- could be seen in a comment written by Doug Thompson on www.capitolhillblue.com.
Thompson, publisher of the site, is credited with 46 years of work in various capacities, including some years in the corridors of power in Capitol Hill, but mostly as a writer and journalist.
In his latest article, Thompson gives vent to his anger at Cheney for criticising Republican Senator John Murtha for calling on the administration to withdraw the US military from Iraq.
Asserting that Cheney himself avoided serving the military during the Vietnam War by "multiple deferments," while Murtha served the US Marines for 37 years and had won several military honours, Thompson delivers a broadside salvo at the vice-president and other politicians:
"American politics is cursed with chicken-hawk politicians who do everything in their power to avoid serving their country and then vote to send other Americans to fight and die for their questionable wars. Bill Clinton used falsified documents to secure and keep his student deferments in place. Congress is littered with false patriots, Republican and Democrat alike, who avoided military service. And the biggest warmonger of them all, George W. Bush, needed daddy's connections to ride out the war at home in the safety of the Texas Air National Guard and couldn't even complete that service."
"It's bad enough when Bush uses Veterans Day, a holiday where we are supposed to honour those who serve our country, to spread his Iraq invasion propaganda and criticise those who dare question his failed policies. As Americans we have the freedom to agree or disagree with war but it is our duty to serve her when she calls. Draft dodgers are the worst kind of traitors to our country. They avoided the call and are nothing but despicable."
Another posting (www.uruknet.com/ ?p=18002&hd =0&size=1&l=x) delves into the same subject and asserts:
"The only people buying this Bush/Cheney tent show are the never-say-die entrenched Republicans and those suffering from Alzheimer's. What a charade, both of them feigning indignity and charging that the Iraq war critics are irresponsible and unpatriotic for questioning their claims that the 'neocon' Bush gang was only honestly mistaken when they spoon fed bogus prewar intelligence to Congress and the American people. In truth, it is irresponsible and unpatriotic to not question these men who are benefiting by this war and who have not convincingly proven a need for this war, which has cost the lives of two thousand and counting of our bravest men and women as well as the maiming of tens of thousand more."

'Truth of 9/11'

It is not simply the deceptive war against Iraq and the American lives lost there and the more than $200 billion spent on war that is bothering the Americans. They have seen a policy pattern, decisions and statements which they interpret as designed to deceive them and keep them in the dark in the name of national security.
Even more intriguing is the theory that the Sept.11 attacks were an "inside job."

Here is an interesting web posting: www.indybay.org/news/ 2005/11/1784820.php)
"What does questioning 9/11 mean? I think everyone is open to questions about what the US knew about Al Qaeda before 9/11 and what the US had done in earlier years to aid it. There is probably also room for doubt as to whether Al Qaeda really carried out 9/11 to the same extent as there is room for doubt about the London bombings; Al Qaeda never really existed as a centralised organisation with a clear hierarchy of command and control even in the official version of things so asking whether Al Qaeda did something doesn't even have a clear yes/no answer.
"There is also clear room for doubt about USA motives behind Afghanistan since (Osama) Bin Laden was never caught and the US still dropped troop levels and started to focus on Iraq (which everyone knows had no links to 9/11). If you bring up questions like these you will get an overwhelmingly positive response from most on the left and not get dismissed.
"There are other questions that seem legitimate but probably won't get clear responses since the technical nature of concern makes them sound conspiratorial even though everyone knows they are open questions. "What was the names of all those who carried out the 9/11 attacks?

"Did all the hijackers know it was a suicide mission?

"How exactly did they take over a plane with box cutters?

"How did cellphones work from within one of the airplanes?

"How did the WTC towers fall?

"How much was due to fire and how much to the impact?"

Why are such allegations and questions being given a sudden boost?

Sidney Blumenthal writes on Salon.com: "The Senate's decision last week to launch an investigation into the administration's role in prewar disinformation, after the Democrats forced the issue in a rare secret session, has provoked a furious presidential reaction.
"The Senate Intelligence Committee, under Republican leadership, connived with the White House to prevent a promised investigation into the administration's involvement in prewar intelligence. Its revival by Democrats is precisely the proximate cause that has triggered Bush's paroxysm of revenge."
Richard Cohen, a columnist, writes on New York Daily News (www.nydailynews.com/news/col/story/366489p-311821c.html):
At the moment, no one can have confidence in the Bush administration. Almost three years into the war, the world is not safer, the Middle East is less stable and Americans and others die for a mission that is not what it once was called: A fight for democracy. It would be nice, as well as important, to know how we got into this mess -- nice for us, important for the president. It wasn't that he had the wrong facts. It was that the right ones didn't matter."

Media manipulation

Manipulation of the media's yet another charge against the administration. It has emerged that some of the mainstream newspapers, which were until recently considered as highly credible, are known to have carried misleading reports in the build-up to the war against Iraq and ignoring key questions that any respectable media institutions should have asked and demanded answers.
These reports played a key role in convincing the Americans that there was indeed a case against Iraq. Little did they know that many of the reports originated within the administration and neoconservative camp and were cycled through several channels before ending up with the newspapers.
Additionally, according to www.commondreams.org, the Bush administration was behind "bogus and deceptive" news items.
Says www.commondreams.org: Under Bush administration directives, at least 20 federal agencies have produced and distributed scores, perhaps hundreds, of "video news segments" out of a $254 million slush fund. These bogus and deceptive stories have been broadcast on television stations nationwide without any acknowledgment that they were prepared by the government rather than local journalists. The segments- -- which trumpet Administration "successes" -- promote its controversial line on issues like Medicare reform and feature Americans "thanking" Bush -- have been labelled "covert propaganda" by the Government Accountability Office.

'Rigged' elections?

Then there is the charge that the Republican-led neoconservatives rigged the 2004 presidential elections.
Analysts who closely studied the pattern of voting are questioning how Bush won the election despite trailing in most state and national polls.
They note that he won despite an approval rating of less than 50 per cent, "usually the death knell for an incumbent presidential candidate" (TIA), a poster on DemocraticUnderground.Com).
The posting notes that Bush won despite trailing in the three national exit polls three timelines on election day from 4pmto 12:22am (13,047 respondents) by a steady 48 to 52 per cent, "miraculously winning the final exit poll (with only 613 additional respondents, totaling 13,660)."
TIA, using various elements of the national and state exit polls and other data sources, produces results that are thorough, detailed, sober and compelling. He shows all data and calculations, while encouraging others to check his math. Only once did he make a minor math error, after asking DUers to check his calculation of probability that at least 16 states would deviate beyond their exit poll margin of error and go for Bush. The answer turned out to be one in 19 trillion.
Will Pitt, who has done extensive analysis on election numbers, says "To believe Bush won the election, you must also believe...." and he lists 35 points that are worth serious consideration (organikrecords.com/corporatenewslies/tobelievetrifold.pdf).

Defiant administration

The final picture that emerges is that of an angry American public and a defiant administration influenced by neoconservatives who refuse to acknowledge that they went wrong not only in plotting and executing the war against Iraq but also have taken the American people for granted. They continue to spoon feed information, but people in cyberspace are not willing to buy it.
To a large extent, most Americans are relying more on the Internet for information, commentaries and analysis than the corporate media. No doubt, the arguments cited here have reached millions of Americans and they are demanding answers.
No doubt, there would be more "revelations" in the days and weeks ahead that would add to the questions being raised, piling up pressure on the administration and contributing to the growing fear among the ranks of the neocons that they could be held to account. Indeed, not many of them might stampede, but there is already enough heat in Washington to make them restless and perhaps deprive them of sleep.
Members of Congress from within Bush's Republican camp are also growing increasingly anxious that the present state of affairs does not bode well for the party in next year's mid-term elections to the legislature.
The Republicans also seem to have realised that it is no longer a matter of critics giving vent to their hostility through hard-hitting commentaries in the media or bloggsites. They should know that it is the people of America who are demanding answers to key questions like whether their president lied to them in order to build a case against Iraq and whether similar action is being planned against Syria and Iran if only to serve Israel's interests.
Beset with such crises, the neocons, who have proved that they would stop at nothing to achieve their goal of American domination of the globe among other things (including giving priority to Israeli interests rather those of the US), are more likely to orchestrate an action that they would hope would take American public attention away from the crises in Washington.
However, the questions of the American public could not be waived away. They are here to stay until they are answered, honestly and truthfully, but such answers, as and when offered, would spell doom for the Bush administration.



with inputs from web sources