[Mb-civic] The Enemy By William Rivers Pitt

[Michael Butler]

    The Enemy
    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Friday 17 February 2006

    They called it "Cyber Storm," and it was a war-game exercise run last
week by the Department of Homeland Security. The war game had nothing to do
with testing the security of our shipping ports, borders, infrastructure or
airports. "Cyber Storm" was testing the government's ability to withstand an
onslaught of information and protest from bloggers and online activists.

    "Participants confirmed," wrote the Associated Press, that "parts of the
worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives
to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by
Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political
rantings and musings about current events."

    Say what? Online expressions of political opinion are so dangerous that
the Department of Homeland Security must war-game scenarios to deal with
them? Bloggers are potential terrorists now? Bloggers are the enemy? Last
week, as far as DHS was concerned, they were.

    We hear a great deal about enemies these days. Don't criticize the war,
or you'll embolden the enemy. The enemy is clever and cruel. Stick with the
White House and we'll defeat the enemy. Since the Bush administration no
longer likes to mention the name Osama bin "Stayin' Alive" Laden in public,
lest everyone remember a dramatic promise long broken, any specific
definition of an enemy changes with the moment.

    Sometimes, the enemy is in Iraq, and we fight them over there so we
don't have to fight them over here. Sometimes, the enemy is in Iran,
allegedly toiling with all its collective might to manufacture nuclear
weapons. Sometimes, the enemy is in Palestine, where Hamas used George W.
Bush's exported democracy to take over the government. Sometimes, the enemy
is an American face on a television offering criticism of the White House.
Last week, the enemy was a blogger making a political expression.

    The enemy is never in Saudi Arabia, though that nation is the very
birthing bed of international terrorism. The enemy is never in Israel,
though that nation's far-right leadership has been a good deal of the
impetus behind the Bush administration's calamitous push into Iraq. The
enemy is never in China, even when they smack our planes out of the sky,
because they own a substantial portion of our debt. The enemy is never in
Pakistan, though that nation's fundamentalist wing allies itself with the
Taliban, and though they actually do possess nuclear weapons. The enemy is
occasionally mentioned as being in North Korea, but not often, because we
want no part of that fight.

    For a time, the enemy was in the United Arab Emirates. Two of the
hijackers of the September 11 aircraft were citizens of the United Arab
Emirates, and the funding behind those attacks was wired through the UAE's
banking system. Republican and Democratic Senators believe the UAE has been
used as a conduit for the proliferation of nuclear technology.

    That was then, however. A company named Dubai Ports World intends to
spend $6.8 billion to gain control of the management of shipping ports in
New York and New Jersey, as well as in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans
and Miami. Dubai Ports World is foreign-owned, but is backed financially by
the government of the United Arab Emirates. In other words, a nation
suspected of being a significant player in the September 11 attacks is being
allowed to take control of our borders. For the record, US ports handle an
estimated two billion tons of cargo annually, with only 5% of that cargo
undergoing inspection. The deal has already been granted regulatory
clearance by the White House.

    We hear a great deal about enemies, both real and contrived. Let us
ponder, for a moment, the existence of another enemy so insidious that it
operates fully in daylight but beyond control. This enemy seeks to destroy
the rule of constitutional law in the United States. This enemy seeks to
destroy the seed-corn defense against tyranny in this nation, the separation
of powers. This enemy gathers more and more power to itself to achieve these
goals, and uses fear and division to do so. This enemy will lie with
impunity, stonewall endlessly and ruin anyone who might disrupt its plans.

    This enemy stood by and did nothing while a major American city was
devoured by the ocean. When New Orleans was drowned, many voices were raised
in panicked unison that the White House must do something, and do something
now. A conference call was held between key members of the Department of
Homeland Security and other administration officials on August 29th, the day
the catastrophe began for real. Investigators are seeking the transcript of
this call, but administration officials claim the transcript has somehow
disappeared. There are many transcripts of calls before and after this one,
but the five-hour call on August 29th, the specific call investigators want
to see, simply cannot be found.

    This enemy deliberately reached out and destroyed the career of a
deep-cover CIA agent named Valerie Plame, because her husband dared to
criticize the White House about its "uranium from Niger" lie regarding Iraq.
Plame, among other things, worked clandestinely to track any person, group
or nation that would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists; in
other words, Plame worked to track the individuals this White House never
fails to label as the enemy. Her work was derailed and her network destroyed
because this White House did not want any discussion of the fact that no
weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, despite miles of claims that
the stuff was there.

    TruthOut correspondent Jason Leopold reported this week that Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales is refusing to turn over incriminating emails to
special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, emails that allegedly indicate the
involvement of Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking
administration officials in the unmasking of Agent Plame. "The emails
Gonzales is said to be withholding contained references to Valerie Plame
Wilson's identity and CIA status and developments related to the inability
to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," reported Leopold. "Moreover,
according to sources, the emails contained suggestions by the officials on
how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly
destructive comments [Plame's husband] Joseph Wilson had been making about
the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence."

    I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was recently
indicted by Fitzgerald for lying under oath during the investigation into
this matter. Recently, Libby stated that he was authorized by his superiors
to expose the classified name of Valerie Plame. Given his position, Libby's
main superior is none other than Cheney himself. Cheney recently claimed
that he is authorized by an Executive Order to declassify any information he
pleases. "I have certainly advocated declassification. I have participated
in declassification decisions," said Cheney this week. "There's an executive
order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously it
focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice
president."

    This is a new trend for the White House: rendering an illegal act legal
retroactively by fiat. The trend manifested itself in another area of
illegal activity by the White House, the warrantless wiretapping of
thousands of American citizens by the National Security Agency, in defiance
of the black-letter law contained within the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978. For several weeks now, Congress has been
threatening to hold hearings on the matter. Bush advisor Karl Rove worked
feverishly behind the scenes to keep such hearings from taking place, and
has succeeded. Rather than investigate the matter, Congress will instead
rewrite the FISA law, thus rendering retroactively legal White House
activities that blatantly broke the law.

    We hear a great deal about enemies these days, and many of them are
quite real and quite perilous. It is difficult to imagine a more perilous
enemy, however, than the one operating out of Washington today. This enemy
would set itself on high, beyond control or censure, and create of itself
that permanent faction James Madison so earnestly warned us of. This enemy
deletes or hides evidence of its calumny, or simply alters existing laws
that would otherwise derail its plans. This enemy destroys lives out of
hand, lives by the tens of thousands, and reaps a pretty profit in the
process.

    The difference between the enemies we hear about and the one in
Washington is simple and deadly: only the enemy in Washington can annihilate
the constitutional government we have enjoyed for more than two centuries.
The idea that is America cannot be terminated by terrorists or rogue states.
Were the nation entire to be somehow obliterated, the idea that is America
would endure. Only its keepers can kill it completely. They are well on
their way.

    "As nightfall does not come at once," wrote Justice William O. Douglas,
"neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where
everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we
all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become
victims of the darkness."

    We must deal with the enemy within the halls of our government, the
enemy whose power to destroy far outstrips any enemy beyond our borders. In
doing so, we save that which is unique in the world. In doing so, we deal a
death blow to all other enemies. In doing so, we save ourselves from that
darkness.