Fighting Terror with Terror

by Dennis Loo

"I looked at him, lost in astonishment…His very existence was

improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble
problem. It was inconceivable how he had existed, how he had succeeded
in getting so far, how he had managed to remain -- why he did not
instantly disappear.” Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness

Bush and Cheney have not yet disappeared. A good thing, the White House tells

us, for six years have elapsed since 9/11 without another terrorist attack on the U.S. But

the absence of an attack doesn’t necessarily prove their case. Eight years passed between

1993 when the World Trade Center was first bombed and September 11, 2001. How do

we know then whether they’re winning or losing? How do we know whether, like Kurtz

in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, we will once again confront “the horror, the horror?”

For some time now, prominent anti-terrorism experts who served under Bush

have been sounding the alarm that the White House is losing its “war on terror” and that

both its offense and defense are fatally flawed. Michael Scheuer, a senior CIA analyst in

charge of tracking down Osama bin Laden, the man who, of all people, ought to know,

was so provoked and distressed that he left the CIA and went public - with the CIA’s

blessings - writing Imperial Hubris: Why the U.S. is Losing the War on Terror. He

concludes his book with these words: “the United States of America remains bin Laden’s

only indispensable ally.” That is not a typo. He said ally.1

1
"One of the great intellectual failures of the American intelligence community… is to
assume if someone hasn't attacked us, it's …because we've defeated him," says Scheuer.
"Bin Laden has consistently shown himself to be immune to outside pressure. When he
wants to do something, he does it on his own schedule." (60 Minutes interview November
14, 2004, available at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/12/60minutes/printable655407.shtml.)

1
 Clark Kent Ervin, former Inspector General of the Department of Homeland

Security, who also left his post in frustration, wrote in his blog: “The full extent of our

Iraq misadventure may only be known one day when an attack at home that might

otherwise have been prevented is not.”2 Ervin points out in his book, Open Target, that

the easiest way for terrorists to get a nuclear device into the U.S. is by sea and warns that

only 6% of shipments at our docks are inspected. “Every year approximately nine million

cargo containers arrive at American’s 361 seaports from all over the world – about

26,000 a day.”3 He goes on to recount that a year after 9/11, ABC News tested how

vulnerable we were to importation of a nuclear device. They transported a container of

depleted uranium to the U.S. from Istanbul. Customs failed to detect the device. A year

later ABC repeated the experiment, this time sending a DU (depleted uranium) device via

Jakarta. Customs again failed to detect the device.4

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar under Clinton and Bush states: “[Al

Qaeda] is in many ways a tougher opponent than the original threat we faced before

September 11, and we are not doing what is necessary to make America safe from that

threat.”5

The Bush White House has treated these fervent warnings the way the Greeks in

mythology reacted to Cassandra’s warnings of impending disasters – Cassandra was

always right, but never listened to. As Scheuer, Ervin and Clarke point out, and as nearly

any Iraqi or Muslim can tell us, we are creating new recruits for anti-state terrorist groups

2
http://opentarget.blogspot.com/, “Declare Victory and Go Home,” February 13, 2007.
3
Clark Kent Ervin, Open Target, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 118.
4
Ibid, pp. 118-120.
5
Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, NY: The Free Press.

2
everyday by our policies. Scheuer reiterates this again and again in his book: it is not who

we are that provokes Bin Laden, it’s what we are doing.

This isn’t hard to understand. Kurtz’s horror is daily being visited upon Iraqis.

More than a million Iraqis have died because of our 2003 invasion, a country, need it be

said, that had nothing to do with 9/11, and at latest count, close to 4,000 American

service personnel have been killed. As the National Intelligence Council – the CIA

director's think tank - concluded in its January 12, 2005 report, our ongoing occupations

in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists6 the way

dropping bloody fish heads into the ocean produces sharks roiling the waters. Scheuer,

among others, further notes the disjuncture between Bush’s talk of liberty and democracy

and the U.S. government’s unwavering support for brutal, parasitic regimes in Middle

Eastern countries (e.g., Saudi Arabia) and elsewhere (e.g., Pakistan) that fuels anger in

these countries and provides an ongoing, open offense and rallying cry against the U.S.

What would the average American think if Germany invaded us, using cluster

bombs on dense urban areas, treating any American as an enemy and our cities as free

fire zones, picked Americans up at random in the streets and tortured them, killed an

equivalent number of Americans as we have in Iraq (i.e., taking out the entire population

of New York City), set up permanent bases, built the largest embassy in the world on our

soil, and declared that it intended to stay indefinitely? How many Americans would be

waging a determined, militant resistance against our invaders and occupiers? (When H.G.

Wells wrote The War of the Worlds it was prompted by his desire to convey to the people

of imperialist countries how it must feel to be a Third World country invaded by a foreign

6
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/011505Z.shtml

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power. Some of the people still deluded into thinking that it’s alright to invade innocent

countries and okay to torture people would do well to re-read H.G. Wells’ classic.)

What is Terror Anyway?

Since 9/11 Bush and Cheney have been waging a “global war on terror,” but

what, really, is terror? The term has been used so indiscriminately in public discourse that

it needs to be given a shower, a haircut and a fresh set of clothes so that it can appear in

decent company and be of some use again. The stakes involved and the need for

intellectual and emotional clarity could hardly be greater.

Let’s first consider how our government defines terrorism. Inherent in these

definitions are clues to part of the problem we face as a people with this “war on terror.”

The FBI defines terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence against

persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any

segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”

The key word in the FBI definition is “unlawful,” not “coerce” or “intimidate”

since governments, as well as terrorists, use force. It isn’t violence, intimidation, or

coercion per se that makes something terroristic. It is whether or not that force can be

rationalized as lawful or legitimate. If it’s seen as legitimate, then violence is not

terroristic, no matter how unjust, excessive or random. The question here then is: what

makes something “unlawful?” The rules of engagement for soldiers in war and the

procedures promulgated by law enforcement (police, FBI, ATF and so on) are essential to

legitimizing state use of force – otherwise, the public could see the actions of soldiers and

law enforcement as arbitrary and capricious. The intentional irony here is that in the fog

of chaos the very existence of these rules legitimates their violation in the breach.

4
 Police use of force can be rationalized as being in the public interest since it’s

carried out under the color of law. Likewise, when military forces bomb and kill civilians

in times of war we are told that war is a messy business and “mistakes” are inevitable. In

the huge gray areas of real conflicts, the existence of tidy procedures provides a

convenient fiction that justifies varying degrees of random savagery. Legitimacy or

illegitimacy is not an inherent property of the act or acts; legitimacy or illegitimacy are

subject to interpretation.

The U.S. State Department defines terrorism as “premeditated, politically

motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or

clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience" (Title 22 of the United

States Code, Section 2656f(d)).

The State Department’s definition is better than the FBI’s, but it implicitly

excludes state-sponsored terror since the agents of such terror are state actors.

Britannica Dictionary defines terrorism this way:

“Terrorism, n. the systematic use of violence to create a general climate of

fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political
objective. Terrorism has been practiced by political organizations with
both rightist and leftist objectives, by nationalistic and religious groups, by
revolutionaries, and even by state institutions such as armies,
intelligence…”

This is better still, but neither it nor the State Department’s definition specifies that a key

characteristic of terrorism is its indifference to the injury or death of innocent victims or

even terrorism’s deliberate targeting of innocents.

Finally, here is the USA PATRIOT Act’s definition for a new crime dubbed

“domestic terrorism:” “acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal

5
laws … [if such acts] … appear to be intended …to influence the policy of a government

by intimidation or coercion.”

Obviously, by this definition, any act of civil disobedience and any political

protest could be readily categorized as “domestic terrorism” since they are all designed to

influence the government’s policy. Someone, after all, can always trip and get hurt.

Lobbyists, obviously, intend to influence government policy. The PATRIOT Act’s

definition for “domestic terrorism” is so broad that it robs the term terrorism of all real

meaning and makes it instead a catch-all label that can be used against almost any

dissenters or advocates of policy that those in power do not appreciate. Environmental or

animal rights activists, for example, do not target people. What they engage in might

more properly be described as sabotage. Yet because a spray can might blow up while a

saboteur is using it to deface a Humvee, for example, they could be (and have been)

classified as “ecoterrorists” or “domestic terrorists.” If truckers, to use a different

example, were to engage in a strike action or demonstration in which they used their

trucks to block traffic in D.C. for an hour or more, this could arguably be seen as

dangerous to human life and be treated as terrorism. Indeed, a group of demonstrators in

Salt Lake City a few years ago were prosecuted as “domestic terrorists” for interfering

with commercial businesses retail sales on the street where they were demonstrating.

Simply put, the PATRIOT Act’s definition of terrorism renders the term meaningless

except as an amorphous bogeyman.

Terrorism properly defined is

The systematic use of force against persons or property with the intent to
induce a general climate of fear in a population in order to produce a
particular political objective. Such actions are carried out with either

6
 deliberate indifference to the fates of, or involve the conscious targeting
of, noncombatant individuals.

I include the explicit mention of innocent civilians in my definition because terrorism

differs from political violence in that it is designed to induce fear by the injury or death

of innocents.

This definition has the virtue of bypassing the question of legitimacy since, as

everyone knows, “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.” By bypassing

the question of legitimacy, it allows us to more impartially define whether something is

terrorist or not. Of course, it isn’t really possible to offer a definition that everyone will

accept. Some people will never accept a definition that includes the actions of their own

government.

War and State/Anti-State Terror

Wars are commonly depicted in bravado terms that overlook or drastically

minimize any casualties, especially among civilians. Witness, for example, then Fox

News’ Tony Snow’s cheerleading the initial quick toppling of Saddham Hussein on April

13, 2003:

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom
that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless
victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics'
complaints."

The toppling of Hussein and the invasion were not relatively bloodless.

If innocents are hurt or killed or their property damaged and states are called to

account for it happening, their explanations are likely to be that these acts were the

product of rogue individuals, “collateral damage,” or the innocents hurt or killed were

being used as “human shields” by the individual(s) the state was really targeting. States

7
invariably respond that they had no intent to hurt, kill or damage innocents. It was

accidental or unavoidable through no fault of theirs.

Of course in the course of war, even states that are being as careful as they can be

and are not trying to deceive will sometimes inadvertently hurt innocents. The issue here

is not individual acts then, it is one of state policy. Is the policy one that intends to do

harm, or reflects utter indifference and criminal recklessness with respect, to civilians? If

so, then it’s terrorism.

Anti-state terrorism and state terrorism share, at a minimum, an indifference to

civilians’ fates and in most instances they both deliberately target civilians. The object in

both cases is to strike fear in the population in order to provoke a particular political

response. Anti-state terrorists intend for the fear and disruption they cause within the

population to provoke the state into granting certain political concessions. In most

instances, anti-state terrorists want to cause a state to be toppled. States that use terrorism

intend for it to cause their opponents and their supporters to give up their fight. State use

of terror is deliberately indiscriminate: you are supposed to be terrified that you or your

love ones could be the next target, merely for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

Both anti-state terrorism and state terrorism share therefore a fundamentally

identical attitude towards the people – people are political objects to be acted upon, rather

than subjects to whom we can appeal. They are best moved through the generous

application of fear. Anti-state and state terrorism both evidence contempt and cynicism

towards people. In that sense anti-state and state terrorism are both profoundly, deeply,

anti-democratic and anti-humane.

8
 Bush and Cheney’s war on terror is the obverse side of the coin from Bin Laden’s

jihad. Osama Bin Laden has on a number of occasions subtly signaled his pleasure with

Bush and Cheney’s policies. Recruiting soldiers to his jihad is far easier with Bush and

Cheney in charge. Both sides of this global war on terror – Bush/Cheney and al-Qaeda –

present a unity of opposites: each needs the other and profits from the existence of the

other. The CIA, in fact, concluded that Bin Laden’s October 2004 videotaped message

just prior to the November 2004 presidential elections was actually intended to help

Bush.7 "Atiyah," a top Osama Bin Laden lieutenant, states in an intercepted Dec. 11,

2005 letter that "prolonging the war is in our interest."8 And in May 2007 Ayman al-

Zawahiri, an al-Qaeda leader, released a message stating that they hoped that American

troops would remain in Iraq longer so that they can kill enough Americans to make our

invasion produce changes to our policies.9

Bush and Cheney’s approach has been to use the fear of attacks to consolidate

their power and control – witness the PATRIOT Act and illegal spying - rather than to

take obvious steps that would truly help make America safer, such as safeguarding port

cargo security. Their priorities in response to 9/11 make it clear they are not even

7
Robert Parry, “Al-Qaeda’s Fragile Foothold,” October 4, 2006,
http://consortiumnews.com/2006/071406.html
8
Ibid.
9
“Zawahiri expressed some mock anguish over what he sees as a too-early US
withdrawal from Iraq.

“Such an action, he said, ‘Will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American
forces which we have caught in a historic trap. We ask Allah that they only get out of it
after losing two or three hundred thousand killed.’" Michael Scheuer, “Al-Qaeda message
aimed at US living rooms,” Asia Times, May 10, 2007,
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE10Ak08.html.

9
particularly interested in preventing another attack. Indeed, in recent weeks, several

people who support or represent the White House have made it astonishingly clear that

another 9/11 would be good and necessary because it would justify the White House’s

policies:

Dennis Milligan, new Arkansas GOP Chairman: “[A]ll we need is some attacks

on American soil like we had on [9/11], and the naysayers will come around very quickly

to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been

made by men and women to protect this country.” (June 3, 2007).

Rick Santorum, ex-Senator from Pennsylvania: "Between now and November, a

lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American

public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of

some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the

American public’s going to have a very different view." (July 7, 2007, speaking on the

Hugh Hewitt Show).

Lt.-Col. Doug Delaney, War Studies Program Chair, Royal Military College in

Kingston, Ontario: "The key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like

9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago.” (Delaney paraphrased by Toronto

Star reporter, Andrew Chung.) "If nothing happens, it will be harder still to say this is

necessary," adds Delaney. (July 8, 2007). (Boldfacing added)

A Sacramento Democratic strategist, paraphrased by one of the pro-impeachment

Democrats at a recent Democratic gathering, offering the following as one of the reasons

why he thinks impeachment is foolhardy for the Democratic Party: “there will be another

terrorist attack between now and next November…the public will run into the arms of the

10
Republicans as a cause of that, and … Democrats are essentially helpless to do anything

about that.” (July 17, 2007).

Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004, in

his book The Terror Presidency quotes David Addington, Cheney’s current Chief of

Staff, as saying in a February 2004 meeting: "We're one bomb away from getting rid of

that obnoxious [FISA] court."10

Or, as Nazi Leader Hermann Goring put it in 1946:

“The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders . . . tell them they

are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the

country to danger.”11

The corollary to the Bush administration’s rights violations and illegal

surveillance at home are violations of the rules of war that amount to state terror. The

U.S. military in Abu Ghraib and at GITMO and in their assault on Fallujah and Hilla,

where they specifically suspended international rules of war by aiming phosphorous

missiles at people and shooting at anyone who moved, rule through terror. In the case of

Hilla, where they used cluster bombs on civilian areas, the object was to quickly crush

any resistance to their drive to Baghdad because they did not think that American public

opinion would tolerate a protracted war campaign. In the case of the siege of Fallujah, the

point was to punish the people of Fallujah for their support of the insurgents.

10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/09/04/AR2007090402292_pf.html

11
A conversation Gustave Gilbert held with Goering in his cell on the evening of April 18, 1946, recorded
in Gilbert’s book, Nuremberg Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1947), pp. 255–256.

11
 A state that uses terror reveals itself to be in a particularly precarious state. It’s

precarious because it must resort to means exceeding those that states normally employ in

order to carry out their policies and/or in order to retain their power. This so-called war

on terror cannot be won the way it is being waged. Indeed, it only guarantees the spread

of anti-state terror and its growing virulence indefinitely. It’s like fighting a fire by

thinking that you can drown the fire with barrels and barrels of gasoline. As the

conflagration grows ever higher, Bush and Cheney call out: “We need more gasoline

here!”

The Bigger the Failure, the Greater Their Success

A vicious paradox characterizes this White House: the more they fail, the more

they succeed in getting what they wanted all along and the more grounds they marshal

and spin to justify their continued leadership. After Katrina ravaged an unprotected New

Orleans, Bush stated that he wanted to see the Posse Comitatus Act overturned – the Civil

War law that prohibits the use of military forces in domestic affairs. Soldiers are ill-suited

by training and mission to handle domestic matters. The “grave and deteriorating”

situation in Iraq where American and other forces are charged with handling domestic

affairs to a large extent are further living evidence of this.

Bush got his wish in the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 that he

signed into law in a private ceremony the same day he signed the Military Commissions

Act of 2006 in October 2006.12 The Warner Act, unbeknownst to nearly the entire U.S.

population, gives the president the power to declare a “public emergency” and take

control of National Guard Units - the National Guard is ordinarily under the control of

12
http://www.bordc.org/threats/hr5122.php

12
state governors - to conduct mass roundups, arrests and detentions. The Warner Act, in

other words, is a martial law enabling act.13 The Act calls for the president to inform a

handful of members of Congress if he does declare a “public emergency” to reveal what

he’s doing and why he’s doing it. In his signing statement, 14 however, Bush declared that

he reserves the right not to tell anyone in Congress why he’s declared martial law and

what he’s doing.

A tragically all too plausible and all too possible scenario whereby the president

invokes the Warner Act would be a nuclear device being set off in a U.S. city, killing tens

or hundreds of thousands immediately and endangering millions more. Bin Laden, as

Scheuer has pointed out, has already received permission to use nukes.

"You've written no one should be surprised when Osama bin Laden and al
Qaeda detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States," says
Kroft. "You believe that's going to happen?"
…

“I think it's pretty close to being inevitable," says Scheuer.

...

"[Bin Laden] secured from a Saudi sheik named Hamid bin Fahd a rather
long treatise [a fatwa issued in May 2003]… that [bin Laden] was
perfectly within his rights to use [nukes]. Muslims argue that the United
States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so
reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans."15

What would Bush do in case of another 9/11? Imagine the chaos that would ensue

after a nuclear (or chemical or biological) attack. Bush would most likely declare martial

law, suspend civil rights, civil liberties, muzzle the press and, if it occurs close enough to

13
http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911/

14
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/10/20061017-9.html

15
60 Minutes interview November 14, 2004, available at
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/12/60minutes/printable655407.shtml.

13
November 2008, quite possibly also suspend elections. The Democratic Party would

undoubtedly join the chorus demanding the most draconian anti-terrorism measures

possible in order to “prove” their patriotism. The country would stand “united in outrage”

and at one with the martial law president who promises us, against the (video) backdrop

of a major American city in ruins, to find and punish the perpetrators of this terrible act

and to wage an unremitting, indefinite war against terror. All bets would be off and all

prior “normality,” all pretences of “checks and balances” and due process would be a

quaint and increasingly distant memory.

If Bush and Cheney, in other words, fail once again to prevent a terrorist attack on

the U.S., they would be rewarded with their fondest wish: unbridled dictatorial powers.

The fact that their approval ratings are today at historic lows would be wiped away in one

day. In George Orwell’s classic, 1984, Big Brother declares, “War is peace.” In Bush’s

America, “failure is success.”

Should this scenario come to pass, no one can say that we weren’t warned.

Warnings of the 9/11 attacks were numerous, dire and ignored. The most blatant of these

was the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Bulletin that warned Bush that Bin Laden

might be planning to hijack commercial airliners. The PDB was entitled “Bin Laden

Determined to Strike in the United States.”16 It specifically mentioned the World Trade

Center.

Despite what they knew before 9/11, the Bush White House did nothing to alert

NORAD of potential hijacking, nor did they step up security at the airports. Suspects

were not followed up with, despite repeated and urgent requests to do so from FBI field-

16
http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/terrorism/80601pdb.html

14
agents who were shocked to find Arabs taking flight lessons with no interest in learning

how to land.

Condi Rice, in spite of the foregoing, declared on May 16, 2002 to the 9/11

Commission: "I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an

airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." Rice insisted that nobody knew

who, when and where and therefore their inaction was appropriate - they didn’t have

Mohammed Atta’s exact itinerary after all.

As Thomas Kean, former Republican Governor of New Jersey and 9/11

Commission Chairman, concluded, 9/11 “was not something that had to happen…. There

are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in

at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

The Losing War on Terror: Is It Cultural Myopia?

Scheuer attributes the counter-productiveness of Bush and Cheney’s war on terror

to cultural myopia. Cultural myopia certainly helps to explain the disastrous wars on

Afghanistan and Iraq: an arrogance and laziness of mind that treats everything and

everyone in the world through the lens of American values, practices and behaviors.

“With regret,” the Russian official said, “I have to say that you are going to get the hell

kicked out of you [in Afghanistan].” One of the Americans responded… “We’re going to

kill them,” the U.S. official asserted. “We’re going to put their heads on sticks. We’re

going to rock their world.”17 This kind of grotesque arrogance can explain much about

why we’re losing these wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it does not explain why the neo-

cons wanted to invade Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place prior to 9/11. It does not

17
Scheuer, op cit, p. 29, quoting from Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, p. 103.

15
explain their outsourcing their pursuit of Bin Laden and their willful substitution of Bin

Laden as Public Enemy No. 1 with Saddham Hussein. Cultural myopia and arrogance can

account for tactical blunders but they do not explain the overall strategy.

Bush and Cheney knew when they launched their campaign to parlay the anger

and fear of Americans as a result of 9/11 into an invasion of Iraq that Saddham Hussein

and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. They elected to go after Iraq under the signboard of

the “war on terror” knowing that al-Qaeda was elsewhere. Bush and Cheney’s so-called

preventive war doctrine that rationalizes their unprovoked aggression on countries that

pose no threat to the U.S. therefore bears no relationship in actual fact to the dangers

posed by al-Qaeda and by anti-state terrorism in general. Incompetence and cultural

arrogance do not comprise the central reason for their bungling this “war on terror.” As

Scheuer points out, Bush and Cheney need their putative enemy Osama Bin Laden just as

much as Bin Laden needs his foil in Bush and Cheney.

The anti-terrorism measures employed by the White House are not just

dramatically counter-productive; their anti-terror measures appear to be designed

primarily to repress and control the U.S. population and other countries. The White

House ordered the NSA to carry out massive warrantless surveillance of Americans’

phone calls before 9/11. 18 Bush has openly mused that a dictatorship would be fine, as

18
USA Today first reported on this on May 11, 2006, “NSA has Massive Database of
Americans’ Phone Calls,” http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-
nsa_x.htm. Subsequently, it came to light in lawsuits and briefs that the NSA sought to
initiate this illegal spying seven months before 9/11. Qwest Communications’ CEO
Joseph Nacchio states that he met with the NSA on February 27, 2001 and was asked to
participate in this. He refused. AT&T and Verizon, however, complied. See “Documents:
Qwest was Targeted,” by Sarah Burnett and Jeff Smith, Rocky Mountain News, October
11, 2007:
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_5719566,

16
long as he was the dictator.19 Moreover, since taking office he and Cheney have

aggressively and consistently asserted unrestricted executive powers, claiming under the

Federalist Society’s doctrine of the “unitary executive” that Bush’s role as commander

and chief grants him the right to make law and override the law at his sole discretion. On

May 9, 2007, with little fanfare, and no protests from the Democratic Party, Bush issued

two new presidential directives, the National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 5120

and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD–20. These allow Bush to decide on

his own say so when and if a national emergency has occurred and give him the power to

carry on governance without any role for Congress or any other branch of the government

whatsoever. Dictatorship is the term most apropos here. The Bush administration’s

shocking actions and policies are not, however, an aberration. They are actually a

continuation and acceleration at a higher level of policies begun in earnest under Reagan

and carried forward with somewhat different attributes by Clinton.

Whether Bush and Cheney are failing to prevent disasters out of sheer

incompetence, reckless arrogance, or because they know that their war on terror is a fraud

and they wage it merely as a cover for their real objectives does not, in one sense, matter.

Did they fail to prevent 9/11 because they could not connect the dots that would have

00.html, “Did the NSA Retaliate Against Qwest?” by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger
Report, October 11, 2007: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13201.html
and “Former Phone Chief Says Spy Agency Sought Surveillance Help Before 9/11,” by
Scott Shane, New York Times, October 14, 2007:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/business/14qwest.html.
19
Bush has said this out loud at least three times. See
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/2002/10/29_Dictator.html.

20
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html.
http://www.ww4report.com/node/3940

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been glaringly obvious to even a high school student of ordinary intelligence? Were they

too distracted by their other plans? In any case, the net result for the rest of us is the

same: a dangerous and unprecedented policy of repression and coercion, with no end in

sight.

Consider the following highly abbreviated list: the legalization and ongoing

practice of torture, the doctrine and practice of pre-emptive attacks, targeting of civilians

during war, the open and ongoing violation of the 1978 FISA law through the warrantless

surveillance of hundreds of millions of Americans, the stripping of habeas corpus rights

and the consequent indefinite detentions, the Warner Act, NSPD-51, the USA PATRIOT

Act, the Protect America Act of 2007, and hundreds of signing statements that override

the laws passed by Congress. Breaching long-standing civil liberties and fundamental

beliefs in American governance risks generating severe fissures in the social compact.

Clearly, we face an extraordinary situation, one unlike any this country has ever

seen. Civil liberties and rights that were won through the American Revolution and were

secured through the battle for the Bill of Rights are now gone. But what exactly is this

extraordinary situation? Is it the presence and actions of anti-state terrorists such as al-

Qaeda? Or is it the actions undertaken by our government in alleged response to anti-state

terrorists?

Can we afford to wait out Bush and Cheney’s term in the White House? Every

single day that they remain in office is another day that innocent people are being

tortured, global warming goes unheeded, and the problems they are exacerbating

intensely fester and threaten to explode into a disaster that will make Katrina and 9/11,

horrific as they were, appear surprisingly small by comparison.

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