The imprisonment and torture of Manning is more proof that America is led by barbarians who will do anything to achieve their diabolical and criminal goals. Manning defended the public interest, and enlightened his country about the true nature of Washington's wars. Obama, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other U.S. leaders should be stripped naked, and hanged for treason against America, not Manning.
Arthur Silber points out that the state terror directed against Manning is official U.S. government policy in his piece, "Kingdom of Evil." He writes:
First, forcing a prisoner to remain naked for extended periods of time is not only a barbaric means of humiliating and degrading him: it necessarily includes a very significant element of specifically sexual humiliation and degradation. Add to this unforgivable atrocity the well-known fact that Manning is gay. Especially in the hypermasculinized world of the military, such sexual humiliation and degradation represents an intentional, additional cruelty. I can only say that the U.S. government and the military of which it is so proud put Torquemada to shame.Silber concludes that "This is evil; those who seek to impose this fate on a human being are engaged in evil of an especially monstrous kind."
Second, these cruelties and the purported "justifications" offered by the military, all in a notably high profile case, definitively put the lie to the propaganda spewed by the U.S. government in response to the torture, including sexual humiliation, revealed at Abu Ghraib: that such incidents were an "aberration" perpetrated by a few "bad apples." (I emphasize that similar torture and humiliation occurred in other locations as well; Abu Ghraib is probably the best-known instance.) They also definitively put the lie to Obama's patently false claim that he has "ended torture," a point I have made repeatedly.
Now we have the U.S. military, with the full support of the U.S. government, openly engaging in repeated acts of cruelty, atrocity, humiliation and degradation -- acts which the military proclaims will "continue indefinitely" -- and offering nauseatingly ludicrous justifications which would not convince a minimally healthy ten-year-old child. No honest observer can regard these actions of the U.S. government and its military as "aberrations": these actions are brazenly offered as U.S. government policy.
Since President Barack Obama is the face of the U.S. government, he is also the face of evil. And so was George W. Bush. These men aren't simply corrupt, or compromised. Obama is not boxed in by military advisors, and national security leaders, as his delusional supporters like to think, he is actively endorsing the torture of an American soldier. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing, supporting an evil policy.
The idea that's popular in the Middle East that the U.S. government is the "Great Satan" is not Muslim propaganda, it is the truth. But this is not the American people's government. This is not Thomas Jefferson's or George Washington's government. The current government in Washington is totally evil and illegitimate that kills its own people, tortures its own soldiers, and eats its young.
There was a silent coup d'état in America decades ago. Alex Jones clarified America's current state of affairs in his March 9, 2011 radio broadcast:
I constantly say "our military" - "our government." It's not our military. Our citizens are in it, many of them good people being used, being mind controlled with a false political projection pushed into their minds by propaganda, but it's not our military, it's not our government. We have to admit America fell a long time ago. We have to admit we've been hijacked and overtaken. The government isn't corrupt, that was a long time ago that it was corrupt. The government is completely taken over.When America was attacked on September 11th a new generation of soldiers joined the hijacked U.S. military. They signed up for patriotic reasons, or they wanted to carry on family tradition, or simply to get money for education and a better opportunity in life. Regardless of their motivations, every recruit joined the U.S. military with the belief that America was under attack. None of them knew that their national leaders in Washington lied about the 9/11 events, and the raison d'être for the war on terror. Call them naive, ignorant, or, if your Henry Kissinger, "dumb, stupid animals," the point is that they made an honorable decision to sacrifice their lives in order to protect America from its enemies. And it was the right decision to make given their knowledge of history, current events, and American foreign policy.
People wonder why anybody would join the military of any country, let alone an empire like the United States. I think this is an unfair criticism. It is never a mistake, or wrongheaded to serve your country, if you think that is what you're doing. When you believe your country is in a state of war your natural warrior instincts spring into motion, and you act on those instincts. That is a perfectly moral and good response when your country is in a state of war.
But America is not in a state of war. That is a lie. If America was in a state of war then who is its enemy? It is not Al-Qaeda because the facts show that Al-Qaeda didn't attack America on 9/11. Leaders in the Bush administration, and the entire national security apparatus of the United States attacked America on 9/11. America is in a state of tyranny, not war. That is the truth. America's enemy is inside the gates.
