Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

[lapsedmodernist]

A few days ago I read this story, and it chilled my blood. Tommy Franks is a scary motherfucker, and I couldn't shake the feeling that the interview was one of those times when BushCo members pretty much tell the truth, open text, no bullshit, because the US media in the last 25 months has finally provided an answer to the question of "what happens if a politian tells the truth in the forest, but the primetime corporate news outlets do not amplify the sound." It does not register as a blip on the radar of public consciousness. Does the public remember about Paul Wolfowitz admitting that oil was the real reason for the war? Is there righteous outrage about Donald Rumsfield's thoughtful comment that 9/11 was "a blessing in disguise"? No and no, respectively. Tommy Franks' interview in which he says that he "doubt[s] that The Constitution would survive a WMD attack" is in the new lifestyles magazine called Cigar Aficionado, which is simultaneously weirdly appropriate, and obviously intended to be circulated among...well, cigar aficionados, draw your own conclusion about the kind of class consciousness likely to be pervasive among the magazine's target demographic. And how large that target demographic is. Also, the creme de la creme of BushCo, in addition to being devoted understudies for the Four Horsemen, are all classical Freudian hysterics to boot, which means that telling the truth through lies is part of their modus operandi:

Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy
casualties.
If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple
of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”>

He then proceeds to talk about the aftermath of such a hypothetical attack "in a practical sense":

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

So, framed by a lie about how awful the obliteration of the Constitution would be emerges a truthful scenario implicit with obvious benefits for The Cabal. It's kind of like at the end of "Four Weddings and a Funeral" when Hugh Grant woos Andy McDowell through negative statements which signify his desire for the very things that he is verbally negating--"would you consider not marrying me and not spending the rest of your life with me"? Only this is less performative and without a framework of a verbal game understood by both interlocutors (in this case BushCo and the American public).

So, ever since I read that article, I have been waiting for an article like this, just as vague as I thought it was going to be, under the headline Official: Al-Qaeda plans something big.

What's your favorite part? My favorite part, both for the total Amistad contained within the last sentence of the quote below, and the relevance to Tommy Franks' Book of Revelations is this:

"Intelligence reports suggest that some of the network's operatives think that an attack using chemical or biological weapons could be a way to top the 9/11 attacks, the official said.
Such weapons can be difficult to use, but al-Qaeda has sought them for years."

So, the way things are going now, with partial success of nation-wide implementation of Diebold electonic voting machines, the Administation right-hand/left-hand machinations, i.e. announcing projected withdrawal from Iraq in June while deploying thousands of reservists there, escalating rumors of the draft, Bush's sinking approval polls and BushCo's unsuccesful Weekend-at-Bernie's-type machinations with the economy, using "defense spending" to inject the corpse with some zombie juice, I would say that there is a 100% chance of another Code Orange before November 2004, 50% chance of a Code Red culminating in a prevented "clear and present" danger, and about 35-40% chance of something big actually transpiring, resulting in Code Red: Martial Law version. Either Syria or Iran will be blamed, whichever comes up next in the PNAC game of eenie meanie meini mo, and every US city will become like Miami during the FTAA protests last week. But that wasn't on TV either.

Comments

Indeed

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for doing the legwork on this. I think your fears are well-grounded, and I've been worried about the same scenario myself for some time now. It doesn't take Tommy Franks in Cigar Afficionado to make it obvious what The Cabal's master plan is--although it is useful to have this out in the open and it is always interesting how some of the most candid admissions of Cabal machinations never make the mainstream media but instead get printed in trashy lifestyle mags.

As I'm sure you heard, the martial law(lessness) in Miami last week has been praised as a "model for homeland security"--just the latest in a string of predictable and increasingly successful attempts to equate domestic dissent with Al Qaeda-style terrorism. I mean, they had embedded reporters for fuck's sake.

Anyway, here's a somewhat tangential question: do you find it at all strange that there have been no "small" terror attacks against "soft" targets in the US post-9/11? When I was living in Paris during the mid-90s the Algerian Armed Islamic Group used pipe bombs placed in trash cans to great effect. Every few weeks one of them would go off in a different neighborhood in Paris, causing real panic. The bombs never killed more than one or two people at a time--and usually not even that--but were enough to terrorize the population.

Of course, there are a whole lot of Algerians in Paris, and the French border is arguably more permeable than the US border (unless you're a bin Laden family member looking for a free trip home in late September 2001)--but, still, it would be so easy to do something like that in New York. Hell, at this point a few cherry bombs on the subway would probably be enough to convince most Americans to ditch the Constitution in favor of martial law...

Re: Indeed

[(Anonymous)]

Hey, the above comment was from me. I don't have a LiveJournal, so no username.

Jacob

Re: Indeed

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I agree that it's weird about the lack of "small" attacks. All I have to say is that if there were smaller attacks, it would be very inconvenient for the dept. of Homeland Security. Raising terror alert level to orange periodically accomplishes the goal of mass panic without creating a vulnerable patch in their own structure. I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but after reading various documented sources, it seems pretty fucking likely that BushCo sat and allowed 9/11 to happen as a way to launch PNAC.

I did hear the thing about Miami being the model for domestic "security" and also that, like, 8 mil. of Iraq money got floated that way.

Re: Indeed

[(Anonymous)]

You know, having read thousands of pages of various documented sources myself over the past two years I have come to the conclusion that the burden is HEAVILY on the Bush Cabal as well as those ostensibly Levelheaded Leftists such as David Corn at The Nation and, I regret to say, Noam Chomsky, to prove the Bush and Co. did NOT sit back and allow 9/11 to happen.

In that vein, have you seen 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland's interview with Salon: http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/112303A.shtml (http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/112303A.shtml)? There's some important stuff in there about obstruction of the already-toothless Commission.

As for small attacks, I'm really not sure what to think. To begin with, although I do think that 9/11 was allowed to happen, I think it unlikely that the Bush Cabal actually organized the attacks (although disturbing discrepancies persist to this day--e.g. the Al Qaeda terrorist passport that miraculously survived the crash and was conveniently found sitting undamaged a few blocks away, etc.). Therefore, somebody (lets just say Al Qaeda) is, in fact, targeting the U.S., ostensibly independent of what's convenient for the Dept. of Homeland Security. This group, presumably, *could* carry out "small" attacks against American targets if they wanted to. Which leads me to conclude that whoever the "terrorists" are, they've decided to adopt large and spectacular attacks as their tactic of choice, a high-risk, high-yield strategy. All I'm saying is that I think that they could still accomplish much of what they're trying to do with a lower-risk strategy, and I'm curious about why they haven't--because fundamentally it seems a matter of choice, not possibilities.

Of course, bin Laden was once a CIA asset, and one also can't rule out the possibility of continuing ties between "UBL" and the P-NACzis. Trying to figure out the game plan of Al Qaeda and trying to figure out the game plan of the Bush Cabal often seems to amount to the same thing.

Anyway, at the end of the day, I can't help agreeing with you that--whether organized by bin Laden or by Richard Perle--it seems likely that the next attack will be catastrophically large, perhaps large enough that the American people will acquiesce when a state of emergency is declared and the Constitution is suspended (a prerogative accorded to FEMA, incidentally). And wouldn't it be just the darndest coincidence if that happened just before the 2004 Presidential election?

Jacob

Re: Indeed

[(Anonymous)]

prior to 9/11/01, people in the u.s. didn't pay attention to terrorist attacks: not the 1993 bombing of the wtc, not the attack on the u.s.s. cole, not the attacks on the embassies in africa. a week or two after they happened, most people simply ignored what was going on despite those attacks and despite numerous reports of the danger of a much worse attack. on top of this, the gov't., as has been abundantly reported, was not prepared (no surprise there -- it always takes a crisis to get some action in the u.s. -- consider last summer's blackout as the most recent example).

now consider our current circumstances -- we get regular scare stories (sunday, the wash. post ran a front-page, above-the-fold story about how there are ongoing efforts to get radiological materials for "dirty" bombs) every few weeks, just to keep us from straying from the rove/cheney strategy ("it's a scary world -- vote repub!").

great, we're alerted to the nature of the problem. but notice what the media is not doing -- carrying accompanying stories about what "homeland" security is not doing about the matter. the wash. post editorial board chose to put that story on the front page on sunday (the most read day of the week), that is, it wasn't a time-sensitive article reporting on something that had happened the day before. why did they not also choose to write a corresponding article on shrub&co's lack of attention to the problem? why aren't there regular articles about what's not being done to protect the country's ports and infrastructure. or, given the inevitability of an attack (the w.post reported that there are over ten thousand radiological sources that are used all over the world), there should be regular articles reporting about what is not being done to improve the emergency medical care that's going to be needed. while shrub&co are off "saving us from terrorism" in iraq (in actuality making things worse), their ongoing incompetence is leaving the country wide open to attack here.

-mjm

Re: Indeed

[(Anonymous)]

yes, the constant question about shrub&co: are they "evil" or simply incompetent/stupid? i come down on the "incompetent" side of this question. up until, 9/11/01, shrub was famous for taking six weeks of vacation between jan 22 and sept 10. he'd gotten his tax cut passed, strained his brain on stem-cell research, and showed that he was a "compassionate conservative" with the "leave no child behind" act. anything else, he farmed off to Karen BigHead (there was a famous article in which he was quoted as saying that he let Hughes make half of the decisions herself). he didn't care, and my guess is that he didn't read the reports or didn't understand what their importance was.

-mjm

p.s., al franken recently called the "leave no child behind" act the most ironically named law since the 1942 "japanese-american family leave" act.

[(Anonymous)]

>Does the public remember about Paul Wolfowitz admitting that oil was
>the real reason for the war? Is there righteous outrage about Donald
>Rumsfield's thoughtful comment that 9/11 was "a blessing in disguise"?
>No and no, respectively.

and don't forget richard perle's recent admission (while in europe)
that the attack was a violation of int'l law ("but the right thing to
do").

yes, he was actually trying to equate the murdering of thousands of
iraqi civilians with the civil rights' civil disobedience campaigns of
the 1950s and 60s. had he truly believed in what he was supporting,
then shrub & co would have committed acts of civil disobedience before
some int'l authority. they committed disobedience, but they left out
the "civil" part, in which you agree to be arrested and otherwise
subject to legal sanctions. he likely knew that this could lead to
his being hog-tied on his belly for "training" purposes
(http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1127-01.htm).

oops

[(Anonymous)]

i left out a signature.

-mjm

[(Anonymous)]

>Also, the creme de la creme of BushCo, in addition to being devoted
>understudies for the Four Horsemen...

it goes back to the reagan idiocy/insanity. from a recent article by
robert f. kennedy jr (now there's your presidential candidate
-- if only):

"Most notorious, Coors chose James Watt, president of the Mountain
States Legal Foundation, as the secretary of the interior. Watt was a
proponent of 'dominion theology,' an authoritarian Christian heresy
that advocates man's duty to 'subdue' nature. His deep faith in
laissez-faire capitalism and apocalyptic Christianity led Secretary
Watt to set about dismantling his department and distributing its
assets rather than managing them for future generations. During a
Senate hearing, he cited the approaching Apocalypse to explain why he
was giving away America's sacred places at fire-sale prices: 'I do not
know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord
returns.'"

http://www.rollingstone.com/features/nationalaffairs/featuregen.asp?pid=2154

how did this man get past the senate hearing? why was he not rejected out of hand after that statement?

-mjm

[(Anonymous)]

> ...are all classical Freudian hysterics to boot...

i'm not sure that i agree with the "all" qualifier. a significant
fraction of the repubs isn't fearful -- they are those who come out of
the "robber baron" tradition which took over the repub party in the
late 1800s, and who made up the bulk of their minority party until
reagan came along to form his winning coalition with southern white
males and the religious right. this traditional wing cynically
manipulates a lot of what their party does for the simple motivations
of greed and arrogance born of a sense of privilege (think cheney and
the elder bush, or the so-called "federalist society"). shrub has been
cultivating this sense in himself. (as shrub said back at the time of
the 2000 election (paraphrasing) "dictatorship is a terrible thing --
unless i'm the dictator".)

(it is also the wing of the party that doesn't care whether there is
democracy in this country or not. the most recent evidence of this
is the 2000 election, when they really didn't care to see whether the
votes were counted and the voting machine concerns that have been
raised but ignored by repubs. longer standing evidence is the fact
that people who reside in the country's capital have no voting
representation in congress ("taxation without representation").
repubs don't care whether it ever gets voting representation
because of their perception that the elected congress
people/senators would be democrats.)

but i do agree that fear has long (the entire cold war) been a big
recruitment tool for the repubs. a lot of the bluster that people who
support the repubs masks the fear that motivates their voting. when
the cold war ended, the party was robbed of its biggest argument and
recruiting tool, and the attacks of 9/11 were a godsend to them -- we
can now have "never-ending war." as richard labeviere recently wrote,
if al quaeda didn't exist, the repubs would have had to invent them
(http://truthout.org/docs_03/112603C.shtml).

-mjm

[(Anonymous)]

> So, the way things are going now, with partial success of
> nation-wide implementation of Diebold electonic voting machines, the
> Administation right-hand/left-hand machinations, i.e. announcing
> projected withdrawal from Iraq in June while deploying thousands of
> reservists there, escalating rumors of the draft, Bush's sinking
> approval polls and BushCo's unsuccesful Weekend-at-Bernie's-type
> machinations with the economy, using "defense spending" to inject the
> corpse with some zombie juice, I would say that there is a 100% chance
> of another Code Orange before November 2004...

consider reading the rfk jr article that i cited earlier. your
posting highlights the potential risk to civil liberties. his article
makes abundantly clear not the potential but the ongoing
dismantling or ignoring of thirty years of public policy to protect
the environment and husband the country's natural resources.
(scientific fact disputes what you want to do? simply delete that
information from the report. scientific consensus disagrees with your
propaganda? fire the scientists and then propose "more study.") in
the case of another attack, the repubs would make use of fear to
implement dismantling of civil liberties, but they are already simply
ignoring a long-standing substantial public consensus that disagrees
with what they want to do. they are able to get away with this
because they control congress (hence, no investigations), the presidency,
much of the courts, and have a compliant media (see the recent
censorship of the reagan docudrama).

here's a list multi-dimensional nature of this regime's "ideological
march" (clinton's term)

- tax policy that redistributes money to the wealthy
- medicare policy that redistributes money to HMOs and drug
companies while dropping coverage for millions of elderly
- environmental policy that degrades the environment
- waiting for another attack to dismantle civil liberties

was this foreseeable? the last time that the repubs controlled
both houses of congress and the presidency was the early 1950s,
AKA the McCarthy era.

it's not going to be easy to undo this because it's going to take
more than a change in the presidency.

-mjm

I GOTS THE FEAR

[mendaciloquent.livejournal.com]

Think that's bad? Have you seen this shit about using Iraq funding against the demonstrators in Miami?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1093249,00.html

Re: I GOTS THE FEAR

[(Anonymous)]

H.R.3289, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense and for the Reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, 2004, has as its purported aim "emergency supplemental appropriations for defense and for the reconstruction of Iraq and Afghanistan for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2004, and for other purposes." I haven't fully explored what "other purposes" might be included in the Act, but wouldn't be surprised if "imposing a police state in Miami" is just the beginning (indeed, even more money is set aside for the next G8 summit).

Here is the text related to the FTAA:

EMERGENCIES IN THE DIPLOMATIC AND CONSULAR SERVICE

(INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)

For necessary expenses for `Emergencies in the Diplomatic and Consular Service', $115,500,000, to remain available until expended, which may be transferred to, and merged with, the appropriations for `Diplomatic and Consular Programs': Provided, That of the funds made available under this heading, $65,500,000 may be transferred to, and merged with, the appropriations for `Protection of Foreign Missions and Officials'; of which $32,000,000 is for the reimbursement of the City of New York for costs associated with the protection of foreign missions and officials during the heightened state of alert following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States; of which $8,500,000 is for costs associated with the 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas Ministerial meeting; and of which $25,000,000 is for costs associated with the 2004 Summit of the Industrialized Nations notwithstanding the limitations of 3 U.S.C. 202(10): Provided further, That of the funds previously appropriated under this heading, $2,000,000 is for rewards for an indictee of the Special Court for Sierra Leone: Provided further, That any transfer of funds provided under this heading shall be treated as a reprogramming of funds under section 605 of Public Law 108-7.


In the same paragraph we see that nearly 3 times as much money has been set aside for security at the next G-8 Summit (the "Summit of the Industrialized Nations") to be held at the resort in Sea Island, Georgia. For more info on that little party, see http://www.infoshop.org/octo/g8_2004.php (http://www.infoshop.org/octo/g8_2004.php).


You can find the full text of the Act here:

http://www.fas.org/asmp/resources/govern/108th/hr3289enr.htm (http://www.fas.org/asmp/resources/govern/108th/hr3289enr.htm)

If for some reason you want the official US government source, go to http://thomas.loc.gov and search for "H.R. 3289". The print-friendly version will allow you to see the entire text of the bill on one page so that you can do searches in it. I'd be curious to see what else people find...

Jacob (http://thomas.loc.gov) ()

Must-read article

[(Anonymous)]

My friend JJ just passed me this story (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/warn-n27.shtml) from the World Socialist Web Site which, despite its name, tends to provide unusually rigorous and sober reporting. This is a chilling article that discusses the Franks interview and provides additional indications that a catastrophic attack timed to coincide with the Fall 2003 election season is being widely predicted within mainstream policy and security circles. This is a must-read.

Jacob

Re: Must-read article

[(Anonymous)]

right after the 9/11/01 attacks occurred, a lot of the media were following the repubs lead and asking "why do they hate us?", instead of asking the sensible "what's bin laden's strategy?" since then, a widespread view has been "to recruit people to fight on his side." if this is true, then what is the calculation that bin laden is making about what the political fallout of another attack would be among people whose votes can be changed? is it: "they'll think shrub is incompetent -- throw him out"? or is it: "they'll want to kick some ass -- vote repub"? if sharon's success is any indicator, then rove will be hoping for an attack.

of course, it could be that shrub&co will have (has already?) polarized the country so strongly that there won't be any votes to change, in which case it will come down to which side gets its supporters to go to the polls.

-mjm