THE EMPIRE IS CRUMBLING / BRING IN THE CLOWNS

The last refuge of a scoundrel is patriotism and this Independence Day 2014 as we celebrate our independence with parades, picnics and fireworks ~ let us not forget the clowns and scoundrels who cloak themselves in patriotism and represent the worst of America. There is no more despised clown or scoundrel who still represents the worst of American values, yet continues to cloak himself in patriotism, than Darth Vader himself, Dick Cheney ~ the behind the scenes architect of the 9/11 attacks and cover up, the promoter of the illegal war with Iraq for Oil resources, the instigator of illegal rendition, Guantanamo as well as the torture memos and whose self-described travels on the dark side have left America's crumbling Empire morally barren and spiritually lost: Allen L Roland

Dick Cheney is like a deadly and now dormant vampire who lives in the darkness and can only be truly eliminated by a wooden stake of truth driven into his treasonous heart of denial whereas the truth of 9/11 will finally be revealed as well as Cheney's role in America's greatest act of treason ~ a 9/11 cover up which is still being protected and ignored by the Obama administration.

First, the crumbling Empire. Only Chris Hedges truly captures the true ghoulish face of a fading American Empire as seen in the current disintegration of Iraq ~ "The disintegration of Iraq is irreversible. At best, the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunnis will carve out antagonistic enclaves. At worst, there will be a protracted civil war. This is what we have bequeathed to Iraq. The spread of our military through the region has inflamed jihadists across the Arab world. The resulting conflicts will continue until we end our occupation of the Middle East. The callous slaughter we deliver is no different from the callous slaughter we receive. Our jihadists ~ George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Thomas Friedman and Tommy Franks ~ who assured us that swift and overwhelming force in Iraq would transform the Middle East into an American outpost of progress, are no less demented than the jihadists approaching Baghdad. These two groups of killers mirror each other. This is what we have spawned. And this is what we deserve"  See article ~ http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_ghoulish_face_of_empire_20140623

Next, the barely living symbol and still performing clown of this crumbling Circus or Empire ~ Dick Cheney.

Cheney at Obama's 2009 inauguration

Suggested Caption: Obama's on board with the cover-up, now it's time to write my memoirs.

Dick Cheney's recent words of projection speak for themselves ~ " Rarely has a U.S. President been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many. Too many times to count, Mr. Obama has told us he is 'ending' the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ~ as though wishing is made it so." June 17,2014 op-ed with his daughter Liz in the Wall Street Journal.

Now let's review Dick Cheney's fabrications and wishful thinking during the concerted Cheney led effort to sell our illegal war and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2005.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." August 22, 2002

"We believe he has reconstituted nuclear weapons"  March 16, 2003

"My belief is, we  will, in fact be greeted as liberators" March 16, 2003

"In Iraq, a ruthless dictator cultivated weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. He gave support to terrorists, has an established relationship with al Qaeda, and his regime is no more."  Nov 7, 2003

" What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action."  Oct 5, 2004

" I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency" June 20, 2005

Thom Hartmann briefly describes the true cost of the Iraq war ~ "The Iraq War was the single biggest foreign policy disaster in recent - or maybe even all - of American history. It cost the country around $4 trillion dollars, killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent civilians, left 4,500 Americans dead, and turned what was once one of the more developed countries in the Arab World into a slaughterhouse."

The obvious question is why would Dick Cheney obviously lie and deceive both the public and everyone around himself in both the run up to and aftermath of our illegal occupation of Iraq?

The equally obvious answer is Dick Cheney sees himself as a patriot and was and is still committed to defending the lie of Iraq because if he didn't ~ he would have to defend his and the Bush/Cheney administration's role in the orchestration of the needed Pearl Harbor event or the Bigger lie of 9/11 which led to the attack of Iraq. Cheney's best defense has always been his belief in a strong offense which explains his current blatant denial of the facts regarding Iraq.

And here's the 11 minute YouTube must see documentary of the Cheney, Bush and the PNAC Criminal Conspiracy to invade Iraq which obviously was preceded by the PNAC announced need for a new Pearl Harbor ~ which lo and behold became 9/11 within a year and the now infamous and thoroughly discredited official 9/11 story. See video ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egqqCYSfV2k

And finally, in the spirit of this Independence Day ~ here's the world's shortest fireworks display when over 7000 fireworks went off at the same time because of a computer glitch  http://digg.com/video/happy-4th-america-heres-7-000-fireworks-going-off-at-the-same-time?

Mark Twain correctly wrote ~ Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it ~ and our government most certainly does not deserve to be supported when it comes to using a highly suspicious 9/11 attack as a justification for the illegal war and occupation of Iraq.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism ….and today we sorely need it.

 

  

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-empire-is-crumbling-bring-in-clowns.html
 

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and heart centered spiritual counselor Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations at allen@allenroland.com

 

Allen L Roland is also a lecturer and shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

THE SHAME AND SHOCK OF IRAQ

America's shame and shock is called Iraq and yet the mainstream media continue to down play the blatant hubris and criminal arrogance of the Cheney/Bush administration and outright avoidance of the human cost ~ one million Iraqi dead, five million displaced and hundreds of thousand Iraqi widows and orphans as well the disgraceful after effects of the illegal use of  depleted uranium munitions: Allen L Roland

"God is not on the side of any nation, yet we know He is on the side of justice. Our finest moments [as a nation] have come when we faithfully served the cause of justice for our own citizens, and for the people of other lands." - George W. Bush justifying Iraq war

"If we pursue this way, if we are decent, industrious, and honest, if we so loyally and truly fulfill our duty, then it is my conviction that in the future as in the past the lord God will always help us:" Adolf Hitler, at the Harvest Thanksgiving Festival on the Buckeburg held on 3 Oct. 1937

On July 7, 2010 I wrote Iraq is America's Gaza and almost three years later it remains the same if not worse  ~ Iraq is America's Gaza and, like Gaza, it cries for justice to a world which would rather ignore its plight as well as America's and Great Britain's role in this murderous error of judgement . Our karmic debt, like Israel's with Gaza, is immeasurable. See article ~

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/iraq-is-americas-gaza.html

Let's make this crystal clear ~ The Bush/Blair illegal war against Iraq was the willful planned destruction of a civilization and the same consciousness is obviously at work in the current Obama dismemberment of Afghanistan.

American/British war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan ~ RT News, must see 9 minute video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoK-HpkVKT4

As James Petras points out in his August, 2009 article THE DESTRUCTION OF A CIVILIZATION ~ " The sustained bloody purge of Iraq under US occupation resulted in killing 1.3 million Iraqi civilians during the first seven years after Bush invaded in March 2003 ...The militarist strategy of conquest and occupation of Iraq was designed to establish a long-term colonial military presence in the form of strategic military bases with a significant and sustained contingent of colonial military advisors and combat units. The Iraq war was driven by an influential group of neo-conservative and neo-liberal ideologues with strong ties to Israel. They viewed the success of the Iraq war ( by success they meant the total dismemberment of the country ) as the first ' domino' in a series of wars to ' re-colonize' the MIddle East .. Conflagrating Israeli regional hegemonic ambitions with the US imperial interests , the neo-conservatives and their neo-liberal fellow travelers in the Democratic party first backed President bush and later President Obama in their escalation of the wars against Afghanistan and Pakistan." See article:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article233342.htm

Here's the current state of Iraq according to SFGate.com but note these figures are very similar to occupied Gaza.

Health: Iraq's child mortality rate has increased by 150% since 1990, when U.N. sanctions were first imposed.

Education: By 2008, only 50% of primary school-age children were attending class, down from 80% in 2005, and approximately 1,500 children were known to be held in detention facilities.

Children: In 2007, there were 5 million Iraqi orphans~ according to government officials.

Refugees: More than two million Iraqis are refugees and almost three million internally displaced : 33% percent ( 500,000 people ) live as squatters in slum areas.

Water: 70% of Iraqis do not have access to potable water.

Jobs: Unemployment is as high as 50% officially, 70% unofficially.

Poverty: 43% of Iraqis live in abject poverty.

Sanitation: 80% of Iraqis do not have access to effective sanitation.

As Frank Rich wrote recently in the New York Times ~ "It's too early to say what the war's lasting impact on America (or Iraq or the Middle East) will be, but as for the current impact at home, any accounting must begin with the human cost. As David Rieff, a war opponent, wrote this week: "Could anyone who supported this war today encounter a relative, spouse, or friend of one of the American soldiers who was killed or grievously injured in Iraq and tell them with a straight face that this war was worth their sacrifice?" See article ~ http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/265-34/16617-how-iraq-wounded-america

Bush, Cheney and Obama; Two unindicted war criminals and their presidential enabler and protector.

Iraq cries out for justice but our war crimes still remain unpunished and unacknowledged. Nicolas J.S. Davies makes the same point recently in AlterNet ~ " The reality of the "accumulated evil" unleashed on the people of Iraq by the "supreme international crime" of aggression has been painstakingly obscured behind a tapestry of lies.  Our military leaders may be chronically unable to win a war in another country, but they sure know how to wage a propaganda war in America:

- Fantastical notions of the accuracy of "precision" weapons obscured the widespread slaughter and destruction of the invasion, which unleashed  29,200 bombs and missiles in the first month of the war and  killed tens of thousands of civilians.

- Reports by the Iraqi Health Ministry in 2004 that occupation forces were killing far more civilians than were killed by "insurgents"  were efficiently suppressed.

- Epidemiologists who estimated that  650,000 Iraqis had died by 2006 were ignored or dismissed.  As the war went on, the number of dead  probably reached a million by 2008."

Davies correctly asserts the most disturbing face regarding this illegal and uneccessary occupation of a foreign country ~  "Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the transition from Bush to Obama was that the new President not only failed to hold U.S. officials criminally accountable for their crimes but in fact embraced the doctrines and policy developed under Bush and expanded their application to U.S. policy around the world.  Obama's  ever-expanding drone strikes and doubling of Special Forces operations  from 60 to 120 countries are spreading the violence, lawlessness and instability of Bush's "war on terror" to the four corners of the Earth … The United States has a legal and moral duty to pay war reparations to Iraq to help its people recover from the results of aggression, genocide and war crimes - this is a central demand of one very special group of Americans whose experiences and sacrifices make them uniquely qualified to press such a demand:  Iraq Veterans Against the War."

See article ~

http://www.alternet.org/world/10-years-after-invasion-america-destroyed-iraq-our-war-crimes-

And who made money on the Iraq war ? Dick Cheney's Halliburton cashed in for $39 billion on the shame and shock of Iraq.

" I believe very deeply in the proposition that what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It took a long time. There were significant costs involved." Dick Cheney

"freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." George W. Bush

"Iraq is sort of a situation where you've got a guy who drove the bus into the ditch. You obviously have to get the bus out of the ditch, and that's not easy to do, although you probably should fire the driver." Barack Obama, The Daily Show, Nov. 7, 2005

"Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!" : Adolf Hitler - Nuremberg Sept. 13, 1936.

The shame and shock of Iraq must begin with accountability and end with justice. Humanity demands it !

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-shame-and-shock-of-iraq.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations (allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

IN MY TIME LIES AND QUOTES FROM CHENEY AND NEOCON PUNDITS

Here are some Pollyanna quotes and lies from the hoodwinked mainstream media as well as Dick (Darth Vader) Cheney, regarding the Iraq war, which deserve to be reviewed and remembered in light of the release next week of Cheney’s memoir ~ In My Time : Allen L Roland

In light of the release next week of Dick Cheney’s memoir, In My Time, we must never forget that Cheney tried to justify illegally attacking Iraq on March 20, 2003 by using intelligence that the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee later labeled "unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent."

Here’s a great example of this unindicted scoundrel at work ~ “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." (August 26, 2002, Cheney speech in Nashville, Tenn)

And my all time Cheney favorites ~

"My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." (Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003)

"I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." ~ (Dick Cheney on the growing Iraq insurgency, June 20

And do not ever forget the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits who were totally sucked into Bush and Cheney’s illegal war and occupation of Iraq ~ here are two of my favorite quotes from an enclosed list of Iraq war punditry ; "We're all neo-cons now." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03) "He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys." (CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech from the Deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln anchored off of San Diego 5/1/03) Great moments in punditry Compiled by FAIR "Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?" (Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03) "Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention." (NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03) "Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints." (Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/13/03) "The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington." (Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03) "We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back." (Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03) "We're all neo-cons now." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03) "Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking." (Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a stage-managed U.S. military PSYOPS operation--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04) "The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific." (PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech ~ on carrier anchored off the coast of San Diego) "We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03) "He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys." (CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03) "Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03) "What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?" (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03) "If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?" (CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03) "Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?" (Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03) "I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks." (MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03) "This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right." (New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03) "Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters." (CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03) "This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on." (Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03) "I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?" (Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03) "It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will." (Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03) "He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks." (NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03) NPR's Mara Liasson: “ Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...” Brit Hume: “No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.” (Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003) "Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it." (Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03) This video was recorded very early in the Iraq War with Howard Zinn ~ Hard truths and how Americans have been shielded from them. 4 minute Video: http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/4194.html So there you have it ~ Dick Cheney was and continues to be the great deceiver but as Machiavelli wrote,” One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived" and the mainstream press has been more than willing to perpetuate these deceptions and delay, if not bury, the truth. Cheney also defiantly promised on NBC news that “there are gonna be heads exploding all over Washington,’’ after people read his book ~ but I predict that eyes will be rolling ~ for Cheney’s self serving book, co-authored by his daughter, is still masking an obvious truth. Cheney purposely lied and is still lying about Iraq in order to obscure his role in the Mossad/CIA 9/11 neo-con false flag operation as well as his on going efforts to still shift that blame to Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and eventually Iraq in order to protect himself and key members of the Bush administration who would most certainly be implicated and indicted if properly investigated. Take the time to watch this brief 4 minute interview on NBC News ~ Cheney’s denial and rigid arrogance is almost breathtaking ~ particularly when justifying water boarding and torture to his interviewer. He is obviously convinced he is a patriot and his book, according to NY Times reviewer, Michiko Kakutani is “mostly a predictable mix of spin, stonewalling, score settling and highly selective reminiscences.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/books/dick-cheney-tells-his-side-in-memoir-in-my-time-review.html And why was Cheney the earliest and strongest advocate of torture and water boarding? Cheney was determined to use any means possible to obtain forced confessions for the so called 9/11 terrorist Attack ~ which will eventually be seen, hopefully in Cheney’s time, as a neo-con inspired CIA/Mossad assisted and treasonous controlled demolition false flag operation. It is not necessary to bury the truth. It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares: Napoleon Bonaparte Allen L Roland http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/in-my-time-lies-and-quotes-from-cheney.html Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private consultations ( allen@allenroland.com ) Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his weblog and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net