Michael Rivero
An Age Of Lies
Sat Jul 19 15:29:15 2003
208.152.73.53

An Age Of Lies
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http://www.rense.com/general39/ageoflies.htm

Exclusive
By Michael Rivero
wrh@whatreallyhappened.com
7-14-3

The latest joke making the rounds on the internet is that truth has
become so valuable that the government has embarked on a conservation
program.

Lying is something we normally take very seriously. Certainly we
ourselves are exhorted by schools and clergy to always be truthful. We
demand truthfulness of those around us and those we employ, and while we
may wink tolerantly at the "white" lie, most of us realize that society
as a whole cannot function smoothly without a certain assurance of
honesty. We therefore punish children who lie. We fire employees who
lie. We choose to not associate with, listen to, or trust people who
lie. We are most demanding for the truth in the matter of commerce. We
demand that products and services we spend our hard-earned money on
function exactly as promised by the salesperson. We generally tolerate
nothing less.

For most Americans, government is the single largest expense in our
lives. Combined taxes and fees for all levels of government devour
roughly half of all that we ever earn. Most Americans spend more money
on the government than on their homes. Yet for this particular "product"
and these particular "salespeople", we the consumers seem strangely
reluctant to demand the same honesty we expect of, for example, the
people we buy our cars from. Somehow, We The People have been lured into
accepting a double standard; that the government which takes so much of
our money is exempt from the normal requirement for truth upon which at
least in part our civilization is built.

I don't know where this acceptance of lies by the government came from.
It is certainly not in the Constitution of the United States. The
Constitution lays out exactly what the government is allowed to do. The
Tenth Amendment makes it very clear that the government may not assume a
right or power. If something isn't in the Constitution, then the
government may not legally do it. Now, I've read the Constitution, many
times. Nowhere in that document is the government explicitly given the
right and power to lie to the people. It isn't in there. That means that
when a government official does lie, he or she is acting
unconstitutionally and exceeding the legal limits of their office. When
a government official, ANY official, lies, they cease to be legally a
part of the government of the United States. And just as the
Constitution does not authorize the government to lie to the people, the
Constitution does not bind the people to accept ay lies by the
government, or to follow any dictates by the government built on that
lie. In short, the Constitution mirrors the values of the society. Truth
is required of the government. Nothing less will serve.

While we have all grown up more or less used to the idea that
politicians lie to us, never before in US history have the lies been as
bold, in-our-faces, arrogant, or unrepentant. The American people can no
longer pretend that lying politicians are just a joke. It is real. The
government has been caught lying to us, and lying to us on a matter of
utmost seriousness, a war of conquest.

Those who would defend the liars when they are caught lying usually
resort to one of three arguments. The first is that we must assume that
the lie is for our own good. This is nonsense. If it is for our own good
then tell us the truth and we will likely agree with anything that is
for our own good. The use of a lie by a government official is an open
admission a priori that the official is up to something the people would
NOT agree with, such as spending our tax money for things that benefit
the official but not the people.

The second argument used by those trying to defend the liars is that so
many others have lied who were not caught and punished that it would "be
unfair" to single out the one who was caught lying. But do we stop
arresting muggers because of all the muggers who were never caught? Or
do we catch and punish those that we can to deter others from a life of
crime?

The third argument used by those who defend the liars is to claim that
it was "only one lie" and to consider all the times the official told
the truth. But again, do we free the murderer for all those whom he or
she did not kill, or do we jail the murderer for the one victim that
died?

A lot of people, afraid of the government, found comfort in the illusion
that government lies happened long ago, or far away, or somehow didn't
really impact them and therefore require no response. No more. The
present morass of lies regarding the wars in the Mideast touches us all,
impoverishes us all, and has brought death to many Americans who would
otherwise be alive today.

Current headlines surround the claim made in George Bush's State of the
Union Speech that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger. CIA
Director George Tenet has fallen on his sword for the President, but
only for not trying hard enough to remove the claim from the speech.
Left unexplained is just how the claim was put into Bush's speech in the
first place, and why if the CIA did in fact remove the claim from a
previous Bush speech in October of 2002, the White House felt justified
in using the same claim again three months later. The claim that Iraq
was trying to buy uranium from Niger was based solely on documents since
revealed to be forgeries, and clumsy ones at that, laundered through
Italy and Great Britain before arriving at the US. Iraq hardly needs to
buy uranium ore from Niger, having naturally occurring uranium mines of
its own. This claim was not only a lie, it was an obvious one.

But while the present focus is on this one lie, the fact is that most,
indeed maybe ALL, of the claims made to justify the invasion and
conquest of Iraq have failed to withstand close scrutiny. Prudence
demands that we not forget these other examples of mendacity, because
the war in Iraq was not built on just one lie, but on a great many lies,
deceptions, and falsehoods.

Let us be clear, there were no weapons of mass destruction found in
Iraq. Many Americans may not be aware of that fact because of a little
game the US mainstream media played, in which suspected WMDs were given
constant play throughout the day, with the retraction and admission of a
benign explanation issued late at night when few people would see it.
The swindle worked like this. All day long barrels of white powder
"suspected" of being chemicals used for biological weapons would be the
lead story on all the news shows. Then late at night, there would be a
single report on how the barrels turned out to be pesticide. The media
could claim to have reported the facts truthfully, yet most viewers were
left with the impression that weapons of mass destruction had indeed
been found in Iraq, thereby justifying the war.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this media spin involved the
trailers claimed by Colin Powell to be mobile biological weapons labs in
photos shown to the United Nations. When the actual trailers were
captured by US Forces, photos, captioned as suspected mobile biological
weapons labs, were omnipresent on the network news and major newspapers.
When experts studying the photos pointed out that the trailers lacked
essential components needed to be biological weapons labs, the Bush
administration then claimed that the trailers were used in conjunction
with other, not-yet-discovered trailers, to form the weapons labs. This
too was given a great deal of play on the networks and major newspapers.
But when the trailers were positively identified as part of a weather
balloon system sold to Iraq by Great Britain, the network news barely
noticed!

A major portion of the case for invading Iraq were the two "Dossiers"
provide by Great Britain. The second Dossier, and more recently the
first, have both been revealed to have been assembled from material
collected from the internet, including a plagiarized student paper based
on 12 year old data! The revisions history contained in the original
Word Document of the second Dossier confirms that it was being edited
and revised by Tony Blair's staff.

Why was Blair's staff writing their own dossier from 12 year old
material? Because the intelligence Blair was getting from British
Intelligence, just like the intelligence that Bush was getting from the
CIA, did not support the need for immediate war. Blair went back to 12
year old data, and so did Rumsfeld, because there was no current data
that supported the claim that Iraq posed a threat to the United States
of America.

That claim, that Iraq posed any kind of threat to the United States, is
also a lie. Iraq has never posed a threat to the United States, which is
why the United States had no problems PROVIDING weapons of mass
destruction to Iraq in the first place. Iraq had no missiles able to
reach across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. And even if it
had, Iraq would not have used them.

You see, the thing the US Government and the media is hoping you have
forgotten is that $5 trillion dollar "investment" your parents were
forced to make in nuclear weapons, and the silo-launched missiles,
nuclear subs, and bombers to deliver them anywhere on Earth. The promise
was that this horrific assemblage of monster weapons would deter an
attack.

That has to apply to Iraq. Saddam was many things, but he wasn't crazy,
and he had an ego of the huge size one finds in a head-of-state. He
wasn't going to attack the US when such an attack would destroy Iraq and
all those Iraqis Saddam expected to revere his memory after he was gone.
So, if the US nuclear deterrent works, then neither Saddam nor anyone
else is going to attack us. The cost is too high. If, on the other hand,
the nuclear deterrent does not work, then the taxpayers have all been
the victims of a $5 trillion dollar swindle by the US Government.

In fact, given the existence of the US Nuclear deterrent, it only makes
sense to attack the United States if the attacker plans to plant the
blame for the attack on an innocent nation, for the express purpose of
bringing down the military wrath of the US on that innocent nation.

Which brings us to those anthrax letters sent out just after 9-11.

For weeks after the anthrax letters appeared, the media focused on Arab
Muslims as the prime suspect, based on the letters included with the
anthrax, written to appear to be from semi-literate Arab Muslims. But
this too turned out to be a lie. The letters contained a strain of
Anthrax that traced back to a US Government laboratory! As of now, there
are only two real suspects in the anthrax letters case. One is Dr.
Stephen Hatfill, famed by constant TV reportage of his being a "person
of interest" to the FBI. The other suspect is Dr. Philip Zack, who was
caught by the security system entering the storage area where the
anthrax was kept, after being fired from his job.

The key point is that neither of these men are Arab, or Muslim.
Therefore, the letters enclosed with the anthrax, written to appear to
be from Arab Muslims, are incontrovertible proof of a plan to frame Arab
Muslims for terror attacks in the United States. Just how far that plan
to frame Arabs may reach is still unknown. But that it exists is beyond
doubt.

Lie after lie after lie. It's probably simpler to wonder what if
anything we have been told about Iraq is the truth. But now that the
government has been caught in multiple lies, only a fool and idiot would
assume that anything we have been told by the US Government or the media
is true. The burden of proof is not on We The People to prove the
government lies from this point on, the burden of proof is on the
government and media to prove that they are telling the truth.

The US Government lied to justify an invasion of Iraq and its oil
fields. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Had there been,
Saddam would have used them to save himself during the invasion. All the
lies about WMDs fail on this point, that at the time and place where
Saddam had everything to gain and nothing left to lose by employing such
weapons, he clearly had none to use.

Trust is a delicate thing. It can take decades to build and a single
careless moment to destroy. To judge by the current polls, the people of
the United States have lost all trust in the government. And that is a
fatal affliction for a government, because were a real emergency to
occur now, the government would be unable to lead the people who, wary
of being made fools of yet again, will not accept what the government
says at face value.

Just think what it means knowing that the government lies to you. Is
that tax really legal, or necessary? The government says so, but now you
know that this does not mean it is true. Maybe that tax you pay isn't
really legal at all. How do you know that a leader you liked really died
because of an accident, or a "crazed lone assassin"? You don't know it.
You cannot know it. Not when you live under a government and media that
lies, as this government and this media provably do.

Science fiction movies portray mind control as a zombie like state
involving drugs and flashing lights and lots of special effects. But in
truth all mind control means is controlling the brain by controlling
what it knows, by lying, by feeding the brain of the citizen only those
bits and pieces of information that would cause that brain to decide to
do what the government wants it to decide, and of its own supposed free
will. In a nation of total information control, one could be a slave and
not even realize it.

How did we get into this mess? Yes, because officials lie and the media
has abandoned their role to watch for lies. But in the end, WE THE
PEOPLE must share the blame for the degeneration of our government,
because we saw the lies and chose not to act. Because as long as We The
People tolerate lies in government, we will live under a government that
lies to us. But when we decide to have the courage to make the cost of a
single lie immediate expulsion from office, when we have the will to
make the cost of a lie outweigh its benefit by throwing the liars into
the streets in the most humiliating manner possible, then officials will
discover that truth is a virtue.

It's still our country. The government is our employee, and we have
caught our employee lying to us. What happens next is up to you.