The Terr'ists Are Here... In Washington

By: Bev Conover

Who will be the target this time? New York City again? Atlanta? Chicago? San Francisco? Some small town that can be totally obliterated in one of the "Red" states?

The more the world balks at waging war on Iraq, the more desperate and determined the Bushistas become. George W. will have his war, but he needs to get most of the American people on board. The best way to do that is by perpetrating another attack on American soil.

Within hours of Secretary of State Colin Powell's U.N. presentation being unmasked as another rehash of the same old pack of lies, and his and Bush's hailing of a plagiarized document, supplied by 10 Downing Street, as further proof of why Saddam Hussein has to go, Homeland Offense Secretary Tom Ridge raised his color-coded "terror alert" level from yellow to orange.

"The terr'ists are coming, the terr'ists are coming!" cry was ratcheted up another notch amid Bush spinmeisters' warnings, dutifully reported by the corporate media, that Islamist terrorists may strike right after the Hajj. To pump up public jitters further, they also let it be known that Hamas has reportedly threatened to rain not so holy hell down on Americans in the U.S. and throughout the world if Bush wages war on Iraq.

The corporate media, of course, has been eating this up. Television more so as its cameras capture scenes that once were unimaginable in the U.S.: New York City police, wearing military helmets and armed with machine guns, standing outside synagogues and posh hotels; motorists being delayed for three hours or longer as their vehicles are searched at the Mexican border; air space closed to private planes; a no-fly zone extended to 30 miles around fortress Washington; police around the country looking for "suspicious" people or activity at shopping malls and other public places. Even those wanting to see an Einstein exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, were shown lined up in the cold to have their purses and backpacks hand searched by police, risking having any germs or infectious agents spread from person to person as ungloved police rummaged through their personal belongings.

Yesterday, Poodle Powell told the Senate Budget Committee that Al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite television station, would shortly broadcast a new audio tape from Osama bin Laden that proved al Qaeda's ties to Iraq. Powell's remarks sent the folks at Al-Jazeera into a tizzy looking for this tape.

Al-Jazeera chief editor Ibrahim Hilal even told the Irish Examiner that his station had no such tape. Some time after that the purported tape allegedly turned up at Al-Jazeera, which broadcast it. It is not clear whether all 16 minutes were aired, since Hilal claimed the audio was not of good quality.

The big question that has gone unasked by the corporate media, therefore, is unanswered is how did Powell know about the latest alleged bin Laden tape before Al-Jazeera even received it, unless the tape was another creation of the Bush regime? This question stands alongside last week's unasked question about how Powell, as he claimed in his U.N. presentation, knew it was one teaspoon of dried anthrax that had been placed in the envelope sent to the Senate in the wake of 9/11. Is Powell, aware that the Bush administration is about to go down in flames - and possibly take untold numbers of Americans and Iraqis with it - sending out covert messages to the American people and the world to stop his boss while they can? That the most dangerous and out of control terr'ists are in Washington?

Adding to the theater of fear is the 21^st Century version of "duck and cover". The Bushistas are advising people to make disaster preparations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is offering via mail or a download from its website a Guide to Citizen Preparedness, which was written after 9/11. It advises people to stock up on non-perishable foods, such as peanut butter, water, first aid items, flashlights, batteries, battery operated radios for both home and car. A supply of duct tape and plastic sheeting should be kept on hand, in order for people to seal doors and windows in the event of a chemical or biological attack, as if that is likely to spare people.

Might the Bush administration think that the sale of peanut butter, duct tape, plastic sheeting, and other items on the FEMA list will stimulate the rapidly deteriorating economy?

The corporate television news cuties can't repeat often enough that Ridge has issued an orange alert and that various members of the administration are saying "terrorists" are planning an attack, so prepare, prepare, prepare!

If none of this has the desired effect in convincing a majority of Americans to climb aboard the war bandwagon, fasten your seatbelts because the Bushistas or their surrogates are apt to pull another heinous stunt that either will or finally open the majority's eyes to what the architects of the New World Order are up to before it is too late. The rest of the world already knows.