America’s Immune System Has Failed … So the Cancers of War and Corruption are Spreading

By Washington’s Blog

U.S. Has Lost the Immune System Created by the Founding Fathers

When someone is exposed to a germ, his immune system fights it off.

If his immune system stops functioning, he can’t fight off even minor bugs … and he dies.

Without an immune system, the body doesn’t know good guys from bad.

Without an immune system, the body can’t distinguish between its own self and a mortal enemy and lethal invader.

America has lost its immune system. Unless we kick-start it, our country will die.

Here are a couple of clear examples…

Fraud and the Economy

Failing to prosecute the fraud of the big banks is dooming our economy.

Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future.

Indeed, professor of law and economics (and chief S&L prosecutor) William Black notes that we’ve known of this dynamic for “hundreds of years”. And see this, this, this and this.

And a review of the data on accounting fraud confirms that fraud goes up as criminal prosecutions go down.

Black also says that the Bush and Obama administrations have both broken the law by failing to break up the insolvent banks.

And yet our immune system failed. Indeed, the U.S. government admits that it refuses to prosecute fraud … pretty much as an official policy. Indeed, the government helped cover up the crimes of the big banks, used claims of national security to keep everything in the dark, and changed basic rules and definitions to allow the game to continue. See this, this, this and this.

And top economists and financial experts say we need to break up the giant banks to save the economy.

Because fraudsters weren’t prosecuted and the banks weren’t broken up, the fraudsters are now committing bigger and bigger crimes, and banks are now bigger than ever … leaving the economy open to an even bigger crash than occurred in 2008.

Lying Us Into Disastrous Wars

Warmongerers in the U.S. government knowingly and intentionally lied us into a war of aggression in Iraq. The former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the highest ranking military officer in the United States – said that the Iraq war was “based on a series of lies”.

Many high-ranking military officials, top Republican leaders and key architects of the Iraq war said that the war was really about oil. The American government sold the Iraq war under false pretenses. Former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq.

National security experts – including both hawks and doves – agree that waging war against Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries has weakened America’s national security and increased terrorism risks. See this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this. In fact, there was no Al Qaeda in Iraq until the U.S. invaded in 2003, and now Islamic terrorists have taken over much of the country.

“Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression” is a war crime … a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Because the architects of the Iraq war have not been held accountable, those in government felt free to tell whoppers about Syria to try to whip up a war there for reasons wholly unrelated to America’s national defense.

And now, these same boneheads are trumpeting propaganda – which contradicts what the intelligence analysts actually say – to whip up war with Russia. Russia – unlike Iraq – has nuclear weapons, and is a huge military power.

Because America’s immune system didn’t function to punish those responsible for the Iraq war lies, new lies are being told about other countries … leading America into even more disastrous wars, and destroying our freedom in the process.

Torture

Failing to prosecute those who created, authorized or promoted the torture program is destroying our country’s reputation and hurting our national security. Top experts say that torture creates new terrorists. Prosecuting the torturers would help to reduce the hatred – and terrorism – which comes from the horrendous program of torture.

In addition, top counter-terrorism experts say that indefinite detention – such as we have at Guantanamo – increases terrorism.

And as Darrel Vandeveld – former prosecutor in the Guantanamo military commissions, and current Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve – wrote:

Torture is a crime and the United States engaged in it. Those are two indisputable facts…

The process of self-examination and accountability has been, and remains, the only way to move forward and regain our moral and legal grounding…

We have a Department of Justice for a reason, and now it’s up to Attorney General Holder, the nation’s top law enforcement officer, to do his job and appoint an independent prosecutor to follow the evidence where it may lead…

It is critical that we hold accountable those who authorized, those who legally sanctioned and those who implemented the torture policies of one of the darkest periods in our nation’s history. What is at stake is nothing less than our democracy.

The highest law of the land requires the government to prosecute all of those involved in the torture program … even the president and vice-president.

And yet our immune system failed. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned hundreds of years of legal doctrine by deciding that a judge can throw out a case – before any discovery is even conducted – because he doesn’t personally believe what the Plaintiff says can be true. The case was brought by someone who was tortured … but the judge “decided” that the U.S. doesn’t torture, so threw out the case before the guy could prove he was tortured.

Failing to prosecute the torturers has led to a whole new generation of terrorist recruits, reduced America’s moral standing in the eyes of the world, and left our soldiers vulnerable to torture by our enemies.

Will Anyone Defend America?

There are many other recent examples of America’s failing immune system:

9/11 was – at the very best – criminal negligence. Yet not a single official in government, military or intelligence responsible for letting the attack happen was fired or even demoted. Indeed, most were promoted after 9/11