The fear factor to promote war and trample the truth
By Tom Turnipseed

In egregious efforts to divert media attention from relevant revelations of foreknowledge of the 9/11/01 attacks, the Bush administration appears to be forcing the fear factor on the American people. To counter the concerns produced by 9/11/01 and rapidly evolving "who knew what when" evidence, the administration is seizing the headlines and lead stories on television in a shameless show of constant and conveniently contrived newspeak. Evidence is emerging from sources in South Carolina that a unit of the South Carolina National Guard was suddenly informed in July of 2001 to prepare for a mobilization exercise to be held on September 14, 2001.

The most secretive administration in United States' history has been relentlessly releasing fearful warnings of new attacks to come, along with grandiose plans for a humongous "homeland security" agency, with 170,000 employees and a $37 billion dollar budget, to be run out of the White House. Rather than allow the public to learn about critical information surrounding the events that led us into the "war on terrorism", the arm-chair soldiers of the Bush administration are selling the fear factor to cover their butts and launch the United States into a "first strike" war with Iraq. People are coming forward with alarming accounts of activities that beg us to answer the question of "who knew what when", but such reports are being deliberately diminished in news coverage by the Bush propaganda machine as it usurps the truth from the public.

After reading an article I wrote last week titled "A Crisis of Confidence In U.S. Leadership" a former member of the 1/118th Infantry Battalion of the South Carolina National Guard told me: "My unit reported for drill in July 2001 and we were suddenly and unexpectedly informed that all activities planned for the next two months would be suspended in order to prepare for a mobilization exercise to be held on September 14, 2001. We worked diligently for two weekends and even came in on an unscheduled day in August to prepare for the exercise. By the end of August all we needed was a phone call, which we were told to expect, and we could hop into a fully prepared convoy with our bags and equipment packed." Such indicators of a coming crisis before 9/11/01 are increasing.

After meeting in closed sessions, Congressional investigators like Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Bob Graham, D-Fla. report they are getting "significant numbers of people" from inside the government with more information about intelligence failures relating to the 9/11/01 terrorists attacks. Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, who is the senior Republican on the Committee, said that intelligence failures had now reached into the super-secret National Security Agency. The comments of the Senators were buried on the inner pages of newspapers by the latest headline-grabbing White-House-generated-terror-scare. The terror warriors at the White House seized the headlines on June 9 and 10, 2002 with a frightening story about a terrorist arrested back on May 8, 2002 in Chicago, who was said to be involved in a "dirty bomb, nuclear attack" plan against targets in the United States.

The alleged nuclear threat has dominated the news for most of the week and has raised the U.S. public's fear factor and "us against them" war mentality to the max. This imminent nuclear peril was supposedly based on information gathered from al-Qaeda-Deep-Throat, Abu Zubaydah, a mysterious former associate of Osama bin Laden who was captured in March in Pakistan and is being held incommunicado at an "undisclosed, heavily guarded" location where he has been interrogated in "100 sessions" by U.S. intelligence. The would-be dirty-bomb detonator is an Hispanic American named Jose Padilla who converted to the Islamic faith as a prisoner and is now known as Abdullah al-Muhajir.

Media outlets in the United Kingdom report that British and European security officials are highly skeptical of American claims that the alleged "dirty bomb" plotter was preparing to unleash a radioactive attack and reporters in the mainstream media in the United States have implied that the threat was exaggerated as a diversionary tactic by the Bush administration. Padilla is being held incommunicado and without benefit of counsel at a military installation in Charleston, S.C. In a lead editorial headlined "Dirty Bombs and Civil Rights", The New York Times said that the "government's position is unacceptable" because they are labeling an American citizen an "enemy combatant" and are maintaining he is unable to challenge his indefinite detention.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration has backed off from Attorney General Ashcroft's statement on June 10 when he said, "We have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive "dirty bomb". Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz remarked on June 11 that, "I don't think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and(al-Muhajir's) coming in here to plan further deeds".

An inevitable target for the Bush administration's continuing war on terror is Saddam Hussein. On June 10 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld stopped by a U.S. military base in Kuwait on Iraq's border to cheer-lead the troops about striking at the sources of terror in Iraq. To better prepare us for the war against Iraq , the next terror tale from Deep-Throat Zubayah might just be that Jose Padilla spent the night in Saddam Hussein's palace in Baghdad. A new invasion of Iraq could sweep questions about 9/11 even further under the rug and out of the news.

Demands for a far-reaching inquiry into the mounting evidence of "who knew what when" by an independent commission are being expressed by family members of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On June 11, four busloads of victim's family members went to Washington to lobby for such a commission. Ellen Mariani of Derry, N.H., whose husband died on the United flight that crashed into the south tower of the world trade center said, " I want a real investigation. I don't want lip service. I'm angry, and I'm not going away".

Tom Turnipseed is an attorney, writer and political activist in Columbia, South Carolina. http://www.turnipseed.net