Marching Off Into Tyranny

By Paul Craig Roberts
August 5, 2008

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.

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.”

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 Bergen 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.” He is also coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.