Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the
US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.
Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form
of “executive orders” that are triggered whenever Bush declares a
national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff,
former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might
expect a series of staged, or false flag, “terrorist” events in the
near future.
Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will
not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops
from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position
with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.
Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle
East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern
Iraq’s border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans
favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush’s impeachment.
The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American
people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush
and Cheney have fostered.
William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is “praying for a terrorist
strike” to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008.
Chertoff, Cheney, the neocon nazis, and Mossad would have no qualms about saving
the bacon for the Republicans, who have enabled Bush to start two unjustified
wars, with Iran waiting in the wings to be attacked in a third war.
The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the terrorist
fear factor by infiltrating some blowhard groups and encouraging them to talk
about staging “terrorist” events. The talk, encouraged by federal
agents, resulted in “terrorist” arrests hyped by the media, but even
the captive media was unable to scare people with such transparent sting operations.
If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and
to entrench the “unitary executive” at home, it will have to conduct
some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people
and make them accept Bush’s declaration of “national emergency” and
the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow
any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.
A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media
as a vindication of the neoconsevatives’ Islamophobic policy, the intention
of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American
puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose
is to eliminate any resistance to Israel’s complete absorption of Palestine
into Greater Israel.
Think about it. If another 9/11-type “security failure” were not
in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of
convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist
threats and that he has “a gut feeling” that America will soon be
hit hard?
Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show
that “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 (sic) going to
have a very different view of this war.”
Throughout its existence the US government has staged incidents that the government
then used in behalf of purposes that it could not otherwise have pursued. According
to a number of writers, false flag operations have been routinely used by the
Israeli state. During the Czarist era in Russia, the secret police would set
off bombs in order to arrest those the secret police regarded as troublesome.
Hitler was a dramatic orchestrator of false flag operations. False flag operations
are a commonplace tool of governments.
Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working
to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging “terrorist” attacks
in order to remove opposition to its agenda?
Only a diehard minority believes in the honesty and integrity of the Bush-Cheney
administration and in the truthfulness of the corporate media.
Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German election, used the
Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and push through the Enabling Act, which made
him dictator. Determined tyrants never require majority support in order to
overthrow constitutional orders.
The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown. Are coming
“terrorist” events of which Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the
means for overthrowing our constitutional democracy?
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal
editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor
of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Source URL: http://counterpunch.org/roberts07162007.html