Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear. – Bertrand Russell

THE BAD NEWS

In late September, The Nation magazine reported that the Pentagon had "moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast." Now, Buzzflash.com reports that the carrier group has already sailed and is scheduled to arrive in the vicinity of Iran around October 21, at the same time as a second flotilla of minesweepers and other ships.

And, thanks to the complicit corporate media, most of America had no idea this was happening.

In fact, we may be only weeks away from total disaster. Sometime before the November elections the madmen in the WH may very well launch a major air attack on suspected nuclear facilities Iran. Special ops have been waging covert actions in Iran for more than a year and Karl Rove has promised us all an 'October surprise.’  But most telling of all is that the party of George W. Bush and cartel is in a serious political freefall.  They cannot maintain their power in this coming election without some major intervening event that would once again instill fear and confusion in the minds of the American public (that is if you don’t count the massive election fraud that is taking place in our nation!)

And most of America, so immersed in the Foley Follies, hasn’t noticed a thing.

For a long while, right before IM sex took over the airways, the corporate media played and replayed their latest Bushco infomercials demonizing the villain du jour, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The usual band of pundits hammered home the message that Iran was out to nuke us all into oblivion while financing hordes of terrorists who hate us for our freedom. Network after network assures as that we’d better get them before they get us.

North Korea demanded equal time this week by testing some sort of nuclear bomb. But as luck would have it, the GOP debacle took center stage and few Americans were building fallout bunkers to protect them from Kim Jong Il. The terror trap was sprung, but it had a damaging rusty squeak.

But as usual, most of America hasn’t noticed a thing.

Never mind that Iraq and Afghanistan continue to smolder in the smoke of Bush’s wars.  Never mind the chaos, the deaths, the kidnappings, the corruption and the daily horrors that are no longer newsworthy.   Never mind that Lebanon is still mourning its dead. What matters is that election time is just over the horizon, and it’s time to sell Americans a new enemy and a new war.

Never mind that Iran can destroy us without launching a single nuclear weapon. Check your maps, folks.  If President Ahmadinejad moves to close the Strait of Hormuz – Iran will control the flow of oil and choke our economy in a nanosecond.  Never mind that brighter and saner minds than George Bush are warning of the dire consequences of a military strike against Iran.  Never mind all that.  PNAC rules the roost and the best laid plans of neocons must not be thwarted. Never mind the consequences…. Just never mind.

Never mind, because all that matters is the need to make the people really afraid, and really submissive and really malleable so they’ll once again buy in to another war for God and Empire.

But, never mind all the smoke and mirrors. Most of America hasn’t noticed a thing.

THE REALLY BAD NEWS

In truth, we were all set up from the start. The US has been in disaster mode and going steadily down the tubes since 2000.  And the really bad news is that most Americans have NOT been sufficiently frightened by what they should have feared the most: the forbidding acts of the fear mongers themselves.

For six years, the American public was carefully and skillfully distracted by bogus fears and overblown villains foisted on the nation by neocons and empire seekers.  They were so expertly manipulated that they failed to be terrified of the criminal power brokers and the complicit media they should have feared the most.

And that’s really is bad news, because while America wasn’t looking, so much was evil was planned and so much evil was successfully carried out. And no, it didn’t all change on September 11th. That sound bite was part of the veil of lies that descended on the United States when this administration placed itself in the White House in 2000. Nothing changed on 9/11, but a great deal fell into place.

From day one, as Bushco withdrew from treaty after treaty and Cheney held secret energy meetings, fear for the destruction of the environment should have alerted the nation.  But it did not. As Bushco withdrew from the International Criminal Court, there should have been a shudder of foreboding throughout the nation.  But there was not.

Most of America did not notice what was happening because the media sat on its hands.  Nothing was reported. Nothing was investigated, No flags were raised.  They were part of the game.

Consider only these four time lines to discern the obvious pattern:

• The USA Patriot Act was written before 9/11.  It was an expansion of a bill enacted after the Oklahoma bombing in 1996, and was sitting in the wings ready to go.  But this time it included all of the more severe provisions proposed decades before by the Reagan and Bush I administrations and rejected by Congress as being unconstitutional.  Legislators had been very troubled by a law that included guilt by association, secret evidence and that ignored Congressional oversight – and those were only some of the problems.

No matter, just 45 days after 9/11, the hundreds of pages were put in front of Congress for immediate approval and easily passed.  Fear is indeed a great persuader. Yet, most of America still has no clue as to what this Act entails.  They have no clue that they should be far more afraid of this law than of the "terrorists’ it purports to seek out.

• NSA domestic wire tapping began before 9/11. Court papers filed this year claim that the National Security Agency asked AT&T to help set up a call monitoring site as early as seven months before 9/11. The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president, and bypassed the warrant authority of the FISA court that was set up after the Watergate scandal.

The really bad news is that most of America is unfamiliar with the protections of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. And, as usual, the corporate media played along with the administration’s defense of warrantless domestic spying, so there was little public outrage, and hardly a shudder, when the US government violated the Constitution.  The terror trap, it appears, plays well in the court of public opinion.

• The US withdrew from the International Criminal Court months before the invasion of Iraq.  In May of 2002, George Bush made a strategic move to cover his backside in a war he had no intention of avoiding, At that time, administration officials notified U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that the United States was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court Treaty. That meant that no American could be held accountable by the world community for war crimes or violations of human rights. It seems they knew perfectly well what lay ahead.

In defense of this move, then Sec. of State Colin Powell claimed that the US had "the highest standards of accountability of any nation on the face of the Earth." Yeah, right.

Understand that most of America was oblivious to it all, until a few new words were forced their consciousness.  Years into the Bush wars, there was some concern about abuse and torture when a set of horrific photos taught us something about Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition flights, secret prisons, and the Geneva Conventions.

But most of America really didn’t get too excited over it all. Even as Powell’s 'highest standards’ were being smashed to pieces, no one in our government ever was held accountable, and a 'few bad apples at the bottom’ took the blame. Oh, yes, the Supreme Court slapped George Bush on the wrist for defying US military and International Law.  Ho hum.

The GOP and Bushco are getting together to make it all legal and proper. And most of America remains unafraid.  They really aren’t paying attention.

• The invasion of Iraq was planned long before 9/11. We’ve said this over and over, but it has to be said again. In January of 1998, 18 neocon members of the Project for a New American Century wrote a letter to then President Clinton urging him to use all means possible to remove Saddam Hussein from power.  The men who signed this letter warned of the dangers of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and promised full support for any military action taken against Iraq.

Bill Clinton turned them down, but not to worry. Patience is a Machiavellian virtue.

Conveniently for them, after the coup of 2000 many of the signatories to this famous letter were appointed to high positions in the Bush administration. Among these were Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Elliot Abrams, William Bennet, John Bolton, James Woolsey, and the present ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.   Also signing the letter was war monger William Kristol, a regular FOX NEWS guest pundit.

Important note:  In September of 2000, - a month before the SC appointed George Bush to the presidency, the PNAC group published an important report titled, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century Participants in preparing the document included Wolfowitz, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Kristol, and 23 other prominent PNAC members.

Rebuilding America’s Defenses contained a series of prophetic statements that should have frightened those who read it. It should have been brought to the attention of the public by a concerned and protective media.  It did not. I was not.

The PNAC plan stated:

A "core mission" for the transformed U.S. military is to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars."

The strategic "transformation" of the U.S. military into an imperialistic force of global domination would require a huge increase in defense spending to "a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, adding $15 billion to $20 billion to total defense spending annually," the PNAC plan said.

"The process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor."

They got their new Pearl Harbor on September 11th. Draw your own conclusions.

The plan also strongly encouraged war with Iran. Are you frightened yet? Most of America is not.

THE REALLY, REALLY BAD NEWS

The really, really bad news is that the corporate news sources are really, really complicit in their selective reporting and will remain that way. If Americans have not noticed much in the past, they’re not about to notice very much more in the immediate future.

Have Americans reacted in alarm to the new legislation that allows for you and me to be labeled 'enemy combatants’ and detained indefinitely without knowing the charges against us? Are people raging against the provision that would give us no access to counsel and would allow us to review any evidence against us? I kid you not. That’s part of the legislation recently passed by our lock-step Senate in their unswerving support of the Bush administrations campaign to keep America in constant fear.

And the really, really bad news is that this administration know how to play the fear card.  There as to be a diversion before the election the sabers are rattling all around us, and it has to be big.

The 'Axis of Evil’ ploy has to pay off for them.   Iraq is imploding and North Korea is playing war games. But neither situation has triggered the terror trap effectively enough to rally support for this failed government. We fear that they have only one card left to play: an attack on Iraq.

But, never mind. Most of America will hardly notice a thing until the media pick up the battle cry as they did on the way to Iraq.

In truth, the best way to predict future behavior is by looking at past behavior, and all the Bushco desperation moves appear to lead to Iran. Distraction and diversion play out well in the Karl Rove election strategy book, and saber rattling is part of the game.
Damn, we hope we’re wrong on this one. But it had to be said.