Saturday, December 12, 2009

Answering Obama’s Afghanistan deceptions

Eric Ruder, Socialist Worker, December 8, 2009

Barack Obama’s December 1 nationally televised address to announce a further escalation of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan cemented his role as a war president who bears responsibility for the U.S. war on that country. It also marked Obama’s assumption of the task of providing the justifications, alibis and obfuscations needed to cloak U.S. military aims in an aura of legitimacy.

Eric Ruder goes through Obama’s speech and counters seven of Barack Obama’s worst half-truths and lies about Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama speaks on Afghanistan at West Point (Pete Souza | White House)President Barack Obama speaks on Afghanistan at West Point (Pete Souza | White House)

DECEPTION NO. 1: “We did not ask for this fight…[T]he United Nations Security Council endorsed the use of all necessary steps to respond to the 9/11 attacks…and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, we sent our troops into Afghanistan.”

HERE, BARACK Obama is repeating a lie that has been told and retold so often that it goes completely unexamined in the mainstream press. Countless Western newspapers reported on the Taliban’s offers to hand over Osama bin Laden, so long as the Bush administration provided Afghan government officials with evidence of bin Laden’s involvement in the September 11 attacks–something that any sovereign nation, like the U.S., would require before agreeing to an extradition.

Continues >>

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