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It's Accountability Time
By Scott Ritter
09/09/05 "AlterNet"
-- -- The power and fury of Hurricane Katrina has momentarily pushed
to the side the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001. However, to fully understand the ramifications
of Hurricane Katrina, and the failings on the part of our
government to protect us from harm, we must not forget that before
Katrina there was an event we were told “forever changed the
world we live in.”
September 11, 2001 represented not only a dark day for New York
City and its citizens, but all of America and indeed the world. In
retrospect, the gravest damage inflicted by that act of terrorism
wasn't the human suffering and material loss, but rather the
serious assault on the very soul of the United States by those who
used the horrific events of 9/11 for political purpose.
This “assault” came in the form of actions on the part of
the Bush administration, a cowed Congress, and a compliant media
that worked hand in glove to spin the events of September 11, 2001
into a storm of hype and fear that exploited an already
traumatized people. This conditioned them to accept at face value
any characterization of events, no matter how far removed from
fact, as well as any remedy put forward as a solution, no matter
what the cost to fundamental notions of liberty and justice as set
forth by the Constitution.
From the smoke and ashes of 9/11 came legislation in the form
of the so-called “Patriot Act,” which represented a frontal
assault by its conservative drafters on the very Constitution that
defined a United States of America worth dying for. Congress voted
unanimously to enact this legislation without even bothering to
read it, since to vote against the Patriot Act was to open oneself
to charges of being unpatriotic.
Congress went further, legislating into existence a new
bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, which at its
best provided Americans with a nonsensical color-coded system for
mandating national levels of fear, and at its worst created the
illusion not only of an ever-present terrorist threat, but also
the notion that the federal government, in its role as “Big
Brother,” was there to protect us from all evil.
For nearly four years America proceeded down this path of
self-induced ignorance and bliss, reassured by our Republican
president and Republican-controlled Congress, as well as a
compliant media. We were repeatedly told that a threat to our
security loomed on the horizon, a threat so grave we as a people
needed to cede our liberties to a benevolent federal authority
that guaranteed the security of a nation we now called our
“homeland.”
The newly erected Department of Homeland Security absorbed the
various departments and agencies that had previously performed
specialized tasks, such as border security, customs, and emergency
response, under a single monolithic entity to serve as a guarantor
of our collective protection.
Billions of dollars were spent in the name of “homeland
security.” But under the Bush administration, homeland security
really meant the domestic defense against terrorism, and even in
this case the emphasis was placed on pre-emptive law enforcement
(i.e., implementing the provisions of the Patriot Act) rather than
actual response to an act of terror (i.e., providing aid and
comfort to the victims of an attack).
Little heed was given to real threats to the collective
security of our nation, such as tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires,
hurricanes and floods, and the impact these would have on the
infrastructure and integrity of the nation. These real threats
were never given a color-coded system for the purpose of hyping
them to the American people; they were instead pushed into the
background by a White House and Congress addicted to the
legislative and electoral simplicity of fear of the unknown --
terrorism.
If anything, Hurricane Katrina has stripped away the many
layers of deceit, deception and misinformation that have been
peddled to the American people by the White House, Congress and
the mainstream media regarding the true state of our national
security. With the dead still uncounted in New Orleans and the
Gulf States, Americans are coming to grips with the fact that the
Bush administration, Congress and the Department of Homeland
Security have been asleep at the wheel when it comes to protecting
the citizens of the United States from the true threats facing us
as a nation.
For the first time in a long time, the mainstream media broke
ranks with the spin doctors in Washington D.C., the all too real
face of human disaster compelling them to sort fact from myth,
truth from hype. Finally, when the American people turn on their
television sets, they are watching and listening to reporters and
commentators who seem shocked and alarmed by the callous attitude
and cavalier behavior of those entrusted by the American people to
lead and protect them.
With this newfound clarity of vision, the mainstream media is
starting to focus not just on the appalling lack of response from
the government, but also for the first time on what is transpiring
in Iraq. The post-9/11 period of journalistic sleepwalking allowed
the Bush administration to get away with outright fabrication of
intelligence information used to create a case for war based on
weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that had long ago disappeared
from Iraq. During this period, no one in the mainstream media had
the integrity or courage to stand up and ask for any proof the
Bush administration could provide to back up its unsubstantiated
allegations about Iraqi WMD. More than two years have passed, and
the media still refers to the WMD lie as an "intelligence
failure," instead of the massive fraud it really was, and is.
It took a brave stance by a bereaved mother of a slain soldier
outside the vacation home of President Bush to awaken the media to
the harsh realities of the ongoing occupation of Iraq, and the
absolute inadequacies of the system of government put in place by
the United States. (Hopefully, reporters will soon stop speaking
about the "Purple Finger Revolution" of January 2005 as
reality, instead speaking of a U.S.-manipulated event that was
neither free nor democratic).
As American service members continue to fight and die for a
country that cannot even produce a viable constitution, perhaps
the post-Katrina mainstream media will start accurately reporting
on the realities of occupied Iraq with the same clarity and
purpose they now grant to the coverage of the hurricane and its
aftermath.
Hurricane Katrina may end up posing a great threat to the hold
on power enjoyed by the Republican Party today. The 2006 mid-term
elections are but a year away, and already the Republicans in
Washington are scrambling to limit the political damage caused by
the dual blows of Katrina and Iraq.
The American people and a newly enabled media must keep in
place the very data filters that now provide so much clarity
regarding the duplicity of the Bush administration and the
Republican-controlled Congress, so as to prevent any bait and
switch gambit that might be sprung in order to divert the
attention of the nation away from the absolute requirement of
electoral accountability.
At the end of the day we, the people, are in control of the
people and bureaucracy we empower to govern us. The mechanism of
our control is the process of free and democratic elections. No
matter what the pundits and politicians say, 9/11 did not change
this reality. In 2006 the American people will have the
opportunity to express their will on the national stage.
Each and every one of us must ask ourselves whether are we
happy with the people we have currently empowered to represent us.
If the answer is no, then we must make sure that in the coming
year we do everything in our power to identify those who have
failed us, Republican and Democrat alike, and replace them with
those who represent the will of the people, and not the will of
special interests. If we fail to act, and America is once again
struck by a calamity, whether it be an act of God here at home, or
an act of illegitimate aggression abroad, we will have only
ourselves to blame.
Scott Ritter was U.N. chief weapons inspector in Iraq from
1991-1998 and author of "Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story
of America's Intelligence Conspiracy," to be published by I.B.
Tauris (London) in October 2005.
© 2005 Independent Media
Institute.
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