Columnist Charley Reese: "Don't Trust Government"

The independent commission set up to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks is threatening to use subpoenas to get documents that the White House has so far refused to give up.

The president, at his recent news conference, referred to his daily intelligence briefings and said, in his own muddled way, that if they were made public, the people who prepared them would somehow be inhibited in preparing future intelligence briefings.

That is so illogical it beggars reply. These briefings are written in summary form. It's not as if they quote Serge, Russian President Vladimir Putin's butler. They don't quote anybody. No harm at all would be done if they were made public, except on some occasions to embarrass the president by revealing the fact that he had information and didn't act on it.

I had an off-the-record interview years ago with the man who prepared the president's daily intelligence briefing. He explained in detail how it's prepared. This was during the first Bush presidency, after the first Gulf War. The current president's father had used as an excuse to rush American troops to Saudi Arabia the idea that the Iraqi forces in Kuwait were about to invade the kingdom.

So I asked the guy, who had talked about his access to all the latest satellite imagery, "Did you at any time see any evidence that Iraqi troops were massing for an invasion of Saudi Arabia?"

So, 13 years later, you can know that two President Bushes have led this country into war in the Persian Gulf on false pretenses. It's no wonder the White House loves secrecy so much. The wonder is that the American people are so tolerant. It's also no surprise that some folks refer to oil as "the devil's tears."

What Rudyard Kipling popularized as the "great game" is afoot again. World demand for oil is rising, and the world supply of oil is static. It won't be many years before the situation will get sticky and hairy. The United States wants to be positioned militarily in the Persian Gulf (hence the Iraq wars) and around the Caspian Sea (hence Afghanistan). Of course, the Russians are no fools. They just opened a Russian military base about 30 miles from an American military base in the Caspian Sea area. And they are keeping their hands in the Persian Gulf area with strong relations with Iran.

I don't pretend to know what is going on in the world's mahogany-paneled back rooms, but I do know you can discard as disinformation practically every word uttered by the federal government in regard to foreign policy. What government officials say is blarney for public consumption. The real reasons usually involve money, oil, other valuable resources and power relationships.

The American people don't really control their own government. Until they realize this and decide to take it back by electing honest men and women who can't be bought by corporations and other special interests, they will go on supplying the blood and money for the great game that yields great profits only to the few.

None of the young men and women who have died in Iraq, nor those who are yet to die, will make a penny profit from the war. Those profits will go to multinational corporations as the Bush administration auctions off the Iraqi people's country and resources.

Forgive me if this sounds cynical, but you ought to take note of how easily things like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and weapons of mass destruction just disappear from the president's speeches. You should ask why the White House won't cooperate with the independent commission, why it won't reveal the notes that went into its energy bill, and why so many other things are kept secret.

The American Revolution was not fought so that people could be passive and uninformed citizens. You can be that in a dictatorship. To be free, you must be an informed, skeptical, inquiring citizen.

If Klintoon was still president and pulled this kind of "everything is classified" nonsense, he'd be hearing it big-time from freepers. But they give W a pass since he supposedly is a conservative.

You should ask why the White House won't cooperate with the independent commission, why it won't reveal the notes that went into its energy bill, and why so many other things are kept secret.

Why? So its policy deliberations can be held frankly inside the administration and decisions can be made before they can be torn apart or savaged after the opposition in Congress and the press meets privately to tear the President apart.

You want input before the decision is made? Speak up. Write your congresscritter or the newspaper. We don't have a government by rolling plebescite.

You judge the President based on the final policy made public in word and deed and and the results thereof. If you don't like them, you vote him out of office.

Get a life, Charley.

"Forgive me if this sounds cynical, but you ought to take note of how easily things like Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and weapons of mass destruction just disappear from the president's speeches. "

If this was Clinton, FR posters would be in a tizzy over this.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.