Dr. Rice went before the world this week, looked us in the eye and lied through her teeth. The skill with which she carried out her mockery of the facts suggests considerable practice. Delivering a lengthy diatribe on torture at Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC, before departing on an extensive European propaganda tour, Dr. Rice stated flatly, and in stark contradiction to the facts, that the United States does not torture people. Dr. Rice further stated that the United States does not send detainees to foreign lands to be tortured""a process called rendition. By failing to challenge the premise of Dr. Rice's phantasmagoric assertions, the corporate media in effect gave them the appearance of legitimacy. Dr. Rice said we do not torture people, the media reported it as fact. The people do not want to believe that the United States tortures people. Thus the lies grow to mythic proportions and once again the people are perfectly deceived. A people fed on manure cannot long endure.
Even as Dr. Rice was busily sowing lies for the Bush regime's agenda of global domination, legislation was worming its way through Congress that would exempt the CIA from prosecution for torturing people, as well the practice of rendition. This begs the question: If the United States does not torture people, or send detainees to foreign countries to be tortured, why do they need such legislation?
The corporate media allowed Dr. Rice's preposterous lies to stand. Even worse, it reported them as truth. The evidence that undermines Dr. Rice's lies is unassailable and abundant; and it is readily available. Clearly, the corporate media omitted the facts by design, delivering another smack to the chops of an already dumbed down American public and leaving them clamoring for more. This shameful performance reveals the corporate media's utter contempt for the people. It reveals contempt for truth in its worst incarnation. It illustrates the complicity between the corporate media and those in power and the betrayal of the American people.
Additional evidence comes from those who have survived unimaginable ordeals in these god-forsaken hell holes and lived to tell about it. German citizen Khaled el-Masri is a good example. Khaled el-Masri was abducted by the CIA and transported to a CIA gulag in Afghanistan, where he was tortured for five months in a case of mistaken identify. These are the kind of atrocities that occur when rogue elements of the government kidnap suspects without due process. This is state sponsored terrorism at its worst and the United States does it better than anyone.
Conditions in these festering sewers of depravity are worse than deplorable. They make Abu Ghraib look like a Boy Scout camp. In these clandestine places the worst qualities of human nature emerge and are practiced with sadistic pleasure on human beings""many of whom are innocent. This is what makes the seemingly sweet and innocent face of Dr. Rice and others so dangerous. Behind the faces of Dr. Rice and her cohort in depravity, Donald Rumsfeld, lie twisted, sadistic minds. The reality behind their apparently normal appearance is the grotesque monstrosity of what they do to their fellow human beings. It was this kind of hubris and venomous hate that drove Manifest Destiny, slavery, the Ku Klux Klan and the invasion of Iraq. The arrogance of power is the common thread that ties these shameful events together.
If we are ever going to redeem ourselves as a people and realize our full potential, we must purge the corruption from the American political system. A good blood letting""a revolution""is in order. In the past, during the hey day of social unrest in America, the working class people organized themselves into a formidable force. The social justice movement forged by organized labor brought us the eight hour work day and the weekend. Before then, the work day and the work week were brutally long and harsh. From a powerful sense of outrage emerged a compelling social justice movement. One wonders if we will ever see anything like that again in America.
Now we have not only the common enemy to overcome""the corruptive elements of the political process that created Condoleezza Rice and what Mussolini called corporatism; we have the powerful hypnotic drug of television and citizen apathy to overcome. Do we have it in us? We must serve and protect one another. We the people must wage war on those in power. A good beginning would be a boycott of the corporate media.
Charles Sullivan is a furniture maker, photographer, and free lance writer residing in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net.
