15 February 2006
Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have made headlines in the recent years making bizarre statements that were marginally, if at all, grounded in reality. Cheney, for instance, kept insisting that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda even after all major intelligence agencies, both in the US and elsewhere, had failed to find any evidence to back this up.
But this sort of behaviour is nothing new for the two seasoned Washington power players. They did the same sort of thing some 30 years ago.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called "détente." On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said: "Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world."
But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney - and their cronies - would soon work for and/or run?
Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear.
They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.
The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.
As Dr. Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1980, told the BBC's Adam Curtis for his documentary "The Power of Nightmares":
"They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, 'we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'
"INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.
"CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.
"INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist…
"CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it."
But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.
Rumsfeld and Cheney Revive Their 70's Terror PlaybookThom Hartmann,
Common Dreams, February 13, 2006
Aside from the incredible parallel between Cheney's and Rumsfeld's tactics during the 1970's and today there are many thoughts this article inspires. I will not even go into the gory details - or ruminate over why we once again are allowing the same people to use the same deception on us. Nor will I try to go into why they are doing it - it worked before, they have every reason to try it again.
What interests me is what we as citizens can do in order to stop this sort of unscrupulous politicians from altering the state policy in such ways. One thing I have long been an advocate for is a law expressly making it a crime for any public servant to lie in matters concerning his public duties. Exceptions, of course, must be allowed in some cases - for instance, in case of a police officer deceiving a suspect still at large. But otherwise all those who while in their official capacity make statements they know to be false must be considered lawbreakers and charged accordingly.
In short, we must send a clear message to all our public servants - we gave you a job, and lying to us is not part of the job description.