Fear and Loathing in Washington DC

“He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy..."
- Abraham Lincoln

In response to a drumhead to exact revenge of the killing of the four Blackwater mercenaries by the citizens of Fallujah, a political decision was made ordering US Marines to commence Operation Vigilant Resolve in April. The city of Fallujah was purged of its 70,000 citizens and American forces in the ensuing month long battle engaged in some of the heaviest urban combat of the war. It was reported that the rules of engagement were changed to allow US snipers to fire on unarmed civilians, including children, as well as firing on clearly marked ambulances in an attempt to inflict maximum damage on the recalcitrant and indigenous population. American casualties in April reached their highest peak with a total of 136 Americans dead, plus another 1214 declared wounded. The commander-in-chief had entered a battle his military officers had warned him not to pursue and it ended with him reversing orders, equally to the objections of his military chiefs of staff when the bodies started pilling up.

Domestically, the US economy was still faltering and deep concerns were emerging throughout the nation about the competency and re-electability of George W. Bush.

To ‘manufacture consent’ for their man in the White House, operatives within the federal government in the eighteen months preceding the 2004 presidential election, engaged in a remarkable campaign to instil both fear and terror into the American people. Tom Ridge, then Homeland Security Secretary, stated that he,

[was] never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

In a review of the 2004 election, Joshua Marshall in Time magazine (2006) reported that the terror warnings became synchronous with major societal and political events.

Warnings of terror attacks over the Christmas 2003 holidays, warnings over summer terror attacks at the 2004 political conventions, then a whole slew of warnings of terror attacks to disrupt the election itself. Even the timing of the alerts seemed to fall with odd regularity right on the heels of major political events. One of Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's terror warnings came two days after John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate; another came three days after the end of the Democratic convention.

The severity of this now confirmed internal policy only adds to the growing writ of crimes instituted by the Bush junta to manipulate and inject public fear for political advantages (the definition of terrorism). Apparently when swarthy unshaven foreigners engage in this behaviour a two trillion dollar war without end can be justified, but when public officials sworn to uphold the American constitution do otherwise, it’s a non-story.

When then Democratic Party presidential candidate Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) questioned the timing of these terror alerts, not only was he attacked by Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge, but he was lambasted by his own party in the likes of that ‘ultimate loser’ John Kerry and the spineless glitterati of the punditry class, such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon, says this of the Atlantic magazine’s Marc Ambinder,

[He] acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends,... but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.

The corruption amongst the mainstream news media and both Democrats and Republicans is respectively beyond the scale of even Pravda and that of Latin Americian banana republics. Democracy in America (or the pretense of it) simply ceased to exist in any meaningful manner at this historic juncture.