14 Facts Which Show Criminal Negligence and Ass-Covering

On this eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, we would like to take a look back at what went wrong.

While the Bush administration tried to make its response to 9/11 its crowning achievement, the truth is that they acted with criminal incompetence and ass-covering.

(1) The U.S. is at least partly responsible for creating Al Qaeda.  For example, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser admitted on CNN that we organized and supported Bin Laden and the other originators of “Al Qaeda” in the 1970s to fight the Soviets.

Professor of strategy at the Naval War College and former National Security Agency intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer John R. Schindler documents, the U.S. supported Bin Laden and other Al Qaeda terrorists in Bosnia.

(2) The chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.  It is thoroughly-documented that an attack such as 9/11 was entirely foreseeable.  Specifically, Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was something which American military and intelligence services - and our allies - knew could happen.

(3) U.S. intelligence services have repeatedly infiltrated Al Qaeda and related groups, but then idiotically failed to stop them.  For example - as the New York Times, CBS News and others reported - the FBI informant involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center begged the FBI to substitute fake bomb power for real explosives, but his FBI handler moronically let real explosives be used.

Similarly - as reported by Newsweek, the New York Times and others - an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to 2 of the 9/11 hijackers while they were in the U.S., but then stupidly failed to stop them.

Indeed, former counter-terrorism boss Richard Clarke theorizes that top CIA brass tried to recruit the hijackers and turn them to our side, but were unsuccessful. And – when they realized had failed – they covered up their tracks so that the FBI would not investigate their illegal CIA activities , “malfeasance and misfeasance”, on U.S. soil.

In other words, our intelligence services' attempts to infiltrate and work with people inside of terrorist cells was horribly botched; and they did a horrible job of stopping terrorist attacks once they were set in motion.

(4) Dick Cheney was in charge of all of America's counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. See this Department of State announcement and this CNN article.  As such, at least part of the blame for failing to stop the attacks is on his shoulders.

(5) The Energy Task Force chaired by Dick Cheney prior to 9/11 collected maps of Iraqi oil, Saudi and United Arab Emerates fields and potential suitors for that oil. And you might have heard that the oil bigs attended the Task Force meetings.

According to the New Yorker – a secret document written by the National Security Council (NSC) on February 3, 2001 directed NSC staff to cooperate fully with  the Energy Task Force as it considered the “melding” of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy:

“The review of operational policies towards rogue states,” such as Iraq, and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields”.

It is difficult to brush off Cheney’s Energy Task Force’s examination of arab oil maps as a harmless comparison of American energy policy with known oil reserves because the NSC explicitly linked the Task Force, oil, and regime change.

The above-linked New Yorker article quotes a former senior director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian affairs at the NSC said:

If this little group was discussing geostrategic plans for oil, it puts the issue of war in the context of the captains of the oil industry sitting down with Cheney and laying grand, global plans.

See also this essay.

Is that why idiot Cheney - the guy in charge of all terror protection efforts before and on 9/11 - failed to effectively respond to 9/11 with normal air defense?  Was he too busy pining over Iraqi oil maps to pay any attention?

(6)  The military – under the idiot Vice President’s command that day – didn’t scramble enough fighter jets, and then scrambled jets far over the Atlantic Ocean, in what Senator Mark Dayton called:

The most gross incompetence and dereliction of responsibility and negligence that I’ve ever, under those extreme circumstances, witnessed in the public sector.

Cheney - and the other people in charge of anti-terror response that day - screwed up big time.

But just like the bank CEOs who are rewarded for causing the financial crisis by being given bailouts and subsidies and breaks, the military and intelligence officials who dropped the ball that day have been promoted. As Time reported:

They have basically promoted the exact same people who have presided over the ... failure," says a former Justice Department official, "and those individuals took the same thinking with them.

As the Washington Post reported, no one from the  CIA, FBI or NSA has been reprimanded, punished, or fired for the events of 9/11.

The same is true for the military personnel on watch that day. For example, General Myers, who was Acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 11th, was quickly confirmed as Chairman two weeks later. General Ralph Eberhart, Commander in Chief of NORAD at the time of the attack, was promoted to head the new "Northern Command" a year after the attack.

Just as with the financial crisis, no one has been punished, and the people who screwed up have been allowed to fail upwards.

(7) On the day of 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney initiated Continuity of Government Plans that ended America’s constitutional form of government (at least for some undetermined period of time.)

On that same day, a national state of emergency was declared … and that state of emergency has continuously been in effect up to today. ... even though U.S. military and intelligence officials say that the threat from Al Qaeda is now almost entirely non-existent.

(8) Many of the draconian "national security programs" - such as the Patriot Act, spying on Americans and indefinite detention - overtly approved after 9/11 had actually been implemented or planned before 9/11.  September 11th was used as an excuse to ramp up these programs.

These programs were approved during the Bush administration ... but were never terminated by the Obama administration.  In fact, while Obama is a nicer and smarter guy than Bush, top constitutional law professors say that Obama has actually expanded these programs. And top national security experts say that these programs actually harm our national security and increase the threat from terrorism.  See this and this.

(9)  The Bush administration immediately used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to carry out decades-old neoconservative plans to implement regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa.  And see this,

(10) The Bush administration pretended that Saddam Hussein had a hand in 9/11 ...  one of the two main justifications for that war.

(11) Allegedly,  Saddam offered to leave Iraq - and the Taliban offered to turn over Bin Laden - in order to prevent U.S. invasion.  But the U.S. turned down the offers and invaded anyway.

We can't get the bad guys using peaceful means, now can we?  We have a war to fight!

(12) In contrast, other governments that might actually have sponsored the attacks have been let off scot-free ... and have even been given huge amounts of financial support.

(13) As the 9/11 Commission itself notes, as part of its ass-covering efforts, the Bush administration engaged in criminal obstruction of justice.

There are numerous examples of obstruction of justice into the 9/11 investigation, including:

• The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses

• The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

• The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times

• As reported by ACLU, FireDogLake, RawStory and many others, declassified documents shows that Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

Moreover, the CIA videotaped the interrogation of 9/11 suspects, falsely told the 9/11 Commission that there were no videotapes or other records of the interrogations, and then illegally destroyed all of the tapes and transcripts of the interrogations.

9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

This is particularly disturbing because the torture methods used were specially-targeted at producing false confessions.  And according to NBC News:

• Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured

• At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being "tortured."

• One of the Commission's main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

The 9/11 Commissioners publicly expressed anger at certain cover ups and obstructions of justice:

• The Commission’s co-chairs said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”

• The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

And the Co-Chair of the official Congressional Inquiry Into 9/11 – and former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee – has called for a new 9/11 investigation.

(14)  The American government - like many other governments - has long spun accidents and intelligence failures as justifications for war propaganda.   Unscrupulous Americans - just like dishonest people all over the world - have long used deception as a basis for war.

Whatever the details of the screw-ups on 9/11, the Bush administration used the attacks as a justification to promote their agenda.  And - instead of changing the agenda - Obama has continued it.

The government's claim that it can indefinitely detain American citizens living on American soil based upon a vague "suspicion" that they might be supporting or affiliated with bad guys is disturbing.

But this is nothing new ...

J. Edgar Hoover, then-actor Ronald Reagan, Earl Warren, and UC Berkeley officials all agreed acted to blacklist professors - McCarthy-style - who they suspected of being radical.

Indeed, as award-winning investigative reporter Seth Rosenfeld explains today, the FBI devised plans to arrest without warrant and then indefinitely detain Berkeley professors and students who were champions of free speech in the event of any national emergency:

>

Japanese-Americans, of course, were interned - or "indefinitely detained" - until the end of WWII. In 1988, Congress passed a bill, subsequently signed by President Reagan, apologizing for the internment, and confessing that the government's actions were based on:

Race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership.

Unfortunately, our leaders seemed to have learned nothing from past mistakes.

Constitutional Challenges Contemplated Long Before 9/11

Congress members and legal scholars tell us that the Constitution has largely been suspended since 9/11.

But the suspension of the Constitution and declaration of martial law in the event that the President declares a "State of National Emergency" - for example, based upon widespread the U.S. people's opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad - was contemplated by Ronald Reagan's administration in the 1980s.

See this July 5, 1987 report in the Miami Herald.

In Fact, Everything Happening Now Was Foreshadowed Long Before 9/11

These may seem like isolated examples of extreme plans which were ever implemented.

But virtually all of our "post-9/11 reality" was actually planned long before September 11th :

• The government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this)

• The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11 (and see this). Indeed, former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig:
  

  After 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

  The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

  (4:30 into this video).

• People were locked away in psychiatric hospitals due to their political views 60 years before 9/11

• Militarization of American police forces started 30 years before 9/11

• Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarch long before 9/11

• The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this)

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.”

• Cheney apparently even made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: “Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.” (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

• In fact, regime change in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran were all planned a decade before 9/11

• Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long before 9/11. And see this

• It was known long before 9/11 that torture doesn’t work to produce accurate intelligence … but is an effective way to terrorize people

• And – sadly – America played dirty games to justify and win wars before 9/11

Many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people, who are only trying to help their patients.

But the Nazi government substantially supported psychologists … many of whom, in turn, espoused extermination of the people they considered to be “racially and cognitively compromised”.

Soviet psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters.  The official explanation was that no sane person would declaim the Soviet government and Communism.

American psychologists created the American program of torture which was specially-crafted to produce false confessions to justify U.S. military policy. And see this.

And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)

As prominent forensic psychiatrist James Knoll - psychiatry professor at SUNY-Syracuse and director of a forensic fellowship program - writes in the Psychiatric Times:

When psychiatric science becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance may be created. It is science that will always be the host organism, to be taken over by political viruses…. [P]sychiatry may come to resemble a new organism entirely -- one that serves the ends of the criminal justice system.

Even psychologists with good intentions can erroneously label people delusional simply because they themselves make bad assumptions.

There is even a label for this – the “Martha Mitchell Effect” – defined as:

The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:

Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.

In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable.  As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else … unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.

Governments Indefinitely Detaining Citizens In Psychiatric Wards Without Due Process of Law

As such, detention in psych wards on mere “suspicion” of posing a danger – without due process of law – is troubling.

For example, former marine Brandon Raub was just carted off and locked in a psychiatric ward for his allegedly “anti-government” Facebook posts.

AP reports today:

Police – acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional – took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime.

 

***

 

Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state’s emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.

New York Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft was  involuntarily hospitalizated in a psychiatric ward after he recorded videotapes of his fellow police officers engaging in corruption.

Claire Swinney of New Zealand was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for criticizing the government.    Susan Lindauer was held under the Patriot Act for a year at Carswell Air Force Base - where psychiatric drugs were pushed on her - after she alleged government corruption.

The Daily Mail notes:

The [British] Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health laws.

 

***

 

The team’s psychiatrists and psychologists then have the power to order treatment – including forcibly detaining suspects in secure psychiatric units.

 

Using these powers, the unit can legally detain people for an indefinite period without trial, criminal charges or even evidence of a crime being committed and with very limited rights of appeal.

 

Until now it has been the exclusive decision of doctors and mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained.

 

But the new unit uses the police to identify suspects – increasing fears the line is being blurred between criminal investigation and doctors’ clinical decisions.

 

***

Scotland Yard, which runs the shadowy unit, refuses to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalised by the team because of “patient confidentiality”.

 

***

 

The purpose of the centre is “to evaluate and manage the risk posed to prominent people by…those who engage in inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours in the context of abnormally intense preoccupations, many [Many? That means that some are not] of which arise from psychotic illness.”

Who gets to decide what “inappropriate” or “threatening” means?  What if a whistleblower has information that a member of parliament has engaged in bribes?  Would trying to reveal such information constitute “inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours” in the context of “abnormally intense preoccupations” with that MP’s illegal actions?

Indeed, a study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found a high rate of false positives in the British identification of dangerous persons.

The Mail continues:

So-called ‘sectioning’ allows a patient to be held for up to six months before a further psychological assessment. Patients are then reviewed every year to determine if they can be released.

 

***

 

Human rights activists fear the team, whose existence has never been publicised, may be being used as a way to detain suspected terrorists without having to put evidence before the courts.

 

***

 

Last night human rights group Liberty said the secret unit represented a new threat to civil liberties.

 

Policy director Gareth Crossman said: “There is a grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution.

 

“This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people’s liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.

 

“This raises serious concerns. First that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings.

 

“Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism at a time when the Government is looking at ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial.”

 

***

 

The team examined thousands of cases and liaised with the FBI, the US Secret Service, the Capitol Hill Police, which protects Congressmen and Senators, and the Swedish and Norwegian secret services.

 

***

 

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “The Government is trying to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder and is resisting exclusions which ensure that people cannot be treated as mentally disordered on the grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.

 

“When you hear they are also setting up something like this police unit, it raises questions about quite what their intentions are.

 

“The use of mental health powers of detention should be confined to the purposes of treatment. But the Government wants to be able to detain someone who is mentally disordered even when the treatment would have no benefit.

 

“Combined with the idea that someone could be classed as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs, it is a very worrying scenario.”

Indeed, the whole “indefinite detention” process (which Americans living on American soil are subject to) can be based on circular reasoning:

The government’s indefinite detention policy – stripped of it’s spin – is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:

• If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over

• It is a perpetual war, which will never be over

• Neither you or your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers

• But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security

• We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured), because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don’t apply to you

• Since you admitted that you’re a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention

See how that works?

This is an analogy.  We are not accusing psych wards of using torture.  However, they do often use powerful psychiatric drugs on patients … which can elicit false confessions.

Are we going to slide into Soviet levels of psychiatric detention of political dissidents? Unless the spread of psychiatric detention without due process of law is checked, the mere belief that the government is interfering with your liberty may become grounds for locking you away.

Marine Locked In Mental Ward for Questioning 9/11

Former marine Brandon Raub was carted off by the Feds and locked in a psychiatric ward for his Facebook posts questioning the government’s version of 9/11.

Raub isn’t the first person who has suffered this fate.  Claire Swinney was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for claiming government liability for 9/11.   Others have been committed for the same reason over the last decade.

Surely the Feds are right … that kind of talk is crazy, right?

Maybe.  But many of the 9/11 Commissioners themselves don’t buy what the government says about 9/11, they say that the government has covered up the state sponsorship of the 9/11 hijackers, and Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was entirely foreseeable .

Indeed, while they obviously haven’t said that the government was involved, 9/11 Commissioners have said we need further investigation and that the American people should question 9/11.  Does that mean they should they be committed to the same psych ward which Mr. Raub and Ms. Swinney enjoyed?  Of course not.

Some people believe that 9/11 was wholly unforeseeable.  Others believe that government personnel were criminally negligent in letting 9/11 happen, and then obstructed justice to cover it up.  See this, this, this, this, and this.   Still others believe that rogue government personnel allowed 9/11 to happen, or even played a role in the attacks themselves.

Whatever one believes about 9/11, isn’t our society built on freedom of speech? And if someone has kooky theories, won’t the scientific method and free debate defeat the baseless theories? Isn’t that what modern society is all about?

Raub’s attorney – the head of the non-partisan civil rights law firm The Rutherford Institute – points out that Raub is being indefinitely detained, and says:

For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon. This should be a wake-up call to Americans that the police state is here.”

What Do Mental Health Professionals Say About Those Who Question 9/11?

Many sociologists and mental health professionals say that those who believe the official version without any questioning are the ones suffering from psychological defense mechanisms.

 

Sociologists say that fear of terrorism has made people blindly accept false justifications for war – including the false claim that Saddam had a hand in 9/11 (when even the 9/11 Commission says he didn’t).

And the following mental health professionals say that questioning the government’s cut-and-dried version of 9/11 is the sane thing to do:

• Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Lester Grinspoon, MD

• Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, as well as Radiology, at Duke University Medical Center D. Lawrence Burk, Jr., MD

• Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University Barry R. Komisaruk

• Distinguished Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine and Distinguished Professor of Global Health in the College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Michael D. Knox

• Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Laura Schafer

• Professor of Psychology, Rutgers University Alan Gilchrist

• Professor Emeritus, Psychology and Neuroscience, Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Michael Gabriel

• Former Chief Mental Health Coordinator and Director of Manpower Development and Training, Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, and Lecturer in Psychology, Boston University Herbert Hoffman

• Professor of Psychology, University of Chicago and Northwestern University Jack Sawyer

• Professor of Psychology at University of New Hampshire William Woodward

• Professor of Psychology at University of Essex Philip Cozzolino

• Professor of Psychology at Goddard College Catherine Lowther

• Professor Emeritus of Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies Ralph Metzner

• Professor of Psychology at Rhodes University Mike Earl-Taylor

• Professor of Psychology at Oxford University Graham Harris

• Professor Emeritus, Psychology, University of Marburg Gert Sommer

• Professor of Psychology, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Ralph Hood

• Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College. Former Major, U.S. Army Medical Corps, Vietnam Veteran 7 years service, Jon Bjornson, MD

• Ph.D. Clinical Neuropsychologist Richard Welser

• Trauma specialist Danielle Duperret, Ph.D.

• Psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, MD

• Psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz

• Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Nebraska and licensed Psychologist Ronald Feintech

• PhD in clinical psychology from Texas Tech Michael Green

• PhD in educational psychology Brent Igo

• PhD psychologist Paul Johansson

• PhD psychologist Gail Maudal

• PhD psychologist Robert Hopper

• Ph.D Psychologist Dorothy Lorig

• Psychologist Robert Griffin

There are many other mental health professionals who agree.

Why Are Some Psychologists So Dogmatic?

Russian psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters.

Similarly, American apologists for the powers-that-be are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, … and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)

But most mental health professionals who assume that those who question 9/11 are crazy are simply victims of the the “Martha Mitchell Effect”:

The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.

The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude:

Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.

In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable.

As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else … unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.

Postscript:  We do not condone violence.  Virtually all those who question the government’s version of 9/11 are peaceful, non-violent folks.

Preface: There might be an innocent explanation. But given recent trends, this is worrisome.

Retired Major General Jerry Curry wrote Friday:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S.

 

***

 

Those against whom the hollow point bullets are to be used — those causing the civil unrest — must be American citizens; since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens.

 

What would be the target of these 174, 000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can’t simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don’t just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body’s organs. Death often follows.

 

Potentially each hollow nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest?

 

***

 

If this were only a one time order of ammunition, it could easily be dismissed. But there is a pattern here. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has ordered 46,000 rounds of hollow point ammunition. Notice that all of these purchases are for the lethal hollow nose bullets.  These bullets are not being purchased and stored for squirrel or coyote hunting. This is serious ammunition manufactured to be used for serious purposes.

 

In the war in Iraq, our military forces expended approximately 70 million rounds per year. In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls. This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen. Is this something we and the Congress should be concerned about? What’s the plan that requires so many dead Americans, even during times of civil unrest? Has Congress and the Administration vetted the plan in public.

 

***

 

All of these rounds of ammunition can only be used to kill American citizens, though there is enough ammunition being ordered to kill, in addition to every American citizen, also every Iranian, Syrian or Mexican. There is simply too much of it. And this much ammunition can’t be just for training, there aren’t that many weapons and “shooters” in the U.S. to fire it.

 

***

 

We have enough military forces to maintain law and order in the U.S. even during times of civil unrest.

 

***

 

This is a deadly serious business. I hope I’m wrong, but something smells rotten. And If the Congress isn’t going to do its duty and investigate this matter fully, the military will have to protect the Constitution, the nation, and our citizens.

Why are government agencies doing this?

Major General Curry asks a troubling questions:

We have local police, backed up by each state’s National Guard, backed up by the Department of Defense. So in addition to all these forces why does DHS need its own private army? Why do the SSA, NOAA and other government agencies need to create their own civilian security forces armed with hollow nose bullets?

This may sound like a conspiracy theory …

But remember that Senator Daniel Inouye said in 1987:

There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.

The Federal Reserve – which is not exactly federal (and see this)- also has its own police force.  See this and this.

Chalmers Johnson called the CIA the President’s private army.

But that’s nothing compared to JSOC.  As John Glaser wrote in February:

For the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of a secret, unaccountable U.S. military force … Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is an unwieldy private army at the command of the President, and him only. And they conduct military and spy missions all over the world, never receiving formal congressional approval ….

 

“Without the knowledge of the American public,” wrote Nick Turse back in August, “a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed.” According to a recent Congressional Research Service report, JSOC forces “reportedly conduct highly sensitive combat and supporting operations against terrorists on a world-wide basis.” As the New York Times this week reported:

The Special Operations Command now numbers just under 66,000 people — including both military personnel and Defense Department civilians — a doubling since 2001. Its budget has reached $10.5 billion, up from $4.2 billion in 2001 (after adjusting for inflation).Over the past decade, Special Operations Command personnel have been deployed for combat operations, exercises, training and other liaison missions in more than 70 countries. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Special Operations Command sustained overseas deployments of more than 12,000 troops a day, with four-fifths committed to the broader Middle East.

JSOC operates outside the confines of the traditional military and even beyond what the CIA is able to do.

 

***

 

But it goes well beyond the war zones. In concert with the Executive’s new claims on extra-judicial assassinations via drone strikes, even if the target is an American citizen, JSOC goes around the world murdering suspects without the oversight of a judge or, god forbid, granting those unfortunate souls the right to defend themselves in court against secret, evidence-less government decrees about their guilt. As Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh said at a speaking event in 2009:

Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on.***

 

Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us….

[Marc Ambinder told Wired]:

There are legal restrictions on what the CIA can do in terms of covert operations. There has to be a finding, the president has to notify at least the “Gang of Eight” [leaders of the intelligence oversight committees] in Congress. JSOC doesn’t have to do any of that. There is very little accountability for their actions. What’s weird is that many in congress who’d be very sensitive to CIA operations almost treat JSOC as an entity that doesn’t have to submit to oversight. It’s almost like this is the president’s private army, we’ll let the president do what he needs to do.

An End-Run Around the Constitution?

Remember, we’ve gone from a nation of laws to a nation of powerful men making laws in secret.  A nation where Congressional leaders themselves    aren’t even allow to see the laws, or to learn about covert programs. A nation where Congressmen are threatened with martial law if they don’t approve radical programs.

National security powers are being used to help big business, to the detriment of the American people.

Veterans returning from the front lines are labeled “potential terrorists”, to the horror of both the Republican and Democratic leadership.

This is not surprising, given that tyrannical regimes always crumble when the footsoldiers refuse to carry out draconian measures.

Indeed, active duty military personnel are big Ron Paul supporters.  And see this.  Because liking Ron Paul – as well as liking liberty or the Founding Fathers – may get one branded as a potential terrorist these days, there may be some friction between active military folks and the government as well.

We’ve been in a continuous state of National Emergency for 11 years.  The Constitution has so thoroughly been shredded that it – literally – unclear whether we are still living in a constitutional form of government.

Because military folks are sworn to defend the Constitution, many still would not allow the imposition of overt, full-scale fascism without a fight.  See this and this.

As such, Major General Curry’s speculation is chilling, indeed:

Is the purpose [of the lethal ammunition purchases] to kill 174,000 of the nation’s military and replace them with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) special security forces, forces loyal to the Administration, not to the Constitution?

Most Americans confuse zionism and Judaism.

While many assume that zionism simply means allowing the Israeli nation to exist, many zionists in high positions within the Netanyahu and Sharon administrations advocate for very different policies altogether, including the use of offensive wars throughout the  Middle East.  See this, and read the section entitled “Securing the Realm” here.

In reality, many devout Jews are against zionism as being antithetical to traditional Jewish values.  As such, many Jews say that criticizing zionism is not anti-semitism. … and some zionists themselves admit that even non-Jews have the right to criticize Israel.

Zionists can be also be Christian. Indeed, millions of fundamentalist Christians – including many in the American military -  want to start WWIII to speed the “second coming” of Jesus Christ.

As such, the common practice of American politicians and media of interchanging Iran’s words about the “zionist regime” with the word “Israel”  is disingenuous.  For example, AP reported today:

Israel‘s existence is an “insult to all humanity,” Iran’s president said Friday ….”The existence of the Zionist regime is an insult to all humanity,” Ahmadinejad said.

Criticizing a particular “regime” in Israel is akin to criticizing the “Bush administration” or the “Obama administration”.  For example, saying that Bush should have been impeached is not calling for the American government to be overthrown.

Similarly, the AP story repeated the old canard:

Tensions between Iran and Israel have intensified since 2005, when Ahmadinejad said in a speech that Israel will one day be “wiped off the map.”

In reality:

As a New York Times translation notes, Ahmadinejad wasn’t referring to Israel at all, but to the “regime” – i.e. the current political administration – in Israel.

 

Moreover, it was not Ahmadinejad himself speaking. He was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, who died in 1989 (and who looked exactly like Sean Connery’s long-lost twin).

People can debate whether zionism is helpful or counter-productive, or which form of zionism is best.  But interchanging zionism and Israel without explanation is misleading.

And anti-semitism is wholly unacceptable, as is prosecution of Christians, Muslims or anyone else for their religion or race.

But whatever Iran’s faults, the fact is that:

• The U.S. overthrew the democratically-elected leader of Iran 60 years ago

• The U.S. has been looking for an excuse to bomb Iran again for many decades

• The U.S. funds terrorist groups within Iran

• Iran protects Jews, and it’s constitution officially recognizes their rights (scroll to bottom; on the other hand, our close ally Saudi Arabia is virulently anti-semitic, and is the main backer of terrorism in the Middle East and abroad)

• The American media is always pro-war, and happily trumpets disinformation about supposed enemies to drum up support for new wars

David Martin’s Thirteen Rules for Truth Suppression,  H. Michael Sweeney’s 25 Rules of Disinformation (and now Brandon Smith’s Disinformation: How It Works) are classic lessons on how to spot disruption and disinformation tactics.

We’ve seen a number of tactics come and go over the years.  Here are the ones we see a lot of currently.

1.  Start a partisan divide-and-conquer fight or otherwise push emotional buttons to sew discord and ensure that cooperation is thwarted.   Get people fighting against each other instead of the corrupt powers-that-be.  Use baseless caricatures to rile everyone up.  For example,  start a religious war whenever possible using stereotypes like “all Jews are selfish”, “all Christians are crazy” or “all Muslims are terrorists”.  Accuse the author of being a gay, pro-abortion limp-wristed wimp  or being a fundamentalist pro-war hick when the discussion has nothing to do with abortion, sexuality, religion, war or region.  Appeal to people’s basest prejudices and biases. And – as Sweeney explains – push the author into a defensive posture:

Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule … Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as “kooks”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “left-wing”, “terrorists”, “conspiracy buffs”, “radicals”, “militia”, “racists”, “religious fanatics”, “sexual deviates”, and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.

2.  Pretend it’s hopeless because we’ll be squashed if we try.  For example, every time a whistleblower leaks information, say “he’s going to be bumped off”.   If people talk about protesting, organizing, boycotting, shareholder activism, spreading the real facts, moving our money or taking other constructive action, write things to scare and discourage people, say something like  “we don’t have any chance because they have drones and they’ll just kill us if we try”,  or “Americans are too stupid, lazy and greedy, so they’ll never help out.”  Encourage people to be apathetic instead of trying to change things.

3.  Demand complete, fool-proof and guaranteed solutions to the problems being discussed.   For example, if a reporter breaks the story that the big banks conspired to rig a market, ask “given that people are selfish and that no regulation can close all possible loopholes … how are you going to change human nature?”, and pretend that it’s not worth talking about the details of the market manipulation.  This discourages people from reporting on and publicizing the corruption, fraud and other real problems.  And it ensures that not enough people will spread the facts so that the majority know what’s really going on.

4. Suggest extreme, over-the-top, counter-productive solutions which will hurt more than help, or which are wholly disproportionate to what is being discussed.   For example, if the discussion is whether or not to break up the big banks or to go back on the gold standard, say that everyone over 30  should be killed because they are sell-outs and irredeemable, or that all of the banks should be bombed. This discredits the attempt to spread the facts and to organize, and is simply the web method of the provocateur.

5.  Pretend that alternative media – such as blogs written by the top experts in their fields, without any middleman – are untrustworthy or are motivated solely by money (for example, use the derogatory term “blogspam” for any blog posting, pretending that there is no original or insightful reporting, but that the person is simply doing it for ad revenue).

6.  Coordinate with a couple of others to “shout down” reasonable comments.  This is especially effective when the posters launch an avalanche of comments in quick succession … the original, reasonable comment gets lost or attacked so much that it is largely lost.

7.  Use an army of sock puppets.  You can either hire low-wage workers in India or other developing countries to “astroturf” or – if you work for the government – you can use software which allows you to quickly create and alternate between numerous false identities, each with their own internet address.

8. Censor social media, so that the hardest-hitting information is buried. If you can’t censor it, set up “free speech zones” to push dissent into dank, dark corners where no one will see it.

9.  When the powers-that-be cut corners and take criminally reckless gambles with our lives and our livelihoods, protect them by pretending that the inevitable result - nuclear accidents, financial crises,  terrorist attacks or other disasters – were “unforeseeable” and that “no could have known”.

10.  Protect the rich and powerful by labeling any allegations of criminal activity as being a “conspiracy theory”.  For example, when Goldman gets caught rigging markets, label the accusations as mere conspiracies.

The following 4 tactics from Sweeney are also still commonly used …

11. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the “How dare you!” gambit.

12. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.

13. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer. This works extremely well in Internet and letters-to-the-editor environments where a steady stream of new identities can be called upon without having to explain criticism reasoning — simply make an accusation or other attack, never discussing issues, and never answering any subsequent response, for that would dignify the opponent’s viewpoint.

14. Question motives. Twist or amplify any fact which could so taken to imply that the opponent operates out of a hidden personal agenda or other bias. This avoids discussing issues and forces the accuser on the defensive.

15. Associate opponent charges with old news. A derivative of the straw man usually, in any large-scale matter of high visibility, someone will make charges early on which can be or were already easily dealt with. Where it can be foreseen, have your own side raise a straw man issue and have it dealt with early on as part of the initial contingency plans. Subsequent charges, regardless of validity or new ground uncovered, can usually them be associated with the original charge and dismissed as simply being a rehash without need to address current issues — so much the better where the opponent is or was involved with the original source.

Postscript:  Over a number of years, we’ve found that the most effective way to fight disruption and disinformation is to link to a post such as this one which rounds up disruption techniques, and then to cite the disinfo technique you think is being used.

Specifically, we’ve found the following format to be highly effective in educating people in a non-confrontational manner about what the disrupting person is doing:

Good Number 1!

Or:

Thanks for that textbook example of Number 7!

(Include the link, so people can see what you're referring to.)

The reason this is effective is that other readers will learn about the specific disruption tactic being used … in context, like seeing wildlife while holding a wildlife guide, so that one learns what it looks like “in the field”.   At the same time, you come across as humorous and light-hearted instead of heavy-handed or overly-intense.

Try it … It works.