How the Psychopaths Who Run the U.S. Government Think

Eric Zuesse

On June 25th, the former Obama Secretary of State and current Biden climate czar John Kerry was interviewed by Darius Rochebin on the TF1 French TV network and Kerry accused Putin of aggression against Ukraine, he was pretending that the war in Ukraine hadn’t started with America’s coup in Ukraine in 2014 turning that country, which has the nearest border to The Kremlin, rabidly anti-Russian. Rochebin replied by comparing Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine and America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. He asked Kerry: wasn’t that an international war-crime, an aggressive invasion against Iraq, which was based on the lie that Iraq was hiding WMD, weapons of mass destruction? Kerry answered “No.” Rochebin asked Kerry why it wasn’t comparable to Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Kerry said that there was no comparison because whereas Putin is being charged by the ICC for a war crime of aggression, Bush never was. An accurate description of the discussion was provided by Russia’s RT, and here that is:

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https://www.rt.com/news/578750-john-kerry-iraq-aggression-lie/

26 June 2023 17:29

US envoy admits Iraq invasion was based on lie

The 2003 war was not a crime because President George W. Bush was never charged, John Kerry has insisted

[The passage is starting at 9:30 in the video:

https://www.tf1info.fr/international/video-john-kerry-sur-lci-contre-le-rechauffement-climatique-il-faut-de-l-argent-2261616.html.]

The US-led invasion of Iraq was completely different to the current Ukraine conflict, Washington’s special envoy for climate change John Kerry has told French TV channel LCI.

He appeared on LCI’s Sunday evening show hosted by Darius Rochebin, who had previously interviewed him for a Swiss outlet in 2017. Rochebin tweeted a video segment of the interview, in which he confronted Kerry about the West accusing Russia of aggression regarding Ukraine. The French journalist noted that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was an actual war of aggression, based on the lie that Baghdad secretly possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“No,” Kerry replied. “Because there’s never even been, you know, a process of direct accusation of President [George W.] Bush himself.”

He added that there had been “abuses” in the course of that conflict, and that he “spoke out against them.” When Rochebin asked him directly whether the Iraq War had been a crime of aggression, Kerry repeatedly denied it.

“No, No, No. Well, you didn’t know it was a lie at the time. [That’s a lie because Bush certainly did know that it was a lie, at that time.] The evidence that was produced, people didn’t know that it was a lie,” the former diplomat said, before telling Rochebin that he doesn’t intend to “re-debate the Iraq War” at this point. 

Kerry also claimed he was opposed to the war at the time and thought it was the wrong thing to do. He actually voted in the Senate to authorize the invasion, however. When Rochebin pushed him on the apparent double standard, Kerry began speaking about “climate justice.”

The Bush administration accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of having chemical and biological weapons, as well as being somehow involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The ‘evidence’ for WMDs offered to the media and the UN Security Council turned out to be entirely fabricated, and no such weapons were ever found. Likewise, no connection between Baghdad and Al-Qaeda was ever established.

The 2003 invasion and the subsequent occupation of Iraq was carried out without UN approval, by what Bush called a ‘coalition of the willing’. The US, the UK, Australia and Poland provided troops for the attack, though Washington later claimed 44 more countries had offered some kind of support.

Kerry ran against Bush in 2004 but lost. He later served as secretary of state in the Barack Obama administration, and was appointed climate change ambassador by the current president, Joe Biden, in 2021.

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Here was Rochebin’s tweeted video-clip of the discussion:

https://twitter.com/DariusRochebin/status/1672994415504158722

The tweeted responses to the discussion were largely regurgitations of U.S.-and-allied propaganda against Putin and against Russia. Very few tweets addressed the comparison of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Almost all of the tweeted replies were irrelevant to that issue — which had been the issue. Most of the tweets were non-responsive.

I have previously argued that the comparison is valid, and that the case that Bush is a war-criminal is far stronger than is the case that Putin is.

However, what is most remarkable here is the aristocratic Kerry’s unconcern with the substance of the matter — that Bush is at least as guilty as Putin is — and Kerry’s total and obsessive concern instead about whether Bush has been charged as having been a war-criminal. He thinks in labels, instead of realities. Bush has not been labelled “war-criminal.” It seems that all that concerns Kerry is what people think, and not what actually is.

His type of thinking is sometimes called “other-directed” as opposed to “inner-directed,” or else “conformist” instead of “autonomous” (or “independent”). It seems to lack a core, have no personality or character, because the only ‘conscience’ the person has is other people’s opinions, nothing inside the person — the person is actually a vacancy. That’s a classic psychopath: no conscience is present.

Is this a trait that is virtually universal among the people who run the U.S. Government? To judge by those twitter-responses, it appears to be a rather common trait, though perhaps not as universal as among the individuals who run the U.S. Government. In order to participate in the U.S. leadership, psychopathy seems to be the chief prerequisite. It’s the way to ignore reality.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.