Terror, Terror, Terror: Chertoff's "Gut Feeling" and the Old Shell Game

"We have to fight them in Iraq, so that we won't have to fight them over here," say Bush and every one of his supporters in order to justify the war in Iraq.

Well that argument appears to no longer be operative. Because according to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's most recent gut feeling, Al Qaeda – who wasn't in Iraq until we got there – is coming.

Well, OK. Chertoff doesn't have any evidence of this. And shouting "terror, terror, terror" may be excessive. According to the LA Times, Chertoff said that he was talking "not of a specific threat but of increased vulnerability."

Of course the Bush administration's refusal to implement recommendations in the 9/11 report may have something to do with "increased vulnerability."

So why do they bring this up? Well there are a couple of reasons: Bush's approval rating has sunk to approximate Nixon's; a report to Congress on "progress" in Iraq will show that none has been made; and Congress is again debating how quickly we should get out of Iraq.

For the Bushies the familiar mantra of terror, terror, terror is a preferred topic of conversation. Why are these guys still in power?

CIA "Family Jewels" Don't Tell the Whole Story

The release of hundreds of pages of classified CIA documents to the public recently has exposed a systematic effort by the US government to spy on and suppress political opposition in the US to its policies.

But few in the media have examined the CIA's international role. At the other end of this link, writer Michale Schwartz looks at the CIA's role in terrorist bombings in the 1980s in Lebanon.

Schwartz writes:

The CIA did not just try to assassinate Muhammad Husain Fadlallah. Instead the Agency carbombed his entire neighborhood with an explosion that was felt "miles away in the Chouf Mountains and well out in the Mediterranean." Whether or not the cleric was the perpetrator, the message would be clear to all concerned: attacks on American marines would result in retribution against the whole offending community. It was, in short, an act of state terrorism. Eighty-one people were killed and over 200 wounded in the crowded impoverished Bir El-Abed neighborhood where Fadlallah lived.

In charge of gathering information for the operation, despite warnings that the CIA"s planned retaliation against this individual was probably unwarranted, was current Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Read the full article here...