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FRIENDLY FIRE
(Friendly fire definition: offensive action coming at you from your own side.)
Terrorists may come and terrorists may go but somehow they are not so terrifying when they are one of ours. People got really fearful when they first heard of the Oklahoma bombing. But when it became known that the bad guys weren't foreigners, most people around the country kept their sympathy and some anger but forgot their fears rather quickly.
The 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the bombings of two of our Consulates, as well as the attack on the USS Cole, resulted in loss of American life and property and were taken seriously. But not enough so that President Clinton was given much support from the opposing political party. Rather, their impetus was to destroy the president not the terrorists.
Actually, that was true during most of the 8 years of the Clinton Administration. In fact, some like then Senate majority leader Trent Lott, actively opposed retaliation against the terrorists and openly expressed non-support for the president. Terrorism was not on their agenda, deposing a president was.
What a difference a Repugnant in the White House makes. Have they suddenly come to believe in terrorism following the events of 9/11? Do they count on it to give them the control of a once free people?
Along with their powerful lobbies for gas, oil and most everything else, they control the media that tends to blame the 9/11 events on President Clinton, probably through force of habit. What a bloody handy whipping boy for their own oil-soaked sins of omission.
But even the horror of 9/11 would have soon passed except for the anthrax caper. Letters containing lethal anthrax spores were sent to liberal media and liberal Senators. That in itself should have been a glaring clue of this terrorist source, but it was to the administration's advantage to continue to keep the fear factor at red alert by blaming it on Osama's terrorists.
Tom Ridge, Head of the Homeland Defense, beat the drums for Osama's involvement, as one person after another was infected with anthrax and died. Our mail is sacred and the fear spin took over the collective mind of many Americans. Only recently has Ridge admitted that the Anthrax terrorist is one of us - friendly fire.
That was when the news leaked out that the killer spores were home grown, made in American, best in the world anthrax. This should have been a big story but its only sizzle is anticlimactic and the media plays it low key.
Capitol Hill Anthrax Matches Army's Stocks
5 Labs Can Trace Spores to Ft. Detrick...Genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capitol Hill are identical to stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the U.S. Army since 1980, according to scientists familiar with the most recent tests...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49502-2001Dec15.html
Still the beat goes on to stimulate the fear factor which has turned once intelligent people into zombies happy to give up other people's Constitutional rights because they are told it will keep them safe. One ongoing fear stimulus is the frequent red alerts called by the Homeland Defense.
Another fear stimulus is the way Dubya is made to seem to be a heroic leader by putting Cheney in a secluded hide-a-way, ostensibly to preserve the chain of succession. This keeps the idea of the imminence of a terrorist attack at the forefront of many minds.
Wrapping everything up in the protection of secrecy is the friendly fire from the White House and the Attorney General directed against the Constitution and our right to know. It is supported everywhere by a new society of mega-intolerant Homies waving flags cloaked in brotherly love, but who loudly and angrily chastise any who dare express independent thought. We live in the era of the big trenchcoat.
Graduation speech cut short by hecklers
By Nancy Weaver Teichert -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 5:15 a.m. PST Sunday, Dec. 16, 2001Janis Besler Heaphy, president and publisher of The Sacramento Bee, was speaking before the largest crowd ever for a CSUS graduation ceremony about the threats to civil liberties posed by the federal government's investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks. Her comments were drowned out about five minutes into the eight-minute speech when a segment of the audience began to stomp and clap in protest to her words.
