What
You're Missing in our subscriber-only CounterPunch newsletter
Special Issue: the Collapse of America
Paul Craig
Roberts gives CounterPunchers the definitive data on what is
happening to jobs in America. Not just blue collar jobs. Middle-class,
white collar jobs. Roberts'
stunning probe is the first true picture of what the U.S. economy
is fast becoming and of the savage class wars that lie ahead.
Plus Mike
Ferner on what it really means to investigate war crimes in Iraq. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers
each month! But
remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the
print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription
to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find
anywhere else, or by making a donation towards the cost of this
online edition.
Remember contributions are tax-deductible.Click
here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please:Subscribe
Now!
"Our government has kept
us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a continuous stampede
of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national emergency.
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous
foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly
rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded.
Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened,
seem never to have been quite real."
General Douglas MacArthur,
1957[1]
So now we've (choke) just been (gasp)
saved from the simultaneous blowing up of ten airplanes headed
toward the United States from the UK. Wow, thank you Brits, thank
you Homeland Security. Well done, lads. And thanks for preventing
the destruction of the Sears Tower in Chicago, saving lower Manhattan
from a terrorist-unleashed flood, smashing the frightful Canadian
"terror plot" with 17 arrested, ditto the three Toledo
terrorists, and squashing the Los Angeles al Qaeda plot to fly
a hijacked airliner into a skyscraper.
The Los Angeles plot of 2002
was proudly announced by George W. early this year. It has since
been totally discredited. Declared one senior counterterrorism
official: "There was no definitive plot. It never materialized
or got past the thought stage."[2]
And the scare about ricin in
the UK, which our own Mr. Cheney used as part of the buildup
for the invasion of Iraq, telling an audience on January 10,
2003: "The gravity of the threat we face was underscored
in recent days when British police arrested ... suspected terrorists
in London and discovered a small quantity of ricin, one of the
world's deadliest poisons."
It turned out there was not
only no plot, there was no ricin. The Brits discovered almost
immediately that the substance wasn't ricin but kept that secret
for more than two years.[3]
From what is typical in terrorist
scares, it is likely that the individuals arrested in the UK
August 10 are guilty of what George Orwell, in 1984, called
"thoughtcrimes". That is to say, they haven't actually
DONE anything. At most, they've THOUGHT about doing something
the government would label "terrorism". Perhaps not
even very serious thoughts, perhaps just venting their anger
at the exceptionally violent role played by the UK and the US
in the Mideast and thinking out loud how nice it would be to
throw some of that violence back in the face of Blair and Bush.
And then, the fatal moment for them that ruins their lives forever
... their angry words are heard by the wrong person, who reports
them to the authorities. (In the Manhattan flood case the formidable,
dangerous "terrorists" made mention on an Internet
chat room about blowing something up.)[4]
Soon a government agent provocateur
appears, infiltrates the group, and then actually encourages
the individuals to think and talk further about terrorist acts,
to develop real plans instead of youthful fantasizing, and even
provides the individuals with some of the actual means for carrying
out these terrorist acts, like explosive material and technical
know-how, money and transportation, whatever is needed to advance
the plot. It's known as "entrapment", and it's supposed
to be illegal, it's supposed to be a powerful defense for the
accused, but the authorities get away with it all the time; and
the accused get put away for very long stretches. And because
of the role played by the agent provocateur, we may never know
whether any of the accused, on their own, would have gone much
further, if at all, like actually making a bomb, or, in the present
case, even making transatlantic flight reservations since many
of the accused reportedly did not even have passports. Government
infiltrating and monitoring is one thing; encouragement, pushing
the plot forward, and scaring the public to make political capital
from it is quite something else.
Prosecutors have said that
the seven men in Miami charged with conspiring to blow up the
Sears Tower in Chicago and FBI buildings in other cities had
sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda. This came after meeting with a
confidential government informant who was posing as a representative
of the terrorist group. Did they swear or hold such allegiance,
one must wonder, before meeting with the informant? "In
essence," reported The Independent of London, "the
entire case rests upon conversations between Narseal Batiste,
the apparent ringleader of the group, with the informant, who
was posing as a member of al-Qaeda but in fact belonged to the
[FBI] South Florida Terrorist Task Force." Batiste told
the informant that "he was organizing a mission to build
an 'Islamic army' in order to wage jihad." He provided a
list of things he needed: boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios,
vehicles, binoculars, bullet proof vests, firearms, and $50,000
in cash. Oddly enough, one thing that was not asked for was any
kind of explosives material. After sweeps of various locations
in Miami, government agents found no explosives or weapons. "This
group was more aspirational than operational," said the
FBI's deputy director, while one FBI agent described them as
"social misfits". And, added the New York Times, investigators
openly acknowledged that the suspects "had only the most
preliminary discussions about an attack." Yet Cheney later
hailed the arrests at a political fundraiser, calling the group
a "very real threat".[5]
Perhaps as great a threat as
the suspects in the plot to unleash a catastrophic flood in lower
Manhattan by destroying a huge underground wall that holds back
the Hudson River. That was the story first released by the authorities;
after a while it was replaced by the claim that the suspects
were actually plotting something aimed at the subway tunnels
that run under the river.[6]
Which is more reliable, one
must wonder, information on Internet chat rooms or WMD tips provided
by CIA Iraqi informers? Or information obtained, as in the current
case in the UK, from Pakistani interrogators of the suspects,
none of the interrogators being known to be ardent supporters
of Amnesty International.
And the three men arrested
in Toledo, Ohio in February were accused of -- are you ready?
-- plotting to recruit and train terrorists to attack US and
allied troops overseas. For saving us from this horror we have
a paid FBI witness to thank. He had been an informer with the
FBI for four years, and most likely was paid for each new lead
he brought in.[7]
There must be millions of people
in the United States and elsewhere who have thoughts about "terrorist
acts". I might well be one of them when I read about a gathering
of Bush, Cheney, and assorted neocons that's going to take place.
Given the daily horror of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine
in recent times, little of which would occur if not for the government
of the United States of America and its allies, the numbers of
people having such thoughts must be rapidly multiplying. If I
had been at an American or British airport as the latest scare
story unfolded, waiting in an interminable line, having my flight
canceled, or being told I can't have any carry-on luggage, I
may have found it irresistible at some point to declare loudly
to my fellow suffering passengers: "Y'know, folks, this
security crap is only gonna get worse and worse as long as the
United States and Britain continue to invade, bomb, overthrow,
occupy, and torture the world!"
How long before I was pulled
out of line and thrown into some kind of custody?
If MacArthur were alive today
would he dare to publicly express the thoughts of his cited above?
Policy makers and security
experts, reports the Associated Press, say that "Law enforcers
are now willing to act swiftly against al-Qaeda sympathizers,
even if it means grabbing wannabe terrorists whose plots may
be only pipe dreams."[8]
Commonly, the "terrorists"
are watched for many months, then the police pounce on them at
a politically opportune time. The reasons in the current case
may stem from some aspect of the Blair and Bush administrations
being under attack from all sides, including the defeat of super
war-supporter Senator Joseph Lieberman (just 36 hours before
the British announcement), and the upcoming November elections,
when the Republicans will be running on the War on Terrorism
issue. "Weeks before September 11th, this is going to play
big," said a White House official, adding that "some
Democratic candidates won't 'look as appealing' under the circumstances."[9]
Referring to the alleged UK
terrorism plot, the New York Times reported that:
"The White House and the
Republican Party had pounced on that news, along with the defeat
of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic
primary by an antiwar candidate, Ned Lamont, to paint the Democrats
as weak on national security. Mr. Cheney had gone so far as to
imply that the defeat of Mr. Lieberman, a strong backer of the
war, would embolden 'Al Qaeda types'."[10]
Vote Republican or the terrorists
win!
The announcement of this particular
terrorist threat may also be explained by this news item:
"Much of the televised
discussion yesterday concerned the investigative tools available
in Britain that U.S. officials credit with allowing authorities
to get ahead of the plot before it proved catastrophic. [Homeland
Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff said the ability to monitor
monetary transactions and communications and to arrest suspects
for a period of 28 days on an emergency basis made a significant
difference in the case."[11]
We should be hearing further
from the administration about these things.
1. Vorin Whan, ed. "A
Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of General of the
Army Douglas MacArthur" (1965)
2. The Daily News (New York),
February 10, 2006
3. Washington Post, April 14,
2005; United Press International, April 18, 2005
4. Time, July 7, 2006, article
by Joshua Marshall; Associated Press, July 14, 2006
5. Sears case: Knight Ridder
Newspapers, June 23, 2006; The Independent (London), June 25,
2006; St. Petersburg Times (Florida), June 24, 2006; New York
Times, August 13, 2006
6. Associated Press, July 14,
2006
7. Associated Press, April
18, 2006
8. Associated Press, July 8,
2006
9. Agence France Presse, August
11, 2006
10. New York Times, August
17, 2006. p.23
11. Washington Post, August
14, 2006, p.9
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
