The great Iraq war heroics of Bush and Cheney aren't the only blasts from the past being pushed by the state-corporate media this week - now we are revisiting the good old days of the multi-colored terror alert charts with fear-mongering over possible ISIS attacks on The Homeland. According to a story in The Guardian New York City's terrorism top dog has followed up on Senator Lindsey Graham's dire warnings of a new 9/11 by warning that ISIS militants - those who are US citizens - could return from the land of jihad to exact a terrible revenge upon the land of the free and the home of the brave that truthfully is neither. In the era post September 11, 2001 - the day that everything changed - there is nothing quite like the potent political magic talisman of playing the fear card - as Bush and Cheney well understood, it is the most ass-kicking club in the bag.
The story, entitled "NYPD terror chief: New Yorkers among American Islamists in Middle East" quotes NYPD deputy commissioner of intelligence John Miller as the pall of dread begins to spread, especially after that big find of Saddam's lost chemical weapons by the baddest new bogeymen of them all. I excerpt from the Guardian piece:
New York City’s counter-terrorism chief has claimed that Muslim Americans from the city have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join jihadist groups such as Isis, and could return to attack the US.
John Miller, the deputy commissioner of intelligence for the New York Police Department, said New Yorkers were among more than 100 American Muslims fighting with Islamists in the Middle East.
“I would be hyper-concerned about the people over there from New York City on the presumption they’re going to return to New York City,” Miller told the New York Daily News.
But he added that he was equally concerned about jihadists from cities such as “Chicago, Minnesota, Portland, you name it”, and said: “If their mindset is to return to America and to engage in terrorist activities, they’re likely going to end up in New York anyway.”
Of course Miller provides no actual evidence that the jihadists are "likely going to end up in New York anyway", he just plucked that out of his ass in what is probably just an involuntary spasm of Big Apple arrogance but it will be screamed by every Republican up for election this November and repeated on TV by the talking heads until poor, fear-stricken American's have been battered into jelly. This sort of crap will bolster the NSA Stasi case to just go on conducting their unconstitutional surveillance and data-mining operations, convenient timing in that it was just yesterday that the US House of Representatives just passed an amendment putting minor restrictions on the NSA's spying on Americans. So much for that now that those scary Muslims - American citizen Muslims at that - are at it again because they hate us for our freedoms. It must be noted that this is the same John Miller who did that sorry infomercial defending the NSA on 60 Minutes last year - sounds like a whopping conflict of interest to me.
Now that Obama has sent US military troops back into Iraq and gutless, politically motivated Democrats are joining the warmongering Republicans in squealing like stuck pigs for airstrikes it is obvious that we are doomed to remain trapped in a parallel universe as long as a corrupt media allows for the most cynical political class in US history to continue to wage war abroad and repress civil liberties at home. I recall a bit from the satirical website The Onion early in 2001 entitled “Bush: 'Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over'” published shortly after his inauguration was astonishing in the uncanny ability to so accurately predict the future. Today in retrospect it is shocking as to how closely that the Onion bit mimicked the real Bush:
During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.
"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"
Ten months later he was standing on a smoldering pile of rubble in lower Manhattan with a bullhorn and or national destiny was clinched. The reset button was effectively hit on over 220 years of American democracy as we were force marched down the road to fascism. Bush may have left office in 2008 but nothing that Obama has done shows any indication of reversing that doomed course, in fact if anything he is hastening it.
(Image: Reuters TV image of ISIS recruitment video via the Guardian)
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