The Next Casualty: Bill of Rights?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
September 13, 2001
Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor. The comparison is just. The attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, execution and devastation inflicted on the targets.
There may be another similarity. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December 1941 was known to U.S. naval intelligence and to President Roosevelt. On Tuesday, derision at the failure of U.S. intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know anything here. We're watching CNN too." Are we to believe that the $30-billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced nothing in the way of a warning?
In fact, the editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, said he heard three weeks ago that Osama bin Laden, now the prime suspect, planned "very, very big attacks against American interests."
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The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects—the Taliban or Saddam Hussein, who started off as creatures of U.S. intelligence. The target at home will be the Bill of Rights.
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Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. President Bush gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Fla., then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in Barksdale, La., where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of being on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for the U.S. president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office.
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"Freedom," said Bush in Sarasota, "was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all of Tuesday's mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary on economic consequences was informative and sophisticated. Worst hit: the insurance industry. Likely outfall in the short term: higher energy prices, a further drop in global stock markets. Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security trust funds to give more money to the Defense Department.
Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings and America's response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.
Saturday, August 2
Cockburn - Call Him Freakin' Nostradamus
Actor Alan Koss, one of the barflys on Cheers, sent this to me - a September 13, 2001 commentary by Alexander Cockburn. If Cockburn ever gives you a tip on a horse or an NFL team, bet the house on it. His predictions were probably dismissed as being too cynical at the time. I didn't notice. I was too busy freaking out. Today, it's almost as if the administration got some ideas from him. Not his intention, I guarantee.
