The Grave Threat Is The Bush Administration

According to news reports, at a

US Naval Academy speech on Wednesday, President Bush
will announce plans for withdrawing US troops from Iraq.
It will be diverting to watch the propagandists at Fox
"news" flip-flop with the White House line and
explain that now is the time to cut and run after all.

A month ago the

administration`s line was that cutting and running
was the dastardly act of cowards and traitors who would
abandon our troops and all they have fought for. A

month ago senior US commanders in Iraq said that the
US-trained new Iraqi army

only had 700 troops who could operate independently
of US support.

Now suddenly the new Iraq has the
troops to do the job and America`s soldiers can come
home. What this means is that Republican pollsters have
made it clear that the Republicans cannot win next
year`s congressional elections if the US is still mired
in Iraq. The war is unpopular. A large majority of
Americans do not believe the war was justified, and they
no longer support it. Republicans have no prospect of
rehabilitating Bush if he keeps the country bogged down
in a pointless war.

The war, in other words, no longer
serves the Republicans` political interest and must be
got rid of. So much for "staying the course."

What will happen to Iraq and the
Middle East no one knows. Our concerns need to be
directed at what happens here in the US. Bush`s war
against Iraq might be over, but the police state Bush
built at home is still in place.

On November 27 Walter Pincus
reported in the Washington Post that the Pentagon is
expanding its domestic surveillance activity and that
all sorts of proposals are afoot to allow military
agencies to spy on law- abiding Americans and to build
secret dossiers on citizens. The demand for police state
powers is said to be necessary in order to fight the
"war on terror." [Pentagon
Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity]

Considering the drastic gestapo-type
activities for which Washington is clamoring, a person
would think that America is being overwhelmed by
terrorist attacks. Yet, despite an aggressive and brutal
war that Bush has been waging in Iraq for going on three
years, terrorist attacks in America are even more rare
than a honest politician. There has not been a terror
attack since September 11, 2001, more than four years
ago!

The Bush administration`s hype
about terrorism serves no purpose other than to build a
police state that is far more dangerous to Americans
than terrorists.

Ever since the "war on terror"
was initiated by the Bush administration, the US has
been holding large numbers of "detainees." By
chance or the laws of probability, a few of these people
might fit some definition of "terrorist." The
vast majority, however, are innocents picked up in the
equivalent of Stalin-era KGB street sweeps. Many are
hapless people sold by warlords to the US in order to
receive cash awards for turning in "terrorists."

Despite the large number of alleged
"terrorists" or "enemy combatants" that
are being held, the Bush administration simply hasn`t a
shred of evidence with which to bring "detainees"
to trial. If truth be known, the "detainees" are
merely props for Bush`s hype about the "terrorist
threat." The "detainees" were arrested in
order to make Americans feel safe and at ease with the
police state.

Perhaps the most famous of the
alleged terrorists, a man held for more than three
years, is the "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla.
Padilla was the "grave threat" who was going to
set off a radioactive dirty bomb in a US city.

The charge never made any sense. If
al Qaeda had a dirty bomb, they certainly would not
entrust it to the loud-mouthed Padilla, who was being
followed around by FBI agents. Such a weapon would be
kept secret and entrusted only to the most competent and
proven hands. Who could possibly believe that top al
Qaeda operatives would meet and plot with Jose Padilla?

The Bush administration has itself
given up its Padilla fantasy. After three years of hype
about this most dangerous of terrorists who allegedly
intended to kill large numbers of Americans, the
government`s indictment doesn`t mention dirty bombs or
the murder of Americans. Instead, Padilla is indicted
for conspiring

"to commit at any place outside the United States acts
that would constitute murder" for the purpose of
advancing "violent jihad." Padilla is also
charged with "conspiracy to provide material support
for terrorists."

In other words, the government has
no case against Padilla and is putting him on trial in
the US for conspiring to kill unidentified foreigners in
an effort to overthrow an unidentified foreign country.
His case is lumped in with a case against four other
persons, one or more of whom may have committed an
actual crime that can be used to tar them all.

Both the Attorney General and
President of the United States branded Padilla a
"grave threat" to the lives of Americans. After
three years of this propaganda, all the US government
can come up with is the trumped up charge of conspiracy
to kill foreigners and to provide support for
terrorists.

A police state has to catch enemies
in order to keep the people frightened and appreciative
of the watchful eye of the police state. Now that the
Padilla case has evaporated, the Bush administration has
come up with a replacement. An American student of

Arab descent, who was studying at a Saudi Arabian
university, has been indicted by a federal grand jury
for conspiracy to assassinate President Bush. The
indictment rests on the confession wrung out of the
young man by torture in a Saudi prison.

Does anyone really believe that al
Qaeda leaders would conspire with an American college
student to assassinate President Bush? Indeed, President
Bush has been Osama bin Laden`s greatest benefactor. Why
would al Qaeda want to kill the man who is doing them so
much good? Before Bush launched his war on terror and
invaded Iraq, the vast majority of Muslims thought bin
Laden was a nut case and supported the US. Today Muslims
think Bush is a nut case and support bin Laden.

What kind of a country have we
become when we put a citizen on trial on the basis of a
confession obtained under torture by a foreign
government? Is the case against this student anything
other than an attempt to enlist the sympathy factor for
Bush in order to repair his standing in the polls?

Americans need to understand that a
police state has to produce results in order to justify
its budget and its powers. It doesn`t really care who it
catches. Stalin`s police state caught the wife of
Stalin`s foreign minister in one of its street sweeps.

The Bush administration justifies
torture and threatens to veto congressional attempts to
restrain its use. The Bush administration justifies
indefinite detention of American citizens without
charges. It asserts the power of indefinite detention
based on its subjective judgment about who is a threat.
An American government that preaches "freedom and
democracy" to the world claims the powers of tyrants
as its own.

Americans need to wake up. The only
danger to Americans in Iraq is the one Bush created by
invading the country. The grave threat that Americans
face is the Bush administration`s police state
mentality.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts is the 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.