American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us by Jesse Ventura, Dick Russell Page B

this book are, in my view, the most painful and frightening of all. Since the dawn of the new millennium, our democracy has eroded to the point where it’s hanging on by a bare thread. You can trace this directly to the times that George W. Bush and his cronies stole the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections from their opponents, and also to the tragic events of 9/11 that unleashed their assault on our freedoms in the name of protecting them. What’s happened to our economy grew out of that, and now we’re standing at the abyss looking at the still-in-place plans to end America as we’ve known it since 1776.
    It’s about time people understand that, like anything in life, there’s more than one side to any story. This book presented an opportunity to tell the other sides to many stories and then say, you be the judge. Look at the big picture over time, and try to do so with clear judgment, without letting your emotions make the determination or your patriotism interfere.
    I consider myself a patriot, loyal to the values that built this country that I served as best I could as a Navy SEAL, a mayor and a governor. But I’m outraged when I hear about people like Van Jones being dismissed from his government position for signing a petition calling for an unbiased investigation into 9/11. What is our country turning into, when you can’t dissent from any official opinion? That’s again why I felt so compelled to write this book, because it’s bigger than even these stories—bigger, in that we’re not allowed to talk about them, or criticize.
    Also, we’ve got to have a more open government. Why can’t those 10,000 documents on Able Danger be released? The old excuse of “national security”? Shouldn’t there be some elected board that would say, “Okay, tell us why this falls under national security and we’ll make the determination whether it truly does, or is this simply a political cover-up?” When the government starts keeping too many secrets for us, that’s a big step on the road to losing more of our liberties.
    I’m sure I’ll be attacked as the messenger disseminating this information. Well, it’s not based on my opinion, folks, it all came from documentation. It was a matter of putting together the pieces that the media no longer pays attention to. So let the powers that be come at me. I’m not backing down. I’ll continue to fight against the “special interests” that have taken a choke-hold on our democracy. If you want good government, you’ve got to have an involved citizenry. You’ve got to have people willing to tell—and hear—the truth, much as this might shatter our illusions and trouble our sleep.
    Do you ever think that maybe our country needs a Truth Commission, to understand the crimes that were committed “in our name” over these recent decades? My hope is that some of you will stand with me in calling for accountability. The only way we can truly move forward is to come to grips with a recent past that’s brought us to the brink of losing it all.
    Maybe we ought to put ourselves in the position of the little Vietnamese farmer who did nothing but raise his rice. They handed him an AK-47 and in came the powerful United States, and we dropped more armaments on Vietnam that we did in World War II. We threw everything we had at this little rice farmer—and we couldn’t beat him, could we? When push came to shove, he outlasted us. Why? Because he had the resolve for freedom. That Vietnamese farmer wanted to self-govern, not be part of colonialism. Maybe we, in the United States, should start viewing our government as colonialists. Now the rest of us, in our own country, are becoming the colony. And somehow, some way, we’ve got to reclaim our nation.

FURTHER READING
    THE LINCOLN ASSASSINATION
    Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln , by Edward