Fox News\u2019 anchor Bill O\u2019Reilly interviewing President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For instance, you might be called upon to say that \u201cIran is the principal source of terrorism\u201d when that title clearly belongs to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf state allies that have funded Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Islamic State. But truth has no particularly value in Official Washington; adherence to \u201cgroup think\u201d is what\u2019s important.<\/p>\n Similarly, you might have to deny any \u201cmoral equivalence\u201d between killings attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin and killings authorized by U.S. presidents. In this context, the fact that the urbane Barack Obama scheduled time one day a week to check off people for targeted assassinations isn\u2019t relevant. Nor is the reality that Donald Trump has joined this elite club of official killers by approving a botched and bloody raid in Yemen that slaughtered a number of women and children (and left one U.S. soldier dead, too).<\/p>\n You have to understand that \u201cour killings\u201d are always good or at least justifiable (innocent mistakes do happen from time to time), but Russian killings are always bad. Indeed, Official Washington has so demonized Putin that any untoward death in Russia can be blamed on him whether there is any evidence or not. To suggest that evidence is needed shows that you must be a \u201cMoscow stooge.\u201d<\/p>\n To violate these inviolable norms of Official Washington, in which participants must intuitively grasp the value\u00a0of such \u201cgroup think\u201d and the truism of \u201cAmerican exceptionalism,\u201d marks you as a dangerous outsider who must be marginalized or broken.<\/p>\n Currently, President Trump is experiencing this official opprobrium as he is widely denounced by Republicans, Democrats and \u201cnews\u201d people because he didn\u2019t react properly to a question from Fox News\u2019 Bill O\u2019Reilly terming Putin \u201ca killer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere are a lot of killers.\u201d Trump responded<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of killers. What do you think \u2014 our country\u2019s so innocent. You think our country\u2019s so innocent?\u201d<\/p>\n Aghast at Trump\u2019s heresy, O\u2019Reilly sputtered, \u201cI don\u2019t know of any government leaders that are killers.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump: \u201cWell \u2014 take a look at what we\u2019ve done too. We made a lot of mistakes. I\u2019ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Reilly: \u201cBut mistakes are different than \u2014\u201c<\/p>\n Trump: \u201cA lot of mistakes, but a lot of people were killed. A lot of killers around, believe me.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Moral Equivalence\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Though Trump is justly criticized for often making claims that aren\u2019t true<\/a>, here he was saying something that clearly was true. But it has drawn fierce condemnation from across Official Washington, not only from Democrats but from Trump\u2019s fellow Republicans, too. Neoconservative Washington Post opinion writer Charles Krauthammer objected fiercely to Trump\u2019s \u201cmoral equivalence,\u201d and CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper chimed in. lamenting Trump\u2019s deviation into \u201cequivalence,\u201d i.e. holding the U.S. government to the same ethical standards as the Russian government.<\/p>\n Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan Library)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This \u201cmoral equivalence\u201d argument has been with us at least since the Reagan administration when human rights groups objected to President Reagan\u2019s support for right-wing governments in Central America that engaged in \u201cdeath squad\u201d tactics against political dissidents, including the murders of priests and nuns and genocide against disaffected Indian tribes. To suggest that Reagan and his friends should be subjected to the same standards that he applied to left-wing authoritarian governments earned you the accusation of \u201cmoral equivalence.\u201d<\/p>\n Declassified documents<\/a> from Reagan\u2019s White House show that this P.R. strategy was refined at National Security Council meetings led by U.S. intelligence propaganda experts. Now the \u201cmoral equivalence\u201d theme is being revived to discredit a new Republican president who dares challenge this particular Official Washington \u201cgroup think.\u201d<\/p>\n Lots of Killing<\/strong><\/p>\n The unpleasant truth is that all leaders of major countries and many leaders of smaller countries are \u201ckillers.\u201d President Obama admitted that he had ordered military strikes in seven different countries to kill people. His Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rejoiced over the grisly murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi with a clever twist on a famous Julius Caesar boast of conquest: \u201cWe came, we saw, he died,\u201d Clinton chirped.<\/p>\n At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as \u201cshock and awe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n President George W. Bush launched an illegal war against Iraq based on false pretenses, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, many of them children and other civilians.<\/p>\n President Bill Clinton ordered a vicious bombing campaign against the Serbian capital of Belgrade, which included intentionally targeting the Serb TV building and killing 16 civilian employees because Clinton considered the station\u2019s news reports to be \u201cpropaganda,\u201d i.e., not in line with U.S. propaganda.<\/p>\n After the U.S. bombing in 1991 that incinerated more than 400 civilians, the Amiriyah Bunker in Baghdad was turned into a memorial to the victims. Since the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the memorial was closed to the public.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n President George H.W. Bush slaughtered scores of Panamanians who happened to live near the headquarters of the Panamanian Defense Forces and he killed tens of thousands of Iraqis, including incinerating a civilian bomb shelter in Baghdad, after he brushed aside proposals for resolving Iraq\u2019s invasion of Kuwait peacefully. (Bush wanted a successful war<\/a> as a way to rally the American people behind future foreign military operations, so, in his words, the country could kick \u201cthe Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.\u201d)<\/p>\n Other U.S. presidents have had more or less blood on their hands than these recent chief executives, but it is hard to identify any modern U.S. president who has not been a \u201ckiller\u201d in some form, inflicting death upon innocents whether as part of some \u201cjustifiable\u201d mission or not.<\/p>\n But the mainstream U.S. press corps routinely adopts double standards<\/a> when assessing acts by a U.S. president and those of an \u201cenemy.\u201d When the U.S. kills people, the mainstream media bends over backwards to rationalize the violence, but does the opposite if the killing is authorized by some demonized foreign leader.<\/p>\n That is now the case with Putin. Any accusation against Putin \u2013 no matter how lacking in evidence \u2013 is treated as credible and any evidence of Putin\u2019s innocence is ridiculed or suppressed.<\/p>\n That was the case with a documentary<\/a> that debunked claims that hedge fund accountant Sergei Magnitsky was murdered in a Russian prison because he was a whistleblower when the documentary showed that he was a suspect in a massive money-laundering scheme and died of natural causes. Although produced by a documentarian who started out planning to do a sympathetic portrayal of Magnitsky, the facts led in a different direction that caused the documentary to be shunned by the European Union and given minimal distribution in the United States.<\/p>\n By contrast, the ease with which Putin is called a murderer \u2013 based on \u201cmysterious deaths\u201d inside Russia \u2013 is reminiscent of how American right-wing groups suggested that Bill and Hillary Clinton were murderers by distributing a long list of \u201cmysterious deaths\u201d somehow related to the Clinton \u201cscandals\u201d from their Arkansas days. While there was no specific evidence connecting the Clintons to any of these deaths, the sheer number created suspicions that were hard to knock down without making you a \u201cClinton apologist.\u201d Similarly, a demand for actual evidence proving Putin\u2019s guilt in a specific case makes you a \u201cPutin apologist.\u201d<\/p>\n However, as a leader of a powerful nation facing threats from terrorism and other national security dangers, Putin is surely a \u201ckiller,\u201d much as U.S. presidents are killers. That appears to have been President Trump\u2019s point, that the United States doesn\u2019t have clean hands when it comes to shedding innocent blood.<\/p>\n But telling such an unpleasant albeit obvious truth is not the way to gain entrance into the inner sanctum of Official Washington\u2019s Deep State. The passwords for admission require you to say a lot of things that are patently false. Any inconvenient truth-telling earns you the bum\u2019s rush out into the alley, even if you\u2019re President of the United States.<\/p>\n Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America\u2019s Stolen Narrative, either in\u00a0print here<\/a>\u00a0or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n