No Holds Barred



No surprises here



Last week 60 Minutes did a “breaking news” special on how former U.S. terrorism czar Richard Clarke is coming out publicly, saying Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 and had no ties to Osama Bin Laden or any other “international” terrorists. .

He goes on to accuse Bush of trying to fabricate a case against Iraq and to rally U.S. support behind an attack on Iraq. Clark says Bush deliberately misspoke in phrases that linked Saddam Hussein with terror attacks when the evidence from the National Security Agency, the FBI and the CIA said otherwise.

This is news? The record shows this very column said essentially the same thing 18 months ago, long before the war on Iraq started.



From No Holds Barred (Sept 11, 2002 – Arnprior Weekend News and West Carleton Review)

The bogeyman
Now all we need is a bogeyman!

McCarthy had the Commies - Molosovich had the Albanians, the Croats, and everyone's favorite - the Muslims!

However, even the US realizes it can't take on everyone, so Saddam makes a wonderful target.

Saddam is really not a very nice man. He can't be in a world of cloak and dagger politics. He has no doubt committed atrocities and literally stabbed a few friends in the back.

However he certainly never had anything to do with 9-11.

Is he developing weapons of mass destruction? Perhaps, perhaps not, but so are half the developing world. India and Pakistan already have them, and possess less stable governments than Iraq. Bush just needs someone to direct the anger at - a bogeyman. After all, he can't find Osama!

Now think about this carefully.

The only one who seems to see this dire Saddam threat clearly is George W. Bush.

This is the same foreign affairs guru who is going to fly to Toronto to see the Canadian Government - and thanked Prime Minister Jean Poutine for his support in the last U.S. election.

God or Allah - help us all!



The rational
With hindsight, we now see that even the weapons of mass destruction were little more than empty rhetoric. However, anyone even suggesting that in the media 18 months ago was considered a traitor.

We blindly accept whatever the government feeds us, whenever we are threatened or feel angry. The fact is, this is exactly when the worst abuses by government happen. We see it in Canada too, with Adscam. We didn’t question what the government was doing because of the separatist “threat.”

All the dangerous demagogues and con men see an opportunity to advance their agendas. Unfortunately most media get caught up in the same hype.

From that same article, I directly addressed that issue.



What I am in favour of is stepping back a few inches and looking at this whole issue from a logical and sane perspective.

Terrorists gain their converts by emotional rhetoric and by using inflammatory propaganda. They whip up the emotions of their prospective audience with emotional language. They ask them to suspend their logic and to operate on faith and their emotions.

Are we not using the same kind of propaganda? Are the news media not guilty of exactly the same kind of suspension of reality and caving into the insatiable lust for more and more graphic raw emotion against "the enemy"?

Anyone who questions this torrent of emotional rhetoric is branded a traitor. Does this all sound hauntingly familiar?



Who benefits?
The ones who have benefited so far are those right wing elements who would have us suspend our civil rights, tighten "security" and halt immigration. Despite this, it is clear we are no safer than one year ago.

It is an old formula that has served dictators and repressive regimes well in the past.

Most people will give up freedom, in order to feel secure. However, they realize too late, that the false security has far too high a price tag.

Here are a few frightening signs of just this kind of fear, where even someone who dares question the government has to be muzzled.



* "For the first time in our polling, almost half of those surveyed said they think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees."

* "The least popular First Amendment right is freedom of the press."

* "More than 40 percent of those polled said newspapers should not be allowed to freely criticize the U.S. military's strategy and performance."

* "More than four in 10 said they would limit the academic freedom of professors and bar criticism of government military."

SOURCE: American Journalism Review, September 2002



Already we are seeing signs of new laws being enacted that could severely limit our freedoms. Ask a legitimate Somali businessman in Ottawa if the so-called security only targets the guilty.



False security
It didn’t turn out to be a Somali businessman – it ended up being Maher Arar. That column was written several months before his arrest. It can’t happen? Well it did, almost exactly as predicted.

Now we find out right from the source that our fears about Bush and the entire campaign on Iraq were also right on target.

The lessons here are that dissenting voices need to be heeded and that those who are willing to give up their freedoms for a sense of security deserve exactly what they get.

They get neither security nor freedom.

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