NEWS: The Government Lies To You

POLITICS: The Government Lies To You

This doesn’t surprise anyone, right? I mean, it certainly didn’t cause huge waves of shock and awe yesterday to hear Kevin Tillman testify in Congress that the administration lied about his brother Pat’s death, did it?

We were all told that Pat Tillman, a former football star who left the NFL to join the military after 9/11, was killed fighting off Taliban fighters in the hills of Afghanistan. In reality he was killed by friendly fire in the hills of Afghanistan.

We’re also not surprised when we’re told that the administration actively tried to suppress the truth of Tillman’s death because it would make things politically messy, are we?

Lying? Check. Ordering people to lie to cover up your lies? Check. The government does it all!

Of course, people expect the military to mislead them and distort battlefield events. So when PFC Jessica Lynch also testified to at the same hearing that the story the Pentagon fed the press about her “abduction”, no one batted an eyelash.

Oh, Jessica. Your naivety is so charming! The American people are expecting to be told those "elaborate tales." No one believes anything the government tells them. Why should they when there’s ample evidence that they are big fibbers? We know how it goes. We're cool with it.

Of course, that does beg the question: if Americans can’t trust what their government tells them when it comes to the actions of their own troops, why do we trust what they tell us about the detainees being held in Guantanamo Bay? Doesn’t it stand to reason that if the Pentagon is so cavalier about inventing stories to stir up nationalistic pride that they might also take a few liberties while making their case about “enemy combatants”? And if so, why is our Supreme Court letting the administration get away with limiting the ability of detainees to challenge their detention?

The Court’s refusal means that detainees must limit their appeals to an appeals court without the jurisdiction to hear new evidence or challenge evidence presented by a military review panel. In short, the deck will be heavily stacked in favor of the government. How stacked exactly? Really, really stacked.

In other words, so stacked that these people’s cases will likely never see the light of day. Way to defer to the Executive, guys. Especially when this Executive has such a great track record of honesty.

Just because every word uttered and deed performed by the current Executive Branch has been dishonest in no way indicates their future words and deeds will be as dishonest.

Right?

How is this News?

Why do America's heroes hate America?

Friendly fire happens. It always sucks. It's on my list of things that shouldn't play a part in politics, but it's all too easy to use it against political opponents in power.

I wouldnt be surprised if this is like Clinton's crew removing all the Ws from all the keyboards in the white house. Lie enough times so when he leave the Democrat (cause thats the way it looks like the people will vote in 2008 unless the Dems REALLY fuck up) thats ends up elected will never have the trust of the people for his term. This would allow the Repubs to promote Honesty come 2012.

Though I doubt Bushie knows how the think that many steps ahead

Wars will always breed dishonesty amongst the politicans who initiate and prosecute them.

It's just shocking to see a war where you're pretty sure that the politicians behind it haven't even told a glimmer of the truth at any step along the way.

What more perfect a propiganda story. Nice looking rambo fights off Iraqi's and finally gets taken POW. Then bam send Special Forces to rescue her and film it for TV news so all can see. Or better yet, a truly selfless individual like Scott Tillman gives up 3.5 million dollar contract to join the hardest army job there is and become a Ranger. Wait, hero's don't die from friendly fire, they go down carrying the American Flag to victory, not cowering from .50 cal fire that is friendly. Shame on the Army for using these people's sacrifice for propiganda. Lies to cover lies to cover lies. I really hope after this administration goes to jail over all of this weather during or after their term ends but I think most people just want to forget the government from 2001-2008.

Because they hate our freedom from truth.

I read an excellent interview with Noam Chomsky and Robert Trivers in a science magazine called "Seed" a few days ago, about deceit and self-deception. I was able to find a copy of the article online here. It was real interesting for me because just a few days before that I had the opportunity to listen to a active duty Air Force one-star general is who currently a wing commander for a air base in the middle east that is a major hub for military aircraft involved in military action in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas. I'm not going to name his name, give any details, or provide any proof, so you can take from this what you will, but he struck me as somewhat disillusioned about the anti-war community and feeling in America and around the world.

He was giving a sort speech about America's involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa to his unit (about 800-1,000 people). It was important to him that his audience realized there were positive things happening in this areas that America was involved with, and even had a PowerPoint slide with numerous bullets about how we have built schools, power stations, hospitals, etc. There's no reason to assume he was lying, I'm sure all those things did happen and I'm glad they did. But I'm guessing his purpose here was to improve morale or spread his ideology or maybe he was just trying to re-assure himself. The one thing I found really interesting though, was that he made a point that they [the unit] should go home and out into their communities and inform them [friends, families, neighbors, radio talk shows] of our accomplishments because the media and the anti-war community pushes a negative anti-war stance over the rest of America because they believed 9/11 was a US Government conspiracy to start wars in the middle east. That's was his statement. War critics are conspiracy nuts. Now I know there's defiantly those group of people out there, and I'm not going to criticize them for that belief (because on some level, I think the Bush Administration and the neo-cons wanted something like 9/11 to happen). My point here is, this General, who I would think would be well educated and experienced to be in that position (but then again, this is a military run by the Bush Administration the last 6 years), made a broad sweeping statement that if you don't agree with the war, you're a crazy lunatic who believes in conspiracies. I found it surprising that a high-ranking military officer was pushing political opinions on his troops and asking them to spread it at home. The military community is well known for the idea that they're just doing the job asked of them, if you disagree if it, direct it at Washington. Seems to me that's changed.

And this brings me back to about that article about deceit and self-deception. It really does seem to me that the people in this government who support this foreign policy, the decision makers and high members of it, at least, really seem to be deceiving themselves into believing nothing we've done there is that bad, because, I believe, it's really harsh to realize that you're a part of the problem, not the solution. So they look for whatever evidence they can find to fool themselves into thinking they are right and just. But the truth is, General, schools are great, but it sort of pales when tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead, many more have fled their home country, and the psychological damage being done to almost everybody else (gotta admit though, the Kurds seem to have it going pretty good). Don't forget the 3,200+ that have died. Most Americans have forgotten about Abu-Ghraib prison or written it off as nothing worse than frat-boy antics, but I know most Arabs haven't.

The government just doesn't lie to you, it lies to itself.

Thats the Ministriy's job

Yeah, I guess it's pretty easy to blame the people who sent these guys overseas in the first place and put them in this exact situation for this to occur...silly me for letting my lefty politics get the best of me.

Did you not get the memo about these guys blatantly lying to cover this up? Yeah, those are the kind of guys I want to stick up for.

discrimination against old hippies, lying governments, next they'll be telling us smoking is bad for us.

And this surprises me how? Exactly.

I served in the US military. The little thing we all take for granted that is known as "truth" is always twisted and used against the civilian populace. Why? Becuase we'd rather have a comfortable lie than the ugly truth.

May whatever superior being we all believe in have mercy upon our ungrateful souls.

In the meantime, vote for me for President.

Whats that dialogue from "Escape from LA"

Old Soldier: "There is no Smoking in the United States of America. No smoking, no drinking, no red meat, no foul language, no subversive ideology, no deviant behavior of any kind."

Snake Plisskin: "Land of the Free"

But the important thing is that they're keeping us safe from hippies.

Oh! And look over there! It's a Real American Hero!

This one is written almost as if the writer thinks the readers are stupid. I dunno; I didn't like the tone. But it's an interesting story, to say the least.

Blame them for the war, blame them for bullshitting about the incident; don't blame them for the incident. There's no time for politics on the battlefield. How to put it... you don't blame A for killing B because A sent B to get something from the corner shop; you blame C for running B over with a truck. Crappy analogy, but I think it clarifies what I'm trying to say... probably not. My record is less than stellar in that department, apparently.

Perhaps your irony baffles are improperly calibrated. It's easy to blow them on this site.

Subrosa it is stories like this that will earn you a black bag over the head. After all, how are you going to appeal it once you're at gitmo?

That's neither the point of the article nor the inquiry.

I'm speechless, but seriously, for some reason this doesn't offend me as much as pretty much all the other lies they've told us. Lying about combat action is about as old as humanity itself. I mean consider the Illiad and the Odyssey, at least the administration has joined a long line of something respectful.

By accident, dude. They'll be out of there once they realise where they are.

No, that would mean they'd have to admit they made a mistake.

What will happen is simply that they'll botch it, like everything else they've ever done. Instead of the Iliad, we'll get, like, Springtime for Hitler.