You're Being Lied To

In the Presidential debate this evening, John Kerry paraphrased this quote from Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies:

"Having been attacked by al-Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor."

Ouch! It seems to me that the Bush Administration continues to be less than candid about its actions leading up to the war on Iraq. I think a lot of people need to be reminded that Bush and his cronies didn't say they thought Saddam Hussein had WMD, rather they said that they had "irrefutable evidence" that he did—and that they knew right were to find them. I wonder why the Kerry-Edwards campaign isn't showing those sound bytes in their campaign ads, since I'm sure Michael Moore has a few of them on hand. On top of the lies about WMD (or lack thereof), the Bush Administration has continued to dishonestly link the invasion of Iraq with the so-called "War on Terror". I can't believe that more people aren't aware that the biggest piece of so-called evidence that the Bush Administration employed in order to link Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda was a complete sham. In mentioning that they had evidence that al-Qaeda was operating in Iraq, they usually (but not always) failed to mention that the areas that it was operating in were the autonomous Kurdish regions that were not under the control of Saddam Hussein. So even though al-Qaeda was technically "in Iraq", it had nothing to do with Saddam Hussein - and this is based on the information that the Bush Administration put forward. This, quite simply, was a gross misportrayal of information in order to convince the American people that al-Qaeda had ties to Saddam Hussein. This was a willful and devious distortion of the facts in order to mislead. In short, it was pure propaganda. The scary part about this isn't that they're lying to us, since all governments lie, but how easily they're duping large portions of the American public. America was founded on the belief that citizens should be critical of their government, especially when it's a strong Federal government. These days, however, "patriotism" in the minds of a lot of people just means waving the flag and going along with the government regardless of how ill-conceived their policies might be. Unfortunately, ever since the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, the performance of the American press has bordered on dereliction of duty. As someone once said, the best type of censorship is being afraid to speak the truth. It seems that the networks clearly realize that their ratings stay higher if they just play softball with the Bush Administration, since doing otherwise would seem un-patriotic to many Americans—and ratings is what it's all about. It's no longer about being critical and investigating the truth in order to enable the citizens of the republic to make informed political decisions. If this was the case, the Bush Administration would be in big trouble. Actually, the truth is already out there for anyone who is willing to do a little bit of reading and research. Indeed, the arguments of the Bush Admistration are so vacuous and their propaganda so shoddy, I really can't see how a reasonably intelligent person who takes a bit of time to investigate the facts and analyze the situation can't see through the smoke screen. I'm starting to conclude that many people out there just don't want to see. Many, if not most, of them seem to think that they're getting a semblance of the truth by watching FoxNews or CNN. Believe me, if you think the corporate news networks are telling you what's really going on, then you really don't know what's going on. A typical response that I receive after explaining the above incongruencies to people is, “So you support Saddam Hussein?” or “So you agree with al-Qaeda?” What a bunch of morons. Sorry, but I don’t know any other way to put it.

Remember this on Election Day: "If voting really changed anything, they'd make it illegal."