GORDON DUFF: THE SPEECH WE DID NOT HEAR

HAS AMERICA FORGOTTEN PEACE?

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

Last night, I listened to our President tell me that it will take years to withdraw from Afghanistan. He, out of political necessity told a series of lies.  He lies by omission, failing to tell people that this war, our “good war” was, when the facts are examined, a farce.

There has not been a credible wor d from Osama bin Laden since December, 2001, when his death was announced in the Islamic press.  What other reason did we have to occupy Afghanistan and lead it into total ruin?

The President lies because he has been lied to.

He presented solutions, solutions sending troops into harms way, troops meant to build a government and country that force of arms can only destroy.

Years of propaganda and war mongering has made it impossible for any honest dialog about war.  Years of lying, lying for politics, lying for profit, lying in support of treasonous foreign interests has left us with nothing to build on.  No honest voice is left, just screaming liars paid by thieves claiming to represent the right or the left.

Neither really exist.  If it talks, if it squawks, it is paid off by someone and is probably lying.  Our government has their own business, getting elected, taking care of rich constituents and making sure war profiteers keep raking it in.

Without a voice of opposition from the people, as there is certainly no opposition in Washington, especially since the GOP is tied to the apron strings of the insurance industry and big oil and has no time for simple people, there will be no voice to scream “STOP.”

Yes, support the troops.  Bring them home to their families, let the villagers in Afghanistan continue whatever they have been doing for 300 years and stay out of it.  We have managed to build a massive economy around playing at war.  How many lobbyists does it require to hold a village in Afghanistan?

How many Predator drones does it require to find a bed for a homeless veteran?

How many mercenaries does it take to teach an amputee how to walk?

How many intelligence analysts does it take to figure out that  if you keep doing the same thing over and over and it doesn’t work, but you keep doing the same thing anyway, it is a sign you are nuts?

How long is it going to take us to realize that NOBODY is on our side.  We think we are the new Roman empire, the policeman of the world.  America isn’t Caesar’s Rome, not even the Rome of Augustus.  We are the Rome of Nero and Caligula, a society steeped in corruption, excess and debauchery.  How many Americans think of Washington DC as a center of culture and stability?

Does anyone even think America has a policy or government?  Are we a country or simply a group of people ruled by a government owned and operated by special interest groups who dip into our treasury at will, send our kids off to war for amusement serve the agendas of “flavor of the month” allies, often brutal dictatorships disguised as enlightened democracies.

Over 40 years ago, America began to awaken to the fact that the war in Vietnam was a senseless slaughter having nothing to do with American values or security.  President Obama is the 3rd president in my lifetime elected based on his promise to end a war.

In 1952, Eisenhower promised peace in Korea.  We still have troops there nearly 6 decades later and wait daily for war to break out again.

In 1968, Nixon promised a “secret plan” to end the war in Vietnam.  His plan, fight for 4 more years, killing 20,000 more Americans, then abandon most of our POWs and give Vietnam to the communists.

Tonite we hear another secret plan to end a war.  Will we hear the truth?  Not hardly!

“8 years ago we invaded Afghanistan and a short time later, Iraq, to punish a small group of murderers that killed 3000 Americans.  As time has gone on, we now know that much of what we believed about those attacks is false.  Evidence now points, not only to terror groups, but to countries we thought to be friends and there is even evidence of complicity here at home.

After years of phony intelligence, propaganda campaigns and torturing false confessions out of detainees, nothing can be trusted.

Donald Rumsfeld tells it best.  He went before the 9/11 Commission (see Addendum below) stating there was never any indication that terror attacks of the kind seen on 9/11 were possible nor did he receive any warning.  We now know that nearly every word he and so many others told that commission were lies, unquestionable, proven and done with remorseless cynicism.

8 years, the illegal invasion of Iraq, the engineering of an economic collapse in America, the corruption of our laws, of our national honor and our moral standing make it impossible for me to continue the war in Afghanistan.

No more Americans will die because of the criminality of a few.  Are the few foreign terrorists or Americans, politicians, lobbyists, industrialist, bankers and their good friends overseas in Saudi Arabia or maybe Israel.

How can we order the deaths of thousands of Americans when the real “evil doers” at home run free?  We know their names, we know their crimes.  How can we bring justice and democracy to others when we, ourselves, have none?

Nearly 10,000 Americans are dead, tens of thousands wounded and trillions of dollars are missing.  There is much more proof that these deaths and this massive theft was caused by a domestic conspiracy than any foreign intrigue.

First, we clean our own home, then we carry democracy to others.”

Will we hear this tonite?

ADDENDUM

EXERPTS FROM THE SWORN TESTIMONY OF DONALD RUMSFELD BEFORE THE 9/11 COMMISSION

Ben Veneste: Well, it is correct that the United States intelligence community had a great deal of intelligence suggesting that the terrorists, back since 1994, had plans, discussed plans, to use airplanes as weapons, loaded with fuel, loaded with bombs, loaded with explosives.

There were plans in ’97 using a UAV. In ’98, an Al Qaida- connected group talked about flying a commercial plane into the World Trade Center. In ’98, there was a plot broken up by Turkish intelligence involving the use of a plane as a weapon.

In ’99, there was a plot involving exploding a plane at an airport. Also in ’99, there was a plot regarding an explosive-laden hang-glider. In ’99 or in 2000, there was a plot regarding hijacking a 747. And in August of 2001, there was information received by our intelligence community regarding flying a plane into the Nairobi embassy, our Nairobi embassy.

And so I suggest that when you have this threat spike in the summer of 2001 that said something huge was going to happen and the FAA circulates, as you mentioned, a warning which does nothing to alert people on the ground to the potential threat of jihadist hijacking, which only, it seems to me, despite the fact that they read into the congressional record the potential for a hijacking threat in the United States, in the summer of 2001, it never gets to any actionable level.

Nobody at the airports is alerted to any particular threat. Nobody flying the planes takes action of a defensive posture.

I understand that going after Al Qaida overseas is one thing. But protecting the United States is another thing. And it seems to me that a statement that we could not conceive of such a thing happening really does not reflect the state of our intelligence community as of 2001, sir.

RUMSFELD: A couple of comments. I quite agree with you, there were a number of reports about potential hijacking. I even remember comments about UAVs. I even have seen things about private aircraft hitting something. But I do not recall ever seeing anything in the period since I came back to government about the idea of taking a commercial airliner and using it as a missile. I just don’t recall seeing it. And maybe you do, Dick?

(Editors note: Can anyone see where a charge of perjury might apply here?)

MYERS: No, I do not.

(Editors note: And here?)

BEN-VENISTE: Well, the fact is that our staff has — and the joint inquiry before us, I must say — has come up with eight or 10 examples which are well-known in the intelligence community. My goodness, there was an example of an individual who flew a small plane and landed right next to the White House.

RUMSFELD: I remember…. And a civilian aircraft was a law enforcement matter to be handled by law enforcement authorities and aviation authorities.

(Editors note: Is Secretary Rumsfeld saying that an airliner hijacked by terrorists is a problem for local police? Do they have F16s?)

GORELICK: So now I would like to talk about the aspects that were in your control. When the 1996 Olympics were being planned about what do we do when an aircraft is being hijacked and is flying into a stadium at the Olympics? What is the military’s response? What is it’s role?

And it has always been my assumption that even though, yes, you were looking out, that you have a responsibility to protect our airspace.

So my question is: In this summer of threat, what did you do to protect, let’s just say the Pentagon, from attack? Where were our aircraft when a missile is heading toward the Pentagon? Surely that is within the Pentagon’s responsibility to protect — force protection, to protect our facilities, to protect something — our headquarters, the Pentagon. Is there anything that we did at the Pentagon to prevent that harm in the spring and summer of ’01?

RUMSFELD: First let me respond as to what the responsibility of the Department of Defense has been with a hijacking. As I said, it was a law enforcement issue. And the Department of Defense has had various understandings with FAA whereby when someone squawks “hijack,” they have an arrangement with the Department of Defense that the military would send an airplane up and monitor the flight, but certainly in a hijack situation, did not have authority to shoot down a plane that was being hijacked.

The purpose of a hijack is to take the plane from one place to another place where it wasn’t intended to be going, not to fly it into buildings.

(Editors note: Is this more perjury? Why had Secretary Rumsfeld ordered war games to protect against hijacked planes crashing into buildings, war games held on 9/11 by coincidence if one single statement in this answer is correct?)

GORELICK: Was it your understanding that the NORAD pilots who were circling over Washington D.C. that morning had indeed received a shoot-down order?

RUMSFELD: When I arrived in the command centre, one of the first things I heard, was that the order had been given and that the pilots — correction, not the pilots necessarily, but the command had been given the instructions that their pilots could, in fact, use their weapons to shoot down a commercial airliners filled with our people in the event that the aircraft appeared to be behaving in a threatening way and an unresponsive way.

(Editors note: If crashing planes into the World Trade Center isn’t threatening or “unresponsive,” what is?)

GORELICK: Now, you make a distinction there between the command and the pilots. Was it your understanding that the pilots had received that order?

MYERS: General Eberhart,told the staff, what he told me, as I recall, was that the pilots did — at the appropriate point when the authority to engage civilian airliners was given, that the pilots knew that fairly quickly. I mean, it went down through the chain of command.

(Editors note: Did anyone understand this?)

RUMSFELD: It was on a threat conference call that it was given, and everybody heard it simultaneously. The question then would be — the reason I am hesitant is because we went through two or three iterations of the rules of engagement. And in the end, we ended up delegating that authority to, at the lowest level, I believe, to two stars.

(Editors note: I wonder how long that took? What is an “iteration” of a rule of engagement? Did we need 3 of them? Thousands were dying while Rumsfeld and Myer were “iterating” over and over.)

MYERS: Right.

(Editors note: No matter how stupid something is, you can find a 4 star general in the Pentagon to salute it.)

RUMSFELD: And the pilot would then describe the situation to that level. To the extent that level had time, they would come up to General Eberhart. To the extent Eberhart had time, he would come up to me. And to the extent I had time, I might talk to the president, which in fact, I did do on several occasions during the remainder of the day with respect to international flights heading to this country that were squawking “hijack.”

(Editors note: Does an analogy involving horses, barns and doors apply here?)

GORELICK: I’m just trying to understand whether it is your understanding that the NORAD pilots themselves, who were circling over Washington, as you referred to in your statement, whether they knew that they had authority to shoot down a plane

RUMSFELD: I do not know what they thought. In fact, I haven’t talked to any of the pilots that were up there.

(Editor: Finally, something we can believe.)

This is the official sworn testimony of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman, General Myers. With all the conspiracy theories, with all the finger pointing, why not just start with the real record itself.

VT Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on political and social issues.

Gordon Duff

Gordon Duff posted articles on VT from 2008 to 2022. He is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War. A disabled veteran, he worked on veterans and POW issues for decades.

Gordon is an accredited diplomat and is generally accepted as one of the top global intelligence specialists. He manages the world’s largest private intelligence organization and regularly consults with governments challenged by security issues.

Duff has traveled extensively, is published around the world, and is a regular guest on TV and radio in more than “several” countries. He is also a trained chef, wine enthusiast, avid motorcyclist, and gunsmith specializing in historical weapons and restoration. Business experience and interests are in energy and defense technology.

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