Secretary of State Hillary Clinton played the usual appeal to fear card in trying to bolster public support for the Afghan War, even as polls show the American public overwhelmingly opposed to continuing the occupation, already in its tenth year. Her comments urged Americans to see the war as “protecting their families.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had a somewhat more frank piece of advice for Americans – the government really doesn’t care what you think and isn’t going to end the war no matter how unpopular it gets.
Gates insisted that the government was more interested in the “long-term” implications of the war than its massive unpopularity. He didn’t indicate how long “long-term” was, but it clearly must have been well more than the 9+ years the US has already been occupying Afghanistan.
In that regard, it seems Gates is continuing the Bush Administration’s rhetoric, that massive unpopularity really doesn’t matter when the ruling class has decided that a bad war is going to continue, and that critics of administration policy must inevitably be drown out by the enormous echo chamber of officials who see an endless, failing war as politically expedient.
There you go, the oligarch has spoken.
Military dictatorship explained by Gates, a Bush carryover. It's been a military dictatorship since 2000, the bloodless coup engineered in Florida with the counting of the absentee military ballots, cast after election day and the selection of Bush as President by 1 vote by the SCOTUS.
You are correct.
If anyone had any remaining doubts that we are now living in a dictatorship, this should put them to rest.
Our imperial rulers don't care what the people paying the bills think…wow what a surprise. The sun total of human happiness will be increased when America falls.
At least he is honest about it unlike the woman in charge of a gang of thieves over at SD.
The most beautiful photograph I have ever seen is the one showing Mussolini, his mistress and three of his thugs hanging upside down dead.
Only happened because the US of A liberated Italy.
Like it "liberated" Iraq and Afghanistan. Stalin by his heels would have been more just. Piss on Eli Roth.
And then our CIA collaborated with right-wing mafia and terrorist groups to use bombs on the Italian public during almost 50 years. By using compliant "media" to blame those attacks on "leftists", "we" got compliant governments that did our bidding. The Italians ended up with a totally corrupt "democracy" ruled by mafia corruption that today is a laboratory for developing the kind of corporate controlled police state that is also evolving in the US. Mussolini's "ideology" conquers both countries?
Parallel History Project
Swiss Federal Institute for Technology
Secret Warfare : Operation Gladio http://php.isn.ethz.ch/collections/colltopic.cfm?…
Introduction by Daniele Ganser
Table of Contents
Synopsis
Chronology
Bibliography
About the Author
Book Launch of "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe" by Daniele Ganser
Terrorism in Western Europe ( English 162 KB ) by Daniele Ganser
International Conference on 'Intelligence in Waging the Cold War', Oslo, 29-30 April 2005
Ganser, Daniele (2005): Gli eserciti segreti della NATO. Operazione Gladio e terrorismo in Europa occidentale. Novità: Fazi Editore.
Media Desk
Endorsements
On the Authenticity of FM 30-31B, in: Daniele Ganser: 'The CIA in Western Europe and the Abuse of Human Rights', pp. 775-7 ( English 144 KB )
Funny Heathcliff, Gates statement combined with these FEMA camps made me think…….. It would be great if they started rounding US up….. because that is where THEY would end up….!!. Adorning a light pole……….
I've seen that picture of Mussolini and its dreadful. What did the woman do to deserve that – and who knows what was done to her before that? Who decided she deserved her fate? No one. It is classic ugly blind mob justice. That is NOT what I want to see here. NO ONE deserves that end, and finally it serves nothing but to create someone's new martyr.
I want REAL justice done to these criminals as well as those who started this atrocity. They all equally deserve the docket and whatever comes from it. I sincerely doubt that would be freedom.
The idea of killing the family and all close associates of tyrants is a time honored tradition of making sure the entire nest of vermin is wiped out. Plus it sends a strong message to future nests of vermin.
Well, amongst some groups anyway. Seems to be "standard practice" enshrined by God himself amongst the "god's chosen people" fanatics.
Bronze age "ideology" that has no place in the modern world. We do NOT need more racist, totalitarian tribalism in the world. Better to stick to the principles of American democracy: "all men are created equal and have equal rights" plus "innocent until proven guilty" plus "trial by a jury of peers". The latter to preclude the corruption that ALWAYS results from giving corrupt elites the power to "decide" what is "kosher".
Isn't that what Hitler was trying to do?
"U.S. can't let public opinion sway" … no, but national bankruptcy certainly will.
The separation of "U.S." from the "public" denotes much about the attitude of Uncle Sam. Another 'Marie Antoinette' moment from the Ruling Class.
It is strange that these "Public Officials" can't see themselves.
They are like pirates filling their pockets with gold before being dumped overboard to sink with their loot.
It is suicidal and they are carrying all of us down with them.
I'm glad to see the people of this country expressing their disdain for their government, but when is all the talk going to produce direct action? When is the 'dumping' going to take place, and who will do it? I'm concerned that the American people don't have the stomach for a true revolution, the kind that produces real, permanent change. The best politician we have, Ron Paul, has basically called for just that already: do we have the guts to follow him?
Actually, the best politician we have is Dennis Kucinich. The MSM knows that, and that is why they completely censored him during the Democratic Presidential Primaries, and still do to this day. He called for creating a Department of Peace.
The fact that they do consider it politically expedient shows how stupid and anti-libertarian republican institutions actually are. Screw the Constitution and the tyranny for which it stands.
Why does incompetence in America always have to take on such heroic proportions? Is it not enough to simply fail? Does some status accrue to those who fail as no others have before them? Has Secretary Gates devolved upon the Viet Nam War as the threshold he must equal or exceed in wasted lives and resources. How many lost or ruined lives are enough for this man? Or are the opinions of the lost and ruined also irrelevant to Secretary Gates?
Accuracy in telling lies is not the same as telling the truth. Gates is saying that democracy is irrelevant and utterly powerless. The National Security apparatus runs the country not the voters and their (generally) mis-elected representatives. If the voters can't be swayed by the flood of propaganda then their votes/opinions be damned. We're the adults here and what we say goes. FU American public!
Right! And if you don't like it and actually try to do something about it, they will label you as a traitor and possibly a domestic terrorist.
Now they are trying to revive the WW I unconstitutional Espionage Act which made it illegal to criticize the government. One politician back then protested the law and was convicted and given a sentence of ten year, simply for reciting the First Amendment.
The Afghanis don't want the Pentagon there, the US public doesn't want the Pentagon there but Russia and China and bin Laden want us stuck there. They all three know this is bleeding us dry and bankrupting the US war machine. The fact that Gates can't figure this out is hilarious. But then, he won't read the Wikileaks cables nor let anyone in the military read them. So they can't read the writing on the wall.
Leave Osama Bin Laden alone–he was a CIA operative and had NOTHING to do with 9/II and he is long time DEAD
Osama's death was reported in the NY Times, July 11, 2002. Google it. The article is still there.
US defense contractors and drug lords want us there.
Our bankruptcy will end our foolishness, and of course the poor and middle will suffer most, as they have also supplied 99% of the soldiers for these illegal wars.
The words of our founders fall on deaf ears in Washington.
Gates: "You do not live in a democracy"
True. We live in a plutocratic, kleptocratic fascist oligarchy. While the MSM is now produced by the same producers of studio wrestling! It's all fake, you know. The MSM, not studio wrestling. Those wrestlers are actually performing those stunts in the ring. While the MSM continues to report there is an actual difference between the Republican Party and the Blue Dog DINOs who have hijacked the Democratic Party, and that President Obama is a Democrat when he is actually a one term Republican Trojan Horse president.
Please … instead of saying that Gates is continuing Bush Administration rhetoric, please acknowledge that this is the Obama Administration rhetoric. Heck, its been 2 years, sooner or later this stops being Bush's wars and they become Obama's wars. If Obama put the man there, and if the man serves only at the pleasure of the President, then surely this is Obama's rhetoric.
It's the same rhetoric. So it is the Plutocratic Administration's rhetoric regardless of who is president.
I hate Obama, not because he is different than George Bush, but because he is not different than George Bush.
The real question seems to be, can the president stop the war, or is Gates in charge…??
I think the answer is that not a one of them wants to stop this occupation. These boys have their Grand Strategy and are looking for resources the way people used to search for gold.
They all knew they were lying when they started pouring troups into a desert and sent drones to slaughter people; they were lying then and they are lying now.
They consider US citizens as "the public," that has no say and no importance.
Gates is Obama's boy, Geithner and Summers are Obama's boys, the entire stinking crowd are his boys now. Of course he may be the CIA's boy.
So they have the arrogance to tell us to put that in our pipes and smoke it!
i second the answer…the "US" (shadow) gov't admitted way back during bush and co. that the pentagon would use propaganda Against the American People for this war of terror……So, what gates is really saying is this: they control reality and We the People should just pound salt with our "alternate" view of the "reality" they created….some S#it, huh?…and they think they can get away with lying to US forever… that'd be funny if it didnt piss me off so much.
Peace, in-spite of all the liars who would have it otherwise.
WOW.
Obama is not in fact in charge. Nobody is. Our government , or perhaps I should say our entire society has become a kind of self-perpetuating system, a train-wreck without a driver heading towards catastrophe but will not permit anybody, even the 'public' to take over the wheel to try to avert the coming disaster because entrenched powerful private interests cannot allow it. The coming disaster of 'Global warming' is very real and yet we are not allowed to pass even palliative measures to avert it. We are paralyzed in a state of war that is actually a state of inaction. Wars are now fought to prevent us from doing anything about anything.
Bin laden must be laughing at what has happened to the USA since 9/11. Our economy is on the skids, the world regards us as the evil empire and, as Gates has demonstrated, we have lost our democracy.
Well, one of the other things Bin Laden predicted is that "our" response would lead to increasingly secret government and abuse of the "home population" to keep the empire going.
As for secret government, in thinking about Wikileaks and the response of "our" government, as "we" become ever more secretive, the attempts at further restriction of knowledge will also lead to increasing ineffectiveness and paralysis of the "machine".
This is clearly a government for the people…of the Military Industrial and Financial Complexes
Time to bring democracy to the US.
since when have the citizens of this country become subjects? it goes without saying that the mere action of another corporate military fascist pig like gates proves the u.s. gov't is completely and absolutely illegitmate as it does not recognize the will of the people. the dems and repubs have been doing and saying the same thing for years and the sheeple of this country expect them to do something!? revolt now.
I suppose it is part of the America's fate to go to the bitter end. Its leaders do not want to recognize the obvious thing: it has lost world preeminence, and now it is downhill. They should have studied and paid more attention to the case of Athens and how Athenian arrogance lost them. Or Britain's fall. Or the Soviet Union's. American exceptionalism has blinded them and still is. If things worsen in the Middle East, the US could even lose at least one of its armies there. If that were to happen, what would be the economic, social, political and psychological blow to the US? Their stubborness is in the end probably the best thing for the world because that way an evil force will end more quickly.
Well, it was only a century ago that the pound sterling was still the world's reserve currency, so these things can end rapidly.
Otherwise, the Brits eventually decided that they valued democracy more than empire and were able to make a relatively good retirement from the military empire business. Will we Americans be equally wise? Or have the "propaganda control methods" now evolved to the state that such a decision is effectively impossible?
With a weak progressive caucus that votes for war funding, a president too cowardly to ever do the right thing, and a public too attached to their TVs, computers and I-phones to give a damn–where's the surprise that the warmongers and profiteers aren't afraid of public opinion?
Mr. Gates, we know, we know, we know. Public opinion has never deterred the US from carrying its rapacious wars of expansionism. Public opinion means nothing to you guys. And if people oppose it to much, the answer is more violence. If your citizens oppose it, you jail them. If the international community opposes you, you either boycott or invade them. We all know that you ain't gonna let a little thing like public opinion get in the way of your warmongering.
Perhaps Americans should pay a little bit more attention to their own classics:
http://www.myspace.com/peteseegerofficial/music/s…
I'm pleased that Mr Gates has clarified things for the American Public. They, the voters, just don't count in the scheme of things. Then they never did!
If I was an American, I'd take exception to his dismissive behaviour. In fact, I'd be angry. Very angry. I might even be tempted to take actions which demonstrate my anger.
I'm wondering just how I could could demonstrate that I was angry. Gee, there are lots of things I could do when I think about it. Hmmmmm.
http://www.dangerouscreation.com
If all volunteer soldiers laid down their arms simultaneously, the war would be over – period.
We are all given choices. If we choose to join the military, for what ever reason, and than become aware that I am used by the leadership as a tool for aggression, I have to make a choice to either blindly continue in the aggression or refuse on moral and ethical grounds. To throw once weapon down in protest is not uncommon in history or even morally wrong but a duty to a higher call, to once conscience that differentiate us from a lower life form, unless you have been taught to be one what the powers-that-be wanted – mission accomplished.
When will we turn our 'swords' into 'ploughshares'? When profiteers of wars are exposed for who and what they are! Story and video: http://tinyurl.com/28k8zvw