John McMurtry’s lecture, “Why the Facts of 9/11 Are Suppressed: Understanding the Ruling Group Mind Behind the War Without End,” is an incisive critique of the mass schizophrenia gripping the U. S. and its allies in their waging of the so-called “War on Terror” with the 9/11 attacks as their justification. The “big disconnection,” according to McMurtry: “What, before 9/11, was a world slowly coming under universal norms of life protection and understanding of the destructive life-blindness of the global market system was, after 9/11, a monoculture of one enemy which was disconnected from every real problem humanity faces.” [END] Permalink: Why the Facts of 9/11 Are Suppressed
This German documentary presents a European perspective on the United States’ history of lying to the world in order to advance war agendas with a particular focus on the 9/11 attacks and the so-called “War on Terror.” This video serves as an excellent aid to understanding why the official version of 9/11 is an obvious lie, from the legends of the hijackers to the physical effects observed in the plane crashes and destruction of the buildings, and continues on into an extended analysis of the role of the media in promoting these lies, the agenda of social transformation which has been put into place in their wake and other topics. [END] Permalink: 9/11 False Flag
Barrie Zwicker’s “The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw” is a nice overview of the reasons to doubt the official story of the 9/11 attacks. Here is some additional information on Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission and a member of the Clinton-Bush transition team. It should also be noted that 1998, the year that Zelikow’s “Catastrophic Terrorism” was published, was also the year that the neocons’ Project for the New American Century group was beginning its push on Bill Clinton to attack Iraq and essentially begin the so-called “War on Terror” at that time. [END] Permalink: The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw
John Pilger’s“Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror” questions the fundamental motives for the so-called “War on Terror” of the United States. In this video, Pilger explores the U. S.’ extensive recent history of military interventions both overt and covert in dozens of nations worldwide which, in the 21st century, have been expanded into a quest for what the Bush administration termed “full spectrum dominance” on a global scale. [END] Permalink: Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror
“Enemy Image” is a history of the American media’s presentation of U. S. wars and the U. S. government and military’s fight to control that presentation, beginning with Vietnam and moving on through the 2003 war in Iraq. While early newsreels, with their patriotic narrative overdubs, presented a polished and sterile image of heroic troops bravely fighting like a well-oiled machine, the relatively unregulated television journalism of the later 1960s showed the common soldier up-close and personal, without the touch-ups of Hollywood. Although the film has a curious lack of mention of the late ’90s war in eastern Europe, it does a good job of comparing the Vietnam era to the much more heavily controlled time from the 1980s to today. “Everybody just wants to go home and go to school. [...] The whole thing stinks.” – U. S. soldier in Vietnam [END] Permalink: Enemy Image
This German documentary gives an intimate view into the lives of U. S. soldiers in Iraq. Firefights, sniper attacks, all manners of violence are presented here in true documentary fashion. The first Gulf War began in 1991, a decade of sanctions which killed more people than the bombing of Hiroshima followed, and now a bigger war continues to drag on and on, year after year. What will be the end of the United States’ war in Iraq? [END] Permalink: Iraq: The Continuous War
The “whole truth” about anything may or may not be knowable, let alone expressible. Nevertheless, Robert Greenwald’s “Uncovered”, promoted heavily by the MoveOn PAC, interviews a number of U. S. government officials and ex-officials who have something to say about the Iraq war being a fraud. The lies which paved the way for the U. S. invasion of Iraq here are discussed at length by insiders from the CIA, armed forces and other institutions. [END] Permalink: Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
BBC reporter Jon Snow’s “Iraq: The Hidden War” focuses on the impossibility of accurate media coverage, or even of much media coverage at all in Iraq’s “Red Zone,” the unsheltered area of extreme violence outside of the heavily fortified U. S. military compound known as the “Green Zone” in Baghdad. The U. S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has resulted in a deadly destabilization of the country, where electricity is often available only a few hours per day and the cost of fuel has skyrocketed, where it can be purchased at all. In Iraq, much of the journalism by Westerners must be done from within the Green Zone and consists of the editing of footage shot by hired locals paid to capture what they can where it is safe to get a story. Reporters then attempt to apply what context is available to them to weave a narrative for the viewer. The kidnapping of journalists in Iraq is widespread and cameramen must be extraordinarily careful when in the field. These difficulties have resulted in a war of which the reality, the overwhelming day-to-day violence, has yet to be fully appreciated by the Western nations whose governments have commissioned the fight. [END] Permalink: Iraq: The Hidden War
Here, the CBC walks us through some of the many flaws in the casus belli that led to the U. S. military and the private mercenary firms that they contracted to aid them, and to share in the loot, both foreign and domestic, entering Iraq with the intention of overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2003. While some attention is given here to reporter Seymour Hirsch’s take on the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a “neoconservative” think-tank who have been credited as the authors of the plans for the war, as a group of utopian idealists, it ought to be considered that the PNAC plans revolve around the astoundingly violent concept of “full spectrum dominance” by the U. S. worldwide which includes even the will to deny other nations the use of outer space. Theirs is literally a proposal of world conquest. “Former” CIA operative Robert Baer also adds what should be the already obvious fact that there is “no evidence” that Saddam Hussein had any links to the 9/11 attacks, perhaps to imply the “Afghanistan-war-good, Iraq-war-bad” line of argument which has been taken up by many members of the Democratic Party. However, there is also questionable evidence at best that “Al Qaeda,” however that term may be defined, was linked in any way to the 9/11 attacks, itself, as FBI publicity chief Rex Tomb has told reporters that there is, quote, “no hard evidence” even that Osama bin Laden, when it gets right down to it, was responsible for 9/11. The current state of the Afghanistan war, ostensibly being fought against these same “Al Qaeda” terrorists, now nine years on with no end in sight and almost no “progress” of any kind by any definition having been made, except, perhaps, in the financial sense for those “in the club,” ought to speak to the intentions of those who originated these claims in the first place. [END] Permalink: Lies of the Iraq War
“The Ground Truth” documents the stories of American soldiers who have been involved in the war in Iraq and their experiences both at abroad and after their return from the Middle East. They discuss the indoctrination and personality restructuring they experienced upon entering the military, beginning with the deceptive enticements of the recruitment table on through the suffering of combat and finally in the shattered lives they lead after their tours are over. [END] Permalink: The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War