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writing for godot

The Torture Of The American People

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Written by Ron Clinton Smith   
Friday, 19 December 2014 15:41
The Torture of The American People

Leading up to the Iraq War in 2003, President Bush prepared us for what he already knew he was going to do. I don’t know how many Americans felt this, but I knew damn well from the way he spoke, the emotion in his eyes, and the repeated phrase “regime change,” that he was going to war with Iraq, regardless. He’d put Saddam Hussein against the wall, knew from Saddam’s past history he wouldn't back down, and therefore he could make a case for invading his country.

I felt a yaw, a worldwide groan, as the world realized that George W. Bush was going to have his war. A collective moan and sickening dread. There were protests all over America and around the world. We were already embroiled in going after the Taliban in Afghanistan after 911. There was no reason for this war other than to seize “weapons of mass destruction” the President insisted were there. I don’t know if he believed they were there or not, or cared. He was hell bent on using the possibility that they were there as an excuse to invade Iraq. Using fear that he had manufactured himself to justify, scare and goad us into it.

Dick Cheney said repeatedly that Saddam and Iraq were behind the 911 attacks and connected to Al Qaeda, though they clearly were not. This was a bold-faced lie and Cheney knew it. After saying it many times on camera in interviews, he later said on camera he didn't say it. Nothing was said by him or President Bush about the fact that 19 Saudi Arabians had attacked America on September 11th, 2001. That significant fact was never mentioned by either of them.

In light of the just released Senate Intelligence Committee report on C.I.A. torture conducted in the days following the 911 attacks, the focus has been on “enhanced interrogation methods” used on America’s enemies. But what about the mental, spiritual and physical torture inflicted on the American people by our leaders while these Geneva Conventions were being violated? What about the indignities forced on us without conscience by the Bush administration? Why should we be surprised that the same administration that was selling us phony reasons to go to war, sending our children to die in it, breaking up and destroying American military families, returning mentally and physically damaged soldiers from this war, would have any compunction about torturing our enemies? We were all victim’s of this administration’s lack of moral conscience. We were all put on a torture rack, with the blood of thousands of innocent people left on our hands, Iraqi and American.

Following 911 Bush told us we were attacked “because they hate our freedom.” Osama Bin Laden’s father had been a business associate of George W’s father, but we weren't supposed to make anything of that. Bin Laden family members were swiftly shuttled out of the country while all other aircraft were grounded. There was a suspension of Habeas Corpus. The Patriot Act was passed, riddled with double speak straight out of Orwell’s 1984. We were told “you’re either with us or against us,” a bullying threat to preclude any disagreement with the administration’s policies. If anyone objected to these policies, it was implied they were terrorists themselves. The press, many of which later admitted, were cowed and intimidated.

Soon we were hearing the drum beat that led us into Iraq. There was the childish, grandstanding “Mission Accomplished” stunt on an aircraft carrier, followed by a conflagration of interminable war, car bombs killing thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens in market places, years of bloody battles, massacred Iraqi citizens, violations of an innocent Iraqi populace. A Vietnam War hero running against the administration in 2004 was swift boated and made to seem a traitor. There was Abu Ghraib, C.I.A operative Valerie Plame was outed by Cheney’s henchman because her husband spoke out against the war, while 25, 000 Halliburton employees were busy extracting Iraq’s oil after Cheney’s former company received a no bid contract to do so.

Who has been tortured here the most? Surely our enemies have been tortured. But I’m not being capricious or minimizing their suffering when I say that the American people have been tortured far more by the same people who tortured our enemies. Our enemies are the corollary victims of an administration that has dragged its own people through a genuine hell—a broader, deeper, longer lasting hell—mental, physical and spiritual—of abuse and corruption, betrayal like we haven’t seen since the Vietnam War. The American people under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were tortured by lies, manipulation, deceit, and an abomination called the Iraq War.

The American people not only deserved better, they are owed much. They’ve sacrificed needlessly for heinous crimes of a wrongheaded leadership that led us off the cliff’s ledge into the chaotic and anarchic world we now live in. For crimes of torture against the American people, these two men should be prosecuted, as well as for crimes against humanity. And while they won’t be, we should all be aware of their crimes against us in perpetuity, and never allow such men to commit them against us again. Because we know they will try.
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