William Rivers Pitt | The Enemy

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Fri, 17 Feb 2006 14:10:30 -0800

[Zepps_News] William Rivers Pitt | The Enemy

 

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021706A.shtml

 

The Enemy

By William Rivers Pitt

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

 

Friday 17 February 2006

 

They called it " Cyber Storm, " and it was a war-game exercise run

last week by the Department of Homeland Security. The war game had

nothing to do with testing the security of our shipping ports,

borders, infrastructure or airports. " Cyber Storm " was testing the

government's ability to withstand an onslaught of information and

protest from bloggers and online activists.

 

" Participants confirmed, " wrote the Associated Press, that " parts

of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and

industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns

and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose " Web

logs " include political rantings and musings about current events. "

 

Say what? Online expressions of political opinion are so dangerous

that the Department of Homeland Security must war-game scenarios to

deal with them? Bloggers are potential terrorists now? Bloggers are

the enemy? Last week, as far as DHS was concerned, they were.

 

We hear a great deal about enemies these days. Don't criticize the

war, or you'll embolden the enemy. The enemy is clever and cruel.

Stick with the White House and we'll defeat the enemy. Since the Bush

administration no longer likes to mention the name Osama bin " Stayin'

Alive " Laden in public, lest everyone remember a dramatic promise long

broken, any specific definition of an enemy changes with the moment.

 

Sometimes, the enemy is in Iraq, and we fight them over there so

we don't have to fight them over here. Sometimes, the enemy is in

Iran, allegedly toiling with all its collective might to manufacture

nuclear weapons. Sometimes, the enemy is in Palestine, where Hamas

used George W. Bush's exported democracy to take over the government.

Sometimes, the enemy is an American face on a television offering

criticism of the White House. Last week, the enemy was a blogger

making a political _expression.

 

The enemy is never in Saudi Arabia, though that nation is the very

birthing bed of international terrorism. The enemy is never in Israel,

though that nation's far-right leadership has been a good deal of the

impetus behind the Bush administration's calamitous push into Iraq.

The enemy is never in China, even when they smack our planes out of

the sky, because they own a substantial portion of our debt. The enemy

is never in Pakistan, though that nation's fundamentalist wing allies

itself with the Taliban, and though they actually do possess nuclear

weapons. The enemy is occasionally mentioned as being in North Korea,

but not often, because we want no part of that fight.

 

For a time, the enemy was in the United Arab Emirates. Two of the

hijackers of the September 11 aircraft were citizens of the United

Arab Emirates, and the funding behind those attacks was wired through

the UAE's banking system. Republican and Democratic Senators believe

the UAE has been used as a conduit for the proliferation of nuclear

technology.

 

That was then, however. A company named Dubai Ports World intends

to spend $6.8 billion to gain control of the management of shipping

ports in New York and New Jersey, as well as in Baltimore,

Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami. Dubai Ports World is

foreign-owned, but is backed financially by the government of the

United Arab Emirates. In other words, a nation suspected of being a

significant player in the September 11 attacks is being allowed to

take control of our borders. For the record, US ports handle an

estimated two billion tons of cargo annually,

with only 5% of that cargo undergoing inspection. The deal has already

been granted regulatory clearance by the White House.

 

We hear a great deal about enemies, both real and contrived. Let

us ponder, for a moment, the existence of another enemy so insidious

that it operates fully in daylight but beyond control. This enemy

seeks to destroy the rule of constitutional law in the United States.

This enemy seeks to destroy the seed-corn defense against tyranny in

this nation, the separation of powers. This enemy gathers more and

more power to itself to achieve these goals, and uses fear and

division to do so. This enemy will lie with impunity, stonewall

endlessly and ruin anyone who might disrupt its plans.

 

This enemy stood by and did nothing while a major American city

was devoured by the ocean. When New Orleans was drowned, many voices

were raised in panicked unison that the White House must do something,

and do something now. A conference call was held between key members

of the Department of Homeland Security and other administration

officials on August 29th, the day the catastrophe began for real.

Investigators are seeking the transcript of this call, but

administration officials claim the transcript has somehow disappeared.

There are many transcripts of calls before and after this one, but the

five-hour call on August 29th, the specific call investigators want to

see, simply cannot be found.

 

This enemy deliberately reached out and destroyed the career of a

deep-cover CIA agent named Valerie Plame, because her husband dared to

criticize the White House about its " uranium from Niger " lie regarding

Iraq. Plame, among other things, worked clandestinely to track any

person, group or nation that would give weapons of mass destruction to

terrorists; in other words, Plame worked to track the individuals this

White House never fails to label as the enemy. Her work was derailed

and her network destroyed because this White House did not want any

discussion of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found

in Iraq, despite miles of claims that the stuff was there.

 

TruthOut correspondent Jason Leopold reported this week that

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is refusing to turn over incriminating

emails to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, emails that allegedly

indicate the involvement of Vice President Dick Cheney and other

high-ranking administration officials in the unmasking of Agent Plame.

" The emails Gonzales is said to be withholding contained references to

Valerie Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status and developments related

to the inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, "

reported Leopold. " Moreover, according to sources, the emails

contained suggestions by the officials on how the White House should

respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments

[Plame's usband] Joseph Wilson had been making about the

administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. "

 

I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was

recently indicted by Fitzgerald for lying under oath during the

investigation into this matter. Recently, Libby stated that he was

authorized by his superiors to expose the classified name of Valerie

Plame. Given his position, Libby's main superior is none other than

Cheney himself. Cheney recently claimed that he is authorized by an

Executive Order to declassify any information he pleases. " I have

certainly advocated declassification. I have participated in

declassification decisions, " said Cheney this week. " There's an

executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and

obviously it focuses first and foremost on the president, but also

includes the vice president. "

 

This is a new trend for the White House: rendering an illegal act

legal retroactively by fiat. The trend manifested itself in another

area of illegal activity by the White House, the warrantless

wiretapping of thousands of American citizens by the National Security

Agency, in defiance of the black-letter law contained within the Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. For several weeks now, Congress

has been threatening to hold hearings on the matter. Bush advisor Karl

Rove worked feverishly behind the scenes to keep such hearings from

taking place, and has succeeded. Rather than investigate the matter,

Congress will instead rewrite the FISA law, thus rendering

retroactively legal White House activities that blatantly broke the law.

 

We hear a great deal about enemies these days, and many of them

are quite real and quite perilous. It is difficult to imagine a more

perilous enemy, however, than the one operating out of Washington today.

This enemy would set itself on high, beyond control or censure, and

create of itself that permanent faction James Madison so earnestly

warned us of. This enemy deletes or hides evidence of its calumny, or

simply alters existing laws that would otherwise derail its plans.

This enemy destroys lives out of hand, lives by the tens of thousands,

and reaps a pretty profit in the process.

 

The difference between the enemies we hear about and the one in

Washington is simple and deadly: only the enemy in Washington can

annihilate the constitutional government we have enjoyed for more than

two centuries. The idea that is America cannot be terminated by

terrorists or rogue states. Were the nation entire to be somehow

obliterated, the idea that is America would endure. Only its keepers

can kill it completely. They are well on their way.

 

" As nightfall does not come at once, " wrote Justice William O.

Douglas, " neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a

twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in

such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however

slight, lest we become victims of the darkness. "

 

We must deal with the enemy within the halls of our government,

the enemy whose power to destroy far outstrips any enemy beyond our

borders.

In doing so, we save that which is unique in the world. In doing so,

we deal a death blow to all other enemies. In doing so, we save

ourselves from that darkness.

 

 

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