Zonkerbl wrote:Well, it is a scandal. They flat out lied and they shouldn't have. Shame on them.
But if Bush can get away with flat out lying about WMDs, is it fair to stick it to the Obama administration for something that is a lot, lot less bad? There's a big difference between lying about Benghazi because it's a month before the election and lying about WMD's to fool the nation and the world into a war against Iraq under false pretenses. One is a shameful scandal, the other is downright, terrifyingly Orwellian, and the only punishment the evil, evil perpetrators got is that they didn't get to be President for 8 years.
It's a scandal. But come on.
To me the much bigger scandal is when Breitbart lied about Shirley Sherrod (hey, it's their job to lie, fine) and the administration reflexively fired her with absolutely no justification whatsoever. That's what the Democratic party is all about, right there -- cowardice and incompetence. I think the USDA secretary should have been fired for that.
Orwellian is right.
Crazy world we live in. Not much is actually as it really appears.
Most American's are clueless to what actually goes on in the world. Most are also clueless as to what America's role has been. They believe we always act righteously to promote freedom and democracy around the world. Basically, people think of America as it was under FDR when we fought in WWII when we flexed our muscle to rightfully help stop a truly evil tyrant. And even then, what do most people know of what really happened in those times. How many are aware of the massive amount of death that happened to non Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualtiesAmerican lost 400,000 and only 1,700 civilians. Russia lost 23 Million and 13 to 14 Millions civilians.
Estimations are that the totals are 60 to 80 Million people died and as high as 54 Millions civilians.
Just try to wrap your brain around that for a moment. And that doesn't even tell the entire story I'm sure. What of the injured. The poisoned. The properly lose. The scorched Earth. The torn families.
But for most, apart from us forming this country and breaking away from England so we could be a free and independent self governing nation ( another just war with lots of death and destruction ), the righteousness of WWII is how they think of this country and how the Government approaches war.
But post WWII is when things changed so much for this country and how the government conducts its affairs. That's when we started to become that which we had contempt for. That was the turning point. We were never able to put the genie back in the bottle. The military industrial complex was born. We now had THE BOMB. Trumen started us down the strong path and we have never recovered. Covert operations under the CIA got out of control. We toppled democracies and put in our own strong men. We fought wars remotely by arming strong men.
We started to become the EMPIRE
Russia went from friend and enemy and communism became the new enemy.
We started to investigate our own citizens at an increasing level. We formed our own camps.
We propped up people like Saddam Hussein and Bin Ladin in the middle East.
We fought proxy wars in 3rd world counties.
We turned from a gov for the people to a gov against the people and for the banks, corporations and the MIC
We enter Vietnam and destroyed that region. And for what ? Was a just war?
JFK, his brother and MLK were killed. People that wanted to move us back toward our true path.
Nixon happened and we got a small taste of what was really happening at the highest levels of our gov.
And we saw that people like him. People of power would not be held accountable as he was pardoned.
Over time, our Imperial actions started to create a back lash. Iran was an alley once upon a time.
Then Reagan happened. Debt exploded and so did the MIC. More proxy wars and the neocon takeover.
Slowly one president at a time, we moved farther and farther way from what most believe America is really about as we become more and more an Empire like France and England of the past with a ruling class.
Then Bush Jr happened. A true government Coup. His brother and Katherine Harris and the Supreme Court.
That was a huge turning point in our history. The Orwellian nightmare got a huge shot in the arm at that point. Now we were finally permanently at war and not against an enemy, but a tactic. We manufactured a war in Iraq so we could start to take over that region via the neocon plan. We war was sold on lies, the people were made to be scared and off we went. Promised as a 160 Billion dollar war, it will end up costing us 3 Trillion. Bin Ladin couldn't have been more happy then those results because that was his goal. He wanted to egg us on and watch us overact to bankrupt us.
The Empire was in full swing. Preemptive war. Torture. Go it along. Propaganda. Surveillance out of control. Patriot Act. Massive military spending. Ending of the draft so the people are no longer directly connected to our military actions. Banks and Wall Street to big to fail. Union busting. Massive transfer of wealth to the rich who own our government. Political news propaganda stations. Government wholely owned by the rich and powerful. Bases all over the world. Citizens united. The Supreme Court turned into a political branch.
And now we are about to enter the drone wars.
And yet the people still think of America as it has been sold to them. Righteous. Far. Good. Not an Empire. One that only fights just wars it has to. Basically the America that existed under FDR and WWII.
This is the military machine Ron Pauls talks about.
One can only hope we collectively find a way to put the genie back in the bottle on body part at a time. So much has gone wrong since WWII.
If nothing else, we need to get our election process fixed. We are becoming a Banana republic. Then we need to go after some of these to big to fail structures. And we need to break up these media monopolies.