- "You can discover what your enemy fears most by
observing the means he uses to frighten you." -Eric Hoffer
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- When I went to New York City this past summer to cover
the GOP convention, I remember being awed by the degree of security surrounding
Madison Square Garden. There were fences to control the fences, fifty cops
on every corner, none of whom knew what the others were telling people
to do, a half-dozen passes of needed to get twenty feet in any direction,
and that was before you even got inside the door.
-
- I saw the same thing when I went to DC to cover the Inauguration.
The capitol was an armed camp, a sea of Bush supporters surrounded by tens
of thousands of protesters. At one point, I stopped for 30 seconds next
to a squad car to check my cell phone, and was immediately confronted by
three cops asking me what I was doing. Amusingly, the security fences and
cops decided not to give those protesters One Big Spot to congregate, and
instead spread them out like butter across the entire route. The effect
was to make the protests seem much larger than they were - and they were
big - while forcing the Bush folk to elbow past them every six feet for
the entire length of Pennsylvania Avenue.
-
- All those fences. All those guns. All those cops. At
first, it seemed like an arguably necessary precaution; these were, after
all, the two cities to take the hit on 9/11. But the longer I stayed, the
longer I looked around, and the closer I observed the behavior of Bush
and his people, I came to a sad conclusion: This security was not about
keeping us all safe from terrorists, but was about keeping Bush safe from
his own people. The President of the United States is flatly terrified
of the citizens he would supposedly lead to some supply-side promised land.
He is scared to death of us.
-
- Some positive proof of this came down the wires on Tuesday,
when areport surfaced about three people who were removed from a supposedly
'public' town hall meeting with Bush. According to the report, the Secret
Service hustled them out because their car had a "No Blood for Oil"
bumper sticker on it. The three said they had obtained tickets to the event
through the office of Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-CO), had passed through security
and were preparing to take their seats when they were approached by a Secret
Service agent who asked them to leave.
-
- Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for Americans United, described
the incident accurately: "They're screening the people who are allowed
to come and then they're profiling them in the parking lot," he said.
"It's quite extraordinary, and disappointing."
-
- 'Disappointing' is a mild word. 'Disgusting' would be
a better one. George W. Bush is petrified of his own people, and his security
goes to extraordinary and wildly expensive pains to make sure that only
a hand-picked few, the elect, can get near him to shower him with love
and affection.
-
- Where is all this heading? This isolation of the President
from the world, from his own people, from any information that does not
jibe with his pre-formed opinions? Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower from
the Nixon scandals, has some thoughts on the matter he shared in an interview
with CommonDreams.org:
-
- I think our democracy is going to be tested to the breaking
point by some very dark days ahead and before long. I do expect there to
be another major terrorist event. Ports, the nuclear power plants and the
chemical factories are extremely vulnerable to an attack. To a considerable
event, the war against terrorism has been a hoax because the president
has not only spent so much money on the war in Iraq, but because the war
in Iraq virtually subverts the war on terror. You cannot reduce the appeal
and the strength of Al Qaeda while we occupy Iraq. You can only strengthen
it, and strengthening it is what we've been doing steadily for the last
couple of years. This is the worst public policy decision making, most
antidemocratic and most inclined to be authoritarian, I would say, since
the Nixon administration, but Nixon was confronting a Democratic House
and Senate and a relatively liberal population in media 40 years ago. John
Mitchell and John Connolly and Nixon himself had quite authoritarian instincts,
but they weren't allowed to act on them, and to the extent that they did
act on them -- it brought them down.
-
- Virtually all the things Nixon did against me that were
illegal to keep me from exposing his secret policy are now legal under
the Patriot Act. Going into my doctor's office to get information to blackmail
me with, wiretaps without warrants, overhearing me--all legal now. The
CIA supplied the burglars in my doctor's office with disguises and with
cameras and they did a psychological profile on me. That was illegal then,
legal now.
-
- I would have said that one thing that Nixon did against
me was not yet legal and that was to bring a squad of a dozen Cuban-American
assets of the CIA up from Miami to beat me up or kill me on May 3rd, 1973
on the steps of the Capitol. Right now there's at least one Special Forces
team under control of the White House operating in this country to take
'extra legal actions'. Now, that sounds to me like a White House-controlled
death squad. And that is what the White House sent against me. It's not
clear whether the intention was to kill me then, the words were to 'incapacitate
Daniel Ellsberg totally'. When I asked their prosecutor, 'does that mean
to kill me?'. He said, 'The words were 'to incapacitate you totally.' But
he said, 'You have to understand these guys that were CIA assets never
use the words 'kill'.'
-
- I think that's the kind of thing we do have in our future,
especially when there's another terrorist attack. In that case, I think
we'll see enacted very quickly a new Patriot Act, which I'm sure has already
been drafted which will make the first Patriot Act look like the Bill of
Rights, and the Bill of Rights will be a historical memory.
-
- It is not terrorism that motivates George, or patriotism,
or even profiteering. It is fear, pure and simple: Fear of the truth, fear
of the world, fear of any data that collides with his faith-based bubble-encapsuled
worldview, and fear most of all of the people he would represent.
-
- You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing
the means he uses to frighten you. Now we know, and the knowledge is deeply
and profoundly disturbing.
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- http://forum.truthout.org/blog/user/WilliamPitt
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