What Have We Become: The Suffering of An American Drone Operator

By Nicola Abé

spiegel.de/international.de

 A soldier sets out to graduate at the top of his class. He succeeds, and he becomes a drone pilot working with a special unit of the United States Air Force in New Mexico. He kills dozens of people. But then, one day, he realizes that he can't do it anymore.


For more than five years, Brandon Bryant worked in an oblong, windowless container about the size of a trailer, where the air-conditioning was kept at 17 degrees Celsius (63 degrees Fahrenheit) and, for security reasons, the door couldn't be opened. Bryant and his coworkers sat in front of 14 computer monitors and four keyboards. When Bryant pressed a button in New Mexico, someone died on the other side of the world.

The container is filled with the humming of computers. It's the brain of a drone, known as a cockpit in Air Force parlance. But the pilots in the container aren't flying through the air. They're just sitting at the controls.

Bryant was one of them, and he remembers one incident very clearly when a Predator drone was circling in a figure-eight pattern in the sky above Afghanistan, more than 10,000 kilometers (6,250 miles) away. There was a flat-roofed house made of mud, with a shed used to hold goats in the crosshairs, as Bryant recalls. When he received the order to fire, he pressed a button with his left hand and marked the roof with a laser. The pilot sitting next to him pressed the trigger on a joystick, causing the drone to launch a Hellfire missile. There were 16 seconds left until impact.

"These moments are like in slow motion," he says today. Images taken with an infrared camera attached to the drone appeared on his monitor, transmitted by satellite, with a two-to-five-second time delay.
With seven seconds left to go, there was no one to be seen on the ground. Bryant could still have diverted the missile at that point. Then it was down to three seconds. Bryant felt as if he had to count each individual pixel on the monitor. Suddenly a child walked around the corner, he says.

Second zero was the moment in which Bryant's digital world collided with the real one in a village between Baghlan and Mazar-e-Sharif.

Bryant saw a flash on the screen: the explosion. Parts of the building collapsed. The child had disappeared. Bryant had a sick feeling in his stomach.

"Did we just kill a kid?" he asked the man sitting next to him.
"Yeah, I guess that was a kid," the pilot replied.

"Was that a kid?" they wrote into a chat window on the monitor.

Then, someone they didn't know answered, someone sitting in a military command center somewhere in the world who had observed their attack. "No. That was a dog," the person wrote.

They reviewed the scene on video. A dog on two legs?

Invisible Warfare
 
When Bryant left the container that day, he stepped directly into America: dry grasslands stretching to the horizon, fields and the smell of liquid manure. Every few seconds, a light on the radar tower at the Cannon Air Force Base flashed in the twilight. There was no war going on there.

Modern warfare is as invisible as a thought, deprived of its meaning by distance. It is no unfettered war, but one that is controlled from small high-tech centers in various places in the world. The new (way of conducting) war is supposed to be more precise than the old one, which is why some call it "more humane." It's the war of an intellectual, a war United States President Barack Obama has promoted more than any of his predecessors.

In a corridor at the Pentagon where the planning for this war takes place, the walls are covered with dark wood paneling. The men from the Air Force have their offices here. A painting of a Predator, a drone on canvas, hangs next to portraits of military leaders. From the military's perspective, no other invention has been as successful in the "war on terror" in recent years as the Predator.

The US military guides its drones from seven air bases in the United States, as well as locations abroad, including one in the East African nation of Djibouti. From its headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the CIA controls operations in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

'We Save Lives'
 
Colonel William Tart, a man with pale eyes and a clear image of the enemy, calls the drone a "natural extension of the distance."

Until a few months ago, when he was promoted to head the US Air Force's Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) Task Force in Langley, Tart was a commander at the Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, near Las Vegas, where he headed drone operations. Whenever he flew drones himself, he kept a photo of his wife and three daughters pasted into the checklist next to the monitors.

He doesn't like the word drone, because he says it implies that the vehicle has its own will or ego. He prefers to call them "remotely piloted aircraft," and he points out that most flights are for gathering information. He talks about the use of drones on humanitarian missions after the earthquake in Haiti, and about the military successes in the war in Libya: how his team fired on a truck that was pointing rockets at Misrata, and how it chased the convoy in which former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and his entourage were fleeing. He describes how the soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan are constantly expressing their gratitude for the assistance from the air. "We save lives," he says.

He doesn't say as much about the targeted killing. He claims that during his two years as operations commander at Creech, he never saw any noncombatants die, and that the drones only fire at buildings when women and children are not in them. When asked about the chain of command, Tart mentions a 275-page document called 3-09.3. Essentially, it states that drone attacks must be approved, like any other attacks by the Air Force. An officer in the country where the operations take place has to approve them.

The use of the term "clinical war" makes him angry. It reminds him of the Vietnam veterans who accuse him of never having waded through the mud or smelled blood, and who say that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

That isn't true, says Tart, noting that he often used the one-hour drive from work back to Las Vegas to distance himself from his job. "We watch people for months. We see them playing with their dogs or doing their laundry. We know their patterns like we know our neighbors' patterns. We even go to their funerals." It wasn't always easy, he says.

One of the paradoxes of drones is that, even as they increase the distance to the target, they also create proximity. "War somehow becomes personal," says Tart.

'I Saw Men, Women and Children Die'
 
A yellow house stands on the outskirts of the small city of Missoula, Montana, against a background of mountains, forests and patches of fog. The ground is coated with the first snow of the season. Bryant, now 27, is sitting on the couch in his mother's living room. He has since left the military and is now living back at home. He keeps his head shaved and has a three-day beard. "I haven't been dreaming in infrared for four months," he says with a smile, as if this were a minor victory for him.

Bryant completed 6,000 flight hours during his six years in the Air Force. "I saw men, women and children die during that time," says Bryant. "I never thought I would kill that many people. In fact, I thought I couldn't kill anyone at all." (CONTINUE READING)

The Great Debate: How Ron Paul’s Presidency Will Reshape America

Krummel Design.

Allan Stevo
LewRockwell.com
February 25, 2012

America is a place where neighbors rarely speak openly about politics, and when they do, it is usually only to repeat media sound bites. An Obama / Paul race will change that. Two differing ideologies will Clash. One for greater individual freedom. The other for more government. This competition of ideas will not occur with other Republican candidates, since they are ideologically aligned with President Obama when it comes to the power of the individual over the power of the state. Inevitably, debates will take place between the two candidates. Discussions in the new media will take place on the candidates. And most importantly, neighbors will discuss these two ideologies with each other. Because the differences between them are so significant these two candidates will compel us to move beyond the media sound bites and really examine our beliefs about the idea of America and the direction we should take as a nation. We can make that debate happen.

Many proponents of the statist ideology will work hard to see to it that the champions of freedom are denied a candidate in the general election who expresses those viewpoints. As usual, America’s political class will try to limit debate so that only statist viewpoints are widely expressed and only candidates with statist viewpoints are included on the ballot in November. This year is very different. It is possible and likely that Ron Paul will win the Republican nomination and that great contest of ideas will take place. Instead of Americans being forced to choose between two statists of different flavors (“the lesser of two evils”), they will be able to decide between an advocate of statism and an advocate of freedom.

President Obama is very charismatic and energizes large groups of people with his charm. Congressman Paul, too, energizes large groups of people, but with his relentless pursuit of the truth and his insistence on communicating that truth. These two men will face off and provide America with two different choices for what the future holds. America will have the opportunity to decisively choose which of those paths take. Never in my life have I been able to experience America the way America will look come autumn of 2012 as economic conditions worsen and Americans look to two very different philosophies to explain the cause and correction of the nation’s problems.

It’s the Intellectual Revolution that Matters Most

Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul informs us that election day is but a punctuation mark on the debates of society, a punctuation mark on the active participation of the citizenry. Historian Murray Rothbard points out that the American Revolution took place at least a decade prior to 1776. The shooting war from 1776 onward was but a bloody rebellion that came about because the British government refused to recognize that the colonies had forged a new society. What happens in the hearts and minds is what matters. While winning the election will be the goal of these two political campaigns, what all of us Americans should want above all else is to see this “Great Debate” when Paul and Obama run against each other. I fully expect that Paul will win the nomination, will go on to win the presidency, will make important policy changes, and will lead necessary legislative changes while in office, but it will be that discussion that will change history. However much he changes the face of government, inspiring this Great Debate will be Paul’s most significant impact on America.

When I speak of this Great Debate, I refer not to any specific debate or series of debates between the candidates. I refer instead to the necessary discussion of ideas that takes place between the two campaigns in this election, and especially to the discussion of ideas that will take place in the new media, among neighbors, and in many other forums when these two very different candidates square off.

Ron Paul and Barrack Obama are the Ideal Candidates

There are few people as qualified to represent the sides of the debate. Obama is the charismatic figurehead of the political establishment that calls for greater statism and corporatism. This establishment crosses party lines and includes the vast majority of federal politicians. He is the figurehead of what pollster Scott Rasmussen identifies as the American political class – a group of less than 10% of Americans who identify with the government on at least two of the following three questions:

1. Whose judgment do you trust more: that of the American people or American political leaders?
2. Has the federal government become its own special interest group?
3. Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers?

President Obama, a man whose time in office has aptly demonstrated his belief that the federal government can solve life’s problems by force of mandate, is qualified to represent the American political class in an election.

Ron Paul has spent approximately 40 years establishing himself as the most qualified person to represent freedom – he is well mannered, well read, knowledgeable of the workings of the halls of power, and an adherent to constitutional and pro-freedom values. He regularly finds himself in direct opposition to the ideas of the political class. He is unique among the Republican candidates in flatly speaking out against the statism and corporatism of the political establishment. It is imperative to that establishment that Paul not be allowed to win the presidency and nearly as important that his voice not even be heard. The political establishment does not want the American people to examine their beliefs, forced to think, forced to choose, forced to be exposed to a debate that is so powerful and expansive that neighbors and strangers will reach out to each other to discuss the issues of the day. The establishment is terrified by the potential of that debate. They realize that merely opening the channels of communication between friends and neighbors is enough to bring drastic and lasting change.

I know that debate will happen.

Both you and I know how important that debate is. After all, it’s the debates – the shifting intellectual environment – that made the American Revolution what it was. The act of taking up arms wasn’t the important part. Some piece of each one of us understands how important that debate is; that’s why we are active in the freedom movement. Let’s face it – both you and I have more relaxing and more comfortable things to do than win the day for Ron Paul. For example, instead of spending my time with the people I love the most, I am writing this to you. I am writing this book because I know that the small percentage of Americans who make up the political establishment can be overcome by the rest of the population. I write this because I know that you personally can so successfully appeal to the sense of reason of so many other Americans. Are we not better served by an Obama / Paul race in November than by another contest of Statist vs. Statist? Isn’t it good for the nation to debate the questions that will arise from these two very different candidates meeting? I’m suspect of anyone who doesn’t think that debate is a good idea.(CONTINUE READING)

Congress Proves Ron Paul Right on Foreign Policy

Greg Buls
Infowars.com
January 2, 2012

Ron Paul has placed American foreign policy front and center in the presidential election. Should we even be considering an alternative to our current policies? Definitely not, we’re told, by all of the other candidates for president, both Democrat and Republican. While they were consistently wrong about the prospects for ‘success’ in both Iraq and Afghanistan, most voters are still listening to them. Most voters don’t yet know that Paul emphatically predicted failure, in detail, on both fronts, while also warning about the inflating housing bubble and its inevitable consequences. When voters learn someone is running who actually predicted the establishment’s giant messes, more eyes and ears will turn to Paul.


Presently, voters are being brow-beaten into thinking that Paul’s foreign policy prescriptions are dangerous. Yet in spite of the constant barrage of negative sentiment from media and GOP minions, Dr. Paul is seeking every opportunity to discuss foreign policy with voters. He knows that voters need more than a sound bite to challenge thinking that’s been entrenched for decades. His work is aided by a series of congressional actions, a pattern which provides inescapable proof of catastrophic foreign policy failure.

Consider the proper constitutional purposes of foreign policy: Avoiding military conflict when possible, and keeping the population safe from foreign aggression. Our current foreign policy explicitly abandons the first objective; it requires us to actively seek and engage in war, ostensibly to insure the second objective, keeping us safe. That is exactly how the policy was sold to the American people: We must fight them over there so that they won’t terrorize us over here. It’s probably not an all or nothing question – fighting them over there does not insure that they cannot come here to attack us. Our borders are essentially open; many nations likely have the ability to bring highly-coordinated terror attacks to our shores, if and when they choose, whether we occupy their lands or not.

But we’re not being attacked. Foiled plots are amateurish and often of dubious origin. Maybe all of the real radicals are staying put, in order to fight us over there. That would suggest that the policy is working as intended. But it would also mean that the policy may be endless – if we leave, they will come here, we are constantly told. If it is not safe to leave now, then when, and how can we know? Perhaps we can successfully defend our footholds there for many years and remain ‘safe’ at home. But at some point the people we are fighting will eventually become convinced that fighting us over there won’t dislodge us, and they will turn to the alternative, attacking us here.(CONTINUE READING)

Why Neo-Cons Hate Ron Paul's Honest Foreign Policy

Jeremy R. Hammond
Alt-Market
December 27, 2011

This article, originally titled “Ron Paul: Propagandist Or Prophet?”, was written by Jeremy R. Hammond and published at Foreign Policy Journal

Ron Paul is “the best-known American propagandist for our enemies”, writes Dorothy Rabinowitz in a recent Wall Street Journal hit piece. To support the charge, she writes that Dr. Paul “assures audiences” that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 “took place only because of U.S. aggression and military actions”. It’s “True,” she writes, that “we’ve heard the assertions before”, but only “rarely have we heard in any American political figure such exclusive concern for, and appreciation of, the motives of those who attacked us”—and, she adds, he doesn’t care about the victims of the attacks.

The vindictive rhetoric aside, what is it, exactly, that Ron Paul is guilty of here? It is completely uncontroversial that the 9/11 attacks were a consequence of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The 9/11 Commission Report, for instance, points out that Osama bin Laden “stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War, and he protested U.S. support of Israel.”

Notice that Rabinowitz doesn’t actually deny that the 9/11 attacks were motivated by such U.S. policies as these. Rather, Ron Paul’s sin is that he actually acknowledges this truth. The fact that other political figures choose to ignore or deny this fact hardly reflects poorly on Dr. Paul. Refusing to bury one’s head deeply up one’s arse, as Rabinowitz is so obviously willing to do, is hardly a character trait to be faulted.

From this position of willful ignorance, Rabinowitz then implores her readers that “a President Paul” would “be making decisions about the nation’s defense, national security, domestic policy and much else.” The conclusion one is supposed to draw is that anyone who could actually acknowledge the ugly truth that 9/11 was a consequence of U.S. foreign policy isn’t fit for office; only someone who is willing to delude him or herself that the U.S. was attacked because “they hate our freedoms” is worthy of the presidency. Anyone who wishes to changeU.S. foreign policy is unfit; only a person who is willing to continue the status quo should be allowed a seat in the Oval Office.

Rabinowitz warns that “The world may not be ready for another American president traversing half the globe to apologize for the misdeeds of the nation he had just been elected to lead.” It’s not clear who she has in mind with the “another”, but it’s by now a familiar refrain. “I’ll never apologize for the United States of America. Ever. I don’t care what the facts are,” President George H. W. Bush declared to the world after a U.S. warship had shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in Iranian airspace, killing all 290 passengers aboard, including 65 children. Surely, any president willing to apologize for the murder of innocent children must not lead the nation. The horror of the thought!

And then there is Dr. Paul’s position with respect to Iran. He recently urged his host in an interview “to understand that Iran’s leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had never mentioned any intention of wiping Israel off the map.” Here, again, it’s notable that Rabinowitz doesn’t actually dispute this. Dr. Paul is, of course, correct. The claim that Iran has threatened to acquire nuclear weapons to “wipe Israel off the map” is a complete fabrication of Western media propaganda, and mainstream corporate news agencies know it is a fabrication, but repeat it obligatorily anyway. (CONTINUE READING)

U.S. Politicians Are The Biggest Threat To World Peace In Human History

by Saman Mohammadi
theexcavator
November 12, 2011

The world is on the verge of World War III. There is no question about that.

Russian geopolitical analyst Konstantin Sivkov, Vice President of the Academy for Geopolitical Issues, says WWIII "has already begun" and that it "will take lives of hundreds of millions people worldwide."

U.S. politicians want to start World War III more than anyone else. They want to appear tough and they think attacking countries like Iraq and Iran without any reason is tough.

These are sick and sociopathic politicians who have a dangerous love affair with Israel and War.

Israel and War are for U.S. politicians what milk and cookies are for Santa Claus.

If Bibi and Israel says jump, U.S. politicians say "how high?" That is the nature of the special relationship between the U.S. Congress and Israel.

Some politicians are victims of Israeli and media brainwashing, and brainwashing by the CIA and Pentagon. Some are afraid to criticize Israel because they'll be called anti-Semitic and won't get re-elected.

So ignorance and cowardice are two big reasons why U.S. politicians say what they say.

Another reason is they are flat out criminals who are complicit in war crimes. They know the truth about 9/11 and want a world war because it serves their paymasters' agenda for global government.(CONTINUE READING)

War On Terror Kills More Americans than Al-Awlaki Could

 by ROBIN KOERNER
themoderatevoice.com
Oct 14th, 2011

*** This is the first article I’ve ever submitted to the Huffington Post that they have refused to publish. I await their response as to why. Meanwhile, I am delighted to be able to post it here. ***

Most comments of those who disagree that the manner of killing of Al-Awlaki should not be acceptable to Americans assume two things: first, that the killing was necessary to keep us safe, and second, that the executive branch of government can be trusted to make that assessment without legal constraint.
The issue is not the killing of an American person per se. I recognize the legitimacy of killing as punishment for capital crime after presentation of evidence, due process and a jury trial. I recognize the legitimacy of killing in self-defense, which is a killing by someone likely to be harmed by an aggressor. I recognize the legitimacy of killing in the course of securing a military objective in a just conflict that is being waged in self-defense. Moreover, I do not believe in a moral duty to respond “proportionately” to an intrusion or attack, and I do believe in a military than can deliver crushing force in defense of the nation.
That said, let’s look at the assumptions on which the argument of those who support the killing of Al-Awlaki rest.

The first is that it was necessary to keep us safe.
It was necessary only if Al-Awlaki was in the process of committing a violent crime against the USA with a “detectable” probability of harming American civilians. Was he? We only have the word of the executive branch. Is that word enough? If you find the President trustworthy, then it is enough for you. If you do not, then it is not. But the institutions of a democratic republic are designed to protect us from abuse by leaders we do not trust.

In my last article, I drew a comparison between Bush’s invasion of Iraq and the killing on Al-Awlaki. The point was that in both cases, all we had to go on regarding the imminent threat posed by the target was the word of a president, which turned out to be wrong. This is why I stated that the extra-judicial killing of Awlaki can be justified only if Obama goes to pains to present evidence of the imminent threat posed by Al-Awlaki — and that evidence must be orders of magnitude stronger than that used to go to war in Iraq, which was wrong and led to the deaths of 100,000s of innocent people.

We should demand some evidence because 1) the US has something of a history of being wrong on who to support and who to kill in so-called self-defense 2) many non-American commentators, including in Yemen, seem very unconvinced by the fact that Al-Awlaki was operationally significant in Al-Qaeda and 3) the US government has a vested interest in keeping the American nation believing that we are under immediate threat from people in the Middle East — as a justification for continued projection of power around the world. If you like Obama and can’t imagine that the current administration could have such a murky motivation, just imagine that Bush had ordered the killing.(CONTINUE READING)

Top Government Insider: Bin Laden Died In 2001, 9/11 A False Flag

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 4, 2011
Top US government insider Dr. Steve R. Pieczenik, a man who held numerous different influential positions under three different Presidents and still works with the Defense Department, shockingly told The Alex Jones Show yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury how a top general told him directly that 9/11 was a false flag inside job.
Pieczenik cannot be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. He served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. A former US Navy Captain, Pieczenik achieved two prestigious Harry C. Solomon Awards at the Harvard Medical School as he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.
Recruited by Lawrence Eagleburger as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Management, Pieczenik went on to develop, “the basic tenets for psychological warfare, counter terrorism, strategy and tactics for transcultural negotiations for the US State Department, military and intelligence communities and other agencies of the US Government,” while also developing foundational strategies for hostage rescue that were later employed around the world.
Pieczenik also served as a senior policy planner under Secretaries Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, George Schultz and James Baker and worked on George W. Bush’s election campaign against Al Gore. His record underscores the fact that he is one of the most deeply connected men in intelligence circles over the past three decades plus.
The character of Jack Ryan, who appears in many Tom Clancy novels and was also played by Harrison Ford in the popular 1992 movie Patriot Games, is also based on Steve Pieczenik.
Back in April 2002, over nine years ago, Pieczenik told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months,” and that the government was waiting for the most politically expedient time to roll out his corpse. Pieczenik would be in a position to know, having personally met Bin Laden and worked with him during the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the early 80′s.
Pieczenik said that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001, “Not because special forces had killed him, but because as a physician I had known that the CIA physicians had treated him and it was on the intelligence roster that he had marfan syndrome,” adding that the US government knew Bin Laden was dead before they invaded Afghanistan.
Marfan syndrome is a degenerative genetic disease for which there is no permanent cure. The illness severely shortens the life span of the sufferer.
“He died of marfan syndrome, Bush junior knew about it, the intelligence community knew about it,” said Pieczenik, noting how CIA physicians had visited Bin Laden in July 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai.
“He was already very sick from marfan syndrome and he was already dying, so nobody had to kill him,” added Pieczenik, stating that Bin Laden died shortly after 9/11 in his Tora Bora cave complex.
“Did the intelligence community or the CIA doctor up this situation, the answer is yes, categorically yes,” said Pieczenik, referring to Sunday’s claim that Bin Laden was killed at his compound in Pakistan, adding, “This whole scenario where you see a bunch of people sitting there looking at a screen and they look as if they’re intense, that’s nonsense,” referring to the images released by the White House which claim to show Biden, Obama and Hillary Clinton watching the operation to kill Bin Laden live on a television screen.
“It’s a total make-up, make believe, we’re in an American theater of the absurd….why are we doing this again….nine years ago this man was already dead….why does the government repeatedly have to lie to the American people,” asked Pieczenik.

• 

“Osama Bin Laden was totally dead, so there’s no way they could have attacked or confronted or killed Osama Bin laden,” said Pieczenik, joking that the only way it could have happened was if special forces had attacked a mortuary.
Pieczenik said that the decision to launch the hoax now was made because Obama had reached a low with plummeting approval ratings and the fact that the birther issue was blowing up in his face.
“He had to prove that he was more than American….he had to be aggressive,” said Pieczenik, adding that the farce was also a way of isolating Pakistan as a retaliation for intense opposition to the Predator drone program, which has killed hundreds of Pakistanis.
“This is orchestrated, I mean when you have people sitting around and watching a sitcom, basically the operations center of the White House, and you have a president coming out almost zombie-like telling you they just killed Osama Bin Laden who was already dead nine years ago,” said Pieczenik, calling the episode, “the greatest falsehood I’ve ever heard, I mean it was absurd.”
Dismissing the government’s account of the assassination of Bin Laden as a “sick joke” on the American people, Pieczenik said, “They are so desperate to make Obama viable, to negate the fact that he may not have been born here, any questions about his background, any irregularities about his background, to make him look assertive….to re-elect this president so the American public can be duped once again.”
Pieczenik’s assertion that Bin Laden died almost ten years ago is echoed by numerous intelligence professionals as well as heads of state across the world.
Bin Laden, “Was used in the same way that 9/11 was used to mobilize the emotions and feelings of the American people in order to go to a war that had to be justified through a narrative that Bush junior created and Cheney created about the world of terrorism,” stated Pieczenik.
During his interview with the Alex Jones Show yesterday, Pieczenik also asserted he was directly told by a prominent general that 9/11 was a stand down and a false flag operation, and that he is prepared to go to a grand jury to reveal the general’s name. (CONTINUE READING AND WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DR. PIECZENIK)

Inside Sources: Bin Laden’s Corpse Has Been On Ice For Nearly a Decade

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 2, 2011

A multitude of different inside sources both publicly and privately, including one individual who personally worked with Bin Laden at one time, told us directly that Osama’s dead corpse has been on ice for nearly a decade and that his “death” would only be announced at the most politically expedient time.

That time has now come with a years-old fake picture being presented as the only evidence of his alleged killing yesterday, while Bin Laden’s body has been hastily dumped into the sea to prevent anyone from finding out when he actually died.
In April 2002, over nine years ago, Council on Foreign Relations member Steve R. Pieczenik, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Henry Kissinger, Cyrus Vance, and James Bake, told the Alex Jones Show that Bin Laden had already been “dead for months”.
Pieczenik would be in a position to know such information, having worked directly with Bin Laden when the US was funding and arming the terror leader in an attempt to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the late 70′s and early 80′s (a documented historical fact that talking heads in the corporate media are actually denying today in light of developments).
“I found out through my sources that he had had kidney disease. And as a physician, I knew that he had to have two dialysis machines and he was dying,” Pieczenik told Jones during the April 24, 2002 interview. “And you could see those in those films, those made-up photos that they were sending us out of nowhere. I mean, suddenly, we would see a video of bin Laden today and then out of nowhere, they said oh it was sent to us anonymously, meaning that someone in the government, our government, was trying to keep up the morale on our side and say oh we still have to chase this guy when, in fact, he’s been dead for months,” added Pieczenik.
Pieczenik then stated that the video tape of a fat Bin Laden look alike “taking responsibility” for 9/11 that was released in December 2001 was “such a hoax” designed to “manipulate” people in the emotional aftermath of 9/11.

The subsequent war in Afghanistan that followed 9/11 was orchestrated “With the agreement of the bin Laden family, knowing fully well that he would die,” said Pieczenik. “And I think that Musharraf, the President of Pakistan, spilled the beans by accident three months ago when he said that bin Laden was dead because his kidney dialysis machines were destroyed in East Afghanistan.”
In addition to Pieczenik, as we reported in August 2002, Alex Jones was separately told by a high level Republican source that Bin Laden was dead and that his body was being kept “on ice” until Osama’s death could be announced at the most “politically expedient” time.
When Jones asked the source if his claim was mere speculation or whether it was actually true, the source re-iterated the fact that he was being deadly serious and that Bin Laden’s corpse was “physically on ice” waiting to be rolled out for public consumption at the most opportune moment.
(CONTINUE READING)

Staged Osama Assassination: Get Ready for More War

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 2, 2011
If the cheering crowd at midnight outside the White House is any indication, the American people are ready to support more mass murder in the Middle East.

The supposed hit on Osama – without shred of evidence short of an image badly mangled in Photoshop that was debunked in short order like Obama’s birth certificate – will be used to reinvigorate the war on terror precisely at a time when new enemies are being manufactured in Africa.
Osama’s unverified assassination arrives on the heels of large protests in Pakistan over the CIA’s illegal drone attacks. More than a week ago, activists in Pakistan managed to blockade supplies headed to U.S. occupation forces in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani government has publicly condemned the drone strikes as undermining its sovereignty. Earlier this month, the country lodged a formal complaint with Washington over the use of CIA-run Predator drones.



The U.S. announced it plans to expand the war to Syria when Obama released an executive order to enforce new and more stringent sanctions against the Arab country and appealed to European North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to do likewise.


Following Obama’s unconstitutional order, NATO and the U.S. murdered Gaddafi’s youngest son and three of his grandchildren. They also bombed a school for disabled children.
In addition to providing additional momentum for the flagging war on terror, the staged assassination of a terrorist with ties to the CIA who died almost ten years ago serves to distract the easily distracted masses away from serious economic dangers, most notably the engineered fall of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the related escalation of gas, food and commodity prices.
Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)
It is not certain if the government will use this unverified and unverifiable assassination – now that we are told Osama was buried at sea – as a pretext to engage in a false flag attack to further boost the wars and occupations abroad and expand the police state at home.
If the throng of chortling murder worshippers outside the White House last night is any indication of larger sentiment around the country in the wake of this fake assassination, it will not take much for the government to convince the people to support more mass murder in foreign lands and the continued debasement and destruction of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Related: Media Runs Fake Photo To Illustrate Bin Laden Death Propaganda

Ron Paul Mocks GOP Congress For Defunding NPR Instead Of Military

Ron Paul took to the House floor yesterday to advocate again for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, one of two votes that took place there yesterday.
As, always, one of Paul's main arguments for the military leaving Afghanistan is cost.  Yesterday he mocked so-called fiscal conservatives for moving so enthusiastically to defund NPR, a move which might save the government $10 million dollars when we have spent upwards of a trillion in Afghanistan in the last decade.

There's a serious question of whether [defunding NPR] will even cut one penny, but at the very least the fiscal conservatives are going to be overwhelmingly in support of slashing NPR, go home and brag about how they're such great fiscal conservatives!  And the very most they might save is $10 million.  And that's their claim to fame for slashing the budget.  At the same time they won't consider for minute cutting a real significant amount of money

 In the end the House voted to defund NPR and rejected an immediate Afghanistan pullout.  Video below.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ron-paul-defund-military-npr-2011-3#ixzz1H1aKorf1