The Mega-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda

[babylonsister]

The Mega-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda

By Richard W. Behan, AlterNet. Posted September 27, 2007.

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror" is clearly revealed by looking at the pattern of actions that preceded and followed its launch.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and repeated a lie that is "big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' testimony. It is a mega-lie, and the American people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."

The Bush administration endlessly recites its mantra of deceit:

The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home and to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.

This is classic propaganda. In Goebbels' terms, it is the "state" speaking its lie, but the political, economic, and military consequences of the Bush administration lie are coming into view, and they are all catastrophic. If truth is the enemy of both the lie and George Bush's "state," then the American people need to know the truth.

The military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were not done in retaliation for 9/11. The Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon taking office, and they were set in motion as early as Feb. 3, 2001. That was seven months prior to the attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and the objectives of the wars had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has ignored the story, but the administration's congenital belligerence is fully documented in book-length treatments and in the limitless information pool of the internet. (See my earlier work, for example.)

more...

http://alternet.org/waroniraq/63632/

[lazer47]

1. K&R,," Mega lie" fails to actually describe this Lie of all Lies

Absolitely best thread I have read all morning

[groovedaddy]

2. What would Machiavelie do?

Lie.

[yurbud]

4. whatever a prince does, he must make up a good reason to tell the people why he's doing it.

[yurbud]

3. It is a war on terror if you believe we don't have enough terror and need more

[Baby Snooks]

5. The Noble Lie

It's called the Noble Lie although there's nothing noble about killing millions of people for oil under the guise of a "war on terror."

What say you, Madame Speaker?

[Hydra]

6. It's the most obvous lie

All throughout the Cold War, the threat of nuclear attack was very real. There was ample reason for fear. Now, they make excuses(and pitiful ones at that) to scare us into looking to them for leadership.

The sad thing is that many people believe it. I guess I should simply be grateful that I have some understanding of military tactics and counter-terrorism...otherwise I might have bought into some of this bull myself.

[rodeodance]

7. This is a long well-documented article:

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror," however, is clearly revealed in the pattern of subsequent facts:

* In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the terrorist. Offers by the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden were ignored, and he remains at large to this day.

* In Iraq, when the United States invaded, there were no al Qaeda terrorists at all.

* Both states have been supplied with puppet governments, and both are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases in strategic proximity to their hydrocarbon assets.

* The U.S. embassy nearing completion in Baghdad is comprised of 21 multistory buildings on 104 acres of land. It will house 5,500 diplomats, staff and families. It is ten times larger than any other U.S. embassy in the world, but we have yet to be told why.

* A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate shows the war in Iraq has exacerbated, not diminished, the threat of terrorism since 9/11. If the "War on Terror" is not a deception, it is a disastrously counterproductive failure.

* Today two American and two British oil companies are poised to claim immense profits from 81 percent of Iraq's undeveloped crude oil reserves. They cannot proceed, however, until the Iraqi Parliament enacts a statute known as the "hydrocarbon framework law."

* The features of postwar oil policy so heavily favoring the oil companies were crafted by the Bush administration State Department in 2002, a year before the invasion.

* Drafting of the law itself was begun during Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of a number of major oil companies. The law was written in English and translated into Arabic only when it was due for Iraqi approval.


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[JohnyCanuck]

9. Author Naomi Klein discusses the Iraq oil rip off

in this excerpt from her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, published on The Globe and Mail web site.

The law that was finally adopted by Iraq's cabinet in February, 2007, was even worse than anticipated: It placed no limits on the amount of profits that foreign companies can take from the country and placed no specific requirements about how much or little foreign investors would partner with Iraqi companies or hire Iraqis to work in the oil fields.

Most brazenly, it excluded Iraq's elected parliamentarians from having any say in the terms for future oil contracts. Instead, it created a new body, the Federal Oil and Gas Council, which, according to The New York Times, would be advised by “a panel of oil experts from inside and outside Iraq.”

This unelected body, advised by unspecified foreigners, would have ultimate decision-making power on all oil matters, with the full authority to decide which contracts Iraq did and did not sign. In effect, the law called for Iraq's publicly owned oil reserves, the country's main source of revenues, to be exempted from democratic control and run instead by a powerful, wealthy oil dictatorship, which would exist alongside Iraq's broken and ineffective government.

It's hard to overstate the disgrace of this attempted resource grab. Iraq's oil profits are the country's only hope of financing its own reconstruction when some semblance of peace returns. To lay claim to that future wealth in a moment of national disintegration was disaster capitalism at its most shameless.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070907.wshock0908/BNStory/Front/home/?pageRequested=3

Above link is to Page 3 for the quote. Link to Page 1 is here:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070907.wshock0908/BNStory/Front/home

[Flarney]

8. Big ol' kick. This needs wide circulation...

...and I'll be back to kick you again, later.

[Skittles]

10. "War on terror" is patently ridiculous

war IS terror

[trusty elf]

11. war on terror = moron error

Once in a blue moon I hear it described in the MSM as the "so-called war on terror", otherwise the Bushevic meme is just parroted ad nauseum.