The United States Of International Terrorism
From The My Lai Massacre In The 1960s Vietnam War, To Blowing Up The Nordstream Pipeline in 2022, America Leaves A Bloody Legacy Of Terror And Immorality
Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash
For anyone trying to flush out the clog of emotional and mental debris from their mind after the weird and unsettling State Of The Union speech on the day after, it seemed like a minor miracle.
President Joe Biden and other Congressional reps and dignitaries had assembled in the Capitol before a joint session of Congress to tout their triumphs on the evening of February 7th, but what should have been a speech filled with typical political platitudes accompanied by cued applause lines instead turned into a Felliniesque circus of shouting, awkward pauses, and strange costuming.
All of it against a random backdrop of celebrities, political relations, and regular citizens being exploited simply to illustrate Biden’s points. Nothing sells a political narrative better than real-life examples.
Biden entered the aisle, making his way to the podium grinning and shaking hands, (with notable exceptions) leaning in and smiling, almost schmoozing, more like a man getting the Salesman Of The Year award at a used car dealership convention in Las Vegas than the leader of the free world. He fought early on to gain some kind of rhythm, and to be fair, public oratory is one of the most difficult tasks a person can master. You either are naturally gifted or you’re not.
It was painful to watch.
Biden stumbled out of the box, slurring words and phrases together to the point of incoherence, rushed the pacing, grimaced, squinted at the large block font on the teleprompter, and at certain points, rather inexplicably, shouted incoherently.
If you follow Biden on Twitter and had seen all the tweets written for him by the taxpayer-funded team of digital propagandists over the last 8 months, you quickly realized the SOTU was little more than “Biden’s Greatest Hits”.
So, what was the minor miracle then?
That would be, on the following day, under the depressing specter of Biden’s continuing, (if more tepid) endorsement of US aid for Ukraine, an increasingly dangerous situation leading us all to possible extinction, revered journalist Seymour Hersh dropped a truth bomb of journalistic integrity in the midst of the fog of exclusive pro-war propaganda, as he has on previous occasions.
Specifically, Hersh published a stunning revelation that unequivocally implicates the United States as an active participant in the bombing of the Nordstream pipeline.
Hersh, a heroic figure in the anti-war movement, has a half-century of journalistic experience, in which he courageously took on the lies of the Military Industrial Complex, beginning most notably with the My Lai massacre during the United States’ involvement in the Vietnam war.
“In a cable filed through Dispatch News Service and picked up by more than 30 newspapers, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals the extent of the U.S. Army’s charges against 1st Lt. William L. Calley at My Lai. Hersh wrote: “The Army says he [Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968, in a Viet Cong stronghold known as ‘Pinkville.'”
The incident, which became known as the My Lai Massacre, took place in March 1968. Between 200 and 500 South Vietnamese civilians were murdered by U.S. soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade of the Americal Division. During a sweep of the cluster of hamlets known as My Lai 4, the U.S. soldiers–particularly those from Calley’s first platoon–indiscriminately shot people as they ran from their huts, and then systematically rounded up the survivors, allegedly leading them to a ditch where Calley gave the order to “finish them off.”
Much like today, the government and military at that time largely stifled the press from telling the truth and revealing the horrors of that war.
The difference between then and now, and what tends to make this article by Hersh a miracle at the right time, is that “journalism” in 2023 is completely sold out to an agenda of being little more than court stenographers. The unquestioned amplification of every dubious and absurd statement that comes out of the Pentagon, State Department, and White House is the rule, not the exception. Skeptical inquiry is kept to a minimum, leaving true journalists as unheard voices on the fringe.
The story, unlike the Russigate rumor mill that was fed by desperate ratings-hungry and increasingly irrelevant cable news, is credibly sourced.
Another important point: The Biden agenda has largely been concentrated on hiding behind NATO to perpetuate creeping US involvement in the Ukraine proxy war. The recent campaign to declare Russia as a terrorist state rings hollow when contrasted with the actual record. The United States, at least since I’ve been alive, has always pointed the finger at its enemies, using a false moral standard to label them as terrorists while hiding its own participation in acts of terrorism. Congressional legislation, enshrining this dubious and false moral projection into codified law, is particularly heinous.
I would recommend reading the entire article, published here on Substack, but the critical elements are highlighted below. It should be noted that the White House, and The CIA, when asked for comment have stated that Hersh’s story is “completely false” and utter fiction”. It should be noted that similar pushback was heaped on Hersh when he questioned the government narrative on the Osama Bin Laden killing.
“Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.
Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions.”
Hersh also notes that, much like Ronald Reagan’s secret, CIA-funded Iran Contra war, it was vital to hide direct US involvement so it would not have to be reported to Congress, and more likely leaked to the press:
“Biden’s decision to sabotage the pipelines came after more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mission, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was responsible.
There was a vital bureaucratic reason for relying on the graduates of the center’s hardcore diving school in Panama City. The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Administration was doing everything possible to avoid leaks as the planning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.
President Biden and his foreign policy team—National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two different ports in northeastern Russia near the Estonian border, passing close to the Danish island of Bornholm before ending in northern Germany.”
Even when playing devil’s advocate, applying the most skeptical filter to the Seymour Hersh story, all of Hersh’s narrative is FAR more credible than the dubious drivel that spewed forth from the mouths of officials for weeks after the pipeline exploded, the narrative being that Russia blew up its OWN pipeline, a profitable, vital source of economic revenue.
“We have to conclude, without the evidence,” said one official, “that it’s most likely Russia.” Biden, when questioned by a reporter CLEARLY threatened the continuing existence of the pipeline. Biden’s true intent in Ukraine has been, and remains, to weaken Russia economically, and corral Germany and the EU into buying far more expensive American natural gas. Presumably, another “benefit” of NATO membership is dependence on expensive American-produced energy.
To quote Hersh:
“From its earliest days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Washington and its anti-Russian NATO partners as a threat to western dominance. The holding company behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incorporated in Switzerland in 2005 in partnership with Gazprom, a publicly traded Russian company producing enormous profits for shareholders which is dominated by oligarchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom controlled 51 percent of the company, with four European energy firms—one in France, one in the Netherlands and two in Germany—sharing the remaining 49 percent of stock, and having the right to control downstream sales of the inexpensive natural gas to local distributors in Germany and Western Europe. Gazprom’s profits were shared with the Russian government, and state gas and oil revenues were estimated in some years to amount to as much as 45 percent of Russia’s annual budget.
America’s political fears were real: Putin would now have an additional and much-needed major source of income, and Germany and the rest of Western Europe would become addicted to low-cost natural gas supplied by Russia—while diminishing European reliance on America. In fact, that’s exactly what happened. Many Germans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliverance of former Chancellor Willy Brandt’s famed Ostpolitik theory, which would enable postwar Germany to rehabilitate itself and other European nations destroyed in World War II by, among other initiatives, utilizing cheap Russian gas to fuel a prosperous Western European market and trading economy.”
From My Lai to the prison torture at Abu Ghraib to decimating Libya and turning it into a modern-day slave market, the US is certainly in no moral or ethical position to declare any nation a terrorist state.
Anti-war activists or the few that are left within the skeletal remains of what was once a vital protest movement can celebrate the fact that at least occasionally, a credible journalist like Seymour Hersh comes along and the truth shines through.
Let’s hope people’s eyes are opened before it’s too late.
For additional commentary, I highly recommend Aaron Mate and Katie Halper’s take on this story as it develops. It should also be noted that after writing for major news organizations for a half-century the White House is denigrating the Hersh story by relegating it to the description of a random “blog post”.