A Time of Deception

While he was assistant secretary of state, Rand Beers, lied under oath about Colombian narco-terrorists being trained in Afghanistan during a trial brought by Ecuadorians against Dyncorp, the big private mercenary outfit now owned by CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation). Today there's a big article about Rand Beers in the Hartford Courant, front page. He's quit the Bush administration, which never quite saw his perjury as reason to give him the boot, and signed on as John Kerry's security advisor. In doing so, Beers also made some strong statements regarding the war on terrorism. Most specifically, that Homeland Security is underfunded.

Inasmuch as former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair has been pilloried for creative writing, one can't help but think that perhaps someone might take issue with the other, more prevalent, practice of journalism, which is rampant ommission of pertinent facts. My husband pointed this article out to me, thinking that here is an example of a break in the Bush ranks. However, upon reading the name Beers, I immediately thought of not only the testimony in the Dyncorp case, but that other act of lying, the government's insistence that our country's security is being threatened by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. I am finding that one needs to be well armed with much information before reading any articles pertaining to members of the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, the lead story in the Courant, is entitled " New IRS Rules Burden the Working Poor." Is it just fortunate juxta-positioning, that we have an article about a so-called security expert touting the need for greater funding of Homeland Security on the same front page as an article about the IRS cracking down on possible tax malfeasance by the poor? Are we supposed to perhaps think that there's a legitimate reason for squeezing the poor, namely, the financial demands of keeping our country safe from terrorism?

Having Beers on his staff has certainly turned me against John Kerry.

In my estimation, Homeland Security has become the catch phrase for fascism. I can prove this point quite simply, by quoting an op ed piece from today's Wall Street Journal. It's called Jews and Anti-Jews by Ruth Wiese. Just subsitute the word "terrorist" for Jews and you'll understand what I mean. In it she writes:

.".. Hitler used the supposedly illegitimate presence of the Jews as the excuse for tightening control over all the instruments of state. His promise to rid Germany of "the Jewish vermin" ushered in an assault on democratic culture that gained popular support by targeting an unpopular minority. Anti-Semitism camouflaged the Nazi will to power and the imposition of totalitarian controls: In the name of limiting the "influence" of the Jews, Hitler delimited the power of the courts, the media, and the educational system. As a young German named Sebastian Haffner noted at the time, "[the Nazis] provoke a general discussion not about their own existence, but about the right of their victims to exist." Suddenly, the Nazis had everyone debating the question of the Jews rather than questioning the legitimacy of the discriminatory laws against them."

I will even go one further, that in the Beers case, terrorism in our country has come to specifically mean Muslim terrorism. It's not good enough that narco-terrorists are bad people, we need to place them in a Muslim country in order to legitimize them as actual targets of our official anti-terrorism policy. Of course, it was the purpose of Wiese's article to prove Muslim fanatacism. However, the seeds of fanatacism are identical and will grow into poisonous crops no matter where you plant them.

These are all very subtle points, the insincere criticism against the Bush Administration by Beers, the legitimcy of burdening the lowest economic rung with the costs of securing our country against terrorists, the insistence on shifting attention from government prevarication to the need for institutional reform in decidedly un-democratic directions. I think these are themes which repeat themselves over and over again in the media without an anchor person, an editor, or a reporter to explain them.

We are living in a time of deception.

June 17, 2003

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