“We Are Now In The Longest Continuous Period of War In American History”

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter James Risen reminds us:

We are now in the longest continuous period of war in American history. And yet there is remarkably little debate about it.

Many Americans assume “because 9/11″.

But regime change in Iraq, Lybia, Syria and Afganistan (and see this) was plannedbefore 9/11.

Let’s take Iraq, for example.  Former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials saythat the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.”

Cheney apparently even made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: “Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.” (remember that Alan Greenspan,John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officerand others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

Indeed, we’ve seen it all before.

We explained last year:

We are in the middle of a perpetual series of wars. See this, this, this andthis.

As just one example, in 2010 the war in Afghanistan became the longest war in U.S. history. 

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Why is the war of terror being waged indefinitely?

Many have said that “war is the health of the state”,  and Thomas Painewrote in the Rights of Man:

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice, nor warped by interest, would declare, that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

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