What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king, having moved on from snooping on our phone calls and outing honest CIA agents to destroying the last vestiges of the rule of law?

As assaults on a society go, the 9/11 attacks, which left 3,000 dead and are sure to be described in this anniversary week as being among the greatest of historical outrages, were something less than that, given the world's experience with the ravages of war. The countless Russians and the 6 million Jews killed by those so finely educated Germans come to mind. The 3.4 million Vietnamese, mostly rice farmers, whom Robert McNamara admitted to having helped kill with his carpet-bombing of their country, are a forgotten footnote. Yet we who have never experienced such carnage on our home front all too easily poke out tens of thousands of eyes for each lost one of our own.

Surely two planes crashing into office buildings and another hitting the Pentagon doesn't compare to the leveling of every major city in Japan with conventional bombing, capped off by the mass murder of hundreds of thousands more at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Speaking of eyes lost, mark the words of Hiroshima's mayor two years ago: "That fateful summer, 8:15 AM. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast--silence--hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted."

We assumed that the Japanese people would readily forgive us and, having been raised in the spirit of total obedience to their emperor, they accommodated our occupation quite well, even injecting industrial-grade silicon into their women's breasts to satisfy the erotic appetites of our soldiers.

Americans who blithely claim the moral high ground with every pledge of allegiance to a flag that, because it is American, is assumed to have never been sullied by imperial greed or moral contradiction expect no less than instant and full forgiveness for our "mistakes." Only last month, four decades after he led the massacre of 500 villagers in My Lai, Vietnam, did former Army Lt. William Calley express "regret" for his crimes. He served no time in prison for the point-blank shooting of toddlers, thanks to the commutation of his sentence by Richard Nixon, who might have been anticipating his own need for a presidential pardon.

In blind and wrathful retaliation for 9/11 we wreaked havoc on Iraq, a nation that our then-president knew had not attacked us, and we continue to slaughter peasants in Afghanistan who aren't able to find Manhattan on a map.

We, a people whose nation has never suffered a long and widespread occupation, easily gave vent to our most barbaric impulses, assuming the absolute right to arrest and torture anyone anywhere in the world without revealing his identity, let alone respecting a single one of those God-given rights that we claim for ourselves alone. And even when we identify the few we hold responsible for the attacks on our soil, we refuse them public and fair trials even after years of torturing them.

But we do have a saving grace for our experiment in democracy--although unfortunately it did not exist in the Supreme Court or Congress as a barrier to an imperial vice presidency. It is the power of the lone whistle-blower of conscience, occasionally given voice in what remains of our free press and which can influence presidential elections, as happened quite dramatically this last time around. There are those like Joe Wilson, who exposed presidential fraud masquerading as national security concern over bogus Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger, and more recently the truth-telling of Ali H. Soufan, a former FBI agent and lead interrogator of terrorists.

In Sunday's New York Times, Soufan, who was involved in obtaining much reliable information from prisoners before they were tortured, observed that the recently released memos cited by Cheney to back his argument that torture was efficient actually "fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism."

So, Cheney is again proved wrong, but if there had been a larger attack on 9/11, I doubt whether many free souls would be around now to tell him so.
_______


About author
Robert Scheer is the editor of Truthdig. rscheer@truthdig.com

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/23737

Good article, but everything being blamed on Cheney is a whitewash.

I think that lots of millions of people think 9/11 was an inside job by The g.W. Bush Administration to invade countries and steal their resources such as oil....etc .
I do not believe the official version of events as they seem to be lies and deceptions .

I think more and more people are thinking this.

I do not believe the official version of events as they seem to be lies and deceptions .


I concur. In fact several members of the 9/11 comission itself have come out and said that they were lied to and that information was denied them or covered up.

And, how convienient the Air Foce didn't scramble once the planes entered prohibited airspace.
Military Traffic Monitors asleep at the helm? Me thinks not.

How convienent indeed... I personally love the miracle of 2 planes hitting 2 buildings, but 3 fell down. All perfectly into their respective footprints and all at free fall speed.

Who needs the laws of physics anyway.

I agree with willing2 on this one scarry I know. It was a bad tragedy and lives lost and the terrorist fault and leave it at that.

If the government did all that crap. Why are all of you "truthers" still alive? Should'nt they be able to find and elimenate all of you?

A couple million people, conservatively, start disappearing hand over fist and the only common denominator is 9/11 truth... yeah, that wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb.

Seems to me that they get more mileage with the sheep by trying to paint the Truth movement as kooky.

The science of that day just doesn't add up.

This is all based on a what if? What if your aunt had a beard...she would be your uncle. I hate what if scenarios.

If my aunt had a beard, she'd work for the circus...

Fact is if the Government just rounded up all the truthers, or put us to death tomorrow, they'd martyr the movement and they can't afford to draw that kind of attention to their activities, especially when they're in the full blown middle of selling out our country to banking interests.

1st mention to Norad that plane was maybe hijacked-08:37:52
1st plane left ground to intercept-08:44:59 from Otis Air Force Base

Well its offfical Barack Obama has kept us safer longer than George Bush. As we all know one year after Bush took office we were attacked while he read a book to a group of school kids. The right wing howled that it wasnt his fault, after all he was only in office for a year............. Great Job Mr Obama........You have officialy kept america safer longer than Bush!

Yeah, okay, but Obama's poll numbers are still pretty high. Lets see them fall and his having continued difficulty pushing his agenda through and then we'll see what happens.

People like Bestinshow who repeat lies for so long finally the people begin to be live them at least that’s what Gobles though.

The main problem with people like you is George, he didn’t give a dam, Bush. If he had then all you liberals would have been called and the lie would have been put in the proper pocked.

Dick Cheney and the CIA. That law was written by a lady, not a member of congress. She said that there were four things had to happen for the law to kick in an not one of them were meet.

George, he didn’t give a dam, Bush and Dick Cheney did some discussing things like Cheney balanced twenty five checks while in the House.

You know what, left or right, its like we're the embodiment of the old story about the disgraced Japanese soldier, who ran off into the wilderness and didn't know the war was over.

No matter where we go, we put bases there and almost never leave.

Tell me again why we have more than 1,000 bases, in 130+ countries on 5 continents?

How can we point fingers and tyrants and dictators when we do so much business with so many of them and run an empire of military occupation?

With the wars going on right now, BHO only needs a crisis that would push his obamacare plan through.

What about Charley Sheen’s twenty Questions?