September 23, 2005
On September 5, 2005, we published an article by Axis of Logic
columnist Paul Richard Harris entitled 'The Enemy Next Door’. Paul
lives in Canada, so who the 'enemy’ next door is meant to be should be
obvious.
We
have now received a response from an American, Phillip Toler, whose
essays have appeared previously on Axis of Logic. Mr. Toler has taken
the trouble to respond from the perspective of one United States
resident.
Please
read his article entitled 'The United States and the WTC Three, A Study
in Controlled Demolition’. Except for applying formatting, we have not
edited his text in any way; it appears here exactly as he submitted it.
For ease of comparison, the text of 'The Enemy Next Door’ follows Mr.
Toler’s work.
- Axis of Logic editorial team
The United States and the WTC Three, A Study in Controlled Demolition
By Phil Toler
"Whosoever
controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all
industry and commerce... And when you realize that the entire system is
very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at
the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and
depression originate."
- James Garfield 1881
Within weeks of releasing this statement President Garfield was assassinated.
Paul
Harris has hit the nail squarely on the head. Though I have long been
aware of what his essay "The Enemy Next Door" chronicles in brutal
detail, his solemn recitation is still a painful read. And while one
might lament what he has to say, it would do no good to try to frame
this as opinion because it is nothing but bare-faced fact and history,
one that the more conscious Americans would so love to forget,
especially if they never knew it in the first place.
History
shows us that the urge to empire can lead in only one fatal direction —
its dustbin. Just as all the others to go before, the United States is
convinced that now that history has been eclipsed by the new reality of
its leadership, it will not be subject to mere laws of nature, whether
human or otherwise. But it not only will — the process is well-advanced
as I write.
A
tempting metaphor to depict the United States is a hopeless alcoholic
uncle who can print his own money to fuel his addiction, but it is
worse than that. Far better are the first three steel framed buildings
in history to be destroyed by fire collapsing in free fall on September
11, 2001. On the surface, they appeared to be the epitome of symbols
for American wealth and know how. They housed businesses that generated
millions of dollars, and scores of government agencies like the FBI,
SEC, and so on. Yet though they enjoyed a wide no-fly zone around them,
it was penetrated by aircraft supposedly piloted by crazed Arabs which
impacted two of the buildings, and allegedly brought them down in free
fall. The third, WTC 7, fell in exactly the same way though it wasn’t
damaged at all.
The conventional wisdom was
created by a passport found near the buildings that was purported to
belong to one of the 'hijackers’, as absurd as that seems today, and
phone calls that identified the 'hijackers’ as Middle Eastern, which is
no less absurd. Can you tell, for example, an Arab from an Israeli? By
the middle of the afternoon, the jury had returned a verdict of guilty
and the judge pronounced a death sentence, yet no real evidence was, or
has been since, presented.
The
resulting chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq have benefited immensely the
so-called neocons who spend as much time in Tel Aviv as Washington
advocating a takeover of the Arab Middle East, and the oil and
"security" related companies who fund their think tanks and profit off
their wars. They even published a document that called for such an
atrocity, but it is all unmentioned in the 'free’ press. Could it have
something to do with the fact that the owners of the 'free’ press sit
on the same boards of directors as those of Halliburton, Bechtol, and
the notorious Carlyle Group? The average American hasn’t a clue.
It
is this seeming paradox that has the world scratching their heads in
wonder — why can’t they figure out what’s going on in their own name?
There are a thousand reasons with the top two being: even if we do know
what’s happening, there isn’t squat we can do about it, and, just as
important, we’re too busy living ersatz lives to care. So the real
question is, how did it come to this?
The
key to understanding this outcome is the fact that the Federal Reserve
Bank, which is none of the above, dictates the amount of US currency in
circulation, and therefore its value, and by extension economic and
foreign policy. If this sounds like a non sequiter, bear with me.
Though it is called the "Fed", it is entirely privately owned. So, you
might ask, who has the power to print money and loan it to the
government with interest that is guaranteed against tax receipts? Peter
Kershaw provides the answer in Economic Solutions where he lists the
ten primary shareholders in the Federal Reserve banking system:
The Rothschild Family – London
The Rothschild Family – Berlin
The Lazard Brothers – Paris
Israel Seiff – Italy
Kuhn-Loeb Company – Germany
The Warburgs – Amsterdam
The Warburgs - Hamburg
Lehman Brothers - New York
Goldman & Sachs - New York
The Rockefeller Family - New York
Since
they control the U S Federal Reserve Bank, it’s pretty obvious that
they control economic policy down to the last centime. Perhaps
this is why one of Richard Nixon’s legacies was the dissolution of the
Breton Woods agreement whereby member entities that printed fiat money
did so as long as it was backed by gold reserves. Between the Vietnam
war, low taxes, a recession and skyrocketing oil prices, America
withdrew from that agreement, and the Fed fired up the printing
presses. The result was an average inflation rate for the decade
following of 11.35%, which echoes the first decade after the Fed was
established in 1913, 14.97%.
The
bottom line on this economic control by private interests has many
ramifications but a great place to start is to comprehend that what
costs $1910.99 today could have been purchased in 1913 for a single
hundred dollar bill. More ominous are the economic 'cycles’ over that
interval. When the dollar inflates, the assets denominated in it
increase accordingly. By lowering interest rates and increasing the
supply of money, or debt, the Fed gins up the value of everything. At
some point, those who call the shots convert out of the dollar into
either a stable currency or a commodity such as gold, then rapidly
decrease the supply of money and raise interest rates so that the value
of assets fall.
For
the owners of those assets that do not owe money on them, at least they
can keep them in hopes prices will return to what they purchased them
for. For the others, the bank simply calls the note and repossesses the
assets owed on and if they are a big enough bank, or well-connected
with the Fed and know the deflation is coming, life is good. For the
rest, pure misery ensues. This alternating cycle manipulation makes
wealth accumulation child’s play if you’re on the A Team — otherwise
you’re on your own.
To
finish our economics lesson, consider the fact that banks are only
required by law to have on hand ten per cent of the amount they loan.
This is glibly called 'fractional reserve’ banking. Thus, when the bank
gives you $100,000 to go with your down payment, say $20,000, they’ve
doubled their money before you even leave the building. If you found
out you had lost your job before you could make the first payment, the
banks $10,000 temporary liability would be handily offset by the
$20,000 they got from you. Plus, they can sell the house for the
$120,000 it is theoretically worth and their total profit is $140,000!
But
let’s say you pay it off exactly on time. That $100,000 mortgage loan
for 30 years at 5% interest results in a total principle plus interest
income of $193,255, and it’s all profit.
When the loan is made, your account is magically credited the $100,000
which is offset by the debit to pay the lien holder of the property
that now belongs to your bank. There is no actual movement of funds
from your bank’s accounts excepting the $10,000 in deposits that must
be moved into reserve status until it is replaced by debt repayments or
deposits. Now you know why there’s a bank on every corner.
So
what does all this have to do with country full of zombies unable to
take control of the government that aggressively invades other nations
that are no threat, something we used to justifiably vilify Germany
for? A lot, actually. We have isolated the forces that induced the
Congress to abdicate their Constitutional duty to print our currency
and regulate its value, and have found one of them to have boasted :
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes
the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild uttered these words in 1790 and his
descendents evidently took them to heart.
So
if who writes the laws is trumped by who controls the currency,
Americans will have lost control of our ship of state for almost 100
years. That means that virtually all elections since then have been
manipulated. This means that bankers have tilted the playing field to
their advantage for almost a century, and perhaps that explains the
fact that a pre-Fed nickel costs five dollars today. They’ve incited
the wars, dictated the peace treaties, and collected interest plus
principle often times from all parties to the conflicts. And the people
have fed their sons, daughters and taxes to the dogs of war, all the
while thinking God and Country had something to do with it. And to this
day, only a handful of us are aware of these facts. That must mean the
bankers have had a great deal of success in controlling the information
flow for the last century, as well. Perhaps this explains the dismal
job a Federalized public school system so famously metes out to its
victims, the students and to a large degree the teachers, all under the
thumb of politicized administrators.
It
might also explain the garbage that dominates the output of Hollywood’s
movie and television industries. It certainly explains why it takes two
incomes to raise a family on even a modest scale. And since the
government has been controlling the drug trade for a century and using
the profits to finance off-the-book black operations to bludgeon anyone
that threatens to horn in on the take, or worse, threaten the supply,
as did the Taliban in Afghanistan, we see the hand of the bankers at
work, yet again. This list could go on and on, but Paul is right in
demanding some responsibility on our part, and I have no mea culpa for
that, because, after all, we were given a Constitutional Republic, and
the founders told us constant vigilance would be necessary to maintain
it. Well, my fellow Americans, we flat blew it.
What
we did, folks, was sell our souls to the devils in the banker’s suits.
We settled for life-sapping, one-dimensional jobs to appear prosperous.
We became mesmerized by sports and entertainment and the 'stars’ they
produced creating our own American royalty. And as the content of these
entertainments became ever more degraded, we allowed the corrosion to
rot the fabric of social responsibility right out of us. So now we
smugly drive around in our massive SUVs with flags fluttering repeating
ad nauseum via cell phone that we’re the greatest country in the world.
The founding fathers would have no way to conceive how we could have
allowed their blood and hard work to turn into a fascistic war machine
intent on subjugating the world, all the while spouting platitudes
about how honorable our intentions are.
Like
the collapsed WTC towers, the American experiment was imploded behind a
cloak of deceit, and we took a big fat bribe to look the other way. I’m
ashamed for all of us, and I, for one, offer my deepest apologies to
Paul and the rest of the world for our National Disgrace.
© Copyright 2005 by AxisofLogic.com
Originally published by Axis of Logic, September 5, 2005
The Enemy Next Door
The 'shunning’ of an individual is the act of deliberately avoiding association with him or her. The historical punishments of ostracism and exile
were forms of shunning. Today, shunning in an official, formalized
manner is practiced by only a few religions, although it continues to
be practiced informally in every sort of human grouping or gathering.
Shunning
aims to protect a group from members who have committed acts seen as
harmful to the shunning organization, or who violate the group's norms.
- Adapted from the Wikipedia
For
many religious groups, shunning might be seen as the ultimate act by
disconnecting an individual from the group. Historically, the practice
is sure to have been initiated for extraordinarily flimsy reasons from
time to time – but as a social agent to ensure civil behaviour, it is a
powerful tool. It serves a function similar to the amputation of a
right hand in Islam.
In
more modern times, occasions arise when one or several countries choose
to 'shun’ another nation as a way of trying to influence a change in
the behaviour of that nation. Think of the United States’ embargo on
Cuba, sanctions levied against bad actors by the United Nations (like
Libya, Iraq), the Canadian sanctions against South Africa, eventually
adopted by most of the British Commonwealth. That last example is a
model of what can be accomplished with international condemnation;
although the world’s sanctions against Apartheid cannot claim full
credit for the turnaround in South Africa, it was a powerful incentive
to those who sought to bring about changes there.
This
is an article about the United States of America. From the outset, let
me admit that there is tremendous credit due to the US for a wide
variety of social, humanitarian, artistic, scientific, intellectual
accomplishments. But this small group of people, ruled by an even
smaller group of thugs, is truly the epitome of the
'tail-wagging-the-dog’ syndrome. The US comprises a small fraction of
the world but it sees all the rest of the world – and, for emphasis,
ALL the rest of the world – as its servant, its supplier of cheap goods
and labour, its warehouse, its flea market, the place to play with its
guns.
Both
Canada and Mexico can reasonably think of the United States as our best
friend. But it is also clearly our worst enemy. Indeed, I will argue
here that the United States is the enemy of ALL nations. It’s a little
tougher for Canada and Mexico because the Beast lives next door, but
also a little easier because at least they haven’t sent in the troops.
Now,
we’ve all heard the rebuttal that 'not all Americans are like that’,
and that is certainly true. The US has at least as many decent humans
as any other nation, more than some. But a country premised on 'we the
people …’ cannot shirk the responsibility for what they do as a group.
The actions of the US are the actions of the whole population, by
definition … the US constitution does not begin with 'we, some of the
people’.
Many
outside the US have waited patiently for them to outgrow their juvenile
delinquency, but they show no sign of maturing. We have waited
patiently for the good citizens of the US to corral the bad, but they
persist in failing to do so. And now that they are acting out again and
threatening the peace and security of the entire planet, it is high
time that the rest of us took matters into our own hands.
The rest of the world should join hands and shun the United States.
America,
the country, really does believe it is better than anyone else. That
America is entitled to as much of the resources and riches of the
planet as it wants and it doesn’t matter whomever else might have to
suffer or go short. That all other nations are enemies if they don’t
march to the American drum in virtually any arena you might care to
mention. That it has the right, indeed the obligation, to enforce its
will wherever it sees fit by whatever means it wants. That it has the
right to invade sovereign nations as a way of deflecting attention from
some domestic political scandal or if there is some new weapon that
needs a good field testing. That killing of foreign civilians doesn’t
really count because they’re always in season and there’s no quota.
That somehow a bullet-ridden and trigger-happy American society is in
every way superior to any other place on earth.
Astonishingly, Americans seem to have a hard time grasping that other folks might be a little annoyed about all that.
Bombs and Bullets
Consider
their military adventures. The United States claims to be a nation of
peace lovers and officially it has been at peace since the end of the
Second World War. Except, that is, for their attacks on:
- China (1945-46)
- Korea (1950-53)
- Guatemala (1954, 1967-69)
- Cuba (1959-60)
- Belgian Congo (1964)
- Vietnam (1961-73)
- Cambodia (1969-70)
- Grenada (1983)
- Libya (1986)
- El Salvador (1980-92)
- Nicaragua (1981-90)
- Panama (1989)
- Iraq (1991)
- Somalia (1993)
- Bosnia (1995)
- Sudan (1998)
- Yugoslavia (1999)
- Afghanistan (2001-02)
- plus a grudge match currently underway in Iraq (since 2003)
- Plus
"police action" in Colombia re: drugs (ongoing), an insurrection
in Chile (1973) and numerous other covert bombings conducted by, or
under the direction of, the CIA
From 1945 to the early years of the 21st
century, the US attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign
governments and to crush more than 30 populist movements fighting
against insufferable regimes. In the process, they bombed about 25
countries, killed several million people, and condemned many millions
more to lives of agony, poverty and despair. Oh yes, and they’re
presently sabre-rattling against Iran and, maybe, North Korea. [Forgive
me if I’ve forgotten any military excursion here; it’s hard to keep
track.]
Most
of this activity took place during a time when the United States was
allegedly in a defensive posture. In reality, the United States has
never been in a defensive posture. It’s short history is one of
expansionism; first through movement to the west coast, then
economically in the rest of the Americas (where the profits can be
derived without the overhead of actually running the countries).
At
this point, thanks to George W. Bush’s September 2002 document entitled
'The National Security Strategy of the United States of America’ (NSS),
we know with certainty that the United States intends to rule the
world. They will act unilaterally to attack wherever and whenever they
wish and they have already demonstrated that they mean it. Given their
propensity for field-testing their high-tech weaponry, should they
really be surprised that most other nations fear them? And is it
rational for them to think that those who fear them are going to like
them?
But
it isn’t quite as simple as worrying about American bombs. Because they
don’t drop them everywhere. There are actually some places that the US
considers to be alright. Canada for one, although they often think we
are cheeky buggers who they’re one day going to have to squash. Britain
for another, although one wonders if the US only thinks well of them
because of the recent lapses of British common sense in supporting
Bush’s military adventures.
Let’s Make a Deal
Ask
any country that’s ever entered into a trade agreement with the United
States how well it worked out for them. The US bargains with a fisted
glove, despite George Bush’s remarks in the second paragraph of the
NSS: "In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our
strength to press for unilateral advantage." He couldn’t even get past
the second paragraph without lying.
The
fact is, the financial instruments that operate the world – the World
Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund –
are all tools of American diplomacy (I use the term loosely since
diplomacy is not a strong suit for America, never has been). Oil, that
most precious commodity, the thing that seems to attract American
military excursions like flies to a corpse, is priced in US dollars
giving the United States an unprecedented trading advantage over every
other nation. The Yankee buck is used as the currency standard in most
parts of the world despite its shaky foundations and the tremulous
state of the American economy. By default, then, the currencies of the
rest of the world are subservient and unstable because of their
measurement against the flaky dollar.
The
list of agreements entered into by the US that they have ignored,
abrogated, or violated is long; and it has grown exponentially in
recent years. Without even looking beyond the borders of North America,
the US record of honouring its commitments is appalling. The Free Trade
Agreement (FTA), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have
been sad examples of the way the US bullies its 'partners’. It
routinely ignores rulings of the dispute resolution panels that it
doesn’t like, it slaps unjustified tariffs against its partners and
dares them to do something about it. It fully expects the other
partners to live with and adhere to the agreed upon rules, but it has
no intention of doing so itself.
Naturally,
these examples should serve as warnings to anyone else foolish enough
to think they can enter into equal agreements with the US. It should be
clear to all that no trade agreement with the United States is ever
predicated on the 'win-win’ principle, but only on the premise that all
the chips will end up on the American side of the ledger. It is almost
pathological that the US cannot abide the idea of both sides winning
something because that means something was left on the table that they
could have grabbed.
On
the horizon is the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and
the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and despite the obvious
failings of FTA and NAFTA, other North and South American countries
have given serious consideration to entering into trade agreements with
the United States. Some have already foolishly signed on the dotted
line. They need only look at the record of the way America
adheres to its bargains with its closest neighbours to realize that the
United States considers the rest of the world to be nothing more than
its supplier of cheap raw materials and labour, and the place that it
wishes to dump its surplus and its crap.
Playing well with others
One
of the most sensible things ever created by the countries of the world
is the United Nations. Its problems and weaknesses are huge, but most
stem from four things: the foolish concept of the Security Council; the
American belief that the sole function of the UN is to service the
domestic and foreign interests of the United States; the failure of the
US to live up to its commitments to the UN; and the US determination
that nothing the rest of the member nations want or think is relevant
if it doesn’t suit the United States.
If
the US was being given a grade school report card for its United
Nations activities it would be given the lowest grade possible and the
teacher would surely note that the US does not play well with its
peers. Indeed, the United States does not seriously consider that it has
peers. There is a good chance the teacher might think the US needs
professional intervention to deal with its obvious psychopathic
tendencies.
Currently
on the table is a draft agreement for United Nations reform and
renewal. It is well-recognized internationally that the UN has
shortcomings and members from many nations have worked long and hard to
prepare a draft proposal for addressing those weaknesses. The United
States has made some 700 changes to the document that they insist will
be necessary before they will agree to the rest. The parts they are
willing to leave in place are the vague 'lets play nice’ homilies that
are unenforceable and make no commitments; the parts they want changed
or removed provide a solid roadmap to showcase the disagreements the US
has with the rest of the world on almost every imaginable global issue.
Think
back again to President Bush’s statement: "In keeping with our heritage
and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral
advantage." It is difficult to credit that there is anyone, anywhere,
including within the United States, that could make that statement with
a straight face. Where the US is unable to win agreement from other
countries, it threatens. It starts off with gentle remonstrance but the
stakes very quickly rise to trade and even military threats: it takes
guts to stand up to the US and only a few countries have the clout or
temerity to do so (China and Cuba, respectively, come easily to mind).
But
the reason these difficulties arise in the first place is there is no
room in the eyes of the United States for compromise. President Bush
again: "Either you’re with us, or you’re with the terrorists." This
narrow black-versus-white approach (an appropriate metaphor for the US)
allows for no compromise, it permits no neutrality. It is the classic
schoolyard bully approach to problem solving.
As
a further example, consider the American attitude to such concepts as
the International Court of Justice. The US refuses to be a part of it
because they will not put themselves in the position where someone else
has the power to judge them or the activities of their citizens. They
believe that international law governs everyone but them: they were
quite prepared to judge the Third Reich at Nuremburg and Manuel Noriega
(after he finished being useful to them) and Saddam Hussein, and so on,
but they refuse to accept that anyone, anywhere, has the right to judge
them or one of their citizens.
Freedom
The
United States prides itself on being free. Its citizens have come to
believe that this includes them although any outsider can easily see
that the only freedom in the US is the freedom of the elite to get
richer and richer. The US operates on the principle of 'free enterprise
for the poor and socialism for the rich’ in an astounding display of
law-of-the-jungle mentality. The rich and the elite of the US enjoy the
biggest and best of everything while the lower castes fend for
themselves.
This
is a nation with wealth and privilege beyond measure, yet it houses
vast numbers of poor and downtrodden who are left to wallow on their
own. A timely example is in front of the world as we all watch with
horror and consternation the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It is
clear that the US was unprepared for this disaster despite having all
the resources imaginable, despite having plenty of notice that this
event was about to occur, despite having years of warning that it would
occur some day. It is not lost on anyone that the slow and feeble
response of the Bush administration to this catastrophe is coloured by
who the victims happen to be.
The
US was founded on the principle of democracy, the republican form of
democracy, but it has been many years since it practiced democracy or
even believed that it should. We all know its elections are unfair
contests of rich against rich, often with unscrupulous polling
practices to ensure the right person wins. And we all know that once
elected, the winners are ensconced for the sole purpose of lining their
own pockets and those of their backers.
Yet
the United States strides around the world with the alleged aim of
installing 'democracy’, by force if necessary, even if the people
affected would rather not have it. There is a proselytizing fervour to
the missionary zeal with which the US pledges to 'free’ the rest of the
world. It cannot be stated more clearly that the US interest in other
nations is solely as providers of cheap raw materials and labour, and
as market places. They are quite content to accept the rule of
dictators in those nations who are willingly serving US interests
(Saudi Arabia, for instance).
The
US notion of 'democracy’, at least within the current administration,
is surely Orwellian, avoiding anything that would allow for a genuine
rule of the people. In nominal democracies today there is a huge gap
between the ruling elites and the general populace. In this neo-liberal
world, leaders regularly betray campaign promises and the public
interest in order to serve the needs of the corporations who ensured
their election victories. Nowhere has this reached such a high art form
as in the United States.
Democracy
has steadily eroded in the United States, accelerated by the present
administration. The Patriot Act and its successor have castrated the
constitutional protections of the rights of individuals; the courts
have been filled with pliable right-wing judges, threatening judicial
independence and constitutional rights; corrupt election practices are
rampant and the checks and balances system has been seriously
disrupted.
Killing the rest of us
The
United States is a dirty place. Despite its millions of square miles of
open space, it has allowed industry to turn large swaths of the
environment into cesspools. Rivers and streams are polluted, food
sources are contaminated with both inadvertent and deliberate chemical
additives, in many places the air gives a foul stench. While the US is
certainly not alone in the world in this regard, the sheer volume of
pollution that is produced by this conspicuous consumption society is
staggering.
American
administrations, particularly the current one, blithely ignore the
evidence that even school children can grasp. Scientists the world
over, excepting those few on the payrolls of the polluters, have been
issuing dire predictions at least as far back as Rachel Carson’s 1962
warning in her book 'Silent Spring’. But no, global warming isn’t
really happening; or if it is, it has nothing to do with any human
activity. It is an interesting dichotomy that the scientists are heeded
by leaders so long as they are saying things the leaders want to hear,
ignored otherwise.
But
the rest of the world knows. That’s why it struggled to produce what
became known as the Kyoto Protocol after many attempts and many years
of diplomacy. It is a horridly flawed agreement; but it is a first and
critically necessary step to cleaning up our environment while there is
some potable water and some breathable air remaining. The American
response: the rest of the world can be damned, no one is telling us
what to do.
Most
of the world has reluctantly agreed that planting landmines is a nasty
practice. While they may have had some military value in the days when
troops rode horses or walked, their only value now is for containment
of non-combatants. By far the greatest number of landmine victims in
recent years is the population left behind when the armies go off to
play elsewhere. The soldiers never remove the landmines so they remain
buried, waiting for some unsuspecting peasant or child to die, or blow
off a leg or two.
And
so the world agreed to stop using them, to stop manufacturing, to
remove all they could locate. The American response: they refused to
sign on to anti-landmine treaties, they refused to remove those they
have buried, they have recently decided to start manufacturing them
again which can only mean that they intend to use them. The rest of the
world be damned.
The
United States has touted the need to control nuclear weaponry. However,
if any further evidence was actually needed, their recent proposals to
the United Nations draft agreement for reform make crystal clear that
nuclear control is only for others. They have no intention of
disarming, or reducing the nuclear stockpile, but everyone else should.
And it is imperative that no additional countries gain nuclear weapon
capability. The capability and right to obliterate mankind should rest
entirely with the White House. The rest of the world be damned.
American
soldiers have dropped depleted uranium (DU) on enemy combatants since
1991. It is lethal, it is horrid, and even though it doesn’t have the
bluster and showmanship of a mushroom cloud, it is still a nuclear
bomb. It is one of the ironies of history: the United States went to
war against Iraq in 2003 on the basis that Iraq was full of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) but finally they were forced to admit they were
wrong and just couldn’t find those weapons. So the US has deployed its
own WMDs in Iraq, in the form of the DU cluster bombs.
The
United States has a long history of manufacturing, storing, selling and
deploying WMD. As far back as the Second World War, there is clear
evidence of use by the United States of several chemicals which meet
the current U.S. definition of WMD. Still, most of us who point fingers
at the Americans are most familiar with their exploits in Vietnam.
Agent Orange and napalm are the best known WMDs used in Vietnam
although the Americans also deployed Agents White, Blue, Purple, Pink
and Green.
These
products are actually herbicides, developed during the 1940s, and were
used in Vietnam as defoliants to strip away the grasses and trees in
order to deny the enemy hiding places. Most of these products are known
carcinogens and their extensive use in Vietnam compromised the health
of many who came in contact with them, including American forces; and
they were used in far greater concentrations than would be usual.
:: Article nr. 16070 sent on 24-sep-2005 02:50 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=16070
:: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.
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