There is something terribly wrong with this country, if a majority of the people will choose to follow the very same lies that were used to start the last unnecessary war, to start a new world war centered on Iran, even though that same majority wants the first war ended. The same liars who sold us the same song and dance have now convinced 52% of the people that the future might be so incredibly dangerous that we have to start a nuclear war now to avoid it. http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1379  

These are the same deceivers who convinced us that Saddam Hussein had model airplanes capable of striking the United States with biological weapons. They are the same charlatans who still have 41% of the people convinced that Saddam Hussein used al Qaida to bring down the Twin Towers. http://atlanticreview.org/archives/726-More-Americans-Believe-that-Saddam-Was-Directly-Involved-in-911.html These are the same wolves in sheep's clothing who have convinced twenty million American Christians that Armageddon is a good thing, one of those things that "Jesus would do." http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north188.html     

They are using the same blatant lie that Iran, like Iraq, would risk giving al Qaida a nuclear weapon that could be traced back to them, thereby causing their own nuclear destruction. Our leaders are acting like lunatics, pursuing a path that all experts agree will be a genocidal one, one which will lead to our own economic downfall. Why are they undermining American security by crippling our over-extended economy and flagrantly going against the will of the American people? If they are not serving the common will of the American people, then whose will are they serving? Isn't it true in America that our representatives are loyal to the moneymen who put them in office, instead of the people they are elected to represent? Lobbyists have more influence in Washington than do the people. 

The moneymen and their powerful lobbies have waged psychological warfare against the minds of the American people, in a PR campaign to sell an irrational war to the irrational public. The power mad elite have used public and private institutions to develop psy-warfare techniques that will make public opinion pliable to their manipulations. The idea is to be able to control the majority so that they could be manipulated into accepting the ideas transmitted to them. In selling their irrational policies to the people they developed ways to trick the people into embracing whatever they were told to embrace. They manipulate the majority into ignoring the voices of reason, training the people to think with their emotions instead of their rational minds. 

How is it that the war on terrorism, which was started to protect the American people, has been transformed into a war to protect Israel from its neighbors, even while the original war has been handed to NATO to fight for us? The war on terrorism has been hijacked by a handful of conspirators, led by Vice President Cheney (many of them with dual Israeli/American citizenship), who have done everything within their power to turn it into a world war in the Middle East. One of them, neoconservative Michael Ledeen, boldly asserts that Iraq is "a miserably limited battlefield," openly expressing the common neocon desire to see the war escalate into total war, expanded throughout the entire Middle East. http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2006/01/osama-bin-laden-died-three-weeks-ago.html This is the same Ledeen who wrote a book called Universal Fascism, which sings the praises of fascism and how much America needs a good dose of it. http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html

Other fascist-loving neoconservatives, such as Elliot Abrams, have been busy starting small wars in other Arab countries which are unfortunate enough to be neighbors of Israel (like Lebanon and Palestine), using the same illegal methods he helped to perfect in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In Palestine, his men armed Mohammad Dahlan's radicals to start the Palestinian "civil war" against the popularly elected government. In Lebanon his man, Said Hariri helped to establish the Fatah el-Islam terrorists who attacked the Lebanese government from the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp. Abram's war plan was called the "El Salvador option," when it was used in Iraq, where it helped to create the ongoing sectarian warfare there. 

The neocon war plan is to hire gangs of mercenaries, to start large gang wars, wherever Bush and Cheney want to fight real wars. (This is the same overall strategy that brought armies of mercenaries into Iraq, in place of legitimate troops.) These wars justify our invading Muslim countries, not to fight the original "al Qaida-related" thugs, but to fight the militias that rise up to oppose them. We use these thug armies to find the men who will dare to defend themselves against our intrusions. Those who resist us and defend their countries against our invasions are classified as "extremists." The idea is to start the conflicts that will bring out the Muslim men who will not submit to our violent demands, in order to bomb them into submission. In Bush-speak, ideas of self-defense are "radical extremism." The war on terror is being waged to change the minds of all Muslim men, or to kill those whose minds we cannot control. 

Likewise, the US government is planning to bomb the Iranians until they change their minds about conforming to our demands. Bush has implied that "World War III" will come about if "the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon" is not somehow removed from Iranian heads. He expressly warned Americans to support his "negotiations" with Iran (which are actually just a series of ultimatums), if we want to avoid the alternative. 

The warning to Americans is also a key element of their strategy in the war on terrorism, this part being waged to change people's minds by force, or the threat of force. They are trying to outlaw what people are allowed to BELIEVE. The "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act," H.R. 1955, was passed on October 23, by the House of Representatives. This bill creates a commission which will study how to prohibit ". . . . .the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system . . . . .to advance political, religious, or social change.. . . ." Spreading these beliefs to "advance political, religious, or social change" is defined as "radicalization." If you are trying to educate your fellow countrymen, to democratically influence popular opinion, then you may find yourself accused of "facilitating ideologically-based violence."
   
Conspiracy theories fit into the government's definition of an "extremist belief system." Belief that our government answers to a secret higher authority than the American majority qualifies you as an "extremist." According to the US State Department, this is anyone who believes that "vast, powerful, evil forces are secretly manipulating events." Doubting the "official version" of violent events, like 9/11, the Kennedy assassinations (John, Bobby, or John Jr.), Oklahoma City bombing, or the downing of Flight 800, is extremism. This act follows on the heels of countless other bills and presidential "signing statements," like the "Military Commissions Act of 2006," which places martial law just a signing statement away. The threat of imprisonment for improper belief may not be imminent, but is clearly very real. 

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November 3, 2007 By Peter Chamberlin