Welcome to Sanctimonious Sunday, a series published by members of the following groups: The Amateur Left, Team DFH and Frustrati, as a collaboration of sorts. Feel free to get your sanctimonious on. It's welcome here.
Q: What is your understanding of how the immunity works for you?
A: I can't be held to anything I'm saying.
The US Army prosecutor who asked this hanging curveball set-up of a question to his star witness in a murder trial was surely disappointed to hear this honest answer. The "right" answer, the public consumption answer the star witness was supposed to give, was that he had to tell the truth and not perjure himself. But Private First Class Bradley Mason was proving himself to be more honest, in a convoluted way, than the government This is one of many troubling exchanges in the record of the Article 32 hearing (pre-trial hearing) in which four soldiers were being accused of premeditated murder in a war zone, a case associated with Operation Iron Triangle. The government was pressing for the death penalty. The pressure was successful in getting every soldier to look out for himself, finding the most effective lies to minimize the extent to which their lives would be ruined. The government, fully aware that the soldiers were lying, successfully created low ranking soldiers in their own image--the truth takes a back seat to protecting one's reputation.
Yes, the US government lies and lies, and lies some more. Anyone who takes seriously the announcements of the US government is living in fantasy land. This diary is an invitation to mention your "favorite" lies. The lies that did the most damage. The lies that were most shameless, heartless, or blatant.
This diary is not for chumps. If people stop by who want to pretend these huge lies never happened, tonight we're going to tell them that if they want evidence, they can find their own fucking links. These lies are all over the public record, are well-documented. And the effects of the lies are widely known. Tonight, the sanctimonious crowd is going to ignore surrealism, obfuscation, and misdirection for a refreshing interlude and talk about what we know to be true.
Manipulating the lies of US soldiers by using cynical threats
One would think the Army would take seriously a murder trial (technically, a court martial) of its own soldiers. Thanks to Stjepan G. Mestrovic, an expert witness at several war crimes trials, I have read through a lot of the testimony of the soldier whose testimony the army chose to build its case on. After the defense had thoroughly destroyed the credibility of this witness several times over, defense attorney Michael Waddington called this testimony a "perjury-fest. Here are some more samples from a treasure trove.
Defense attorney Paul Bergrin is questioning star witness Private First Class Bradley Mason:
Q: Isn't it a fact that when you gave your statement on 15 June, when you were supposedly coming clean, you never told them that you also lied about your experiment with the zip ties, correct?
A: They knew I lied about this whole statement.
Q: The whole statement is a lie? There's nothing in it that's the truth?
A: No.
Q: A lot of things that came out of your mouth you're not serious about?...
A: No.
Q: They didn't mean anything to you, correct?
A: I was more worried about myself.
Q: And you deliberately and intentionally lied on purpose even after being given the oath?
A: Yeah.
Q: So the oath meant absolutely nothing to you, right?
A: I'm more worried about myself than about the case.
Q: The oath meant nothing to you, correct?
A: At the time, no, it didn't.
Can anyone be held to anything they say anymore, or is it all just brute force and media control from here on out? Here's how the CID, the Army's investigating unit, treated the truth when prepping Mason for his testimony:
Q: Were you asked to sketch the individuals at the time of the shooting?
A: Yes.
Q: Isn't it a fact that you weren't present during the time of the shooting?
A: I wasn't present at the time of the shooting.
Q: Yet you drew a sketch of where each individual was, right?
A: They [CID investigators] asked me to draw out where everybody was.
Q: You drew a sketch of Hunsaker being cut and stabbed, correct?
A: Yes.
Q: You didn't see Hunsaker get cut or stabbed?
A: No.
As a result of such PR-inspired manipulation of truth by the US government, two soldiers are serving 18 years in Fort Leavenworth prison and another is serving 10 years.
They can prepare as many official reports as they want and choose whichever ones they need on any given occasion. Didn't you know that?
Joseph Heller, Catch-22, p. 406.
Is anything sacred to the US government? We've seen that oaths mean little, but what about internally? Surely there is some internal integrity. What about the Silver Star, the third-highest military decoration that can be awarded to a member of any branch of the United States armed forces for gallantry in action against an enemy of the United States? Pat Tillman was awarded a Silver Star just in time for the publicity surrounding his funeral.
In shepherding Tillman's award through the system, Gen. Stanley McChrystal signed off on the claims that Tillman put himself in the line of devastating enemy fir and enabled his platoon's safe passage from the ambush kill zone. McChrystal knew this citation to be false at the time that he signed it. He knew that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire under unusual circumstances which had not been adequately investigated. The day after signing the award, McChrystal got word to Bush to avoid discussing the fictitious heroism of Tillman to preclude any...public embarrassment if the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public.
Surely someone with the awesome responsibility of a general in the US Army must be held to his words. Well, McChrystal blamed some underlings and, when caught red-handed, weaseled out by saying the citation was not well-written. As a reward for his willingness to lie and cover up, McChrystal is now in charge of the Commission on Military Families. Here's how Pat Tillmans mother feels:
I've come to learn through this journey that there are many other families that have been lied to by the military about their sons and daughters, and so we feel that what happened to Pat pertains to other people, not just us. I think it's a slap in the face to all soldiers to appoint this man, to be on this committee.
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Don't worry. It's a slam dunk case.
- George Tenet to George W. Bush concerning WMD in Iraq.
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The war of aggression of a sovereign nation on the basis of lies has destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq and has created two and a half million refugees from the country. Our government has not bothered to count Iraqi deaths, but the number is excess of a million. In quantitative terms, the suffering caused by the US invasion of Iraq is now greater than that caused by the infamous Rwandan genocide.
Since 1945, America has overthrown 50 governments, many of them democracies. In the process, 30 have been attacked and bombed.
- John Pilger
If a society cannot rouse itself to cleanse the fundamental injustice at the heart of its institutions, then it is effectively choosing self-destruction.
- Charles Hugh Smith
For further exploration of official lies and their effects, check out Meteor Blades current post.
Well hell, it looks like a movement. See this diary from yesterday by BOHICA, Tell me lies.