The Bush administration has even
conducted Stalinist show trials against innocent Muslim
charities as part of its propaganda to make the American
people fearful that they are surrounded by hostile
terrorists. In December 2001 President Bush declared
the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development to
be a "terrorist organization" and seized the
charity’s assets. Bush put the charities’ officials on
trial as terrorists. Six years later on October 22,
2007, after years of investigations and two months of
testimony by who but "Israeli intelligence agents"
(according to the New York Times), the US
government’s case fell apart in the courtroom. [No
Convictions in Trial Against Muslim Charity, By
LESLIE EATON, October 22, 2007]
One of the jurors said that the
case “was strung together with macaroni noodles.
There was so little evidence."
Georgetown University professor of
constitutional law
David D. Cole said the case "suggests the
government is really pushing beyond where the law
justifies them going."
While committing these
unprecedented crimes, President Bush has claimed the
moral high ground despite having lied to the American
people and despite devastating two countries in the name
of "making the world safe from terrorists."
When people in Iraq and Afghanistan
are asked who are the terrorists, they answer that it is
the Americans.
The Bush administration has not
been held accountable for any of its crimes. By failing
to hold government accountable to law, the Constitution,
and the American people, the opposition party and the
corporate media have abandoned their responsibility to
protect freedom and democracy in the United States.
There can be no democracy where
there is no government accountability, and there is no
government accountability in the United States--except,
of course, to the Israel Lobby.
Now the Bush administration wants
to take away the American people’s freedom to travel
within their own country by airplane. Not content with
an 80,000 "no fly" list, a subset of a
500,000-750,000 "watch list," the Bush
administration’s Transport Security Administration has
proposed new rules [PDF]
that will require Americans to
get government permission 72 hours in advance prior
to being allowed to board a domestic flight.
The TSA justifies this
extraordinary violation of our constitutional rights on
the grounds that 90 to 93 percent of all travel
reservations are final by then.
So what?!
And what of the 7 to 10 percent of
flights that the TSA estimates are not on the books 72
hours in advance? These are family emergencies and
critical business deals. What does the TSA care if a
member of your family dies while you await the
government’s permission to fly?
Any agency of the government that
can propose such a tyrannical regulation should be
abolished. The TSA’s mentality shows it to be a far
greater threat to Americans than are terrorists.
Even without the "permission to
fly" rule, the TSA’s practices are ridiculous and
unjustified. The confiscation of tooth paste and
unopened bottles of perfume, the harassment of US
military officers in uniform, the harassment of old
people struggling with their walkers, of mothers
struggling with small children--none of this makes any
sense except in terms of getting Americans accustomed to
harassment as a citizen’s duty to government and to
train a cadre to conduct warrantless searches of fellow
citizens.
The no-fly list itself is absurd.
If a known terrorist were to show up at an airport, he
would be arrested, not refused permission to fly.
Anyone else who can clear security like other passengers
has every right to fly.
Set aside the violation of the
Constitution and the Soviet-style tyranny of the loss of
the freedom to travel and consider merely the practical
aspect of the proposal. What American wants his travel
plans dependent on a government bureaucracy capable of
putting US Senator Ted Kennedy on the "no fly"
list and capable of issuing US visas to two of the
alleged 9/11 hijackers six months after they allegedly
died in the 9/11 events?
If we believe the official story,
9/11 itself reveals a government totally devoid of any
competence whatsoever.
The "war on terror" is
fraudulent. The cruel war and the deceptive vocabulary
that protects it are a cover for expanding US and
Israeli hegemony in the Middle East and for constructing
a functioning police state at home.
A country in which people cannot
make airline reservations without the government’s
permission is not a free country.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts
[email
him] was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration.
He is the author of
Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of
Policymaking in Washington;
Alienation
and the Soviet Economy and
Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy,
and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of
The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and
Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name
of Justice. Click
here for Peter
Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts
about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
