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28 November 2010 By Paul Craig
Roberts
It
doesn't take a bureaucrat long to create an empire.
John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over the
Transportation Security Administration
on July 1 told
USA Today
16 days later that protecting trains and subways from
terrorist attacks will be as high a priority for him
as air travel. It is difficult to imagine New
Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on
crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two
in advance for clearance for a 15 minute subway ride,
but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they
take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will
be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine
open air bus stops turned into security zones with
screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before
they board. Will taxi passengers be next? In
those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government
has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for
retaliating against the Americans are car and truck
bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA
Gestapo
is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and
interstates to check cars for bombs? That 15 minute trip to the
grocery store then becomes an all day affair. Indeed, it has already begun.
Last September agents from
Homeland Security, TSA, and the
US
Department of Transportation,
assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff's Office,
conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy
Interstate 20
just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER
(Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the
operation required all trucks to stop to be screened
for bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening
devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection
machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery
schedules and truckers' bottom lines. There are also news reports of
federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray devices
that secretly scan cars and pedestrians. With such expensive
counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the
hard-pressed taxpayers' money and
civil
liberties, one would think that
bombs were going off all over America. But, of
course, they aren't. There has not been a successful
terrorist act since 9/11, and many doubt the
government's explanation of that event. Subsequent domestic terrorist
events have turned out to be
FBI sting operations
in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected
members of society and lead them into displaying
interest in participating in a terrorist act. Once
the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds
in prompting all the right words to be said and
captured on his hidden recorder, the "terrorists" are
arrested and the "plot" exposed. The very fact that
the
FBI
has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence
of real terrorists. If Americans were more thoughtful
and less gullible, they might wonder why all the
emphasis on transportation when there are so many
soft targets.
Shopping centers, for example. If there were enough
terrorists in America to justify the existence of
Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the
clock in shopping malls in every state. The effect
would be far more terrifying than blowing up an
airliner. Indeed, if terrorists want to
attack
air travelers, they never need to
board an airplane. All they need to do is to join the
throngs of passengers waiting to go through the TSA
scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has
conveniently assembled the targets. The final proof that there are no
terrorists is that not a single neoconservative or
government official responsible for the
Bush regime's invasions of
Iraq
and
Afghanistan and the Obama
regime's slaughters of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and
Somalians
has been assassinated. None of these Americans who
are responsible for lies, deceptions, and invasions
that have destroyed the lives of countless numbers of
Muslims have any security protection. If Muslims were
capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly
capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle,
Feith, Libby,
Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton,
Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of
the same day. I am not advocating that
terrorists assassinate anyone. I am just making the
point that if the US was as overrun with terrorists as
empire-building bureaucrats pretend, we would
definitely be experiencing dramatic terrorist acts.
The argument is not believable that a government that
was incapable of preventing 9/11 is so all-knowing
that it can prevent assassination of unprotected
neocons and shopping malls from being bombed. If Al Qaeda was anything like the
organization that the US government claims, it would
not be focused on trivial targets such as passenger
airliners. The organization would be focused on its
real enemies. Try to imagine the propaganda value of
terrorists wiping out the neoconservatives in one fell
swoop, followed by an announcement that every member
of the federal government down to the lowest GS, every
member of the House and Senate, and every governor was
next in line to be bumped off. This would be real terrorism
instead of the make-belief stuff associated with shoe
bombs that don't work, underwear bombs that
independent experts say could not work, and bottled
water and shampoo bombs that experts say cannot
possibly be put together in airliner lavatories. Think about it. Would a terror
organization capable of outwitting all 16 US
intelligence agencies,
all intelligence agencies of US allies including
Israel's
Mossad, the
National Security Council, NORAD,
air traffic control,
the Pentagon,
and airport security four times in one hour put its
unrivaled prestige at risk with improbable shoe bombs,
shampoo bombs, and underwear bombs? After success in destroying the
World Trade Center and blowing up
part of the Pentagon, it is an extraordinary comedown
to go after a mere airliner. Would a person who gains
fame by knocking out the world heavyweight boxing
champion make himself a laughing stock by taking lunch
money from school boys? TSA is a far greater threat to
Americans than are terrorists. Pistole has given the
finger to US senators and representatives, state
legislators, and the traveling public who have
expressed their views that virtual strip searches and
sexual molestation are too high a price to pay for
"security." Indeed, the TSA with its Gestapo attitude
and methods, is succeeding in making Americans more
terrified of the TSA than they are of terrorists. Make up your own mind. What
terrifies you the most. Terrorists, who in all
likelihood you will never encounter in your lifetime,
or the TSA that you will encounter every time you fly
and soon, according to Pistole, every time you take a
train, a subway, or drive in a car or truck? Before making up your mind,
consider this report from
antiwar.com
on November 19: "TSA officials say that anyone
refusing both the
full body scanners and the
enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into
custody. Once there the detainees will not only be
barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as
suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff's office said
they were already preparing to handle a large number
of detainees and plan to treat them as terror
suspects." Who is cowing Americans into
submission, terrorists or the TSA Gestapo?
Paul Craig Roberts
was an editor of the
Wall Street Journal and an
Assistant Secretary of the U.S.
Treasury. His latest book,
HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST,
has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He
can be reached at:
PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.comTSA's
Gestapo Empire (Another hard-hitting MUST READ by
Roberts)TSA's Gestapo Empire (Another hard-hitting
MUST READ by Roberts)TSA's Gestapo Empire (Another
hard-hitting MUST READ by Roberts) Comments 💬 التعليقات |