WikiLeaks' Most Terrifying Revelation: Just How Much Our Government Endangers National Security By Lying to Us

By Fred Branfman / AlterNet, January 4, 2011

Wikileaks has shown that our government and military form a 'vast lying machine' that perpetrates mass murder in our name.

Wikileaks has proven U.S. Executive...

Future historians will marvel at how U.S. leaders failed to learn from their horrific crimes in Indochina, and are instead repeating so many of them today.

"I saw my cousin die in the field of death. My heart was most disturbed and my voice called out loudly...

This post originally appeared at Alternet.

"[General McChrystal says that] for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies." ~ "The Runaway General," Rolling Stone, 6/22/10

The truth that many Americans find hard to take is that that mass U.S....

When Rolling Stone Calls the Shots, It's Time to Negotiate

It is amazing how little commentary there has been on the key issue raised by the McChrystal Affair: Should U.S. war policy be made by Rolling Stone? The very fact that it took a magazine article for...

In 1970 a Lao villager who had survived five years of U.S. bombing wrote: "In reality, whatever happens, it is only the innocent who suffer. And as for the others, do they know all the unimaginable things happening in this war? Do they?"

Do we? And if we did...

"Robber Barons" Built, "Robber Bankers" Destroy
Posted on Truthdig, May 6, 2010
By Fred Branfman
"For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly...

ON JOHN MCCAIN AND TOM BROKAW'S SHAMEFUL VERSIONS OF THE VIETNAM WAR

Note: As John McCain's makes his Vietnam war experience central to his campaign, the true facts about the war are more relevant than ever. This is the original version of a review of Tom Brokaw's shameful book Boom!...

Below please find links to some 22 minutes of personal videos about Nixon and Kissinger's war-making from 1969-72, a period that holds important lessons for the growing dangers in Iraq and the Mideast today. Understanding the historic shift in the balance of power toward the jihadists resulting from Bush's...

Should war-critics go on the offensive and stress the obvious but largely unmentionable truth of the Iraqi war: that our leaders are callously betraying U.S. soldiers dying in a war that cannot be won? Does John Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony, excerpted below, apply today to leaders of both parties...

The wonderful news that Dr. Muhammad Yunus has won the Nobel Peace Prize sent me back to reread a still-relevant article I wrote after interviewing him ten years ago (please see below). Dr. Yunus is not only a real hero, but a wonderful human being - kind, modest, friendly, good-humored,...

Note: Fred Branfman spent over 4 years on the ground in Indochina as a volunteer and journalist between 1967 and 1973, and was co-director of the Indochina Resource Center in Washington, D.C., which U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin blamed for the loss of Indochina.

This is the second of a...

WHEN 'STAYING THE COURSE': MEANS DEFEAT: 1. IRAQ

Note: Fred Branfman spent over 4 years on the ground in Indochina as a volunteer and journalist between 1967 and 1973, and was co-director of the Indochina Resource Center in Washington, D.C., which U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin blamed for the loss of...

"Gestapo interrogation methods included: repeated near drownings of a prisoner in a bathtub."
The History Place

"The CIA officers say 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted the longest under waterboarding, two and a half minutes, before beginning to talk, with debatable results."
 -- Brian Ross, ABC World News...

Now that the hoopla on the Cheney shooting has begun to die down it is time to focus on the most serious issue it symbolizes: Mr. Cheney's weakening the U.S. and strengthening our enemies over the past 5 years. Just as he bungled his hunting, he has bungled every major...

PRESIDENT BUSH IS ENDANGERING OUR LIVES: 14. LOSING THE WAR ON TERROR BY MISUSING EXECUTIVE POWER

"We are losing."
-- The Next Attack, by former NSC officials Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon

"Over the years there had been an erosion of presidential power and authority. I believe that...

"In a time of crisis, it is important to remember the President who, while waging our bloodiest, most divisive war, was able to do what recent Presidents have failed to do: he inspired `the better angels of our nature'." (Emphasis added)
-- "Lincoln", by Gary Wills, Life Magazine, Feb....

"Saeed Semnanian, the chancellor of one of Tehran's most conservative universities (said) the achievement that matters is that Iran is independent. As far as he is concerned, it might be yesterday, and not in 1953, that Kermit Roosevelt and the C.I.A. organized the coup that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh, the prime...

"(Captured reporter Jill) Carroll actually spoke Arabic and still was unable to avoid the wash of fury and hatred that now confronts Westerners. We are not wanted." (Emphasis added)
-- Alissa Rubin, L.A. Times, 1/26/05

"But while I am certain bin Laden is losing, I still don't feel that...

"The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet."

-- Winston Churchill

Congratulations to Arianna for daring to expose Tim Russert, whose Meet the Press has for so long dishonored American journalism. Russert is guilty of all the sins she has exposed: slimy cronyism, back-stabbing, nepotism, favor-trading...

"The U.S. will, if necessary, act preemptively, and will require bases within and beyond Western Europe and Northeast Asia, the ability to ensure U.S. access to distant theaters, and critical U.S. infrastructure and assets in outer space. Our forces will dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes...