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A Photographic Journal of Life
in a Afghan Refugee Camp
by Judith Mann
November 7, 2001
Cockburn/St. Clair
Greens, Airports
and
National ID Cards
Dr. Susan
Block
Ayatollah
Asscroft
Brian J. Foley
Bombing Campaign
Not "Self-Defense" Under International Law
November 6, 2001
Mark Scaramella
Where's
That Red Cross Money Going
C.G. Estabrook
Our Torturers
Sheperd
Bliss
Scott
Nearing on War
Rep. Ron Paul
Underwriting
the Taliban
Tariq
Ali
The
General Who
Came to Dinner
Evan Ravitz
Stop the War
Through
Direct Democracy
Steve
Perry
Hunger
in Afghanistan
November 5, 2001
Patrick Cockburn
Living
in the Minefields
David Price
Terror
and Indigenous People
November 3, 2001
Declan McCullagh
Nancy Oden Interview
Daniel
Wolff
The
Memphis Blues Again
Mark Weisbrot
War on Civilians
Dave Marsh
How
the RIAA (and the FBI) Cheat Musicians
Robert Jensen
Speaking
Out Against
War on Campus
November 2, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Green
Party Leader Detained at Maine Airport; Prevented from Boarding
Any Plane
Alexander Cockburn
FBI Eyes
Torture
November 1, 2001
Dean Baker
Dying
for Patents
Sami Amarah
US Attempts
to Recruit
Russian Vets of Afghan War
Molly Secours
Where
Are the Voices of Reason? Let the Women
Be Heard
William Blum
Unleashing the
CIA
October 31, 2001
Tom Turnipseed
Terrorize
the Poor,
Subsidize the Rich
Chris Clarke
Thank God
for Berkeley
Steve
Perry
The
Silent Genocide
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CounterPunch
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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November 8,
2001
Homeland
Insecurity by Douglas Valentine
Part Seven
The Last Decade 
Michael Ledeen, who was forced from the Reagan
Administration after the Iran arms fiasco became public, described
George Bush in the 20 August 1987 Boston Globe as "the
most powerful man" in America." And after his election,
Bush tried his hardest to prove he was the most powerful man
in the world as well. His devastating invasion of Panama left
thousands dead, and tens of thousand homeless, but did nothing
to curb international drug smuggling. Likewise, his massive terror
bombing of Kuwait and Iraq killed tens of thousands, and his
economic sanctions, endorsed by Clinton, have killed hundreds
of thousands, for no reason at all, save vengeance. Saddam Hussein
is still in power.
For all the violence and terror he inflicted
on the world, Bush did nothing to make America a safer place.
And while America's anti-terrorism policy remained unchanged
under his son and ideological heir, our sacred homeland, according
to Michael Ledeen, is a much unsafer place.
In his 1 October article for NRO, Ledeen
said: "The last great chief of the CIA, Bill Casey, saw
the necessity of creating a counter-terrorism center where all
the information came into a central location and was analyzed
in toto. He entrusted the task to Dewey Clarridge," who
"cracked his very active whipgreatly improving the quality
of our intelligence."
Then came the "infamous" although
unspecified "restrictions" put in place by Clinton.
What it required now, Ledeen contends,
is "a top guy with real power and total support from the
president, and it requires men and women at the working level
who not only have the resolve and the courage to do it - laying
waste to dead wood as they go - but who know the system cold,
know how the bureaucratic games are played, and know which walls
have to be broken down."
What Ledeen is prescribing, of course,
is a recipe for the type of domestic political repression outlined
in detail in this essay, that American's have endured under previous
right wing regimes.
Will we never
learn?
Our constitutionally protected right
to political activity has been under constant attack for decades
now, and it will only get worse. As a result of the recent anti-terror
legislation, even your email can be subjected to permanent monitoring
by the FBI, CIA or the new OHS. As of this week, the FBI can
"seek a peak" inside your home or office without a
warrant, and seize your files, property or computers without
any notice, and they don't have to tell you about until afterwards.
Committing any petty misdemeanor, which can in anyway be interpreted
as frightening some National Guardsman at some Office of Homeland
Security checkpoint of airport, is now grounds for surveillance
of your home and person, and monitoring of your internet activity.
God forbid you should stoop to political
dissent, or opposition to Bush's eternal war.
Internationally the story isn't any prettier.
Bush's ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, has
stated that America must attack more and more countries. Like
other terrorists in the Bush Administration, Negroponte is well
suited to this task. As U.S. ambassador to Honduras under Reagan,
he funded that particular right wing regime's most notorious
death squads, Battalion 316.
In the name of anti-terrorism, the illegitimate
Bush Administration can be expected to revitalize this practice
worldwide, training torturers and tyrants to wage "global
counter-terrorism" against any nation that harbors suspected
terrorists, or critics of U.S. foreign policy. And any connection
you have to these foreign enemies, even if it is merely sympathy
for the Palestinians, subjects you to imprisonment, loss of livelihood,
and worst of all, forfeiture of your sense of humor.
That's right. You can't even make fun
of the situation anymore. Which is, when you think of it, perfectly
in keeping with out time honored Judaic-Christian ethic.
Here at home, through the Office of Homeland
Security, we will endure more political and psychological warfare,
more black and gray propaganda, and more deceit and disinformation
than any society on earth before. We're told we must become new
people in a brave new world, where indefinite detention, torture
and summary execution of our suspected enemies will make us free.
Award winning reporter and likely Mossad
propagandist Seymour Hersh tells us that we must resort to the
tactics the Jordanian security service used to catch the notorious
Palestinian terrorist Abu Nidal. "The Jordanians did not
move directly against suspected Abu Nidal followers but seized
close family members instead, mothers and brothers," Hersh
notes. Then he quotes an anonymous CIA officer as saying, "Jordan
is the one nation that totally succeeded in penetrating a group,"
because it was able "to get their families under control."
So much for family values.
Hersh disingenuously adds that these
tactics defy CIA procedures, but suggests it's a better alternative
than "sitting around making diversity quilts."
Well, this is exactly the type of psychological
warfare you can expect to be subjected to on a daily basis from
here on out. As noted in the Marine Corps Gazette, "Psychological
operations may become the dominant operational and strategic
weapon in the form of media/information intervention. Logic bombs
and computer viruses, including latent viruses, may be used to
disrupt civilian as well as military operations. Fourth generation
adversaries will be adept at manipulating the media to alter
domestic and world opinion to the point where skillful use of
psychological operations will sometimes preclude the commitment
of combat forces."
"Television news may become a more
powerful operational weapon than armored divisions."
Let me say it one last time: in the name
of anti-terrorism, all of the nation's pent-up anger and frustration
over Vietnam, and a host of other, mostly Clinton-related issues,
is poised to be unleashed on an enemy that lurks inside our borders.
And that enemy is you.
But in order to survive, and enjoy, and
laugh, you need only know one thing: when Bush and Cheney and
Rumsfeld and Rice and Powell tell you that America needs to wage
unrelenting war for the next fifty years, in order to achieve
peace, they are lying.
War, dear Citizen, is not Peace.
Hail The Republic!
Homeland Insecurity Continued: Footnotes
Douglas Valentine writes frequently for CounterPunch. He is the
author of The Phoenix
Program, the only comprehensive account of the CIA's torture
and assassination operation in Vietnam, as well as TDY
a chilling novel about the CIA and the drug trade.
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