Jesse Ventura - American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us

I close this book with that quote from Gandhi. Because, after Im long gone, I believe there needs to be a record that some people thought things other than just the status quo of what the government has put out for us all to believe. I think its a duty we have to humanity. Even if were wrong, were right enough to have an alternate opinion. You may not believe everything thats been written in this book, but its certainly scary. Even thinking that a lot of it could be true is scary enough.

Ive covered a lot of ground in American Conspiracies , most of it not pleasant to consider. But we cant simply look the other way about the dark side of our history. And theres been no shortage of dark, over this last half-century or so. After the Second World War where my father, my mother, and millions of others distinguished themselves, in our leaders well-meaning effort to contain Communists and now terrorists, they unleashed something equally threatening. I guess you could call it power run amuck.

Its not a newelement, really. You see it in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln, and the big-money forces that wanted to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt. When President Kennedy set out to challenge the status quo on many different fronts, he paid the price with his life. The same was true for the three other great American leaders of the 1960s: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Then Nixon became, in a way, a victim of some of the same forces hed helped come to power in the Fifties, like the CIA. And the CIAs ultimate experiment in controlling human behavior, Jonestown, followed at the close of the seventies.

With the rise of Reagannot a face that belongs on Mount Rushmorewe saw the first of the neo-cons successes in ripping off an election, or at least making sure the incumbent president couldnt properly fulfill his mandate. Dealing drugs, as a crucial element of our political landscape, came to the fore during the Reagan years. I decided not to delve into the right wings ongoing efforts to sabotage Bill Clintons presidency, culminating in setting him up to take the fall with Monica Lewinsky, but its no stretch to add that to the list of conspiracies.

The last chapters in 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 its 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. Whats happened to our economy grew out of that, and now were standing at the abyss looking at the still-in-place plans to end America as weve known it since 1776.

Its about time people understand that, like anything in life, theres 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 Im 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 cant dissent from any official opinion? Thats again why I felt so compelled to write this book, because its bigger than even these storiesbigger, in that were not allowed to talk about them, or criticize.

Also, weve got to have a more open government. Why cant those 10,000 documents on Able Danger be released? The old excuse of national security? Shouldnt there be some elected board that would say, Okay, tell us why this falls under national security and well 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, thats a big step on the road to losing more of our liberties.

Im sure Ill be attacked as the messenger disseminating this information. Well, its 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. Im not backing down. Ill continue to fight against the special interests that have taken a choke-hold on our democracy. If you want good government, youve got to have an involved citizenry. Youve got to have people willing to telland hearthe 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 thats 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 farmerand we couldnt 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, weve got to reclaim our nation.