Re: RE: NATO gets proof

On Tue, Oct 02, 2001 at 10:28:01PM -0400, [email protected] wheezed something about:

> Are you claiming that the US is purposefully lying to the public and 
> the world just in order to get revenge on a man that didn't commit the 
> crime they want justice for or that they are too stupid to release 
> overwhelming evidence to the world that would obviously support their 
> position?  

Are those my only choices? 

I don't have any problem with the idea that the government lies to its
citizenry. So I won't rule that out.

I am suspicious of all the claims of ironclad proof, which has so far only
been shown to elites like NATO and Tony Blair and the like. 

I'm also suspicious of the claim that we must assume that it's being hidden
to protect intelligence assets or to not give away an advantage. I simply
find neither claim very compelling.

My general assumption is that evidence is being withheld for the same kinds
of institutional and political reasons that have led Bush and Powell and
Rumsfeld to promise to 'wage this war' with 'unprecedented levels of
security'; for, I also assume, the same kinds of reasons that led the
Pentagon to manage every scrap of information that the corporate media
reported about the Gulf War.

Further, the release of even overwhelming evidence would not support
Washington's position as I understand it, since evidence tying bin Laden to
the crime is still just evidence of crime, and Washington wants to treat
this as war. If there were evidence linking the attacks to a state, which
*would* justify treating this not as crime but as war, it's very hard to
imagine reasons why that would not have been forthcoming yet, at least
leaked.

  Doesn't it make more sense that they simply don't want to 
> give away any advantage to these terrorists no matter how small, be it 
> an inside source whose life might be endangered or a mistake in their 
> planning that they may repeat, or perhaps even because they don't give 
> a high prority right now to explaining thousands upon thousands of 
> documents and sources to six billion people that each have their own 
> version of the facts.  

No, that doesn't make more sense.

Further, I expect *our* leaders to explain themselves and their actions to
*us*, that is, to American citizens, the sovereign, not the rest of the
world. That comes later.

  It is an admirable trait of our democracy that 
> it is one of the most transparent in the world, however that does not 
> mean that it must release all information as soon as it recieves, 
> particularly if it endangers ongoing processes.  

Hmm. It's transparent in a particular way; I'm skeptical that it's the most
transparent, but that would need to be further specified before we could
seriously attempt to validate it.

Further, massive transparency in one area doesn't make up for lack of
transparency in another.

Kendall Clark