The attacks of September 11th were horrific. And while seven years has past since they occurred, they have not been forgotten. On that day almost 3,000 people were killed, the majority of them Americans, and the United States changed forever.

In the weeks that followed the attacks the Bush Administration sent mixed messages to the American people. With ample help from a willing media it instilled a fear so immense that it gripped societies far beyond its own borders while at the same time telling Americans to go about their lives as usual as an act of defiance. In short, Mr. Bush told the American people to go shopping.

Over the last seven years I have had countless conversations with hundreds of different people from numerous countries about the true intent of 9/11 and the organization responsible for its planning and execution, and every time that one occurs I am somewhat shocked at people’s perception of the event and its purpose.

One of the most troubling aspects of such conversations is the widespread belief that the sole aim of the attacks was to take life. While that was certainly a crucial part of the operation, the attacks themselves only represented the initial mechanism required to attain much loftier goals, ones which the Bush Administration ignorantly played into. After 9/11 the American landscape changed, and that change was fueled by a fear that allowed the government of the United States to enact unprecedented legislation that diminished the powers of the Constitution, allowed a hard-line element within the administration to enter into what can only be best described as an era of militaristic opportunism, and propel the American people into a war two years later that had everything to do with American hegemony and nothing to do with the terrible events of that fateful day.

In short, 9/11 was one of the most successful psychological operations in modern history and the government of the United States played into it without missing a beat.

To think that such an outcome was not the goal of those that planned the attacks is extremely short sighted. Since 2001 the United States has found itself not only militarily stretched to the limit and embroiled in two different conflicts abroad, but has increased its military spending every year since. The Defense budget for the fiscal year 2009 is an estimated $713 billion dollars, more than the financial bailout package. Of course, unlike the bailout, which the government has promised to repay to the people, even though that’s unlikely, the Defense budget is something that American taxpayers support no matter their views. And within that budget is money allocated for the Black Budget, used to run off the books operations such as Extraordinary Rendition, the use of Black Sites in foreign counties, illegal covert operations, covert military assistance and training, and the continued existence of the detention facilities at Guantanamo.

That said, I personally do not believe that those that planned 9/11 ever thought, even in their wildest dreams, that the attacks would produce the sort of Constitutional degradation that has been prevalent over the last seven years, not to mention much of the public’s willingness to unquestioningly accept it. But that is precisely what has occurred. In seven years the American landscape has been transformed into one in which questionable actions taken by law enforcement, and other agencies, have become acceptable to many, even if they usurp those freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

Ground Zero isn’t just in New York. In truth, it’s in every city, town, and neighbourhood in the United States.

One of the most troubling aspects of the post-9/11 world has been the promotion of al-Qaeda as a world-wide organization that operates as if a global military entity. This perception has been promoted to such an extent that many believe it to be a well oiled terror machine that possesses boundless resources and a large global network of loyal soldiers that act on the orders of a single command structure.

This perception has led to the rise of a very dangerous phenomenon. First, the actions of unaffiliated groups inspired by al-Qaeda that claim affiliation with the group despite being completely unaffiliated with them. The second is the use of the group’s name by militants, such as those that appeared in Iraq following the occupation, that are most likely not even in contact with any of al-Qaeda’s actual figureheads.

In short, following 9/11, what was simply a terror cell was transformed into an international terrorist phenomenon and promoted as a global entity that has, in turn, only caused those aligned with perhaps only some of its principles to adopt the moniker because of the fear attached to its name alone. The promotion of al-Qaeda as the globe’s foremost terrorist threat has also immensely benefited the policy aspirations of the United States, who have used a false image of the organization to justify its actions, especially in Iraq, where ‘al-Qaeda’ did not even exist prior to the occupation. Only an estimated 5-7% of the insurgency was comprised of foreign fighters that claimed affiliation with al-Qaeda, and even they were considered the enemies of some Sunni guerrilla groups, not to mention all of Iraq’s Shia militias.

So what am I driving at?

It’s rather simple, actually. Given everything that has transpired since 9/11, all that need be done at this point is for a threat to be issued for panic to take hold. In turn, that panic plays directly into the hands of those that helped make the monster appear one thousand times its size and strength and used that image to justify their actions. And so al-Qaeda, or whomever is using the name this week, wins another victory without firing a shot or detonating a single bomb. Meanwhile, their enemy is spending its way into financial extinction.

According to The Age, an Australian daily, Osama bin Laden has warned of a new attack…

“Osama bin Laden is planning an attack against the United States that will “outdo by far” September 11, an Arab newspaper in London has reported.

- bin Laden ‘planning US attack’
- Goal to ‘outdo’ September 11
- al-Qaeda reinforces training camps

And according to a former senior Yemeni al-Qaeda operative, the terrorist organisation has entered a “positive phase”, reinforcing specific training camps around the world that will lead the next “wave of action” against the West.”

According to the article the attack will “change the face of world politics and economics”. From the perspective of a psychological operation, especially given the current state of global financial fears, such rhetoric is to be expected.

The article also contains the quote - “this will be shown by the fact that we now control a major part of the south of Somalia”.

Now this is interesting because the United States backed the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, as well as initially assisting it by proving air and naval support and the use of US Special Forces in various locations. Since the invasion, the conflict has produced one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, despite the fact that it rarely gets mentioned. Prior to the invasion the ICU were the first governing body to actually bring peace to most of the country for the first time in decades, but because of their hard-line Islamic ideology, and perceived connections with terrorist organizations elsewhere, the Ethiopians were used as a proxy to remove them from power. Thus, the above statement could been seen as a lure, simply another attempt to see the United States directly involve itself in another conflict. More money, more loss, further exhaustion.

Could the United States be attacked again? Certainly. Given everything that’s transpired over the last seven years that can’t be discounted. But the real question is – does an attack need to be carried out to get results? In a world gripped by fear the issuing of a statement becomes just as powerful as an attack in many ways. And those that release such statements know that. Thanks to the unprecedented PR that they’ve been gifted, it’s certainly a much less costly vehicle with which to cause havoc.

Then again, madmen aren’t exactly in short supply – on either side of the fence.

We forget. But when all seems lost we are reminded that all of this is not that complex after all. People can do extraordinary things, things that get lost in all of the ugliness that we are confronted with on a daily basis. For some reason that part of us seems to get overlooked, leading one to wonder why our goodness isn’t as news worthy as our villainy.

For every killer in this world there are a hundred saviors. For every closed mind there are dozens more that are open. Borders, oceans, and continents do not divide the decency within us, nor that universal belief in hope or peace or happiness that has been painted as folly by closed minds.

There are 6.7 billion of us on this planet. If one sixth of that number represents the worst in us then there are over five billion of us that don’t. And if that is the case, then what are we waiting for?

I am a man that deals in ugliness. Every day it awaits me like toxic samples waiting under a microscope. My eyes peer into the maw of the worst of what we can be and I faithfully catalogue it. That has been my daily routine for years now. But the truth is that when you look up and see the world around you, you realize that the darkness that lingers on our collective horizon is nothing more than a diffusion of light. It is a mechanism of distraction used to diminish and belittle those things that we are told are too idealistic to ever become reality. Thus, the question remains – at what point do we disengage ourselves from the drug that we have become so addicted to that we perceive its reality as the norm? At what point does sobriety become something more than a fantasy, when, in truth, the existence that we endure now is the fantasy?

From religious to political divisions, these are the drugs that we have become so accustomed to that our perception of something beyond them is rendered hazy and oblique. Under their influence we forget that there are far more of us that believe in something better than those that do not. If there is truly a War On Terror being waged then it is one that must include every aspect of the promotion of division, the belief in violence to solve our problems, and the corruption of societies and religions to ensure the solidification for the support of such beliefs. Because if it does not, then it is not a war against terror but simply two versions of its application struggling for supremacy.

We may be caught in the middle, but there is a choice left us. We can choose not to walk either path, but one that is not represented by political or religious ideologies. Some claim that that, within the context of our world, is an impossibility. A century ago so was sending a man into space. Making the impossible possible is our greatest strength – all that need be done is to alter its focus.

Good morning from mentally ill headquarters located in Vancouver’s sunny Downtown Lower Eastside. Here at MI HQ we do our best to cover the day’s events from the perspective of the mentally ill prior to our mid afternoon tee-off times (and to think there was a time when I was younger that I had a 15 handicap – just ask Salros).

Painting 2 Billion People With A Single Brush

Sheldon Richman of The Future Of Freedom Foundation penned a piece yesterday entitled Why the Peaceful Majority of Muslims Are Not Irrelevant, something that every hack out there that loves to employ the term ‘Islamofascism’ should read (not that it would make a ton of difference)…

“A few years ago, FrontPageMag.com columnist Paul Marek wrote an article titled “Why the Peaceful Majority Is Irrelevant.” His thesis was that even if the majority of Muslims abhor violence, it doesn’t matter because “the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history…. The hard quantifiable fact is, that the ‘peaceful majority’ is the ‘silent majority’ and it is cowed and extraneous.”

For Marek, the upshot is this: “We must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life.”

He’s wrong. No, he’s worse than wrong, because his position could be used to justify mass murder.

Marek and those who have applauded his column point out that most Germans and Japanese during World War II were not warmongers, but warmongers controlled policymaking. The implication is that the United States was right to regard the peaceful majority as nonexistent. That’s exactly what the Allies did. Under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians were targeted and killed in bombings that had no direct relationship to military objectives. Most people consider this morally defensible. It’s regarded as a normal part of war, although it violates traditional just-war doctrine. But why isn’t it understood to be mass murder? Marek’s answer would be that, since the peaceful majority did nothing to stop the warmongering minority, the majority — men, women, and children — were fair game.

This dubious principle has been applied to the Middle East: If the majority are peaceful, why don’t its members speak out — and act — against the radical minority? Since they don’t, “we” have the right to ignore them when “we” devise strategy and tactics to defend “ourselves.” If they die or otherwise suffer in the attacks, they have only themselves or the radical minority to blame. This principle goes beyond chalking up the deaths of innocents to “collateral damage,” because it suggests that no one is truly innocent.”

I invite you to read Paul Marek’s original piece written in 2006 published by FrontPage Magazine. When doing so, for the sake of ‘objectivity’, keep in mind that FrontPage Magazine is the anti-Islamic propaganda brainchild of David Horowitz. Beyond that, read the piece and then read Richmond’s article in full and decide for yourself which is the more intelligent and well rounded argument.

Photoshop, Not Just For Graphic Designers

Wired Magazine points out that some of the images used to bolster anti-Russian sentiment during its recent conflict with Georgia were tampered with by an Associated Press photographer. The AP has denied the accusations.

Again, read the article and come to your own conclusions.

Poland And Black Sites

When news first broke that the United States had been using secret locations in Europe to hold and interrogate detainees illegally rendered to them, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scoffed at the assertion. Of course, as time passed, it became clear that her rejection of the idea was little more than hot air.

Yesterday’s Telegraph contains an explosive article pertaining to the uncovering of evidence that numerous key Polish Cabinet Ministers knew of the existence of a CIA Black Site in the country…

“A Polish radio station has claimed that prosecutors possess a 2006 report confirming the jail’s existence, written by Roman Giertych, a cabinet minister in Poland’s previous government, who was then head of a committee monitoring the secret services.

The station, Radio Zet, says that at least two ministers, including then justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, saw the report.

The revelations have been supported by similar claims by one of Poland’s most respected newspapers. Gazeta Wyborcza says that it has seen a document, possessed by prosecutors, proving the existence of a key CIA centre in Poland, which was set up under a secret Polish-US agreement in 2002.

The paper adds that the secret service presented the report to Poland’s then chief prosecutor, Janusz Kaczmarek and two ministers in 2006. Mr Kaczmarek confirmed he met the ministers but has refused to disclose what was discussed.

Prosecutors began their probe under orders from Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, in order to investigate persistent accusations that Szymany, an air force base in north-east Poland, was the location of a key centre in US’s campaign against terrorist networks.

They are also investigating claims that US interrogators used practices such as water-boarding, regarded by many as torture, in Poland.”

I would imagine that, somewhere out there, there are articles that contradict this. If you can find them, feel free to post them in the comments.

So the Presidential conventions are at an end. Now we just have to painfully sit through two months of media speculation and, of course, the debates, before we’re treated to a result.

I don’t rightly know what my reaction will be if John McCain wins the White House, thought it will certainly include a considerable loss of respect for those that chose to maintain what I believe to be an immensely dangerous political status quo. That’s not to say that I believe Barack Obama to be a saviour, but if he wins it will at least signal to the world that the majority of Americans haven’t completely lost their minds.

Canadians will also be going to the polls this fall, though I have little stomach for it. The state of Canadian politics is so thin that it’s hard to place faith in any of this nation’s leaders. Not unlike the state of affairs south of the border, we find ourselves in a vacuum in which the lesser of evils is largely perceived to be the best of options. As far as I’m concerned, such an outlook betrays the principles that we as a nation believe in. Surely, somewhere out there, there must be an individual worth their words, one that is more than just the construct of crafted language. It is difficult to believe in the system when all it produces is straw men, those that endeavor to placate the public when an election is called and then conveniently forget everything that slipped out between the forced smiles on their faces when the results are in.

Democracy is an antiquated ideology. It has been corrupted almost since its inception by the plutocratic, rendering it nothing more than a mechanism that ensures public docility through the belief that the people ultimately control their own destiny. That mechanism has gifted an elite segment of democratic populations the ability to continue to use the concept of democracy itself as a shield against their corruption of its ideals, all the while guarded against true public discontent because of the widespread misconception that the people are the true arbiters of power.

Were the people to throw off the yoke of what has become nothing more than ideological propaganda, the result would be the demise of the system that we now endure. As to what would occur after that I cannot say, but such an occurrence is something that scares the living hell out of those that depend on this current state of mass manipulation, and so ensuring its survival is something that is of the utmost importance.

Ultimately, though able to order pizzas at 3am and get the Playboy channel beamed into our homes, we are not truly free. We are cattle that exist to maintain economies, to support that which we are taught to support, and are derided for questioning that which we have been told not to question. Democracy is, in truth, the greatest scam every unleashed in history simply because, on the surface, it provides luxuriant distractions that convolute the perceptions of those that dwell within its comfortable bosom. It provides in its current context the most elaborately designed groundwork for the usurpation of liberty simply because it espouses the assurance of it. I am sure, even in his wildest dreams, that that is not something that even Joseph Goebbels could have thought possible.

In 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. The Bush Administration employed blatant falsehoods regarding Iraq’s WMD program and links between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the latter of which is still believed by a great many Americans (there is ample television footage of almost every senior member of the administration employing outright falsehoods during the run up to the war). In truth, the decision to invade Iraq was made shortly following 9/11, with only the when and why left to be engineered. In the end, and despite popular belief to the contrary, the US led invasion of the country was not sanctioned by the United Nations, and was, in truth, in direct contravention of international law. The administration’s proverbial sleeve ace was that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator and that the American public had a far better and clearer recollection of US military action taken against his regime than US assistance to it. This would be why it was effortless for pro-war pundits to evoke the gassing of Halabja as justification for Hussein’s removal while completely ignoring the fact that President Reagan vetoed a Congressional resolution passed soon after the incident calling for all US aid to Iraq to be immediately suspended. Of course, time passed, the incident died down in the press, and US aid continued unabated.

The Bush Administration, having adopted the Wolfowitz Doctrine as its official foreign policy platform in the aftermath of 9/11, initiated with the invasion Iraq what no other US administration had ever attempted – the establishment of a permanent US military footprint in the region. Of course, Iraq doesn’t geographically border the United States, but being that the United States has been the world’s lone super power since the end of the Cold War the truth is that every nation on earth does border America’s sphere of influence. US national security interests span the globe, not merely the Western hemisphere, making the Middle East as relevant as Mexico. The Wolfowitz Doctrine was written as a guidance to unabashedly capitalize on a singular world power reality, and that is precisely what the Bush Administration has endeavored to do in the wake of 9/11.

For reasons of national security, the United States invaded a foreign country, affected regime change, and has militarily occupied it for five years. In that time there have been war crimes committed, over 2 million people have been displaced, and most likely well over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed. That said, the US is still able to condemn the Russians for their recent actions without batting an eye. Even more, they’ve largely won the PR battle on Georgia’s behalf.

Russian history in the 20th Century is, in many ways, replete with absolutes. The horror of the purges, the seizure of Eastern Europe following the Second World War, and so forth. These things are absolutes because a dictatorially corrupted political ideology was in place that could be easily seen for what it was. The same cannot be said of Western plutocracies, who, while adorned with chevrons marking their unquestionable right, conducted business in private with the same cold, ruthless, and unforgiving resolve. That reality has produced publics that have ultimately only lived half of the modern story of their nations, and ones that have, for the most part, unquestionably adhered to the designs of their plutocratic infrastructures.

Abraham Lincoln wrote something rather telling in August of 1855 in a letter to Joshua Speed, something rather prophetic with regards to the slow diminishment of the democratic principle that would continue unabated after his death…

“As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty - to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy”

The perfect machine. Life lived during days of never ending summer with winter cloaked, knife in hand, doing business out of sight. This is who we are. Never mind our defense. We are never wrong. We are only sometimes mistaken.

It is altogether proper that we fear nuclear weapons. While one has not been used in 63 years – 63 years ago on this very day, in fact - the horror and devastation wrought by the two employed in the summer of 1945 was enough to usher in an age of unprecedented fear and paranoia. In the wake of that fear and paranoia a nuclear arms race would commence that would help promote a theory that to maintain nuclear détente the production of weapons was required to ensure that a global balance was maintained – along with all of the military hardware and support mechanisms required to maintain it. And so here we find ourselves, over six decades later, with the world’s foremost nuclear powers attempting to safeguard their nuclear superiority, concerned that the theory that they put into practice over a half century ago will be employed by fledgling nuclear powers.

It is also altogether proper that we fear propagandized history, even though risks are involved when the presentation of information that challenges overwhelmingly popular historical myths is presented. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were, according to popular doctrine, military necessities. According to your average history book, the bombs were dropped to force Japan into unconditionally surrendering so that a conventional invasion of Japan could be avoided. It has long been contended that were the United States to have invaded Japan that millions of Americans would have been lost in the endeavor. But what is commonly overlooked is the fact that conventional bombing had already devastated much of Japan, so much so that its infrastructure was in utter ruins.

John Pilger of The Guardian put it best today…

“The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.

The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.

Information such as this is commonly scoffed at, even though it is based on factual historical evidence. The reality is that an invasion of Japan would never have needed to occur, nor would the Japanese have ‘fought to the last’, a belief that has been promoted as fact since before the war’s conclusion. Of course, the majority of Westerners are not exposed to the testimonials of those Japanese civilians and military commanders that would, following the war, claim such accusations baseless. Being that they contradict the mythology that has been instilled in young minds since the 50’s, the inclusion of the ‘other side of the story’ has been conveniently removed from the pages of rudimentary academia for decades.

As Pilger also points out, the groundwork of misrepresentation began almost immediately following the employment of the bombs…

“In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb’s blast. It was the first big lie. “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. “I write this as a warning to the world,” reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called “an atomic plague”. For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.”

When I was a child we were made to practice drills in the event of a nuclear attack. We were told to get under our desks and cover our heads with our hands. It was utterly pointless, of course, being that were we attacked our school would probably have been hit by a rolling shockwave that would have ripped the entire structure from its foundation. Hurling through the air with tons of concrete and other debris, we would eventually succumb to being crushed by something if the air in our lungs hadn’t already been vacuumed out.

They commonly held such drills on what used to be known as ‘hot dog days’ - and did so for obvious reasons. The very same, in fact, that prompted the New York Times to declare that there was no radioactivity in the ruins of Hiroshima.

The Los Angeles Times ran an interesting article yesterday entitled The Iraq war movie: Military hopes to shape genre. Here’s a short excerpt…

“With military assistance, moviemakers get access to bases, ships, planes, tanks and Humvees. Military leaders also offer script advice.

And unless a filmmaker agrees to address any problems, the Pentagon generally opts out.

Most movies involving the military have been summer action films, like this year’s “Iron Man,” which was made with Air Force help.

But Army officials are eager to work with filmmakers making serious movies about Iraq — the kind of pictures that have the power to shape the public’s view of the war and its warriors.

“In the past, have there been instances of disagreements with scripts? Yes,” said Maj. Gen. Anthony A. Cucolo III, chief of Army public affairs. “The message I would send is: Give us a try.”

The problem for military officials is that some in Hollywood see their script advice as a subtle form of censorship or an attempt to spin the war.

Paul Haggis, writer and director of the Iraq war movie “In the Valley of Elah,” said he concluded that the Army was not interested in telling honest stories about the war or soldiers.

“They are trying to put the best spin on what they are doing,” Haggis said. “Of course they want to publicize what is good. But it doesn’t mean that it is true.”

Few directors focused on Iraq or Afghanistan have approached the military for help. Haggis did.

Haggis said that after he submitted his script, the producers received 21 pages of objections to parts of the film. Haggis, who did not review the notes, said his producers told him they amounted to a refusal to participate.”

In the article, Army Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale claims that Brian De Palma’s Redacted, a film about the true story of the rape and murder of a teenage Iraqi girl and her family by US soldiers, was “wildly offensive”. The reason? Because he felt that it painted all members of the US military as potential rapists and murderers. Ironically, murderers are what most of Muslims has been painted by many in the West over the last seven years and you don’t see anyone making films to correct that misconception.

I own Redacted and I think De Palma did a superb job documenting a very important event - a war crime. I did not walk away from the film convinced that all American soldiers were rapists and murderers – but here’s the thing - some are, whether Breasseale likes it or not. The film that De Palma made was based on an actual event, one that received a nanosecond’s worth of attention stateside. It was an important film to make, as was Haggis’ In The Valley Of Elah and Kimberly Peirce’s recent film Stop-Loss. Added to that list are notable documentaries which should be quintessential viewing as far as I’m concerned, such as No End In Sight, Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib, Why We Fight, and The Road To Guantanamo.

How should the war in Iraq be depicted? The fact of the matter is that the same people that are willing to dole out finances to those willing to put less of a negative spin on the war are the very same that have never bothered to even keep an official count of Iraqi civilian casualties.

And they want to talk about ‘reality’.

Bad news. According to ‘reality’ the mission was ‘accomplished’ in 2003. Remember?

If you read one thing this weekend, or month for that matter, read this piece by former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter. In it, Ritter confronts the shady practices of David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, an organization that Albright himself started. Two of the more revealing passages from Ritter’s piece read…

I can’t say for certain when Albright became “Doctor” Albright. A self-described “physicist,” he allows the term to linger, as he does the title “former U.N. inspector,” in order to create the impression that he possesses a certain gravitas. David Albright holds a Master of Science degree in physics from Indiana University and a Master of Science in mathematics from Wright State University. I imagine that this résumé permits him to assign himself the title physicist, but not in the Robert Oppenheimer/Edward Teller sense of the word. Whatever physics work David Albright may or may not have done in his life, one thing is certain: He has never worked as a nuclear physicist on any program dedicated to the design and/or manufacture of nuclear weapons. He has never designed nuclear weapons and never conducted mathematical calculations in support of testing nuclear weapons, nor has he ever worked in a facility or with an organization dedicated to either.

At best, Albright is an observer of things nuclear. But to associate his sub-par physics pedigree with genuine nuclear weapons-related work is, like his self-promotion as a “former U.N. weapons inspector,” disingenuous in the extreme. His lack of any advanced educational training as a nuclear physicist, combined with his dearth of practical experience with things nuclear, is further exacerbated by his astounding assumption of the title Doctor. In 2007 Albright received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Wright State University. This honorary award is a recognition which should never be belittled, but it in no way elevates David Albright to the status of one who has undergone the formal educational training and has actually earned a doctorate, especially in the demanding field of nuclear physics. While I cannot find any evidence of Albright promoting his honorary title in a manner which indicates direct fraud on his part (i.e., falsely claiming to be a Ph.D. in physics), there are far too many instances where he is referred to by those who interview him as being both “Dr. Albright” and a “physicist” that the uninformed reader might be misled into believing that the two were somehow connected.”

Secondly, and this is of paramount importance…

“David Albright has a history of being used by those who seek to gain media attention for their respective claims. In addition to the Hamza and Obeidi fiascos, Albright and his organization, ISIS, have served as the conduit for other agencies gaining publicity about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program, the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, and most recently the alleged Swiss computer containing sensitive nuclear design information. On each occasion, Albright is fed sensitive information from a third party, and then packages it in a manner which is consumable by the media. The media, engrossed with Albright’s misleading résumé (”former U.N. weapons inspector,” “Doctor,” “physicist” and “nuclear expert”). give Albright a full hearing, during which time the particulars the third-party source wanted made public are broadcast or printed for all the world to see. More often than not, it turns out that the core of the story pushed by Albright was, in fact, wrong.

While Iran did indeed possess uranium enrichment capability at Natanz and a heavy water plant (under construction) at Arak (as reported by Albright thanks to information provided by the Iranian opposition group MEK, most probably with the help of Israeli intelligence), Albright’s wild speculation about weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium proved to be wrong. There was indeed a building in Syria which was bombed by Israel. But Albright’s expert opinion, derived from his interpretation of photographs, consists of nothing more than simplistic observation (”The tall building in the image may house a reactor under construction and the pump station along the river may have been intended to supply cooling water to the reactor”) combined with unfocused questions which assumed much, but were in fact based on little (”How far along was the reactor construction project when it was bombed? What was the extent of nuclear assistance from North Korea? Which reactor components did Syria obtain from North Korea or elsewhere, and where are they now?”). And, most recently, we have Albright commenting about the contents of a computer he hasn’t even laid eyes on, though he feels confident enough to raise the specter of global nuclear catastrophe (”How will authorities learn if Iran, North Korea, or even terrorists bought these designs?” Albright asks when referring to the contents of the Swiss computer).

Nowhere in his résumé does Albright cite any formal training as a photographic interpreter; in any case, one would have to have an intimate knowledge of nuclear facilities in order to know what one was looking at when examining an aerial image. A genuine nuclear weapons expert would have been able to discern the technical faults in the logic of the stories being peddled by Albright. And a genuine former U.N. weapons inspector, well versed in preparing airtight investigations based upon verified intelligence information, would have balked at the shabby nature of the evidence provided. Again, because Albright is neither, he and ISIS play the role of patsy, the middleman peddling misinformation to a media too lazy to conduct their own due diligence before running with a story.”

McClatchy’s eight-month investigation into the US detention system post 9/11 and wrongful imprisonments is, in my opinion, a must read. McClatchy describes the journalistic investigation as follows…

“An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.”

The following is an excerpt from Guantanamo: Beyond The Law…

“The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

They shouted “Allahu Akbar” — God is great — as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar’s head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face.

Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as “the worst of the worst.”

But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo’s Camp Four who hissed “infidel” and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn’t: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

“He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government,” a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.”

To view the report’s complete table of contents click here.

One of the most important aspects of this report, though it should come as no surprise, is that it exposes the fact that the projection that the United States knew what it was doing with regards to the capture and imprisonment of those deemed a threat was, in many cases, simply guesswork, a system aimed at presenting the façade of action rather than achieving real goals. In effect, the method employed was akin to fishing with explosives.

Like it or not, Dennis Kucinich is one of the most intelligent and courageous members of Congress…