Mark Udall And The Unspeakable - FDL

[WillyT]

Mark Udall and the Unspeakable
By: David Swanson - FDL
Saturday November 22, 2014 4:32 am

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President Obama, who is just now un-ending again the ending of the endless war on Afghanistan, has never made a secret of taking direction from the military, CIA, and NSA. He’s escalated wars that generals had publicly insisted he escalate. He’s committed to not prosecuting torturers after seven former heads of the CIA publicly told him not to. He’s gone after whistleblowers with a vengeance and is struggling to keep this Bush-era torture report, or parts of it, secret in a manner that should confuse his partisan supporters.

But the depth of elected officials’ obedience to a permanent war machine is usually a topic avoided in polite company — usually, not always. Back in 2011, the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley, a member of Obama’s transition team in 2009, said publicly that Obama had decided in 2009 to block prosecutions of Bush-era criminals in part because the CIA, NSA, and military would revolt. Ray McGovern says he has a trustworthy witness to Obama saying he would leave the crimes unpunished because, in Obama’s words, “Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King?” Neither of those incidents has interested major media outlets in the slightest.

As we pass the 51st anniversary of the murder of President John F. Kennedy, many of us are urging Senator Mark Udall to make the torture report public by placing it into the Congressional Record, as Senator Mike Gravel did with the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Gravel is alive and well, and there’s every reason to believe that Udall would go on to live many years deeply appreciated for his action. But there is — let us be honest for a moment — a reason Udall might hesitate that we don’t want to speak about.

The general thinking is that because Udall’s term ends this month, he doesn’t have to please those who fund his election campaigns through the U.S. system of legalized bribery, and he doesn’t have to please his fellow corrupt senators because he won’t be working with them any longer. Both of those points may be false. Udall may intend to run for the Senate again, or — like most senators, I suspect — he may secretly plan on running for president some day. And the big payoffs for elected officials who work to please plutocracy always come after they leave office. But there is another consideration. The need to please the permanent war machine ends only when one is willing to die for something — what Dr. King said one must be willing to do to have a life worth living — not when one leaves office.

Presidents and Congress members send large numbers of people to risk their lives murdering much larger numbers of people in wars all the time. They have taken on jobs — particularly the presidency — in which they know they will be in danger no matter what they do. And yet everyone in Washington knows (and no one says) that making an enemy of the CIA is just not done and has not been done since the last man to do it died in a convertible in Dallas. We’ve seen progressive members of Congress like Dennis Kucinich leave without putting crucial documents that they thought should be public into the Congressional Record. Any member of Congress, newly reelected or not, could give the public the torture report. A group of 10 of them could do it collectively for the good of humanity. But nobody thinks they will. Challenging a president who does not challenge the CIA is just not something that’s done.

To understand why, I recommend reading Jim Douglass’ book JFK and the Unspeakable. Douglass is currently writing about three other murders, those of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Distant history? Something that doesn’t happen anymore? Perhaps, but is that because we’ve run out of lone nuts with guns? Clearly not. Is it because the permanent war machine has stopped killing its enemies? Or is it, rather, because no one has presented the same challenge to the permanent war machine that those people did? Peace voices are no longer allowed in the U.S. media. Both political parties favor widespread war. War has become a matter of routine. Enforcement has become unnecessary, because the threat, or other influences that align with it, has been so successful.

I recommend checking out ProjectUnspeakable.com http://projectunspeakable.com/ , the website of a play by Court Dorsey that recounts the killing of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK. (Or check out a performance in Harlem planned for February 21.) The play consists almost entirely of actual quotes by public figures. While no attempt is made, of course, at including a comprehensive collection of information, enough evidence is included in the play to completely erase belief in the official stories of how those four men died. And evidence is included showing who actually killed them, how, and why.

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More: http://my.firedoglake.com/blog/2014/11/22/mark-udall-and-the-unspeakable/

[johnnyreb]

1. Thank you David.

Plato: "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light."

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
--GWB, 12 May, 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7809160.stm

[woo me with science]

2. K&R

[Octafish]

3. The President is under incredible professional pressure.

From warmonger and bankster alike, each applying the full resources at their disposal to, em, manipulate his actions.

Been saying from the get-go, we need to watch his back. Seemed obvious at the time, now it also seems critical.

Thank you for the heads-up, WillyT.