It doesn't take a
bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI agent who took over
the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told USA Today 16
days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist attacks will be as
high a priority for him as air travel.
It is difficult to imagine
New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowed subway platforms
or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance for a 15-minute subway ride, but
once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth they take absurdity to its logical
conclusion. Buses will be next, although it is even more difficult to imagine
open air bus stops turned into security zones with screeners and gropers
inspecting passengers before they board.
Will taxi passengers be
next? In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US government has been
slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating against the Americans
are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces that the TSA Gestapo
is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and interstates to check
cars for bombs? That 15-minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an
all-day affair.
Indeed, it has already
begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Department
of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, conducted a
counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 just west of Atlanta, Georgia.
Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response), the operation
required all trucks to stop to be screened for bombs. Federal agents used dogs,
screening devices, and a large drive-through bomb detection machine. Imagine
what the delays did to delivery schedules and truckers' bottom
lines.
There are also news
reports of federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray devices that secretly
scan cars and pedestrians.
With such expensive
counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the hard-pressed taxpayers' money
and civil liberties, one would think that bombs were going off all over
America. But, of course, they aren't. There has not been a successful terrorist
act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts doubt the government's
explanation of that event.
Subsequent domestic
terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations in which FBI agents
organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and lead them into
displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act. Once the FBI agent,
pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right words to be
said and captured on his hidden recorder, the "terrorists" are arrested and the
"plot" exposed.
The very fact that the FBI
has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence of real
terrorists.
If Americans were more
thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all the emphasis on
transportation when there are so many soft targets. Shopping centers, for
example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the existence of
Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in shopping malls in
every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than blowing up an
airliner.
Indeed, if terrorists want
to attack air travelers, they never need to board an airplane.
All
they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through the
TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the
targets.
The final proof that there
are no terrorists is that not a single neoconservative or government official
responsible for the Bush regime's invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the
Obama regime's slaughters of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians has been
assassinated. None of these Americans who are responsible for lies, deceptions,
and invasions that have destroyed the lives of countless numbers of Muslims have
any security protection. If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are
certainly capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby,
Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour
of the same day.
I am not advocating that
terrorists assassinate anyone. I am just making the point that if the US was as
overrun with terrorists as empire-building bureaucrats pretend, we would
definitely be experiencing dramatic terrorist acts. The argument is not
believable that a government that was incapable of preventing 9/11 is so
all-knowing that it can prevent assassination of unprotected neocons and
shopping malls from being bombed.
If Al Qaeda was anything
like the organization that the US government claims, it would not be focused on
trivial targets such as passenger airliners. The organization, if it exists,
would be focused on its real enemies. Try to imagine the propaganda value of
terrorists wiping out the neoconservatives in one fell swoop, followed by an
announcement that every member of the federal government down to the lowest GS,
every member of the House and Senate, and every governor was next in line to be
bumped off.
This would be real
terrorism instead of the make-belief stuff associated with shoe bombs that don't
work, underwear bombs that independent experts say could not work, and bottled
water and shampoo bombs that experts say cannot possibly be put together in
airliner lavatories.
Think about it. Would a
terror organization capable of outwitting all 16 US intelligence agencies, all
intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel's Mossad, the National
Security Council, NORAD, air traffic control, the Pentagon, and airport security
four times in one hour put its unrivaled prestige at risk with improbable shoe
bombs, shampoo bombs, and underwear bombs?
After success in
destroying the World Trade Center and blowing up part of the Pentagon, it is an
extraordinary comedown to go after a mere airliner. Would a person who gains
fame by knocking out the world heavyweight boxing champion make himself a
laughing stock by taking lunch money from school boys?
TSA is a far greater
threat to Americans than are terrorists. Pistole has given the finger to US
senators and representatives, state legislators, and the traveling public who
have expressed their views that virtual strip searches and sexual molestation
are too high a price to pay for "security." Indeed, the TSA with its Gestapo
attitude and methods, is succeeding in making Americans more terrified of the
TSA than they are of terrorists.
Make up your own
mind. What terrifies you the most. Terrorists, who in all likelihood you will
never encounter in your lifetime, or the TSA that you will encounter every time
you fly and soon, according to Pistole, every time you take a train, a subway,
or drive in a car or truck?
Before making up your
mind, consider this report from
antiwar.com on November
19: "TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the
enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there, the
detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as
suspected terrorists. . .One sheriff's office said they were already preparing
to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror
suspects."
Who is cowing Americans
into submission, terrorists or the TSA Gestapo?