‘War on terror’, US invasion of Iraq and now, Iran: The ultimate collapse of the collective conscience

Key Highlights

• But by 2013, I well knew that there would be no accountability imposed by either the international community or by the American public.
• The so-called “War on Terror” was already 12 years old, and nothing in the preceding years promised any reckoning so late in the game.
• Also in 2013, one of the few true “American patriots” of that time, Chelsea Manning, was brutalised by the United States government, and her broken face and body were paraded in front of the media.
• Meanwhile, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba’s “Camp X-Ray,” where even children — shackled and hooded, already tortured and “interrogated” — were being brought from anywhere in the world that the CIA chose to abduct them from, had been open for 12 years.
• “Black sites,” where torture — and at times murder — had been carried out, had been opened in several hidden corners of the earth, dependent on “extraordinary rendition,” conducted again through secret state channels, without any public oversight or transparency regarding how and where these torture chambers were in operation.