It makes me sad to see the direction our country is taking.
It seems as though the masses are some mindless amoebic life form with no sentience or ability to make informed decisions, or, for that matter, even pay attention to the political winds that blow across this land from sea to shining sea. They would rather let mainstream media and corporations that own the media make their decisions for them. Whether it’s what kind of toothpaste makes their teeth whiter, to the type of automobile they drive, or to the leaders who will make the decisions that affect their lives and their liberty.
Whenever there is a fresh wind that blows, in the form of Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, it seems that the media and the corporations that drive them try to besmirch or outright ignore these courageous individuals. If for no other reason than that they speak truths that the corporations or the status quo politicians don’t want to hear, and most importantly, don’t want you to hear.
You have to admit; it is so refreshing to hear a politician call it like it is. This happens too infrequently. If only the rest would follow suit. Our nation would again be the strongest, most admired country in the free world.
We, as a nation, have fallen into a quagmire from which we cannot, nor seem to want to pull ourselves out of. We have sunk to the level of torturing prisoners, if not by our own hand, then through rendition, where we “farm” them out to countries where torture is not a moral or ethical dilemma. This is supposedly for intelligence purposes, in the name of National Security, and The War on Terror.
It doesn’t seem very “intelligent” to me. After all, it seems to me that a person who is being tortured would be willing to tell you anything just to stop the pain of the torture, so how accurate could he or she be? Wouldn’t they lie to try to keep you from gaining any reliable information, and once at the threshold of madness through pain, lie again telling you anything you wanted to hear to stop the pain? How reliable then, is that information? Or perhaps, not being a torturer myself, I miss some “middle ground” where we indeed get the information we are seeking?
We have effectively suspended habeas corpus. The same goes for the Posse Comitatus Act. Now our own troops can be used against us, and we can be locked away with no rights to a speedy trial by a jury of our peers, indefinitely. If these two actions don’t scare the hell out of the average citizen, and apparently it doesn’t, then we are indeed in troubled waters.
In a news report from NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams not long ago, it was stated that our troops are stretched so thin and our National Guard are doing so many tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, that if we were indeed attacked here at home, there wouldn’t be enough of a military presence to respond to the attack.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, in their report called “IRAQ: THE WAR CARD, Orchestrated Deception on the Path to War,” the Bush Administration lied or made at least 935 false statements about Saddam Hussein and the threat posed by Iraq in the two years following the 911 attacks. You can view it here:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/
The not so funny thing is, that after this “campaign” to go to war with Iraq, and the blitzkrieg of speeches, Meet the Press interviews, and anything else the media assisted in during the years leading to the war; if you ask the average citizen on the street, even today, if Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 911, you get an amazing 70% of them that answer yes.
This is a stunning example of propaganda and brainwashing with the assistance of the mainstream media.
Ron Paul cites American Foreign Policy as the reason that there is such a disdain for the United States in Arab and other countries, and not our “freedom” that causes them to hate us. He is scoffed at, not only by the other presidential contenders, but also by the mainstream media who promote the status quo. This is a truth none want to hear. Here is a prime example.
After the 911 attacks, Iran attempted to initiate contact with the US because they were sympathetic toward our losses in the WTC, and wanted to address the threat to everyone, including them, by the Taliban and Al Qaeda; whom the Iranians detested as much as we did.
The Bush administration rejected this outstretched hand. Then Bush labeled Iran as a part of the Axis of Evil. This pretty much slapped Iran in the face. Not only that, Iran was becoming more and more moderate, leaning to a more western position politically and philosophically, and this upset the apple cart and caused the moderates to lose power to the conservatives and we have the Iran as it is today.
Now Iran is getting ready to open their own bourse and is pushing to trade its oil and oil futures in Euros. Saddam tried this back in 2000, and was met with ridicule. But Iran is not Iraq, and pressure from the US will not change their path, only strengthen their resolve. They are also keenly aware of the weakening dollar, and trading oil in Euros would put a buffer zone of protection between them, the US war in Iraq, and the collapse of the dollar. And I don’t think they would shed a tear if our dollar did collapse.
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