Michael C. Ruppert, at From The Wilderness, quotes Paul Krugman, who wrote in June 24 The New York Times:
“There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious…But even people who aren’t partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration’s dishonest case for war, because they don’t want to face the implications…
“After all, suppose a politician – or a journalist – admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability – and to do so in the face not only of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It’s a scary prospect. Yet, if we can’t find people willing to take the risk – to face the truth and act on it – what will happen to our democracy”
Ruppert writes, “Let’s just suppose for a moment that George W. Bush was removed from the White House. Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz and Rove too. What would that leave us with It would leave us stuck in hugely expensive, Vietnam-like guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would leave us with the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and Total Information Awareness snooping into every detail of our lives. It would leave us with a government in violation of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to the Constitution. It would leave us with a massive cover-up of US complicity in the attacks of 9/11 that, if fully admitted, would show not intelligence ‘failures’ but intelligence crimes, approved and ordered by the most powerful people in the country. It would leave us with a government that now has the power to compel mass vaccinations on pain of imprisonment or fine, and with no legal ability to sue the vaccine makers who killed our friends or our children. It would leave us with two and half million unemployed; the largest budget deficits in history; more than $3.3 trillion missing from the Department of Defense; and state and local governments broke to the point of having to cut back essential services like sewers, police, and fire. It would leave us with a federal government that had hit the debt ceiling and was unable to borrow any more money. And we would still be facing a looming natural gas crisis of unimagined proportions, and living on a planet that is slowly realizing that it is running out of oil with no ‘Plan B.’
“The greatest test of the 2004 presidential election campaign is not with the candidates. It is with the people. There are strong signs that presidential election issues on the Democratic side are already being manipulated by corporate and financial interests. And some nave and well-intentioned (and some not-so-nave and not-so-well intentioned) activists are already playing right into [their] hands. There are many disturbing signs that the only choice offered to the American people will be no choice at all. Under the psychological rationale, ‘This is the way it has to be done,’ campaign debates will likely address only half-truths and fail to come to grips with – or even acknowledge – the most important issues that I just described.
“Unless people find the will to address scandals, lies, and betrayals of trust that, by their very existence, reveal that the system itself is corrupt and that the people controlling it – both in government, and in America’s corporations and financial institutions – are criminals, there is no chance to make anything better, only an absolute certainty that things will get worse.
“Some on the Democratic side are already positioning themselves to co-opt and control what happened on 9/11 into a softer, less disturbing ‘Better this than nothing’ strategy. This attitude, that the only thing that matters is finding an electable Democrat, is nothing more than a rearrangement of deck chairs on the Titanic.”
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