War correspondent: Why a war zone in America is THE place to go

         Back in the day, I was always trying to fly off to report on international combat hot-spots like Iraq and Afghanistan -- always hoping that if the American people back home read my horror-stories of war, they too would somehow become war-resisters and that my stories of brutal, grim and unjustified death in far-away places might even help escalate a strong anti-war movement here at home, one that would finally stop the heartless killing of women and children by American tanks, rockets and drones.  But now?  Now I'm thinking that I should be doing something even more important than traveling to combat zones far away -- that I, like some modern-day Jonah, should actually be going down into the belly of the American beast itself instead.

     Plus it's always cheaper to go to North Carolina or Washington DC or St Louis than to fly off to Syria, Gaza, Haiti or Ukraine.

     The main question that I would be asking in these particular American war zones, however, would be, "What makes America tick?" 

     What has made us become the most dreaded and hated country in the world -- a country that has more weapons and more money to spend on weapons than any other country anywhere, ever?  What gives us the right to call ourselves "patriotic" and "brave" and "democratic" when, in reality, it is America that has killed, maimed, tortured and mutilated millions of people all over the world -- and trampled any survivors' chances and their children's chances of ever ever having a decent life again.

     Why do Americans support dictators in Ukraine, Palestine, Honduras, Congo, etc. with such enthusiastic glee?  And also why do Americans applaud so loudly when elections here at home are stolen and our infrastructure and school systems die and "Christianity" becomes just another excuse to kill, rape, torture and maim God's children both at home and abroad?  http://www.globalresearch.ca/iraqi-army-downs-two-british-planes-carrying-weapons-for-isil-terrorists/5433089

     And what makes Americans bitch and complain so much about what ISIS is doing in Iraq and Syria -- when what Americans have done there in the past and are doing there right now is so much much much worse?  ISIS fanatics behead hundreds of people.  American troops level whole cities and leave them contaminated with radioactive detritus that will kill children and other living things there for the next 500 years.

     Why do Americans fight so hard against trying to end climate change?  Why are Americans so set against preventing nuclear holocausts both at home and abroad?  Why do Americans cheer and get all teary-eyed and proud when our cops turn into robo-cops and spray peaceful protesters with tear gas?  And then actually buy tickets to go see women tortured?  http://womensenews.org/story/media-stories/150219/fifty-shades-grey-eroticizes-torture
 
     "What makes Americans tick?"  I need to know what is going on right here in America before I can possibly understand what the freak is going on in all those American-financed war zones throughout the rest of the world.

     So here's my plan.  I'm going to go out and see America first.  Ukraine and Gaza and Baghdad will just have to wait -- while I, like Jonah, go deep into the belly of the American beast instead.

     Despite all the nightmares I have seen in the last decades, I continue to be an idealist and to dream of a better world, a world that Buddha, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad would be proud of.  Most Americans, however, apparently dream of cruelty, torture, injustice and ruling the world vicariously. 

     We are the protagonists of our own dreams.

     Americans (and all other human beings too for that matter) need to finally learn that it is far better to die with love in our hearts than to live with hatred in our eyes, fear in our guts and evil in our souls.

PS:  A Manhattan jury just awarded a $218.5 million verdict against the Palestinian Authority for damages done to Israelis with American citizenship by Palestinian suicide bombers.  Do you know what this means?  A new precedence has just been set.  A new Pandora's box has just been opened.

      From now on, relatives of Americans killed in any foreign country, not just Israel, can also use American courts to get recompense for damages done by acts of "terrorism" on American citizens abroad!  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/24/nyregion/damages-awarded-in-terror-case-against-palestinian-groups.html?_r=0

     For instance, if any Chilean-Americans were killed in the CIA coup against Allende in Chile, their relatives can now sue Henry Kissinger in American courts -- but of course they will have to stand in line behind the relatives of any Cambodian-Americans killed by him.

    And what about the bunches and groups of Palestinian-Americans, Yemeni-Americans, Iraqi-Americans, Syrian-Americans, Ukrainian-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, Somali-Americans, Haitian-Americans, etc. who have been killed by American tanks, rockets and drones?

      America?  You can no longer pretend to not know what you are doing.  See ya in court!

PPS:  On March 11, 2015, I'll be going off to Portland, Oregon, to attend a convention -- and can start my exploration of American war (and peace) zones there.  http://www.leftcoastcrime.org/2015/

What would happen if the US became isolationist again?

     What would happen if we Americans suddenly decided to withdraw all of our troops currently scattered all over the world and to actually bring them back to within our own US borders where they belong?  What would happen if we actually closed down all of America's extensive and pricy (over one thousand and counting) military bases and black-site operations all around the globe?  We may never know.  "Why?" you might ask.  Because it is never gonna happen, that's why. 

      Despite all of the incredibly huge amounts of money, energy, pain and grief that all these bases and black-site operations are costing us American taxpayers daily right now, the subject of closing even a few of these bases and black-site operations (or at least to stop opening up new ones!) isn't even up for debate.

     There are so many other topics that we are happily debating in America right now -- but not this one. 

     Americans are currently debating such crap topics as how best to save rich people from having to pay taxes; whether cops should be allowed to kill minority and/or poor people at will; why torture is a good thing; how we can most easily give large corporations our life savings and pensions; whether or not our kids should get measles vaccines; and exactly how soon "we" can bomb the crap out of Russia.  But one of the most important subjects for debate in America today is not even on the menu right now.  http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/17416/wall_street_to_workers_give_us_your_retirement_savings_and_stop_asking_ques

     A raging debate on how to return America to its grand old isolationist tradition should be the major topic in every newspaper headline and TV news show in America right now.  But, sadly, it is not.

     And there are many other life-threatening topics for debate here in America that we should be discussing too (but are not) such as, "Is it really in our best interest to support chaos in the Middle East or be Israeli neo-colonialists' catspaws?"  Or whether corporations really are people, or "Why is election-malfeasance in America is still running amuck?"  Or if we really want to be committing climate-change suicide?  Or why America now has the same distribution of wealth between the upper classes and the rest of us that it had back in 1910 and that the difference in income between America's top 1% and the rest of us is further apart now than any other time in history including the Roman Empire, Charles Dickens' London and Marie Antoinette's France. 

     According to economist Thomas Piketty, "Income inequality has exploded in the United States." http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117429/capital-twenty-first-century-thomas-piketty-reviewed 

    And why the freak is America a member of NATO, the most war-mongering organization in the entire world outside of the US Department of "Defense"?  http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/02/15/More-than-4000-troops-will-be-deployed-to-Kuwait-possibly-to-fight-Islamic-State/2061424019948/#ixzz3Rpuk2BKH 

     And -- really?  Here's a headline that will warm all those Scrooge-like corporate hearts:  "Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown"  Social science is being militarized to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and non-violent protest movements.  http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/12/pentagon-mass-civil-breakdown  Should we not be discussing that too?

     And then there's that good old "New World Order" thingie popping up again, and it no longer even includes America on the list of those giving the New Orders -- because the global overlord dudes who are currently drawing up the list to re-order our world seem to have us Americans in mind only to play the minor roles of vassals and serfs.

     But none of these other topics are up for debate in America either.  http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/warren-display-backbone-threatens-career-democrat

     According to journalist Juan Cole, the top five favorite planks for the Republican party platform in 2016 are gonna be torture, war-mongering, bank corruption, tax evasion for the uber-rich and how best to steal elections.   http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27479-top-5-planks-of-gop-2016-platform-torture-war-bank-corruption-paid-for-elections  Why aren't we discussing that either? 

     Frankly, there seems to be no debate in America today on almost any topic that should be of primary concern to We the People who are paying for all this crap.  But I digress.  Let's get back on topic, the topic of closing over a thousand US military bases and black-site operations all across the globe.  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/sudans-president-claims-cia-and-mossad-stand-behind-isis-and-boko-haram-10051024.html

     Of course I myself am obviously an advocate for closing all U.S. bases and black-site operations on foreign soil and bringing all of our troops home where they belong.  So.  Let's debate.

    Debaters in favor of keeping America's foreign empire strong and all these bases and black-site operations open might come up with a list of arguments such as:

     1.  "They" will come here and terrorize us if we let down our guard.

     2.  We will then have little or no access to raw materials and natural resources.  Our economy will shrink.

     3.  We need the war industry because it produces jobs.  

     4.  We must bring freedom and democracy to the world and stop tyrannies.

These four points are all laughably easy to refute -- except for perhaps point number three.  Here are my counter-arguments: 

     1.  In the many decades since the end of WW II, America has systematically created more enemies than one can shake a stick at due to its brutal policy of foreign military interference abroad.  People all over the world used to love America.  But this is no longer true.  Obviously.  These foreign bases and black-site operations are not keeping America safe.  Just look at 9/11.  Just look at the Great Recession of 2008.  I rest my case.  http://friendsofsyria.co/2014/12/18/fox-news-cia-created-al-qaeda-and-taliban/

     2.  Hey, we can always get access to foreign natural resources by actually paying for them.  Now there's a unique idea.  It's called Capitalism!

     Right now, our military mainly serves the purpose of acting as thugs and extortionists for corporations, allowing corporations to go into foreign countries at will and steal their natural resources.  Our nation's finest young men and women are being forced to serve as mega-corporations' personal security forces and Mafia crews.  Hell, let these corporations pay for their own damn security thugs.  Why should we taxpayers do the job?  We are never the ones who make money off of this deal.  Au contraire.  We get to pay through the nose for it.

     Why should we American taxpayers keep paying out trillions of dollars so that the best and brightest of our young generation can die violent and lonely deaths and leave widows and orphans behind them -- in order to "Keep Corporations Strong"?  It's like Vietnam all over again.

     3.  Yes, the war industry does produce jobs.  But working for the Yankee Dollar is a high-risk employment, is morally repugnant and the benefits are few.  How about, instead, that we hire all those soldiers to work in the solar industry or to repair our shabby infrastructure?  Or train them to become doctors or teachers.  Just think of the money we'd save!

     4.  America doesn't bring democracy to the world.  "We" mostly bring dictators and ruffians and torturers and election fraud.  And "we" are currently supporting monsters like ISIS and those neo-Nazis in Ukraine.  It's all about the money.  The American dream has become a nightmare if you live overseas (and will probably become more of a nightmare here too if we continue to keep the same vampires and doofuses in charge).  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27529-focus-us-tv-provides-ample-platform-for-american-torturers-but-none-to-their-victims

     That's my argument and I'm sticking with it. 

     Hey, I may be wrong here about proposing that we immediately bring all of "our" weapons and troops home.  Or I may be right.  Who knows.  But shouldn't we at least be having this debate?  http://www.gp.org/about-the-green-party

ISIS:  The Children's Crusade

     I really hate to mention ISIS in the same breath with my beloved San Francisco Giants, but I will anyway -- if for no other reason than to point out the mind-boggling contrast between these two organizations.

     In preparation for this year's FanFest at AT&T Park, I was lucky enough to meet a few members of the Giants' ball team last week, including Xavier Lopez, Sergio Romo, two Brandons (Crawford and Belt) and Hunter Pence!  And got to high-five them all too!  I will never wash my right hand again!  Plus I actually got a chance to chat with Hunter Pence.  "If you show me your palm, I can predict if you will win the next World Series," I told him.

     "No, I'd rather not know for sure," replied Pence.  "That would take all the fun out of it."  And when I promised to use all my influence to get my pregnant daughter to name her new baby "Hunter" instead of Sofia, he gave me a big smile.  He was so nice!

     But when I also told him that my daughter would probably just stick with the name 'Sofia,' he looked so sweetly disappointed that I think I'd better talk to Ashley again.

     So what's my point here?  My point is that these amazing young Giants were good-hearted and friendly and open and sweet -- fame had not spoiled them.  They are the best athletes that America can produce -- and yet are still as sweet and innocent as the boy next door.

    Not so with ISIS -- even though, in all-too-many cases, ISIS members really are (or used to be) the innocent boys next door (if you live in London or Berlin or Paris that is).

     And in many respects, ISIS has also become like a new European Children's Crusade -- only instead of some greedy pope in the Middle Ages luring French, German and British kids to their deaths by filling their heads with promises and lies, ISIS' social media is the one now luring modern European kids to their deaths by filling their heads with promises and lies.  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/world/middleeast/isis-displaying-a-deft-command-of-varied-media.html?_r=0

     "Come to the Middle East and fight for your religion and ideals," touts ISIS's various thinly-disguised FaceBook pages.  "Be a hero of your time!"  And so off these poor gullible kids go, lured by their pied piper on Twitter, to also meet their deaths in the graveyard of the Middle East, fighting ghoulish battles for their handlers, NATO, Turkey, the US, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Israel -- whose leaders are neo-colonialists who don't give a flying damn if these kids survive or not.  All these War Street touts really want is to conquer the Middle East on the backs of these gullible youths' bodies and blood.  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/16/1330029/-Saudis-Lobbied-John-McCain-Lindsey-Graham-to-sell-War

     When the Muslim youth of Europe, who are children of Middle Eastern refugees themselves, see horror movies like "Shujayea:  Massacre at Dawn" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTr_Un4a_zA, and they know that US, NATO and Israeli neo-colonials are behind all this merciless slaughter, they just want to do something -- anything -- to protest.  And so they are vulnerable to joining ISIS.  But ISIS is not now and has never been a Muslim organization.  That would be like calling Hitler a good Christian because his swastika is in the form of a cross. 

     What to do?  Let's cut off the snake at its head and stop helping ISIS to recruit gullible youth through social media.  But how can we do that?  Cutting down on ISIS's growing social media presence would be a hecka lot easier if the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel simply stopped buying up ISIS's oil and thus flooding ISIS with millions of dollars to buy fabulous and alluring FaceBook graphics.  http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/syrian-army-regains-ground-rebels-south

     According to journalist Mohammad Kesserwani, "ISIS took hold of more than 11 oil fields in Syria and Iraq.  The group actually has ventured into extracting oil and transferring it by trucks to the black markets in Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq,...relying on reports unveiled by US media means quoting the administration in Washington as saying that ISIS was now making more than USD 3 million per day which makes the group the wealthiest terrorist organization in history."  http://www.ilfarosulmondo.it/how-is-isil-financed/ 

     All this slick and mendacious ISIS social media propaganda also reminds me of those dire hoodlums in Pinocchio who lured young boys to Pleasure Island so that they could turn them into donkeys.  And now the ISIS boys (and girls) also helplessly bleat, "Mommy!  I want my mommy!"  Too late.

    We Americans (and Europeans) now have a choice.  We can spend our trillions on war and dismemberment and turning our children into monsters and/or corpses -- or we can spend it on creating upstanding youth who have integrity and openness and good hearts (and hopefully high batting averages too).  http://smpalestine.com/2015/02/08/israels-historical-fear-of-the-palestinian-mind-witnessed-in-gaza-today/

        I'm still haunted by this video, "Paradise Stolen": http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40867.htm

     At this very moment, there might be (a lot more) Giants out there among our children even as we speak -- or else there might be (a lot more) gullible kids with no other prospects of education or jobs or tolerance or justice being offered to them than the bogus chance to go off on a Children's Crusade in the Middle East and become the helpless pawns of bad men.

PS:  Instead of Americans fighting tooth and nail to prevent themselves from being grimly swallowed alive by War Street and its buddies on Wall Street and K Street, Americans these days are instead battling fiercely and with all of their might to...wait for it...protect (or not protect) our country from measles!  What?  Measles is the greatest danger to America today?  I think not.

PPS:  Such hypocrisy.  The American press attacks Brian Williams for a small lie.  Yet everything our mainstream media told us about Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, etc. have been big lies.  So how come they don't suspend Bush, Cheney, Obama and Rumsfeld for six months too -- preferably in Guantanamo?  And doesn't that also sorta make you wonder what Brian Williams did to piss War Street off so much right now?  It never seemed to get angry at him when he told the right kind of lies. 
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/us-has-become-a-nation-where-tv-news-celebrities-are-more-important-than-the-news
 
     And then the American press also (rightly) crucifies ISIS for burning just one man alive -- yet War Street has been burning hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people alive since way back in the days of Dresden, Hiroshima, Pyongyang and Vietnam.  Then there's the more recent fire-bombing of Kosovo, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iraq...  The napalming of Gaza?  Women and children there incinerated alive from the air?  War street has clearly stooped to the same level as ISIS -- only on a mass scale.

My own personal list of lies War Street has told us

Author's note:  "War Street" is the simplified name that I've given to the war-mongers, weapons manufacturers and military-industrial complex members who pretty much own America right now -- along with their buddies on Wall Street and K Street of course.

     This is my own personal list.  Feel free to jump right in with a list of your own.

1.   That the Civil War was fought to free the slaves.  Nah, that was solely an afterthought.  The real reason for the Civil War was the lust for $$$$ and power.  Like war always is for.

2.  That holding the Union together back in 1860 was a good thing.  A good thing for who?  Dontcha sometimes just wish that The South had been allowed to go on its own merry way back then -- so that we now don't have to waste billions of Yankee dollars on Red State racists, corrupt senators, war-mongers and welfare queens?  Boy, I could surely live without Mitch McConnell.  He's our ultimate grand prize for The North having won the 1860 Civil War?  Really?

3.  "Remember the Maine!"  Yeah right.  Apparently the sinking of the Maine was a false-flag operation to force Americans into a brutal war with Spain.  http://zinnedproject.org/about/a-peoples-history-a-peoples-pedagogy/

4.  The 1908 invasion of the Philippines -- wherein approximately one-sixth of its population was massacred by the US Army in the name of bringing "Democracy" to Filipinos.  They could have lived without that one -- literally.

5.  World War I?  Really?  Do you even have to ask why this war was based on lies -- such as that the Huns were out to murder our babies?  Or that the Lusitania was torpedoed by the evil Kaiser when actually it was illegally carrying six million pounds of explosives on board a munitions transport ship disguised at a cruise liner before it blew up.  Or how about the famous "Zimmerman Telegram" lie?

6.  Pearl Harbor.  Roosevelt knew.  Of course he did.  And Senator Prescott Bush invested in Nazi Germany bigtime.  And after WW II was over, our very own CIA brought 1,000 Nazi officers over here to help J. Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles and Joe McCarthy organize their new Cold War storm-troopers.  And today "Corporatism," as Mussolini called it, is now king in the USA -- and all over the rest of world too.  Unbelievable.  Was there any reason at all why we fought World War II?  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html?_r=1

7.  The invasion of Korea.  Again, that phony "Democracy" thing came into play -- as it has again and again and again as Wall Street and War Street set up dictator after dictator across the globe and then whitewashed these brutal bad guys to the gullible American public back home:

     7.a  Chaing Kai-shek, "Our democratic ally in Asia"

     7.b  The Shah of Iran, "Our democratic ally in the Middle East."

     7.c  Fulgencio Batista, "Our democratic ally in Cuba."

     7.d  Apartheid South Africa, "Our democratic ally in Africa."

     7.d  Francisco Franco, "Our democratic ally in Spain."

     7.e   Syngman Rhee, "Our democratic ally in South Korea."

     7.f.  Papa Doc Duvalier, "Our democratic ally in Haiti."

     7.g  Augusto Pinochet, "Our democratic ally in Chile."

     7.h  Manuel Noriega, "Our democratic ally in Panama." 
    
      7.i  Mubarak and Sisi, "Our democratic allies in Egypt."  http://www.amec.org.za/articles-presentations/135-egypt/484-sisi-s-unenviable-dilemma-the-illusion-of-stability-and-the-perpetuation-of-unrest

     7.j  King Salman al Saud, "Our democratic ally in Saudi Arabia."  http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/01/23/Canada-Saudi-Arabia-Weapons-Deal/ 

    Although I must admit that the new Saudi king now appears to be actually lightening up and coming to his senses a bit -- not an easy task for someone who allegedly has Alzheimers http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-hearst/a-saudi-palace-coup_b_6531246.html 

     However, Saudi Arabia still has a "Democratic" track record that would impress even Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.  In Saudi Arabia today, for example, the government holds a public beheading on the average of once every four days.  No wonder that their ISIS protegees are handy with swords.  But don't even get me started on the Saudis! http://www.iacenter.org/nafricamideast/oil012915/    

      There are approximately 50 other "Democratic ally" dictators that I could list here too but am running out of space.  I don't wanna be doing this forever you know.

8.  The Kennedy assassination.  Do you really believe that one lone gunman could have gotten through all that security without any help, or could have made that incredible kill shot with a BB gun from behind Kennedy and very far away -- and yet still manage to hit the front of Kennedy's head?  Then I have a bridge to sell you.  Lee Harvey Oswald was definitely not Chris Kyle.  He was a patsy.

9.  Vietnam!  The Gulf of Tonkin incident was made-up baloney.

10.  Remember all those lies we were told by that "low-life scum" Henry Kissinger during his vicious secret bombings of Cambodian rice paddies in 1969, wherein approximately 600,000 poor Cambodian farmers were massacred from the skies?  "Never happened," said Henry.  Plausible deniability is all that matters to him.  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40867.htm

11.  The Iran-Contra scandal.  The death squads in Central America.  And all that BS about "Americans do not torture" -- even as War Street was running the School of the Americas right under our noses.

12.  What came next?  Oh yeah.  That Milosevic nightmare.  Milosevic was America's go-to guy -- until he wasn't.  Didn't you ever wonder why no one did anything to stop him until after socialist Yugoslavia was just a hot mess?

13.  Saudi Arabia.  Again.  They told us that the Saudis were the good guys, but actually Saudi Arabia is where most of the 9-11 hijackers came from.  http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/twenty-eight-pages

14.  Israel, said to be "Our democratic ally in the Middle East."  But if Israel is a democracy, I'll eat my hat.  Just ask the Moroccan-Israeli Jews living there.  http://vimeo.com/60814711  Or the Ethiopian-Israeli Jews.

      Violent and shifty Israeli neo-colonialists have also committed despicable crime after despicable crime against humanity in the most undemocratic fashion, including their brutal, traitorous, dastardly and deliberate attempt to sink the USS Liberty, a false-flag operation approved and facilitated by War Street itself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRZSzdQuOqM, the horrors of the genocidal bombing of Gaza and Israeli neo-colonials' covert support of ISIS -- all in order to steal territory and oil in the Middle East.  

     Just watch this horrifying film of Israeli neo-colonials' cowardly destruction of a whole city in Gaza, using US weapons and $$$$:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ41ko3L5Xc  And if you still have the stomach, watch this too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTr_Un4a_zA

15.  Saddam Husein, who we were told was Ronald Reagan's hot new Middle East boy wonder -- until he wasn't.  See #12.

16.  And then there was that first Gulf war, totally based on a lie.  The Kuwaitis were slant-drilling into Iraqi oil reserves, a big no-no, and so Pappy Bush told Saddam, "Sure, they deserve it, go ahead and invade..."  And remember all those incubator babies too?  Lies upon lies.

17.  September 11, 2001.  Bush knew.   And let it happen.  http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/30/police-state-upon-us-paul-craig-roberts/

18.  As a result of that infamous "Second Pearl Harbor" on Bush's watch, we were once again lied to and told that we needed to invade Afghanistan instead of Saudi Arabia.  And that we needed to invade Iraq. 

     18.a.  John McCain himself lied right to my face in Baghdad back in 2007 -- but I still can't decide if it was a lie of commission or omission.  At a press conference in the Green Zone, McCain told us that it was perfectly safe for him to walk around a marketplace in Baghdad -- but neglected to tell us that he was also protected by body armor, humvees and helicopters, and also put a battalion of grunts in harm's way while he did it.  http://jpstillwater.blogspot.com/2007/04/letters-from-iraq-me-light-brigade-john.html 

     Just that same morning, I had been told by Major Hernandez of CPIC that if I wanted to go outside of the Green Zone without a major armored escort, I would be dead within five minutes after crossing the 14th of July Bridge.  Luckily I believed Major Hernandez and not John McCain.

        18.b.  That, after 9-11, we also needed to invade Libya, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, I forget where all else, if we were ever to be safe.  And that we needed to invade oodles of other countries all over the world in order to "Keep America Safe".  That was the biggest lie so far.  Are we safe yet?

19.  That Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was standing in the way of "Democracy".  Well, he sure isn't standing in the way any more!  Turns out he was standing in the way of anarchy.  But you get what you pay for.

20.  That Bashar Assad in Syria is in cahoots with ISIS.  Yeah right.  NATO, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Pentagon are in cahoots with ISIS.  Assad is only the victim here, the one who is getting his country torn apart.  Why would he want to support the brigands who are robbing his home?  http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/30/syria-yes-we-are-responsible/

21.  "I am Charlie."  No, you aren't.  "I am the CIA".  Watching that film of the killers getting into their getaway car was just a big joke.  They took their time.  They even put their AK-47 on the roof of the car while they fiddled with their backpacks and chatted about the weather, obviously knowing that they were protected.  But then they weren't.  See # 12.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZyHQljawdE&x-yt-ts=1421914688&x-yt-cl=84503534&bpctr=1422157632

22.  The debacle in Ukraine.  "We're not involved," the Pentagon tells me.  Then how come when Flight MH17 was tragically shot down by the Ukies, War Street went to such lengths to blame the event on Russia and not on the neo-Nazi stooges they had set up in Kiev?  https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/06/nyt-still-pretends-no-coup-in-ukraine/

23.  That the torture and mass murders at Auschwitz and the "preemptive war" on and occupation of Holland, France, Greece, Norway,  Denmark and Poland by Hitler's minions were obviously war crimes -- but the torture and mass murders at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Gaza, and "preemptive war" on and occupation of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine by Bush and Obama's minions aren't.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N294FMDok98&app=desktop

     That Nuremberg standards apply to war crimes committed 70 years ago but no longer apply to war crimes committed today.

24.  That we are always being told the truth by the New York Times and Fox News.  Yeah right.  Despite the fact that War Street just loves the "Newspaper of record" to pieces, the Times needs to wash its mouth out with soap.  And Politifact just announced that 60% of everything Fox News tells us is lies.  60%?  Yikes! http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2014/jul/01/introducing-scorecards-tv-networks/?fb_action_ids=10204846428834242&fb_action_types=og.shares

25.  That War is better than Peace. 
http://www.crescent-online.net/2015/02/distorting-the-story-of-syrias-heritage-destruction-eva-bartlett-4815-articles.html

     Sorry, that's all of the War Street lies I can think of right now.  But I'm sure there are many more out there, many many more lies that I've missed.  Transparency is clearly and obviously not an American value -- and democracy doesn't seem to be one either.

     But I will tell you one thing that I know for sure:  I won't ever be fooled again.  And the rest of America needs to avoid being suckered down the garden path to War Street as well.