The Core: Part 1. The Economy of Lies

Scott Creighton (archived from March 2008)

The Core

Scott Creighton

Part 1. The Economy of Lies

The current administration that occupies the Executive branch of our government lies to us on a daily basis. So often, in fact, we have begun to expect it. It is not enough to say that governments have always mislead the public, as that is indeed true, but these lies are of a special nature and the pattern has been depressingly obvious to anyone that cared enough to look, for some time now.

Perhaps we have been collectively suffering from some form of mass Stockholm syndrome; where we not only expect our paid officials to lie to us constantly, but actually would feel cheated somehow if they didn’t.

Who can forget Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney all claiming right after the attacks of 9/11 that “no one could have imagined terrorists would use planes as weapons against us”; and then the revelation that just one year before the Pentagon, and FEMA had run drills for that exact scenario? That was nice, huh? The beginning of “group lies”.

How about when Christine Todd Whitman was forced by the administration to declare that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breath, two days after 9/11 so that the markets could be opened and investors could capitalize on the instability? Now that one was of a particularly nasty, and therefore endearing, quality. Because what was being done was in fact, sodomizing the good people of New York once again, right after the most vicious attack in our countries history.

While that lie made thousands sick and nearly a hundred have lost their lives from pulmonary problems related to the air quality in lower Manhattan during that time, the lie of an “assistance fund” that was set up with tax-payer money to help them, is still refusing to release the funds that will help them gain the medical attention they desperately need and many people in this country feel they deserve.

Yeah, that set of lies takes a special kind of human being to sign up for, doesn’t it Christine? It’s kind of like finding a rape victim crawling up out of the woods and then getting a little piece for yourself before calling the cops. I mean, after all, you didn’t commit the initial crime, but you might as well take advantage of the situation that has presented itself; right?

Like I said, Christine Todd Whitman; a special kind of human being.

But let’s extrapolate. Our examples have gone from the individual victim to the city of New York so why not expand our focus a bit, “zoom out” as it were, and include the entire United States and even, dare I say it, the World.

Yesterday Keith Olbermann presented yet another special comment on the lies of this president. This round of critical attention focuses on President Bush’s recent inflammatory rhetoric about the imminent dangers of a nuclear Iran.

Keith brilliantly maps out for us how the spin of the story of the dangers of Iran has subtly changed since Aug. 9^th, when he was probably given the briefing on the new NIE report that states, clearly, that Iran had given up on the nuclear weapons program sometime in 2004 or earlier.

Olbermann then shows from the presidents own comments, that he not only learned about this information way before he admitted that he did, but he began a pre-emptive shift in the Pro-Iran Strike rhetoric to cover the impending release of the NIE Report. Spinning us closer to war before the intelligence community could release the truth about the previous lies.

I like Keith. It is unfortunate that more “Main-Stream” journalists don’t posses his commitment to the truth. Or at least, part of the truth.

Let’s face it; it takes courage to call a seated president a liar to his face. But he has done it before. So many times, in fact, that I have lost count. But the first time I recall quite clearly; it was before the 2006 elections and it was about how the administration was equating the democrats with the ‘terrorists”. Remember that one? I was so taken aback, I downloaded the Special Comment, and it sits, to this day, in a file on my desktop.

I was sure that was going to do something. But really, what came of it? The democrats won control of the House and Senate? And what has come of that? And why?

Ah… The economy of lies.

Now, Keith calls the president a liar yet again. And he claims that Cheney is a warmonger and a profiteer. To true, to true. But what is the overall effect? Well, for one thing, Keith’s ratings have gone way up in the past year, and when the ratings go up, the price for the advertising goes up. And then the revenues go up. The revenues for MSNBC, a company partially owned by GE. GE, a company that advertises their washing machines on MSNBC and is a major military contractor in the “War on Terror”.

The economy of lies is a carefully balanced system. Like most PR campaigns, one has to be careful not to go too far with the rhetoric; or else you risk breaking the connection with the target market. They will begin to see the strings you’re pulling and people don’t like knowing that they are being manipulated. That tends to turn them off of your “product”, so to speak.

Let’s face it; dissent has become as much of a product as the War on Terror ever was. There is money to be made in scratching the surface, as long as one doesn’t dig too deep.

Let me give you an example of an investigative journalist who won’t be an anchor on MSNBC anytime soon, and the curious set of lies he has been able to uncover.

“John Martin of ABC News says "Gerald Posner is one of the most resourceful investigators I have encountered in thirty years of journalism." Garry Wills calls Posner "a superb investigative reporter," while the Los Angeles Times dubs him "a classic-style investigative journalist." "His work is painstakingly honest journalism" concluded The Washington Post. The New York Times lauded his "exhaustive research techniques" and The Boston Globe determined Posner is "an investigative journalist whose work is marked by his thorough and meticulous research." "A resourceful investigator and skillful writer," says The Dallas Morning News.” From Huffington Post bio section on Gerald Posner.

For the record, Mr. Posner wrote an article in Oct. of 2006 where he admits that right after the attacks of Sept. 11^th he bought the whole “standing on the pile of rubble with a bullhorn” crap hook line and sinker. It seems to shame him.

He goes on in that article to write:

 “We know now that all American intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were wrong. There were simply no ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. But neither you, nor any top official of your administration, is honest enough with the American people to admit that the reasons for the war are, at their most innocent, just wrong, and at there most serious, deliberate lies?”

But in a more recent article, dated Dec. 7^th 2007, Mr. Posner begins to go much, much further.

The article, “The CIA's Destroyed Interrogation Tapes and the Saudi-Pakistani 9/11 Connection”, deals with the CIA's director, General Michael V. Hayden’s Dec. 5^th revelation that the CIA has destroyed video tapes of several interogations of suspected al Qaeda opperatives back in 2005.

Many people have written about the implications of Hayden’s statement, but few have gone so far as to explain exactly what was destroyed and why.

First of all, it is important to note that these tapes were also withheld from the 9/11 Commission, according to Hayden. This, according to Hayden, was to protect the identities of undercover operatives. But Posner doesn’t leave it at that.

Of the two terror suspects whose interogation tapes were destroyed, Hayden only gives the name of one; Abu Zubaydah. As Posner points out in his article;

“It was Abu Zubaydah, the top ranking terror suspect when he was tracked and captured in Pakistan in 2003. In September 2006, at a press conference in which he defended American interrogation techniques, President Bush also mentioned Abu Zubaydah by name. Bush acknowledged that Zubaydah, who was wounded when captured, did not initially cooperate with his interrogators, but that eventually when he did talk, his information was, according to Bush, "quite important."

Quite important indeed; just, not used.

You see, according to Mr. Posner, a widely published and respected journalist, Zubaydah was reluctant to talk at first. But then, the CIA interrogators came up with an idea; they would transfer Zubaydah to Afghanistan under the ruse that the Americans had turned him over to the Saudis. They figured that would scare the hell out of him. But, in fact, it had quite the opposite effect.

“Instead, when confronted by his "Saudi" interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he said, because he feared the Americans would kill him. He then asked his interrogators to call a senior member of the Saudi royal family. And Zubaydah provided a private home number and a cell phone number from memory. "He will tell you what to do," Zubaydah assured them”

Posner goes on…

“That man was Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul-Aziz, one of King Fahd's nephews, and the chairman of the largest Saudi publishing empire. Later, American investigators would determine that Prince Ahmed had been in the U.S. on 9/11.”

“…Several hours after he first fingered Prince Ahmed, his captors challenged the information, and said that since he had disparaged the Saudi royal family, he would be executed. It was at that point that some of the secrets of 9/11 came pouring out. In a short monologue, that one investigator told me was the "Rosetta Stone" of 9/11, Zubaydah laid out details of how he and the al Qaeda hierarchy had been supported at high levels inside the Saudi and Pakistan governments.

He named two other Saudi princes, and also the chief of Pakistan's air force, as his major contacts. Moreover, he stunned his interrogators, by charging that two of the men, the King's nephew, and the Pakistani Air Force chief, knew a major terror operation was planned for America on 9/11.”

This information is consistent with the story of the $100,000 paid by the Pakistani ISI to the lead hijacker, Muhamid Atta, just weeks before 9/11. It is also consistent with the revelation from inside sources that the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report deals with Saudi involvement in the financing of the attacks of 9/11.

And it is consistant with the administration desire to cover up any Pakistani and Saudi involvement with the attacks of 9/11.

This act, in and of itself, is treason. To provide aid and comfort to any nation that may have contributed to 9/11 is treason. Of this there is no doubt.

Posner goes on to thoroughly describe the curious ends that all of those people met who were mentioned by Zubaydah. It would seem that the middle east is not a safe place to live. One died on the way to another’s funeral and one died of “thirst”.

Posner ends this article with an interesting statement “The American public deserves no less than the complete truth about 9/11. And those CIA officials now complicit in hiding the truth by destroying key evidence should be held responsible.”

Ah… the complete truth. Now there’s a concept.

To rattle off all the lies of this administration would be something of a massive undertaking that is, quite frankly, far more exhaustive of a chore than I am willing to undertake.

Thanks to the efforts of journalists like Olbermann and Posner and many, many others, we have the beginings of an acurate picture developing.

But what is astounding to me is that even with so many examples of this administration’s malicious fabrications, some to cover up crimes, others to create them, the vast majority of the intelleligencia of this nation, still refuse to fully explore “the lie”; the big lie. The lie that started it all.

When asked to release all of the 80 plus video survellance tapes that were confiscated from the Pentagon on Sept. 11^th 2001, the FBI cited that to do so would be a risk to “national security”.

The same was said when the families of the victims on Flight 93 wanted to hear the cock-pit voice recordings. They had to take it to court to hear those and, inexplicably, the last 3 minutes of the recording were missing. The families have never heard what happened in that cock-pit when their loved ones were supposed to have broken in so heroicly. Maybe those last three minutes would explain why there were 2 debis fields more than 8 miles apart.

In the end, what is the real threat to our “national security” that the truth about 9/11 presents? Is it that somewhere walking across the lawn of the Pentagon, there was an undercover agent whose face is seen in all 80 videos? Or is it, that somehow, those markets that were so important that Christine Todd Whitman ruined her career and her good name to reopen, are somehow again, more important than the victims? More important than catching the “terrorists”? More important than the truth?