Do Folks Really Believe In This "TERRORISM" Bogeyman?

[Orwellian_Ghost]

A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force.----- William Blum

"The War On Terror" meme is just endless propaganda. It's a Big Lie.

[arcadian]

1. It allows U.S. politicians to put warfare in American's front yards.

Scare the shit out of people and corral them even further.

[spanone]

2. well, 911 DID happen.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

4. Ouch

That the CIA is a terrorist organization is clear from its record of terrorist activities (sometimes called "counterinsurgency" or "low intensity conflict"). Here are just a few examples:

During the Vietnam war the CIA conducted Operation Phoenix, an assassination program. The goal was not only to eliminate those Vietnamese who might oppose the U.S. (which in practice meant most of the population of Vietnam) but also to terrorize the entire population of South Vietnam and to suppress opposition to the occupying U.S. forces. Over 20,000 Vietnamese were murdered, often at random.

The CIA also recruited a mercenary army in Vietnam (financed by profits from the CIA's heroin smuggling), particularly from among the Hmong villagers, which was used to terrorize the civilian population and to prevent them from assisting the Viet Cong.

The CIA organized and financed (with the profits from its cocaine smuggling) the activities of the Contras in Nicaragua, who murdered tens of thousands of civilians, and tried to disrupt the economy, in an attempt to destabilize the legitimate Sandinista government. (For this the U.S. was condemned in the World Court for engaging in international terrorism, and it rejected a U.N. security council resolution calling upon it to observe international law.)

The CIA planned and organized the military coup d'etat in 1973 in Chile which overthrew the legitimately elected government of Salvador Allende (because he would not implement economic policies designed in Washington to favor American corporations doing business in Chile) and brought to power the regime of General Augusto Pinochet; this regime abducted, tortured and killed thousands of Chilean citizens in an attempt to suppress opposition.

<snip>

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/cia_terr.html

[tanngrisnir3]

33. Which has what to do with 9/11 happening?

[Bandit]

9. So did Cancer but I don't see the same effort to eliminate it.

How many people died from Cancer since 9-11 compared to how many died from terrorist in the same period. Where should our resources really go? How many people were assaulted by street thugs since 9-11 compard to how many were assaulted by terrorists? Let's try and keep things in perspective shall we?

[stuntcat]

11. for reals

That was cool what the president said about cancer last night. If we TOOK CARE of more people who are DYING (like the 40,000 who will die of starvation today) then people wouldn't want to bomb us with airplanes.. it wouldn't look like they were striking the Superpower, their killing wouldn't encourage kids in poor countries to dance in the streets the way they did 911.

[stuntcat]

10. yah

the Retardicans saying "9/11, 9/11, TERROR TERROR" to justify all their crap IS reaallllyyyyy tired. But 9/11 did suck.
I have personal diaries saved on my computer, the essays my friends in NY wrote about how scary that day was, spending the day walking uptown with no idea what happened.
I live 4 miles from the Pentagon and I felt the boom when the plane hit that day.

People can plot for months and then SURPRISE us with mass killings in our cities.
We have CIA and FBI and all that but apparently they can't spy on 7 billion people.
Maybe nothing like that will ever happen again, that's what I hope anyway, but out there in the world innocent people are being blown up by homemade bombs every day. Maybe our borders keep us safe.

[roody]

15. And who did it? I missed the trial.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

42. Al Quaeda, of course.

I'm sorry, but I have little patience with conspiracy theorists.

Zacarias Moussaoui was tried, convicted and is currently in jail.

Most of the other people involved in 9/11 are either dead or on the run, which makes trying them impossible.

[Greyhound]

19. And what has our reaction to it done but to make further attacks more likely? n/t

[treestar]

30. Even with that, most people are unlikely to be terrorist victims

The odds are extremely low, even for never-married women over 35. :rofl:

I have to say as I sit here today I don't feel all that likely to be attached by terrorists and have even since 911 not modified any behavior based on that - at most I am concerned walking in a dark parking lot in the dark, of criminal attacks.

And I don't think the freepers and rabid right wingers are really afraid either. They are thinking they can get other people afraid and use that fear to gain power.

[mmonk]

3. It greases the wheel of those that rule us in the military industrial complex.

Profits and dividends to the powerful at our expense and the Constitution.

[bigtree]

5. they've put Americans in the position of reacting to the effects of their own militarism

. . . and regard the flailing of our military at those ghosts as a 'war on terror'.

[ejpoeta]

6. it's like the war on drugs.... it's an abstract term

vague and not entirely graspable. it makes it easier to stretch it out as long as you want.

[stray cat]

7. The people dead from terrorist events seem pretty dead

I agree alot of Bush's rhetoric was propaganda but there really are people who want to do harm to groups of other people

[ixion]

8. yes, and one of the largest, if not THE largest, is the US government

don't think for a second that the US government's interests are benign and for the common good.

[TBF]

12. Yes, there are. Sometimes it's hard identifying who they are.

911 could've been an inside job. K&R

[JohnyCanuck]

13. Well certainly not everyone

This War on Terrorism is Bogus

By Michael Meacher (British MP and a former Environment Minister in Tony Blair's Labour Government)

Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq

[2Design]

14. Terror is what has been happening since 911 - baggage checks

while letting the real culprits go - flying the family out of the country

[JohnyCanuck]

16. Of course it always helps

to have a bogeyman hiding under the bed when a government wants to impose more totalitarian type surveillance and control of an outwardly democratic society. And if there aren't enough real bogeymen around, one can always take appropriate steps to create some more.

Rimington is right. This is a recipe for creating terrorists

New Labour's sins in the war on terror are catching up with it, but ministers want to shift blame on to the Muslim community

I never imagined I would say this, but Stella Rimington is right. The former head of MI5 who made her career running the security service's dirtiest operations in the 1980s, against the miners' union and the IRA, has warned that the government has given terrorists the chance to find "greater justification" by making people feel they "live in fear and under a police state". Naturally, ministers described her remarks as nonsense and accused her of playing "into the hands of our enemies".

But the damage is done. To have the woman once hailed as Britain's Queen of Spies accusing the government of recklessly counter-productive authoritarianism carries a special weight - and incidentally turns the traditional relationship between Labour and the secret state on its head. Rimington went further, denouncing the US for Guantánamo and torture, but reverted to type by insisting MI5 "doesn't do that".

No, as we now know, it contracts out that job to others, while its officers stand by promising to arrange "more lenient treatment" if the victim co-operates. In case after case, British collaboration in the hidden crimes of the war on terror has now been laid bare. But none more so than in the seven-year ordeal of Binyam Mohamed, the last British resident in Guantánamo, the details of whose CIA kidnapping and US-orchestrated torture across four countries the foreign secretary, David Miliband, has twisted and turned to prevent being made public.

SNIP

But New Labour's sins in the war on terror are catching up with it. And it's not only officials, but politicians, up to and including Tony Blair, who could be in the legal frame as a result of British collusion with torture, "extraordinary rendition" - illegal abductions to third countries - and "ghost" prisons.

No doubt a battery of state powers and immunities will be deployed to head off such humiliation. But as this week's chilling International Commission of Jurists' report on the counter-terrorist free-for-all put it: "The framework of international law is being undermined ... the US and UK have led that undermining."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/19/terrorism-policy-labour-stella-rimington

[TBF]

17. Yes, it does. When you do a little research on OBL you realize who

created (and funded) him in the first place, and rest becomes crystal clear.

[LeftinOH]

18. The 'War on Terra' has been a train wreck..but terrorism is *for reals*-

and whether the origin is domestic (i.e. McVey), or non-domestic (9-11), or random-psycho-with-a-gun (Virginia Tech)...people are dead and lives are destroyed because someone wasn't doing their job.

[Greyhound]

20. This nation was founded by terrorists. n/t

[Mari333]

21. didnt believe it when bush said it, dont believe it now

its been total bullshit from day one. total horsehockey.
just follow the money and you see the real reasons for the propaganda.

[tk2kewl]

22. My dad got me a t-shirt with that pic on it.

[progressoid]

23. I saw a kid wearing a T-shirt with that graphic last summer

In South Dakota (he was Native American).

[pnutbutr]

24. to not believe

that there are people in this world who want to kill Americans em mass is ignorant considering the situations our government has been involved in that have served to create hatred toward not just our nation but the people and our way of life as well.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

29. Could you please

put some totals to your statement.

Just take the last 60 years. Compare and contrast.

Number of proven American deaths at the hands of "terrorists" versus number of deaths caused by the American military apparatus.

Still there?

And what's this "our way of life" BS. I thought that goop was for reactionary conservatives to parrot.

[pnutbutr]

31. My statement

was never meant to have totals and had nothing to do with the American military apparatus.

It was a statement meant to convey that those who believe that there is nobody who wants to kill Americans and terrorist threats from those people are nonexistant are ignorant.

Simply put, Bush pissed off the world and there are people in the world who want to kill us because of what he did. That's a pretty easy concept.

Our way of life in no way is a conservative statement. :eyes:

[Orwellian_Ghost]

34. Hydrocarbon energy supplies

Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).

Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.

The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.

<snip>

http://www.globalissues.org/article/441/this-war-on-terrorism-is-bogus

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.

[pnutbutr]

38. and that invalidates what I said how?

Bush went in and fucked them, they're pissed and now want to kill us.

[RufusTFirefly]

25. If you haven't seen it, Google the BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares"

There are a number of options for watching it online.

The Power of Nightmares

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

[newtothegame]

26. I would agree, but what exactly was that in Mumbai a few months ago?

Michael Moore's "There is no terrorist threat" doesn't exactly seem to ring true when, indeed, terrorists attacked Mumbai. The attackers weren't from there, they didn't announce they were attacking, and they solely targeted civilians. What exactly would you call that?

ed for sp

[CJCRANE]

40. Giuliani was in India

four days before the attacks promoting his security consultancy...

And apparently there were warnings about the Mumbai attacks (just as there were before 9/11).

Terrorism exists but you need to look at who it benefits.

[cynatnite]

27. Terrorists are real, but 'war on terror' is justification to wage war and torture, IMO. n/t

[LanternWaste]

28. I try to maintain...

I try to maintain a healthy skepticism about my own skepticism...

[Initech]

32. Terrorism may be real, but the war on terror is bullshit.

[earth mom]

35. Terra Terra Terra = Fear = Control. That's what it's ALL about.

Al Qaeda is nothing more than an invisible boogeyman the powers that be are using to control the masses. :grr:

[TBF]

36. And confuse the masses as to actual political goals. OG's thread above re

Hydrocarbon energy supplies is quite enlightening.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

37. There is terrorism and probably most of those terrorized have been so by our

own CIA/Black Ops.

[TBF]

39. morning kick n/t

[shadowknows69]

41. I fear we will reap a bitter harvest for the Bush years

Unless President Obama can truly work miracles and get the world to believe that the US has changed its ways and wants peace and cooperation instead of world hegemony. I didn't believe in the boogeyman as Bushco tried to sell it because they, not Osama, were the ones destroying America. I knew September 11th was a direct result of our past foreign policies (assuming it wasn't MIHOP, which is still on the table IMO). President Obama has a long way to go to turn the enemies Bush created into friends or at least a managable threat.