Freedom Bombs

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Orwellian doublespeak flourishes in Washington - notably when it comes to the language of wars, waged for wealth and power, never for peace, democracy building, or other rhetorically claimed high-minded objectives.

In May, the Energy Department rebranded US natural gas as "freedom gas" and "molecules of US freedom."

It's 40% more expensive than easily accessible Russian natural gas, but why quibble.

What the Energy Department prefers not explaining is that much of US natural gas comes from environmentally destructive hydrofracking.

It contaminates soil and drinking water with carcinogenic toxins, including diesel fuel, benzene, ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene, naphthalene and other hazardous chemicals — causing "freedom" from health and long life.

On July 10, in testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee members, hardline Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs R. Clarke Cooper's remarks could have been scripted by Orwell — unjustifiably justifying US arms sales to the Saudis and UAE.

Weapons to their regimes have nothing to do with fostering regional freedom, human rights, or other high-minded notions — everything to do with mass slaughtering Yemenis and terrorizing their own people to assure submissiveness.

Cooper quoted earlier-under secretary for political affairs Michael Armacost in 1984 — the title of Orwell's classic that's no longer fiction with endless US wars and Big Brother watching everyone.

Armacost told congressional members of the "need to respond firmly and decisively to requests from the Gulf states for appropriate and justifiable security assistance (sic)," used for domestic and cross-border terrorism.

According to Cooper, "(o)ur policy is not just limited to arms transfers. It is a manifestation of what else we export: open society, human rights (sic). That is a part of our policy (sic."

US foreign and domestic policies reflect pure power politics, intolerant of democracy building, human rights, as well as free and open societies, notions Washington and its imperial allies abhor.

Cooper turned truth on its head, claiming US weapons sales to the Saudis, Emiratis, and other regional rogue states "are intended to address the military need of our partners in the face of an urgent regional threat posed by Iran…"

Fact: The US, Israel, and despotic regional monarchies threaten Iran, not the other way around. Cooper repeated the long ago discredited Big Lie otherwise.

Fact: US weapons sales to the region are all about waging naked aggression, persecuting Palestinians, and brutalizing other oppressed people.

The US has been waging war in Yemen since October 2001 — together with NATO partners and regional rogue states Israel, the Saudis and UAE at times.

Endless horrors created the world's gravest human rights catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis perished from war, starvation, untreated diseases, and overall deprivation — the world community doing nothing to hold responsible countries accountable for their high crimes.

Media reports way understating the death toll in Yemen, including RT saying "more than 7,000 people killed by military action," ignore ongoing US-orchestrated genocide in the country, the world's gravest humanitarian disaster, and hundreds of thousands who've perished in the last 18 years, no end of human suffering in prospect.

Endless US wars of aggression rage in multiple theaters, Iran threatened for control of its vast hydrocarbon resources and population, the region's second largest after Egypt.

Washington under both extremist right wings of its war party is addicted to endless aggression, seeking global dominance by raping and destroying one country after another.

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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

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