The Bush Regime�s �terrorist�
protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter
absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private
organization that defends the
US Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now one million names on
the �terrorist� watch list.
One of them is that of former Assistant
US Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are
current. Every time Mr. Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally
incompetent �terrorist�
protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson, who served
in the highest echelons of the US government, from a Muslim
terrorist.
What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of
differentiating an Assistant US Attorney General from a terrorist?
Mr. Robinson said:
�If I were convinced that America is a
safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I
doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who
are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced.�
�Hundreds of thousands
of people� on a watch list that they have no business being on?
Yes. �Members of
Congress, nuns, war heroes and other �suspicious characters,� with names like
Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of
this list, with little hope of escape,� said Caroline Fredrickson,
director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
And this is America, not Nazi Germany?
How can Airport �Security�
possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high-level
American government official from a terrorist?
Do you really believe there are one million terrorists and
nothing has blown up in the US since September 11, 2001 (assuming you believe
the government�s account of that episode)?
How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America
still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in
ruins. According to the Bush Regime�s line, it only took a handful of
terrorists to destroy one of America�s tallest skyscrapers and a section of the
Pentagon and to send the President of the United States scurrying to a hiding
place.
One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and
they wouldn�t need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.
What we are witnessing with the one million person �watch list� is bureaucracy run amok. One
Million Terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger
rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the
power of confiscating your toothpaste
and bottled
water and riffling your belongings in your luggage.
- Show your ID.
- Take off your shoes.
- Take off your belt.
- Take off your jacket.
- Empty your pockets.
Don�t complain about being searched without a warrant or you
will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise
abused -- the fate of many American citizens.
The morons who comprise the US government call the �watch list� one of the government�s �most effective tools in the fight against
terrorism.�
What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference
between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.
The �watch list�
has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have
been inconvenienced and arrested.
The ACLU says that �putting
a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm
than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge
amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning.�
It is worse than that. What the �watch list� or �no-fly
list� is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches,
to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs
and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and
intimidating fellow citizens, using any
excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power
and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of �safety from terrorists,� Americans
are being made the least safe people on earth.
Paul
Craig Roberts [email
him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President
Reagan�s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has
held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair,
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University,
and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was
awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the
author of Supply-Side
Revolution : An Insider�s Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation
and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown:
Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-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.