Marching Off Into Tyranny
By Paul Craig Roberts
05/08/08 "ICH" -- - In last weekend’s edition of CounterPunch,
Alexander Cockburn updates the ongoing persecution of Sami
Al-Arian by federal prosecutors. Al-Arian was a Florida
university professor of computer science who was ensnared by the
Bush Regime’s need to produce “terrorists” in order to keep
Americans fearful and, thereby, amenable to the Bush Regime’s
assault on US civil liberties.
The charges against Al-Arian were rejected by a jury, but the
Bush Regime could not accept the obvious defeat. If Al-Arian was
not a terrorist, then other of the Bush Regime’s fabricated
cases might fall apart, too.
In open view, the US Department of Justice (sic) proceeded to
trash every known ethical rule of prosecution. I don’t need to
repeat the facts, as they are covered by Cockburn’s articles and
in The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Instead, I want to point out another meaning of the Al-Arian
case. The Justice (sic) Department itself knows that it is
persecuting a totally innocent person for reasons of a political
agenda--the need to convince gullible Americans of an ongoing
terrorist threat. The existence of this threat is used to
justify the Bush Regime’s adoption of police state measures,
such as spying on Americans without warrants, arresting them
without charges, and refusing to let go of them when they are
cleared by juries.
Sami Al-Arian is a fabricated terrorist created by federal
prosecutors and judges in behalf of an undeclared agenda. The
Al-Arian case proves that terrorists are in short supply and
that the Bush Regime has had to create them out of total
innocents. The “war on terror” is a hoax used to justify war
crimes and the overthrow of America’s civil liberties.
The anthrax scare is one more example of the Bush Regime’s use
of disinformation to advance an undeclared political agenda. As
Glenn Greenwald reminded us last week in Salon, the Bush Regime
used Brian Ross at ABC News to spread the lie far and wide that
US government tests proved that the anthrax mailed to various
Americans, including prominent US Senators, was made in Iraq by
Saddam Hussein. This lie was essential for scaring Congress into
passing the Bush Regime’s Gestapo laws, such as the PATRIOT Act,
and for overcoming opposition to invading Iraq.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/print.html
When it leaked out that the anthrax actually came from a US
government lab, the Bush Regime tried to frame a US scientist,
Steven J. Hatfill, but failed. On June 28th, the Los Angeles
Times reported that Hatfill, “The former Army scientist who was
the prime suspect in the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings agreed
Friday to take $5.82 million from the government to settle his
claim that the Justice Department and the FBI invaded his
privacy and ruined his career.” Indeed, U.S. District Court
Judge Reggie B. Walton allowed Hatfill’s attorneys two years to
review all news reports and FBI evidence. Judge Walton stated:
“there is not a scintilla of evidence that would indicate that
Dr. Hatfill had anything to do with this.” http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-anthrax28-2008jun28,0,5742061.story
The anthrax matter was again news last week when another US
government scientist, Bruce E. Ivins, “committed suicide.”
Instantly, the deceased Ivins was fingered as the culprit.
Overnight a man, liked and respected by his colleagues, who had
worked on American biological warfare weapons for years, became
a deranged homicidal maniac who decided to murder Americans at
random in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 by sending them
letters containing anthrax.
I don’t believe a word of it. But assume that it is true.
Blaming the anthrax letters on Ivins does not resolve the issue
of why the Bush Regime lied to Brian Ross and used ABC to put
the blame on Saddam Hussein in order to invade an innocent
country.
Wouldn’t a government that would lie about something this
serious lie about other serious matters?
The Bush Regime stands against against the truth. That is why it
pretends to have the power to prevent executive branch officials
wanted for questioning by Congress from appearing before the
people’s representatives. Nothing could make clearer the
contempt that the Bush Regime has for the American people and
their elected representatives than its arrogant claim that it is
unanswerable to them.
Obviously, neither the President nor the Vice President respect
their oaths of office. If they will betray such a serious oath,
won’t they lie about everything, even 9/11 itself?
According to the discredited 9/11 Commission Report, a few
Muslims hatched a multi-year plot that went undetected by the
vast security agencies of the United States and its allies, and
within one hour on one morning at four different locations
defeated airport security, NORAD, the US Air Force, Vice
President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, the Pentagon’s
defenses and crashed three hijacked airliners into the World
Trade Center towers and the heart of the US military. Muslims
were able to achieve this fantastic feat operating out of caves
in Afghanistan.
We now know for a fact that the “terrorist anthrax attack” had
nothing whatsoever to do with Muslim terrorists. Even the US
Government now blames white American citizens, employees of the
federal government, for the anthrax letters that, at the time,
were blamed on the “Osama bin Laden al Qaeda plot against
America.”
We now know for a fact that this was intentional disinformation
planted by the Bush Regime on a gullible and incompetent ABC
News reporter, who is a disgrace to journalism. No one denies
this.
We also know for a fact that ABC News will not say who planted
on ABC the lies that committed the United States to the dishonor
of an illegal invasion, war crimes, and executive branch attack
on the US Constitution. How can anyone anywhere in the world
rely on ABC News when it serves as a disinformation agency for a
criminal regime?
One logical conclusion is that the anthrax attack was part of
the same false flag operation that pulled off 9/11. The anthrax
letters made the “terrorist attack” seem wider and more general.
This increased the sense of peril and Americans’ fear and anger,
thereby opening wider the door for the Bush Regime’s attack on
Iraq and US civil liberty.
Now that the dead Ivins can be conveniently blamed for the
anthrax mailings, the Bush Regime can declare the case closed,
thus protecting the false flag operation from further risk of
exposure.
Many Americans lack the mental and emotional strength to
confront the facts. The facts are too unsettling and many are
relieved when the “mainstream media” spins the facts away. Many
Americans find it too appalling that any part of “their”
government, even a rogue operation, could possibly have been
involved in any way in the 9/11 or anthrax attacks. No
evidence--not even full confessions--could convince them
otherwise. Many Americans have welcomed their brainwashing by
the neoconservatives: America is pure; her shining virtue causes
evil men to attack her; they hate us because we are good and
they are evil.
For the sake of argument, let’s accept this make-believe. It
does not explain why, in order to protect us from evil men, the
US Constitution needs to be dismantled and civil liberties set
aside. Our Founding Fathers said that dismantling the
Constitution and setting aside civil liberties are precisely
what would make us unsafe in the extreme. The Bush Regime has
never explained how the civil liberties guaranteed by the
Constitution interfere with any legitimate response to
terrorism.
The fact still remains that the Bush Regime responded to 9/11
and anthrax letters with a comprehensive assault on US civil
liberty. The Bush Regime’s assault on America has been much more
successful than its assault on “terrorism.” Who remembers the
promise of a “six weeks war”? Americans have been mired for 6
years in two wars without end which the neoconned Bush Regime,
in alliance with Israeli zionists, seeks to expand to Iran,
Pakistan, Syria, and Lebanon. The Republican candidate for
president has given his commitment to a 100-year “war against
terrorism.” Many Americans will vote for this candidate who
wants to fight against a hoax for 100 years.
In The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America,
Jennifer Van Bergen explains the constitutional and legal
principles on which American liberty is based and the Bush
Regime’s intense assault on these principles. Part I of her book
sets out the Constitutional principles that are under attack.
Part II details the systematic attack on the US Constitution
that is the heart and soul of the Republican neoconservative
Bush Regime--and a Regime it is as it asserts that it is above
the law and unanswerable to law, Congress, the federal courts,
and the Constitution that it is sworn to uphold
Jennifer Van Bergan likens Bush and his brownshirt supporters to
Julius Caesar in motives, though not in courage. She cites the
poet Lucan who in his work Pharsalia described Caesar as he
flouted the law of the Roman Republic and crossed the Rubicon
with his army: “When Caesar crossed and trod beneath his feet
the soil of Italy’s forbidden fields, ‘here,’ spake he, ‘peace,
here broken laws be left; Farewell to treaties. Fortune, lead me
on; War is our judge.’”
Anyone who believes that the Bush Regime’s “war on terror” is
about terrorism, oil, getting even with those who attacked us,
bringing freedom and democracy to Muslims--whatever rationale
makes the gratuitous war crimes committed by the Bush Regime
acceptable to gullible Americans--needs to read Jennifer Van
Bergan’s Bush Plan for America. Nothing less than American
liberty is at stake.
The hour is late. Gullible Americans are being marched off into
tyranny as the promised land of safety.
Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the
Reagan Administration. He is a former Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal, a 16-year columnist for Business Week, and
a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service and Creator’s
Syndicate in Los Angeles. He has held numerous university
professorships, including the William E. Simon Chair in
Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International
Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow,
Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the
Legion of Honor by the President of France and the US Treasury’s
Silver Medal for “outstanding contributions to the formulation
of US economic policy.”
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