I'm deeply concerned about the succession of what are being propped up as
victories in the war on terror, and sold to us that way in the MSM. I awoke this morning to news that a group of black muslims had been arrested on a range of concpiracy charges surrounding a supposed plot to blow up the Sears tower. Why should that bother us?
Well, for one thing, it's another installment in this unelected administration's campaign to insinuate together groups with little or no actual affiliation. Black Muslims have only tenuous connnections to the Pan-Islamic world. But, hey, the word
Muslim is in their name, so the administration knows that they can spoon-feed a story labeling a group of black Muslims terrorists, and most Americans won't know the difference, any more than they know that there's a difference between the separate, distinct groups al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq.
The administration feeds the insinuation to the press, and CNN reads the press release as though it is fact. And Hey, presto!, as Vonnegut says, it's the "truth." Wlecome to our virtualized reality. Hussein bombed us on 9/11 -- even Wolf Blitzer had to be told, by Helen Thomas, bless her truth=seeking soul -- that iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. But most of America swallowed that pill a long time ago.
But I'm getting off-track. What has me concerned, apart from the above insinuation campaign, is the timing of these apparent victories in the so-called war on terror. The military has known where al Zarqawi was for a long, long time. They have been instrumental in making him seem like a powerful, dangerous leader within al Qaeda, when he was, in fact, a crazy leading a smallish group of crazied who called themselves al Qaeda in Iraq.
When Bush needed a bounce, and the Repugs needed America to fear terrorism once more, in time for elections, things just magically started to work out:
* Zarqawi is taken out
* A supposed terror plot to hit NYC subways with cyanide gas is uncovered (never mind that terrorism experts say the claim is ridiculous, CNN, "the most trusted name in news," is reporting the press release as though it's all factual)
* Supposed terror plot in Miami foiled
* And now, black Muslims arrested in plan to take down a noted tower in Chicago
Bullshit. This is transparent, and it is politically timed. And despite some reporters getting Alberto Gonzales to admit that the "plot" was uncovered because the government had an agent inside who had inflitrated the group, and depite the fact that said group appears to have had no training or experience in terrorist tactics, and despite the fact that it appears that said government inflitrater actually worked to sell the black Muslims the materials they would have needed to carry out such an attack, I watched CNN gulp the whole thing down this morning, hook, line, and sinker.
A few well-timed moves, and CNN has Gerry Willis on advising us to keep an eye out for suspicious packages and abandoned backpacks, especially on mass transit; that we should be afraid, very afraid; that we should not arrive early to events, so that we may avoid bombing or what have you.
Screw you, CNN. Screw you for your Pavlovian return to whipping up a frenzy of fear in the viewers who count on you for the news. Screw you for swallowing another press release, hook, line, and sinker. Screw you for repeating the press releases and reporting the neocons' spin as though it is the truth.
We're in serious trouble here. Because if this is all it takes to get Americans scared, there is little hope that the majority of Americans will ever learn the truth.