Some readers are aware I have been permanently suspended from Twitter as @wemeantwell.<\/p>\n
This followed exchanges with several mainstream journalists over their support for America\u2019s wars and unwillingness to challenge the lies of government. After two days of silence, Twitter sent me an auto-response saying what I wrote \u201charasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence someone else\u2019s voice.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think I did any of that, and I wish you didn\u2019t have to accept my word on it. I wish instead you could read what I wrote and decide for yourself. But Twitter won\u2019t allow that. Twitter says you cannot read and make up your own mind. They have in fact eliminated all the things I have ever written there over seven years, disappeared me down the Memory Hole. That\u2019s what censorship does; it takes the power to decide what is right and wrong away from you and gives it to someone else.<\/p>\n
Hate what I write, hate me, block me, don\u2019t buy my books, but please don\u2019t celebrate handing over those choices to some company.<\/p>\n
I lost my career at the State Department because I spoke out as a whistleblower against the Iraq War. I\u2019ve now been silenced, again, for speaking out, this time by a corporation. I am living in the America I always feared.<\/p>\n
Peter Van Buren blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during Iraqi reconstruction in his first book, <\/i>We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People<\/a>. His latest book is <\/i>Hooper’s War: A Novel of WWII Japan<\/a>. Reprinted from the his blog<\/a> with permission.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some readers are aware I have been permanently suspended from Twitter as @wemeantwell. This followed exchanges with several mainstream journalists over their support for America\u2019s wars and unwillingness to challenge the lies of government. After two days of silence, Twitter sent me an auto-response saying what I wrote \u201charasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-31568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/212"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31568"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31571,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31568\/revisions\/31571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31568"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=31568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}