An American Child’s Primer on War: Remember the White Rose!

War is another way of saying we’re going to kill you now or else.

War has become America’s heart disease, and we are dying from it.

America holds the hopes, dreams and nightmares of the world in our privileged hands. Also most of the atomic weapons.

C.I.A. was created by a group of corporate police and military agents to make the war machine work for the economy. "Central Intelligence Agency" headquarters were named after George Bush the C.I.A. president and father of the notorious "W."

CIA has set up convenient "wars" using secret networks of killers to threaten or "neutralize" those forces standing in America’s way, or the "American Way."

Since World War II, this has happened in (please mark your maps for extra credit):
Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Chile, Indonesia, Zaire, Angola, the Congo, Laos, Peru, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Israel, Palestine, Iraq and various other African, Asian, South Pacific, European and former Soviet states. Also Mexico, Canada, Australia, Cuba and the United Staes ("of America").

History is mostly a long list of wars, or periods of nations killing each other using various more deadly technologies to kill more people. Now we are in the 21st century epoch of killing, where entire communities and cities are threatened with mass death.

Our social conditioning in America is to support the killing, and say "yes" to wiping out the enemies of America. Now we have laser-guided, satellite-tracking, robot death-missiles, and we trust the CIA knows who to kill? (Extra credit: Draw a Predator drone with Hellfire missiles in action!)

We probably will never know who all were killed, and why, but we are supposed to support it, because we are told we are being "freed from terrorism." In fact "our" War is now officially against another more desperate form of war("terrorism")— the "War against war" which will last until all of America’s enemies are wiped out or agree to the demands of our president ("W," the least intelligent son of Bush 41).

Invasion and war against "insurgency" in Iraq, modelled after Bush 41’s popularity-boosting invasion of Panama and arrest of the CIA drug-ally Noriega (see "The Panama Deception"), is a classic CIA covert-type war , far from America’s borders to secure essential resources and kill enemies.

Whoops! CIA’s wars aren’t covert anymore! And what happens when they control the White House, the Pentagon and most of Congress? Alot of their friends get very, very rich in the War, because it’s set up as a win-win game, secret-like.

American child, the connected version, global networked, 21st century model X-unit, sees that the "war" in Iraq and Afghanistan is not a "winnable" operation for the "American Way." In fact, we have lost our way a long time ago, when we allowed the CIA’s secret war machines and killers like those who are slicing off our brothers’ heads to operate in our name— America, America, allegedly "the home of the brave."

We see the secret wars have led out leaders to this wicked end— against those in the world who have the means and madness to blow themselves up (think about it, grandpa!). Our 21st century scan of the failed CIA machine shows the global glitch is 1) Political 2) Economic and 3) Ethical (ie: criminals in control— oh my!)— but above all these is a failure of 4) Cultural diplomacy and understanding.

America’s child sees a 21st century solution to the failed CIA machine now drowning the world in death and debt, and out interconnectivity offers a hyperadaptive simple solution set:

Creation of a new Cultural Corps independent of the other American agencies, funded by private/cultural contributions. We see the underlying failure in Iraq, for example, is language and religious translation ("W’s" cowboy references never translate well).

Our Cultural Corps would have delegations of translators, artists, religious leaders, musicians, sports stars (even magicians!) make educational/diplomatic tours with our accompanying connected media coverage. We would distribute pre-loaded laptops with translation and DVD libraries everywhere we go. We would allow American and Iraqi women and children to interact on live media broadcasts.

21st century American child sees an end to "war" but it will require utmost honesty and historic justice— exposing our secret CIA war machine to the world for review.

It’s like any other corrupted machine— the operating system must be purged of opportunistic parasites and malicious-ware sucking our bandwidth into oblivion. Or you toss the old machine entirely ("recycle" the hardware!) and boot up a shiny-fresh one with an improved, less corruptable operating system. Like a completely new system of diplomacy, for example.

Finally, America’s funny way of saying "secret" when it comes to war is: "above my pay-grade." This tells so much about the "American Way," but it causes us to question: who is at the highest pay-grade, if the president is heard saying this? Is it even possible to find out?

We will ask our operating sytem executive in chief Bill Gates.

"Reboot!" cry the X-units, from the bleeding edges of the network...

Homework: Please diagram the career of Condoleezza Rice (Ref: "NSA," "oil.")

I’m sick and tired of this patriotic, nationalistic and fascist crap. I stood through a memorial service today for a young Marine that was killed in Iraq back in April. During this memorial a number of people spoke about the guy and about his sacrifice for the country. How do you justify ’sacrificing’ your life for a war which is not only illegal, but is being prosecuted to the extent where the only thing keeping us there is one man’s power, and his ego. A recent Marine Corps intelligence report that was leaked said that the war in the al-Anbar province is unwinnable. It said that there was nothing we could do to win the hearts and minds, or the military operations in that area. So I wonder, why are we still there? Democracy is not forced upon people at gunpoint. It’s the result of forward thinking individuals who take the initiative and risks to give their fellow countrymen a better way of life.

When I joined I took an oath. In that oath I swore to protect the Constitution of the United States. I didn’t swear to build democracies in countries on the other side of the world under the guise of "national security." I didn’t join the military to be part of an Orwellian ("1984") war machine that is in an obligatory war against whoever the state deems the enemy to be so that the populace can be controlled and riled up in a pro-nationalistic frenzy to support any new and oppressive law that will be the key to destroying the enemy. Example given - the Patriot Act. So aptly named, and totally against all that the constitution stands for. President Bush used the reactionary nature of our society to bring our country together and to infuse into the national psyche a need to give up their little-used rights in the hope to make our nation a little safer. The same scare tactics he used to win elections. He drones on and on about how America and the world would be a less safe place if we weren’t killing Iraqis, and that we’d have to fight the terrorists at home if we weren’t abroad. In our modern day emotive society this strategy (or strategery?) works, or had worked, up until last month’s elections.

My point in this; to show that America was never nationalistic. If anything they were Statalistic (giving their allegiance to the state of their residence). This is shown in the fact that the founders created states with fully capable and independent governments and not provinces that were just a division of the federal government. These men believed that America was a place where imperialistic values would be non-existent. Where the people trying to make their lives better by working hard, thinking, inventing and using the free market would tie up so much of normal life that imperialistic colonization and the fighting of wars thousands of miles away for interests that are not our own would be avoided. They believed this expansion of power could be left to the European nations, the England, France and Spain of their time. However this recent, and current influx of nationalistic feeling has created an environment where giving up your rights, going to a foreign country to fight a people who did not ask for us to be there, nor did their leader do anything to warrant us being there, and dying would be considered honorable and heroic. I don’t believe it anymore. I don’t believe it’s right for any American to go along with it anymore. Yes I know that we in the military are bound by the UCMJ and somehow don’t fall under the Constitution (the very thing we’re suppose to be defending) but sooner or later there is a decision that every American soldier, marine, airmen and seamen makes to allow themselves to be sent to a war that is against every fiber this country was founded on. I know that when April rolls around I will be thinking long and hard on that decision. Even though we in the military are just doing as we’re told we still have the moral and ethical obligation to choose to do as we’re told, or to say, "No, that isn’t right." I believe that if more troopers like me and the professional military, the officers and commanders, start standing up and saying that they won’t let themselves or their troops go to this illegal war people will start standing up and realizing what the heck is going on over there.

The sad fact of the matter is that we are not fighting terrorists in Iraq. We are fighting the Iraqi people who feel like a conquered and occupied people. Personally I have a hard time believing that if I was an Iraqi that I wouldn’t be doing everything in my power to kill and maim as many Americans as possible. I know that the vast majority of Americans would not be happy with the Canadian government, or any other foreign government, liberating us from the clutches of George W. Bush, even though a large number of us would like that, and forcing us to accept their system of government. Would not millions of Americans rise up and fight back? Would you not rise up to protect and defend your house and your neighborhood if someone invaded your country? But we send thousands of troops to a foreign country to do just that. How is it moral to fight a people who are just trying to defend their homes and families? I think next time I go to Iraq perhaps I should wear a bright red coat and carry a Brown Bess instead of my digitalized utilities and M16.

Notice I never once used the word homeland in any of this. I have a secondary point I want to bring up now. Never once was the term homeland ever used to describe the country of America until Mr. Bush began the department of homeland security after the 9/11 attacks. Taking a 20th century history class will teach us that the most notable countries in the last century that referred to their country in this way were Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Hitler used the term fatherland to drum up support, nationalistic support, for his growing war machine. He used the nationalism he created in the minds of the Germans to justify the sacrifice of their livelihood to build the war machine to get back their power from the oppressive restrictions the English and French had put on them at Versailles. This is the same feeling that has been virulently infecting the American psyche in the last hundred years. This is the same feeling that consoles a mother after her son is killed in an attempt to prosecute an aggressor’s war 10,000 miles away. It’s also known as Patriotism these days, but I say, "No more." No more nationalistic inanity, no more passing it off as patriotism. Patriotism is learning, and educating oneself to understand what their country really stands for.

I heard a lot during the memorial service about how the dead Marine did so much good for others and how his helping others was like a little microcosm of America helping because we have the power to do so. Well if we have the power to help people why aren’t we helping in Darfur where hundreds of thousands of people have died in the last 10 years. Saddam was convicted and sentenced to death for killing 143 Shiites who conspired to assassinate him. (I know all you "patriotic" Americans would be calling for the heads of anyone who conspired to assassinate supreme leader Bush). And yet we spend upwards of 1 trillion dollars and nearing 3,000 lives to help these Iraqis when they don’t even want us there. Not to mention we don’t have the legal justification to be there. I guess we should wait around for the omnipotent W Bush to decide who we should use our superpowerdom to help next. It’s about time to throw him and the rest of the fascists out. Moreover it’s about time to start educating Americans about their past and history, and letting them know that imperialistic leaders are not what the founders of this great country wanted.

Knowing more about the world. Kids are global citizens now, whether they know it or not, and they need to behave that way. Mike Eskew, CEO of UPS, talks about needing workers who are "global trade literate, sensitive to foreign cultures, conversant in different languages" — not exactly strong points in the U.S., where fewer than half of high school students are enrolled in a foreign-language class and where the social-studies curriculum tends to fixate on U.S. history.

Thinking outside the box. Jobs in the new economy — the ones that won’t get outsourced or automated — "put an enormous premium on creative and innovative skills, seeing patterns where other people see only chaos," says Marc Tucker, a lead author of the skills-commission report and president of the National Center on Education and the Economy. That’s a problem for U.S. schools, which have become less daring in the back-to-basics climate of No Child Left Behind. Kids also must learn to think across disciplines, since that’s where most new breakthroughs are made. It’s interdisciplinary combinations — design and technology, mathematics and art — "that produce YouTube and Google," says Thomas Friedman, the best-selling author of The World Is Flat.

Becoming smarter about new sources of information. In an age of overflowing information and proliferating media, kids need to rapidly process what’s coming at them and distinguish between what’s reliable and what isn’t. "It’s important that students know how to manage it, interpret it, validate it, and how to act on it," says Dell executive Karen Bruett, who serves on the board of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a group of corporate and education leaders focused on upgrading American education.

Developing good people skills. EQ, or emotional intelligence, is as important as IQ for success in today’s workplace. "Most innovations today involve large teams of people," says former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. "We have to emphasize communication skills, the ability to work in teams and with people from different cultures."

Can our public schools, originally designed to educate workers for agrarian life and industrial-age factories, make the necessary shifts?

The skills commission will argue that it’s possible only if we add new depth and rigor to our curriculum and standardized exams, redeploy the dollars we spend on education, reshape the teaching force and reorganize who runs the schools.

But without waiting for such a revolution, enterprising administrators around the country have begun to update their schools, often with ideas and support from local businesses.

The state of Michigan, conceding that it can no longer count on the ailing auto industry to absorb its poorly educated and low-skilled workers, is retooling its high schools, instituting what are among the most rigorous graduation requirements in the nation.

Elsewhere, organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Asia Society are pouring money and expertise into model programs to show the way.

December 11, 2006
AFP

The Iraq Study Group advised US President George W. Bush to stop lying. Here, a woman holds a poster at a protest in California over the weekend.
No one could ever suggest that James Baker lacks ambition or self-confidence. So it is not surprising that along with its effort to salvage Iraq, the report from Baker’s Iraq Study Group offers some strong advice on how to fix George W. Bush’s dysfunctional Washington - and the president’s dysfunctional relations with the rest of the world.

We were particularly drawn to Recommendations 46, 72 and 78. Under separate headings dealing with the military, the federal budget and the nation’s intelligence agencies, they share one basic idea: Government officials should not lie to the public or each other, especially in matters of war.

One should not need a blue ribbon commission to know that. But the fact that it had to be said, and so often, in the report goes a long way toward explaining how Bush got the country into the Iraq mess and why it is proving so hard to dig out of it.

Consider Recommendation 46, which calls on the new secretary of defense to create "an environment in which the senior military feel free to offer independent advice" to civilian leaders, including the president. That is their sworn duty. But the back story is the Pentagon’s prewar refusal to listen to the former Army chief of staff (and who knows how many other generals) who warned that it would take several hundred thousand troops to stabilize a post-invasion Iraq. The good news is that the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, acknowledged as much in his confirmation hearings. The bad news is that Bush has not.

Recommendation 72 says that "costs for the war in Iraq should be included in the president’s annual budget request." The report warns that the White House’s habit of using emergency funding for the war has eroded both "budget discipline" and congressional oversight. And just in case you were worrying that you hadn’t been paying sufficient attention to the war’s price tag, the report says the White House presents its requests in such a "confusing manner" that only detailed analyses by budget experts can answer "what should be a simple question: How much money is the president requesting for the war in Iraq?"

The Airbus saga: Cables and politics tangled the A380A Taliban ministate in PakistanCelebrations over Pinochet’s death turn violentIraq falls behind on reconstruction spendingAnd finally, Recommendation 78 calls on the Pentagon and the intelligence community to "institute immediate changes" in how they collect data on violence in Iraq "to provide a more accurate picture of events on the ground." The report says that officials have used a standard for recording attacks (it notes that "a murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted") that systematically underreports Iraq’s mayhem. It cites one day this past July when the government recorded 93 "attacks or significant acts of violence," while the Iraq Study Group’s own analysis "brought to light 1,100 acts of violence."

Sprinkled among the recommendations, the report also has some homespun advice on how Bush might fix America’s foreign relations. It suggests that the nature of diplomacy is to engage with adversaries as well as friends. And it warns that the United States does Israel "no favors" by refusing to try to broker peace in the Middle East, adding that it is "an axiom that when the political process breaks down there will be violence on the ground."

It is mind-boggling that this commission felt compelled to deliver Governing 101 lessons to the president of the United States. But that fits with the implicit message of the entire exercise - a rebuke of the ideologically blinkered way Bush operates. The report shows that there have always been plenty of alternatives to Bush’s stubborn insistence on staying the course, and that if he were just willing to make an effort, it would be possible to forge a bipartisan consensus on the toughest issues.

It’s tragic that Bush could not figure that out for himself. It is far past time for him to heed this new advice.

December 9, 2006
Story Highlights• Truthiness is "truth that comes from the gut, not books"

SPRINGFIELD, Massachusetts (AP) — After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 is ... "truthiness."

The word — if one can call it that — best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster.

"Truthiness" was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

"We’re at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people’s minds, and truth has become up for grabs," said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. "’Truthiness’ is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue."

Other Top 10 finishers included "war," "insurgent," "sectarian" and "corruption." But "truthiness" won 5-to-1, Morse said.

Colbert — who once derided the folks at Springfield-based Merriam-Webster as the "word police" and a bunch of "wordinistas" — was pleased.

"Though I’m no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me," he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

"And what an honor," he said. "Truthiness now joins the lexicographical pantheon with words like ’squash,’ ’merry,’ ’crumpet,’ ’the,’ ’xylophone,’ ’circuitous,’ ’others’ and others."

In 1943, as Hitler continues to wage war across Europe, a group of college students mount an underground resistance movement in Munich. Dedicated expressly to the downfall of the monolithic Third Reich war machine, they call themselves the White Rose. One of its few female members, Sophie Scholl is captured during a dangerous mission to distribute pamphlets on campus with her brother Hans. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to the White Rose, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.

On February 22, 1943, Sophie, her brother Hans and their friend Christoph Probst were found guilty of treason and condemned to death by head judge of the court Roland Freisler. They were guillotined by executioner Johann Reichhart in the Munich-Stadelheim prison only a few hours later at 17:00. The execution was supervised by Dr. Walter Roemer who was the enforcement chief of the Munich district court. Prison officials emphasized the courage with which she walked to her execution.

Her last words were "Die Sonne scheint noch," meaning "The Sun still shines." [1]This was a metaphor for God and her commitment to hope for the future. The film of her last days, Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days), used the sun to point to her profound Christian belief.

Following her death a copy of the sixth leaflet was smuggled out of Germany through Scandinavia to England, and in mid-1943 millions of propaganda copies were dropped over Germany from Allied planes, now retitled as The Manifesto of the Students of Munich.

2005 Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, Sophie Scholl - The Final Days is the true story of Germany’s most famous anti-Nazi heroine brought to thrilling, dramatic life. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch (of recent cult fave The Edukators) in a luminous performance as the fearless activist of the underground student resistance group, The White Rose.

Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl’s life: a heart-stopping journey from arrest to interrogation, trial and sentence in 1943 Munich. Unwavering in her convictions and loyalty to her comrades, her cross-examination by the Gestapo quickly escalates into a searing test of wills as Scholl delivers a passionate call to freedom and personal responsibility that is both haunting and timeless.

BEACHWOOD, Ohio (AP) - First you see the faces of Holocaust survivors in stark photographs. They set the stage for the horrors to come, displayed in blunt but richly textured wall hangings at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage.

"Sometimes - I don’t know if it’s right or wrong - I feel guilty myself that I survived," said Polish-born Sylvia Malcmacher, 80, one of the subjects in a black-and-white photo by Herbert Ascherman Jr. She lost her parents and both sisters in the Holocaust.

Still, she said, "I’m thankful. I can talk about them. Otherwise, no one would even mention their names."

The side-by-side exhibits - "Threads of Remembrance: Artistic Visions of the Holocaust" - open Wednesday and continue through Feb. 18 at the museum in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood.

Visitors will first see "50 Faces" - a corridor exhibit of Ascherman’s photographs of people, all from the Cleveland area, who are Holocaust survivors, former prisoners of war and soldiers who liberated the death camps.

Inside the exhibit area, Judith Weinshall Liberman’s "Holocaust Wall Hangings" are mounted on dimly lighted walls and black sheets. Camp names, deportation routes, poison gas, guard dogs and death and barbed wire everywhere are depicted in appliques, stencils, beads, embroidery, painting and sewing.

One hanging, in bright red and black, shows a forearm extending from an open-door oven.

"It’s unbelievable what happened," Malcmacher said. "I don’t belief it myself that I went through this and I survived."

According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, nearly two-thirds of Europe’s 9 million Jews died during the Nazi regime.

The photos and hangings have been shown in other cities, but this is the first time they have been displayed together.

Ascherman, 59, who has devoted his career to portrait photography in Cleveland, made no attempt to brighten the documentary-style, unsmiling faces when photographing some of the estimated 1,000 Holocaust survivors in the city.

"When you look at their eyes, there is a crazed look. It’s not normal. It’s different," he said during a preview tour of the exhibit. "The normalcy was taken from them."

As always the victors claim morality in their murder
principle as a cloak for piracy plunder and predation
a messianic madness with mushroom clouded methods
Rejoice my kindred without a country for Rome gasps
the fouled and feebleminded fourth reich will be the last
think about it as we pull down their imperial icons
no more hails for the chief no longer pledging
or bending over for one man and his devils
Now they are surrounded behind barricades
trapped by their own arrogance and elitism
as we wring the warmongers with our truth
a storm of silver tears spills from heaven

"As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys."
— William Blake

The creators of American reality, those propagators of charades and mirages who dwell inside the hallways of the Ministry of Truth - otherwise known as the Corporate Media - continue their dance of deception and whitewash, festering in their offices of propaganda, directing the narratives and the epics hundreds of millions of Americans consider truth. Much like the disappearance of warmth giving way to the crispness of cold arrives with each annual changing of leaves, so the remarketing of American reality is altered by the changing faces of circumstance. Today, this change is the complete disaster that is the occupation of Iraq, an endeavor whose initial fruition could not have taken shape without the blitzkrieg marketed incessantly into every home and mind in America by the Department of Propaganda, the Ministry of Truth and its army of pseudo-journalists.

With the complete and utter failure of America’s experiment with hubristic imperialism outside its hemisphere, with the complete collapse in confidence by the people of the government and its leaders, with the fictional war on terror losing muster, with the American people questioning the Iraq debacle in growing numbers, the masters and lords comprising the Establishment have been forced to alter direction and appease the minds of the masses. Inside the Ministry of Truth the decision has been made, therefore, to open the curtains, if only minimally, to a small manifestation of truth and fact that has for three years been kept hidden from the people and that sheds light on the Iraq War and its horrific reality.

In the upper echelons of the Establishment’s pyramid and the corporatist power structure, there has arrived a realization that Iraq is and will remain lost, a miserable failure turning more putrid every day, forever becoming a gash that will not heal, a ghost whose lack of placidity will for decades haunt the psyche of America. The Bush Crusade, once seen by the elite as a harbinger of empire and hegemonic power, an excursion becoming the genesis of perpetual wealth and richness, has instead transmuted itself into the greatest strategic disaster in the history of the Pax Americana. In the span of three years, Iraq has surpassed Vietnam, in the totality of the circumstances, as a perpetual burn whose scab will continue to be pulled off by the shame of what America did to Iraq, by the embarrassment of such apparent failure, by the geopolitical suicide it committed in Mesopotamia and by the severed image of the nation in the eyes of the world.

For the American masses, meanwhile, a great discomfort at the disaster unfolding and the failure apparent has been born, as if the growing number of rotting corpses throughout Iraq have exported their terrible stench across the Atlantic to the far reaches of America, finally arriving to wake from the doldrums of comfort and laziness the minds of millions of American people. Yet these millions of Americans grow disquieted not because of the genocide committed by their military, not because of the death of 655,000, or the displacement of 1.5 million, but because of the complete failure in not succeeding and winning, because of the death of almost 3,000 occupying soldiers, for creating a new memory of debacle, quagmire, defeat.

The narrative so-meticulously concocted and crafted by the Ministry of Truth, of an America destined by the Christian deity for greatness, incapable of defeat, always triumphant in victory, forever carrying the torch of goodness, chosen to fight the forces of evil, a beacon of freedom and liberty to the world, has been shown as the sham that it is, a fantasy laced with the glazed sugar coating of Hollywood perfection and brainwashed delusions. The aura of arrogance, the spirit of invincibility, the confidence of victory, the manifest destiny of America has taken a severe and humiliating blow at the hands of a mosaic of “rag tag,” “sub-human,” “third-world,” “dark-skinned,” “Arab and Muslim” resistance fighters, or mujahadeen. The glorious mirror of fables of American prominence that has for decades been used to condition and brainwash the masses has been blasted into pieces by a war of choice and by a cabal of mass murder and criminality.

The job has thus fallen to the Ministry of Truth and its agents of propaganda to once again reassemble the many pieces of the smoking mirror and reconstruct in the mind of the American masses the fantasy and fiction of an America that only exists in the thoughts of the brainwashed and the easily manipulated. The mirror of American preeminence, splendor and greatness that has been used for decades to make servants of the population must be refurbished, lest the people wake from their hypnotized stupor to see that the American Dream is but one more charade, one more level of control over their lives, one more fantasy injecting fog and haze into myopic eyes, one more mirage whose true nightmare remains hidden by the warm glow of the television.

The reality of American life, with its elaborate system of chains and shackles that clandestinely enslave millions to the elite through the mechanisms of predatory capitalism, together with the true nature of America’s domination over the planet, destroying Earth, pillaging resources, ruining nations, birthing enormous suffering, killing millions, enraging billions, must never be allowed to penetrate past the firewalls of propaganda that have since birth been implanted inside the mind of the American masses. The Delusion of the American Dream must remain steadfast and firm so that the Earth’s Nightmare may be allowed to continue. Disastrous endeavors that dispel the self-aggrandizement inherent in America’s delusions attack the basic core of the American people’s conditioned minds, creating the mechanisms by which the citizenry begins to question the fiction they have lived all their lives.

If leadership can be so incompetent as to give birth to debacle and utter failure, even with the greatest military and resources the world has ever known, then how can it govern the rest of the nation’s problems? If defeat, eventual retreat and loss of nearly 3,000 troops, along with the maiming, of both body and mind, of countless tens of thousands more, is the result of an adventure that was supposed to end with flowers and candy thrown at our feet, signifying a marvelous, heralded victory proclaiming American greatness, then what has happened to the only nation blessed by the Christian deity? What does a humiliating withdrawal from Iraq do the American psyche when years of brainwashing seemingly disallow the reality now experienced from ever rising? With the Iraq failure - much like the Vietnam example before - firmly impressed upon the precepts and beliefs the system inculcates into our minds, contradicting that which we have been taught about ourselves, at odds with the fictions hammered into our psyche, an audacious challenge to the constructs of what the state and the corporation say is our reality is issued, making millions breathe above the murky water of lifelong conditioning, oftentimes for the first time.

For in the American narrative, the invincible American military, the most moral and virtuous in the entire world, fighting evil wherever it may rise, protecting humanity from evildoers, is not supposed to struggle against dead-enders, dark-skinned sub-humans or third-worlders. It is not supposed to get trapped in quicksand or quagmire, fighting for survival against an army of resistance fighters, most of whom were simple peasants before occupation. It is not supposed to become that which it has been sent to fight, yet transformed into terrorists and torturers and rapists and mass murderers has it become, dispelling the fallacies of the Dream we all believe to be real and true. In times of disaster and unwinnable war, where frustration and discontent grows, where unsettling facts become the thorns bursting the bubble of infallibility, the fantasy of what we think we are and the reality of what we truly are clash in a fiery battle for truth, unleashing in the mind of the less gullible the beginning sprouts of doubt, forging the genesis of what is a vortex of uncomfortable epiphanies and awakenings.

It is when the Dream jousts with Reality that awakenings to truth emerge, as always after violent storms of thought penetrate a brainwashed mind that refuses to pull its anchors from the draining harbors of control. Like two armies engaged in hand to hand combat, the Dream conditioned and Reality experienced meet on the battlefield of thought, creating volatile and uncomfortable conundrums tearing a mind that has never been confronted with a challenge to what it thinks is truth and reality. In times beset by inevitable questioning of the state and the so-called leaders of the people, when decisions and policies lead to defeat and failure and debacle, leading to embarrassment and deep collective introspection, millions of citizens will confront the dark Dream, wondering why its tenets and axioms have not held firm, finally seeing the light, realizing that the Dream they lived no longer corresponds with the Truth they now see, in the process shattering the smoke-filled mirrors that surrounds them and becoming aware of what has been done them, and who is responsible.

"If fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom, Iraq is the least free society on earth."

The Bush Administration’s presentation of its purpose and continuing role in Iraq is one of elaborate and shifting deception just as were its original explanations of why it waged its war of aggression against Iraq. First one thing, then another: weapons of mass destruction, ties to Al Qaeda, to rid the country of a tyrant, to establish democracy and freedom in the Middle East, to destroy international terrorism at center stage.

All were fabricated and known to be false by the President and the principal “civil officers of the United States” whose purpose led us down this garden path to genocide and the enmity of friend and foe alike.

Today, as the Congressional mid-term elections approach, the Bush Administration is desperate to lay blame elsewhere for its failure to stabilize the country, curtail the rising U.S. casualties while still ignoring Iraqi casualties, and offer any hope for peace and the withdrawal of U.S. and all foreign forces from Iraq. It charges its own puppet government responsible for the violent chaos its policies have caused and it has failed to prevent.

A time table, heretofore verboten as playing into enemy hands, is to be presented to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki within which he must disarm sectarian militias and reach other political, economic and military benchmarks toward social stability, which the U.S. with all its fire power and billions misspent has failed to approach.

The U.S. knows Maliki cannot achieve such goals. Just staying alive is a challenge he cannot meet without U.S. help and even then perhaps not for long, if the U.S. remains in Iraq.

Every time I go to Iraq, the government of Iraq is harder to find. It used to appear to run the airport. Last week armed U.S. contractors rushed me and other lawyers, Iraqi and different Arab nationalities, from the plane through customs and immigration, to waiting U.S. military vehicles, both coming and going. On the drive into Baghdad the protection was entirely U.S. military in the SUV with us, but with U.S. Army tanks, engines running, a crew member scanning the area with binoculars from tank turrets and fortified positions stationed near the roadway.

The government of Iraq, almost as badly fragmented as the society, is hidden away in the international zone secured by the U.S., plotting to gain advantage over other segments of the government and control of the oil producing areas within the country. Outside this comparatively safe haven the various factions work with regional and local leaders of their sects and government forces and militia’s more loyal to them.

If fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom, Iraq is the least free society on earth. Fear is pervasive, at home, work if any, school if accessible, mosque, market, the street where you live.

Conditions are heart breaking, even more so than during sanctions which killed over 1.5 million Iraqis, half under 5 years of age, between 1990 and 2003. Then the people were united in sharing food and medicine to protect the poor, the weak and the sick, as best as possible. Fear, except for the specters of malnutrition and sickness, was minimal.

Today fear is omnipresent. The death rate exceeds that of the genocidal sanctions with more than 500,000 dead after 3 and a half years of foreign aggression and occupation. Most Iraqis I talk to insist a million have died, but we do not know. And those killed are your mother, child, brother, father, friend, neighbor. Death is indiscriminate and capricious. Those who died were strong and able this very morning. And all assaults are shrouded in unbridled hatred.

The government of the United States brought this misery to the people of Iraq.

No one is more aware of the impotence and abject dependence of what George Bush calls the sovereign democracy he has brought to Iraq than the President himself. He knew before we read it on page 1 of the New York Times for October 18, 2006, that “Senior American officials including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice... issued stark warnings to the Maliki government of growing American impatience, especially at the governments failure to stop the scourge of death squads operating with the knowledge, or support of the Interior Ministry...”

“For Maliki, these concerns have taken on a keen personal edge, exposed Monday when the White House revealed that Mr. Maliki asked President Bush in a telephone call whether there was any truth to rumors that the Americans had plans to replace him ‘if certain things don’t happen within two months,’ in the words of Mr. Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow.”

A more pitiful plea of subservience by the head of the government of a purported democracy of sovereign equality is hard to find in history. How long will the American people tolerate these deceptions?

As for U.S. intentions in Iraq, for the first time during my visits, this October the new U.S. Embassy had risen above the high concrete barrier sealing it from view. It is a huge complex with at least 14 cranes still lifting construction materials for its completion, still on schedule. They say for next summer.

It is the “Mother of all U.S. Embassies.” Its initial was cost set at $570 million. We will learn of the cost overruns later. No Iraqis work on construction of the Embassy, for the same reason the architects of the Pyramids were murdered. No outsider must know its secrets. It will have its own assured water system and generators for electricity.

More significantly, it is located in the heart of Baghdad, presently in the International Zone immediately across from the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein and other officials of the government the U.S. overthrew are on trial.

The U.S. Embassy in Iran was located in the heart of Tehran. It could not be protected from angry crowds that captured and held the residual staff and Marine Guards hostage. After that the U.S. has built secure Embassies removed from easy access by potentially hostile mobs. But none nearly so large, or expensive as the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

The ultimate deception is that the Bush Administration intends to remain in Iraq with sufficient military force to assure the security of this huge Embassy situated in the center of a metropolitan area of six million people, a fourth of the nation.

These deceptions, too, are impeachable offenses intended to conceal the most grievous of all high crimes and misdemeanors.