By Paul Craig Roberts - Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Reagan

The tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of firefighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.

The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11.

A generation of Americans has been born into distain and distrust of Muslims.

A generation of Americans has been born into a police state in which privacy and constitutional protections no longer exist.

A generation of Americans has been born into continuous warfare while needs of citizens go unmet.

A generation of Americans has been born into a society in which truth is replaced with the endless repetition of falsehoods.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-Disinformation-Works-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-130523-161.html

OpEdNews 5/23/13 by Paul Craig Roberts

Have you ever wondered how the government's misinformation gains traction?

What I have noticed is that whenever a stunning episode occurs, such as 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, most everyone whether on the right or left goes along with the government's explanation, because they can hook their agenda to the government's account.

The leftwing likes the official stories of Muslims creating terrorist mayhem in America, because it proves their blowback theory and satisfies them that the dispossessed and oppressed can fight back against imperialism.

The patriotic rightwing likes the official story, because it proves America is attacked for its goodness or because terrorists were allowed in by immigration authorities and nurtured by welfare, or because the government, which can't do anything right, ignored plentiful warnings.

Whatever the government says, no matter how problematical, the official story gets its traction from its compatibility with existing predispositions and agendas.

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The Bush regime’s response to 9/11 and the Obama regime’s validation of this response have destroyed accountable democratic government in the United States. So much unaccountable power has been concentrated in the executive branch that the US Constitution is no longer an operable document.

Whether a person believes the official story of 9/11 which rests on unproven government assertions or believes the documented evidence provided by a large number of scientists, first responders, and structural engineers and architects, the result is the same. 9/11 was used to create an open-ended “war on terror” and a police state. It is extraordinary that so many Americans believe that “it can’t happen here” when it already has.

We have had a decade of highly visible evidence of the construction of a police state: the PATRIOT Act, illegal spying on Americans in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the initiation of wars of aggression--war crimes under the Nuremberg Standard--based on intentional lies, the Justice Department’s concocted legal memos justifying the executive branch’s violation of domestic and international laws against torture, the indefinite detention of US citizens in violation of the constitutionally protected rights of habeas corpus and due process, the use of secret evidence and secret “expert witnesses” who cannot be cross-examined against defendants in trials, the creation of military tribunals in order to evade federal courts, secret legal memos giving the president authority to launch preemptive cyber attacks on any country without providing evidence that the country constitutes a threat, and the Obama regime’s murder of US citizens without evidence or due process.

As someone who exchanged a few emails with Alexander Cockburn regarding 9-11truth, and became frustrated with his refusal to address evidence and/or research that brings into questions the government's 9-11 conspiracy myth, I was pleased to see that Counterpunch decided to print this Paul Craig Roberts essay. I'm going to send CP a thank you mote. ;-)

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/11/the-11th-anniversary-of-911/

By: Paul Craig Roberts| September 11, 2012

The article below was written for the Journal of 9/11 Studies for the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day that terminated accountable government and American liberty. It is posted here with the agreement of the editors.

In order to understand the improbability of the government’s explanation of 9/11, it is not necessary to know anything about what force or forces brought down the three World Trade Center buildings, what hit the Pentagon or caused the explosion, the flying skills or lack thereof of the alleged hijackers, whether the airliner crashed in Pennsylvania or was shot down, whether cell phone calls made at the altitudes could be received, or any other debated aspect of the controversy.

You only have to know two things.

One is that according to the official story, a handful of Arabs, mainly Saudi Arabians, operating independently of any government and competent intelligence service, men without James Bond and V for Vendetta capabilities, outwitted not only the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency, but all 16 US intelligence agencies, along with all security agencies of America’s NATO allies and Israel’s Mossad. Not only did the entire intelligence forces of the Western world fail, but on the morning of the attack the entire apparatus of the National Security State simultaneously failed. Airport security failed four times in one hour. NORAD failed. Air Traffic Control failed. The US Air Force failed. The National Security Council failed. Dick Cheney failed. Absolutely nothing worked. The world’s only superpower was helpless at the humiliating mercy of a few undistinguished Arabs.

It is hard to image a more far-fetched story--except for the second thing you need to know: The humiliating failure of US National Security did not result in immediate demands from the President of the United States, from Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from the media for an investigation of how such improbable total failure could have occurred. No one was held accountable for the greatest failure of national security in world history. Instead, the White House dragged its feet for a year resisting any investigation until the persistent demands from 9/11 families for accountability forced President George W. Bush to appoint a political commission, devoid of any experts, to hold a pretend investigation.

April 26, 2012 CNN

Trials Without Crimes Or Evidence - by Paul Craig Roberts

April 25, 2012

Andy Worthington is a superb reporter who has specialized in providing the facts of the US government’s illegal abuse of “detainees,” against whom no evidence exists. (Source) In an effort to create evidence, the US government has illegally resorted to torture. Torture produces false confessions, plea bargains, and false testimony against others in order to escape further torture.

For these reasons, in Anglo-American law self-incrimination secured through torture has been impermissible evidence for centuries. So also has been secret evidence withheld from the accused and his attorney. Secret evidence cannot be confronted. Secret evidence is distrusted as made-up in order to convict the innocent. The evidence is secret because it cannot stand the light of day.

The US government relies on secret evidence in its cases against alleged terrorists, claiming that national security would be threatened if the evidence were revealed. This is abject nonsense. It is an absurd claim that presenting evidence against a terrorist jeopardizes the national security of the United States.

To the contrary, not presenting evidence jeopardizes the security of each and every one of us. Once the government can convict defendants on the basis of secret evidence, even the concept of a fair trial will disappear. Fair trials are already history, but the concept lingers.

Paul Craig Roberts
April 6th, 2012

The stagecoach bounced along the uneven trail through Indian lands. A year ago there would have been danger from Indians. But Ulysses Grant had sent General Philip Henry Sheridan, who had brought the horrors of war to Confederate civilians, to annihilate the plains Indians.

In his winter campaign of 1868-69, Sheridan attacked the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Comanche tribes in their winter quarters, killing women and children and taking the Indians’ supplies and livestock. In Congressional testimony, Sheridan advocated the slaughter of the vast herds of bison in order to deprive Indians of food. Having turned professional hunters loose on Indian lands, Sheridan wrote: “Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated.” For his proficiency in war crimes, Sheridan was made commanding general of the U.S. Army.

When the first thud of the arrows hit the stage, the passengers screamed, “Indians, we will be scalped.” Among the passengers was a grizzled, hardened man. He retrieved an arrow and noting the metal arrowhead realized that it was not an Indian arrow and that the stage was being attacked by outlaws posing as Indians.

False flag attacks are as old as history. “Bowie” Johnston had fought Indians all his life. He had more respect for them than he had for most white men. Unlike the other passengers, he understood that Indians would be blamed when whites preyed upon whites.

Paul Craig Roberts provides another well written defense of 911 Truth.

Entitled "9/11 Truth Critics: Do They Have A Case?", Roberts column is largely in response to Alexander's recent insipid nonsense - The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years?.

Roberts starts out:

"The short answer to the question in the title is no.
The 9/11 truth critics have nothing but ad hominem arguments."

Highly recommended reading.

GRTV talks to Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary, former editor of the Wall Street Journal, author and researcher, about the significance of 9/11 on the brink of the tenth anniversary of those events. We discuss the many points at which the official explanation of 9/11 do not mesh with the available evidence, the many experts who have raised their voices in dissent (and been silenced), and what our response to 9/11 teaches us about where we are heading as a society.

'9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?' by Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
August 8, 2011

In my recent article, “Creating Evidence Where There Is None,” about the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden by a commando team of US Seals in Abbottabad, Pakistan, I provided a link to a Pakistani National TV interview with Muhammad Bashir, who lives next door to the alleged “compound” of Osama bin Laden. I described the story that Bashir gave of the “attack” and its enormous difference from the one told by the US government. In Bashair’s account, every member of the landing party and anyone brought from the house died when the helicopter exploded on lift-off. I wrote that a qualified person could easily provide a translation of the interview, but that no American print or TV news organization had investigated Bashir’s account.
An attorney with a British Master of Laws degree in international law and diplomacy, who was born in Pakistan, provided the translation below. He writes: “I have no problem with being identified as the translator, but would prefer to remain anonymous.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
Aug 5, 2011

The New Yorker has published a story planted on Nicholas Schmidle by unidentified sources who claim to be familiar with the alleged operation that murdered Osama bin Laden.

There is no useful information in the story. Its purpose seems simply to explain away or cover up holes in the original story, principally why did the Seals murder an unarmed, unresisting Osama bin Laden whose capture would have resulted in a goldmine of terrorist information and whose show trial would have rescued the government’s crumbling 9/11 story?

The gullible Schmidle tells us: “‘There was never any question of detaining or capturing him–it wasn’t a split-second decision. No one wanted detainees,’ the special-operations officer told me.” In other words, the SEALs murdered bin Laden, because the US government did not want detainees, not because trigger-happy stupid SEALs destroyed a font of terrorist information.

Why did the SEALS dump bin Laden’s body in the ocean instead of producing the evidence to a skeptical world?

Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts10152010.html

Paul Craig Roberts
Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:31 CDT

Does anyone remember the "cakewalk war" that would last six weeks, cost $50-$60 billion, and be paid for out of Iraqi oil revenues?

Does anyone remember that White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired by Dubya because Lindsey estimated that the Iraq war could cost as much as $200 billion?

Lindsey was fired for over-estimating the cost of a war that, according to Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, has cost 15 times more than Lindsey estimated. And the US still has 50,000 troops in Iraq.

Does anyone remember that just prior to the US invasion of Iraq, the US government declared victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Does anyone remember that the reason Dubya gave for invading Iraq was Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, weapons that the US government knew did not exist?

Alex Jones welcomes back to the show economist and a nationally syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts, who recently announced his journalistic retirement in an article entitled “Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It.” He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. Mr. Roberts is the author of several books, including The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice and How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds.

Paul Craig Roberts expresses his frustration with the censorship of 9/11 and why he is no longer going to write his bi-weekly column for such sites as Counterpunch and AntiWar.com. He explains that if people can't deal with 9/11 they can't adequately deal with any of the other important topics we are needing to deal with as well.

Good-Bye. Truth Has Fallen and Taken Liberty With It

By Paul Craig Roberts
March 24, 2010

There was a time when the pen was mightier than the sword. That was a time when people believed in truth and regarded truth as an independent power and not as an auxiliary for government, class, race, ideological, personal, or financial interest.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it.

Truth is an unwelcome entity. It is disturbing. It is off limits. Those who speak it run the risk of being branded “anti-American,” “anti-semite” or “conspiracy theorist.”

Truth is an inconvenience for government and for the interest groups whose campaign contributions control government.

Truth is an inconvenience for prosecutors who want convictions, not the discovery of innocence or guilt.

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

From Op Ed News:

"Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Road-to-Armageddon-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-100225-925.html

February 25, 2010

The Road to Armageddon

By Paul Craig Roberts

The Washington Times is a newspaper that looks with favor upon the Bush/Cheney/Obama/neocon wars of aggression in the Middle East and favors making terrorists pay for 9/11. Therefore, I was surprised to learn on February 24 that the most popular story on the paper's website for the past three days was the "Inside the Beltway" report, "Explosive News," about the 31 press conferences in cities in the US and abroad on February 19 held by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, an organization of professionals which now has 1,000 members.