[Mb-civic] (no subject)

[Hawaiipolo at cs.com]

Interesting perspsective from our neighbors...amazing what yopu can do with a 
dose of fear and a cooperative and obedient media...MD
 Paranoia Grips the U.S. Capital
By Eric Margolis
The Toronto Sun

 Sunday 06 February 2005

 The film Seven Days In May is one of my all-time favourites. The gripping 
1964 drama, starring Burt Lancaster, depicts an attempted coup by far rightists 
in Washington using a top-secret Pentagon anti-terrorist unit called something 
like "Contelinpro."

 Life imitates art. This week, former military intelligence analyst William 
Arkin revealed a hitherto unknown directive, with the Orwellian name "JCS 
Conplan 0300-97," authorizing the Pentagon to employ special, ultra-secret 
"anti-terrorist" military units on American soil for what the author claims are 
"extra-legal missions."

 In other words, using U.S. soldiers to kill or arrest Americans, acts that 
have been illegal since the U.S. Civil War.

 This frightening news comes as Washington is gripped by reborn, 
Cold-War-style paranoia, ominous threats of war against Iran from the real president, Dick 
Cheney, and a titanic bureaucratic battle just won by Defence Secretary 
Donald Rumsfeld.

 Instead of being fired for the grotesque military-political fiasco in Iraq 
and the shameful torture scandals, Rumsfeld has just managed to create a new, 
Pentagon spy/special ops organization, blandly named "Strategic Support 
Branch," that will replace or duplicate many of the CIA's tasks.

 The CIA has been sent to the doghouse. Too many CIA veterans criticized or 
contradicted Bush's and Cheney's phony claims over Iraq and terrorism. So Bush 
has imposed a new, yes-man director on the agency, slashed its budgets, purged 
its senior officers, and downgraded CIA to third-class status.

 Rumsfeld's new, massively funded SSB will become the Pentagon's CIA, 
complete with commando units, spies, mercenary forces, intelligence gathering and 
analysis, and a direct line to the White House. The Pentagon has just effectively 
taken over the spy business.

 Used Terrorism Hysteria

 Mind you, the Pentagon and its Defence Intelligence Agency have been deeply 
involved in intelligence around the globe for 50 years. U.S. Army intelligence 
and its covert sub-branches have long conducted "black ops," including 
missions in the U.S. as well as assassinations and sabotage abroad. The Pentagon 
consumes three-quarters of the total U.S. intelligence budget.

 Rumsfeld has skillfully used terrorism hysteria to wrest control of 
intelligence and make the Pentagon supreme in Washington's bureaucratic power 
struggles.

 The Pentagon's new spy arm will be largely excluded from Congressional 
oversight or media examination. Its special operations teams will roam the globe, 
all under cover of "deep black" missions of which no records will be kept, and 
no questions asked.

 Equally worrying, the Pentagon's new special-ops units are headed up by 
notorious religious fanatic, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who calls the U.S. Army "the 
house of God" and Islamic insurgents "agents of Satan." He warned Muslims, 
"my God is bigger than your god, which is an idol."

 Boykin's command will now dispatch post-modern Christian crusaders to 
cleanse the world of Satanic Muslims and other miscreants. The Pentagon's new 
special forces will be able to run operations of which the CIA knows nothing.

 The 9/11 Commission called for improved intra-agency co-operation and data 
sharing -- instead, the U.S. will get far less co-operation, as the Pentagon 
goes its own, secret way.

 Now, George W. Bush, who clearly believes he holds the mandate of heaven 
after being re-elected by the less mentally active half of American voters, has 
decided to "unleash" special forces and all sorts of irregular units, including 
mercenaries, uniformed bounty hunters, and mutants sporting t-shirts 
proclaiming "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out." These militarized thugs and video 
arcade Rambos are sure to run amok, dragging America's once good name ever 
deeper into the mud.

 We have evidently learned nothing from the wars in Indochina and Central 
America.

 Have we reached Seven Days in May?

 Not yet, but the second Bush administration has been taking dangerous steps 
that continue to curtail personal rights, further emasculate the supine, 
cowardly U.S. Congress, and empower ideological or religious extremists and shadowy 
agencies with unrestrained powers that endanger Americans at home, and all 
abroad suspected of troubling the Pax Americana.

-------- Eric Margolis is Contributing Foreign Editor to the Toronto Sun.

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 Jump to today's TO Features:                                                 
                                                                     

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