Marching Off Into Tyranny
by Paul Craig Roberts
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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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. government tests proved that the anthrax mailed to various Americans, including prominent U.S. 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.
When it leaked out that the anthrax actually came from a U.S. government lab, the Bush regime tried to frame a U.S. scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, but failed. On June 28, 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. Walton stated, “There is not a scintilla of evidence that would indicate that Dr. Hatfill had anything to do with this.”
The anthrax matter was again news last week when another U.S. 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 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 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 respects 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 multiyear 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 U.S. Air Force, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and the Pentagon’s defenses, and crashed three hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the heart of the U.S. 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 U.S. 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-Qaida 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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” spin 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 six 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 U.S. 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.
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 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.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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1 Comment by Bill Wilder on 7 August 2008:
Dr. Roberts insists on undermining and even discrediting himself by pursuing conspiracy theories instead of facts. Cockburn is a leftist who loathes Christianity and European culture. He embraces Arian because he’s an Arab, muslim radical opposed to our culture and traditions. While most of the case seems trumped up, he was convicted. Moreover, he’s an alien and an advocate for identified terror groups. There’s no need for him to be here and he should be deported. Injecting him into the question of the Bush Admin’s manipulations and lies in pursuit of war and abuse of constitutional liberties against citizens undermines the argument.
As for the 9-11 conspiracy theories–an unproven waste of time. Claiming there were “false flag” operations does nothing to address the failings of the American public to restrain their gov’t in the face of obvious and unsupportable abuses. As for Ivins, I am similiarly suspicious of a suspect (an mentally ill to boot from the leaked stories) conveniently identified just two months after a big payout to Hatfill from the earlier incompetently administered investigation.
While the anthrax incident may well have been Ivins in a “Unabomber” fit, if it were foreign elements it would only raise the question of blowback, giving no comfort to the security state. (It was the US who funneled bioweapons to Hussein during the 80s, for example.)
There are plenty of credible and established bases for criticizing our gov’t conduct in the “War on Terror” without embracing conspiracy theories or radical muslim aliens.
2 Comment by markb on 7 August 2008:
What’s that old saying ??? …”Never assume a conspiracy when mere stupidity will serve as an explanation” … there seems to be plenty of the latter to go around. As Mr. Wilder mentions, the serious damage is that serious criticims – outrages, even – are much more easily dismissed when they are attached to theories that are discounted with relative ease.
3 Comment by Ken Hoop on 7 August 2008:
Bill Wilder
“Moreover, he’s an alien and an advocate for identified terror groups.”
You mean the groups not classified as such by some European countries and others, and groups made viable in part by a one-sided meddling foreign policy conducted by the same government Roberts criticizes?
4 Comment by Bill Wilder on 7 August 2008:
“You mean the groups not classified as such by some European countries and others, and groups made viable in part by a one-sided meddling foreign policy conducted by the same government Roberts criticizes?”
Mr. Hoop,
As to the former, it may well be that certain European countries do not classify Palestinian Islamic Jihad as a terror group. Mr. Al-Arian is welcome to decamp to them.
As to the latter, well, with that I cannot argue; as Dr. Paul discovered, Americans (particularly of the “conservative” variety) will not hear of “blowback” and instead prefer sweet dreams of American innocence.
I also must agree that our gov’t richly deserves Dr. Roberts’s criticisms. I just wish he would insist on making them effectively, rather than discrediting himself; particularly when he is the only one discussing some of the (important) issues he raises (like prosecutorial abuse.)
5 Comment by Ken Hoop on 8 August 2008:
I find Justin Raimondo’s LIHOP book-length 9/11 treatise considerably more plausible than any MIHOP scenario, and indeed Raimondo himself constructs a demarcation others might find amusing by describing MIHOP advocates as beyond the pale.
However, how can Roberts discredit himself if as polls suggest ,a significant percentage of the American people regard some conspiratological aspect re 9/11 as quite plausible? A government
capable of gross negligence at best, and one which punished no one for allowing the attacks leaves itself ethically and practically open to such speculation.
6 Comment by Lois Price on 8 August 2008:
“He embraces Arian because he’s an Arab, muslim radical opposed to our culture and traditions. While most of the case seems trumped up, he was convicted.”
Mr. Wilder,
I find it ironic that you criticize Mr. Roberts for not “pursuing … facts” in the same paragraph in which you yourself blatantly disregard the facts. First of all, Dr. Al-Arian was never convicted of a crime. A Tampa jury refused to convict him on even a single count.
Secondly, Dr. Al-Arian is not a “radical Muslim opposed to our culture and traditions.” How preposterous! Here in Tampa, Sami was a distinguished, widely respected professor; the founder of a school that has graduated hundreds of law-abiding, patriotic students; a tireless volunteer in local civic organizations, working cooperatively and productively with both Muslims and non-Muslims; a true believer in democracy, who worked within the system to lobby legislators. During his thirty years as a U.S. resident, Dr. Al-Arian has done more to build community than most native-born Americans I know.
The son of Palestinian refugees who were forcibly evicted from land that their families had inhabited for centuries, Dr. Al-Arian most certainly has strong feelings about the Israeli occupation of his homeland. However, while he openly defends the right of any people to resist occupation, Sami has never been a proponent of violent attacks on innocent civilians.
Scores of people who once worked closely with Dr. Al-Arian have stood courageously by him as he has endured the nightmare of the past five years. His supporters include Christians and Jews, teachers and students, government leaders and community volunteers, clergy and journalists. Some have abandoned lifelong careers in order to dispel the kind of baseless allegations that you put forth in your post. The dissemination of such misinformation does a disservice, not just to Dr. Al-Arian, but to all who care deeply about the importance of true justice in a democratic society.
Lois Price
7 Comment by polemicscat on 8 August 2008:
Most conspiracies don’t make sense. But they appeal to people who are desperate for clear, simple explanations for unhappy or strange occurrences.
If Bush were trying to become a tyrant or a dictator, why would he wait so late in his presidency to make his move? His administration is practically a lame duck at this late date.
If I were inclined to buy into conspiracies, I would begin to wonder why a nobody–an unknown– with no real track record (but with Napoleonic delusions of grandeur) could become the Democrat nominee for President.
8 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 9 August 2008:
Since the 9/11 attacks were the result of people acting together for evil ends, they were by definition the product of a conspiracy. The question is whether or not all the conspirators have been identified. 9/11 was not a false flag operation in the sense of Al Qaeda being wrongly blamed. But has Al Qaeda been infiltrated by or has it infiltrated various intelligence organization? The interpenetration of intelligence and terrorist groups and the use of both by governments and the resulting blowback has been a large part of the history of the last hundred years, starting with General Ludendorf sending Lenin and his gang to Russia. (Talk about blowback!)
I don’t believe the US regime was directly responsible for 9/11; a deliberate provocation would have been contrived to have real evidence of Iraqi involvement instead of just assertion. But given that Al Qaeda has had contact with several intelligence organizations and given the CIA’s practice of outsourcing operations to private outfits as well as to Israeli, Saudi, and Pakistani intelligence, it’s possible that some American spooks might have known in advance about 9/11 and even helped it along – acting either as rogues or misguided, too-clever-by-half patriots.
And to answer Polemicscat’s question about that Democrat nominee for President who is a nobody with Napoleonic delusions of grandeur, we currently have a Republican President who is a nobody with Napoleonic delusions of grandeur. Apparently it’s part of the job description.
9 Comment by polemicscat on 9 August 2008:
Actually we knew quite a lot about Bush before he was elected.
He had been the governor of Texas. Then as President, he was elected to a second term.
What has Bush perpetrated in the way of a self-serving and diabolical objectives since being re-elected? He has maintained low ratings in public opinion polls by continuing the policies he put in place in the first term. That may be bad, but it doesn’t sound like a plan to overthrow the government.
The Democrat (presumed) nominee–with nothing but a short, bland public record at most—has already redesigned the Presidential seal and a new flag to go on the tail of Air Force One.
That looks like a guy who has big plans for HIMSELF.
10 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 9 August 2008:
Why would Bush want to overthrow the government? He IS the government or at least the head of it. Simply because his incompetence at waging war has eventually damaged the economy as well and caused him to lose popularity doesn’t mean that his actions were not and are not intended to be self-serving. One can have Napoleonic delusions without Napoleonic military talent. That said, it is evident that the saner part of the American ruling class has reigned Bush in considerably during the last year or two. He probably won’t be able to have the war against Iran and he and the neo-cons have so lusted and longed for.
As for Obama, of course he has big plans for himself; he wants to be President of the US, the single most powerful position in the world. And like every other President or prospective President, he wants to increase this already overwhelming power. Heard of any Presidents recently who have sought to diminish the power of the office?
11 Comment by polemicscat on 9 August 2008:
Since you expect every President to try to “increase this already overwhelming power” what is so special about Bush? My initial point was that his tenure is practically over. Why waste energy crying over spilt milk. We may get another like him or worse. You seem to agree.
12 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 9 August 2008:
Paul Craig Roberts is on the money, as is typically the case.
13 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 9 August 2008:
#10 – Bush’s tenure is not over yet and even if it were, well we have plenty of discussions here about presidents whose tenures are over – Lincoln and FDR for example. If you wish to discuss neither history nor current events, but just speculate about the future, this is probably not the best forum for you.
14 Comment by Rowan Berkeley on 13 August 2008:
I personally believe that al Qaeda is more effectively described as Kurt Nimmo used to describe it : al CIA-duh.
However, I also believe it was constructed by CIA (and MI6 of course) and enthusiastically staffed by pious Muslims, because it was anti-communist.
It is therefore fairly stupid (though doubtless modestly lucrative) to pretend that what really ails the USA, and the planet unfortunately victimised by it, is some sort of neocon ‘crypto-marxism’.
15 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 14 August 2008:
#13 – I think this gives the CIA as an organization way too much credit for being efficient, but neo-con crypto-marxists have seized control of almost the entire conservative movement in the US, initially in the name of anti-Communism. It’s no stretch that they could have duped pious Moslems in the same way. Of course in these situations, it is always a question of who is really using whom. No doubt Ludendorf thought he was using Lenin, but the resulting Bolshevik revolution ended up benefiting Lenin plenty and Ludendorf not in the least.
16 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 14 August 2008:
Mr. Higdon, is it plausible that the Pentagon’s defenses would fail completely nearly an hour after the first plane hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001?
17 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 14 August 2008:
#15 – I can’t answer that since I don’t know what defenses the Pentagon had to begin with or how they failed.
18 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 14 August 2008:
#16 – Surely, the Pentagon’s defenses would have been on heightened alert following the World Trade Center attacks, assuming they weren’t meant to fail.
19 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 15 August 2008:
#17 – So apparently you don’t know either what defenses, if any, the Pentagon had.
20 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 15 August 2008:
#18 – I do know that there were reports of explosions going off at the Pentagon before the plane supposedly hit. I also know that Pentagon employee April Gallop has given testimony that strongly suggests that the computer keyboard she used that day was wired to explosives and that in that testimony she has stated the first explosion at the Pentagon occurred the exact moment she touched her computer keyboard that morning.
21 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 15 August 2008:
#19 – Think for a minute. Given that the Pentagon must have thousands of employees who use keyboards, someone was almost bound to be able to make that claim. Was April Gallop claiming to be part of a plot to blow up the Pentagon through wired explosives? If not, are you suggesting that this plot to use pre-set explosives depended on a non-involved employee showing up for work that day and using her keyboard at just the right moment. Do a little shaving with Occam’s razor here; no need to overly complicate things.
22 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 15 August 2008:
#20 – From what April Gallop has said, her credentials were not checked when she arrived at work that day, something totally contrary to normal protocol, and there were other abnormal aspects in how she was directed towards her workplace. Furthermore, she has said, after she pulled herself (and her young daughter who was with her) from the debris, following the explosion, she observed flames coming out of computer monitors in the wreckage of the office. She’s also said she saw no plane wreckage in the area at all, something Jamie MacIntyre of CNN also said while reporting at the scene following the attack. (Years later MacIntyre contradicted his live report and claimed that he had seen plane wreckage at the Pentagon.)
23 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 15 August 2008:
#21 – So was she in on it or not?
24 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 16 August 2008:
#22 – I think April Gallop was no more in on it than were those who were murdered that day.
25 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 16 August 2008:
#23 – So the whole attack on the Pentagon depended on her showing up for work that day, not having her credentials checked, being guided to her workplace in an abnormal way and using her keyboard at just the right time. Does that seriously make sense to you?
26 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 16 August 2008:
#24- She actually touched the keyboard a few minutes too early and not at “just the right time,” assuming her touching the keyboard key detonated the explosion. In any case, the area hit being rigged with explosives makes much more sense than what the controlled media has told us about the attack on the Pentagon, which doesn’t make sense at all.
27 Comment by Kirt Higdon on 16 August 2008:
#25 – To me, it is the pre-rigging with explosives and then depending on an uninvolved innocent person to set off the explosives that makes no sense. I’ll make that my last comment.
28 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 16 August 2008:
Mr. Hidgon, you might be interested in watching this excerpt from a recent speech by 9/11 researcher David Ray Griffin, which can be found on YouTube:
“David Ray Griffin – New 9/11 Evidence – PART 2 of 3″
29 Comment by Constantine FitzRoy on 16 August 2008:
Sorry for mispelling your name, Mr. Higdon.