Mystery of Underwear Bomber Paul Craig Roberts (Debate)

Mystery of Underwear Bomber

Paul Craig Roberts (Debate)

16 January 2010

The Underwear Bomber case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility.

How realistic is it that Al Qaeda, an organisation that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is the most conspicuous of all? Umar Farouk Mutallab had a one-way ticket, no luggage, no passport, and his father, reportedly a CIA asset, had reported him to the CIA. Does anyone really believe that Al Qaeda would choose as an airliner bomber a person waving every red flag imaginable?

This obvious question has escaped the US media, a collection of salespersons marketing full body scanning machines for airports. Would Al Qaeda, with its extensive knowledge of explosives, have armed Umar with a "bomb" that experts say couldn't have blown up his own seat?

It is difficult to imagine a more gullible population than America's, but do even Americans believe this story?

Since 9/11 the FBI has been busy enticing people, who lack organisational skills, into "terrorist plots" that consist of FBI initiated hot air talk. These ridiculous stings are then taken to trial, and the media fans the flames of fear of "home-grown terrorist plots against Americans."

There is little doubt that those interested in leading the US deeper into a police state and deeper into a "war on terror" are active in adding orchestrated events to whatever real ones real terrorists manage to accomplish. The paucity of real terrorists has caused the US government and its Ministry of Truth to promote the Taleban to terrorist rank. The problem is that these "terrorist acts" are taking place thousands of miles away in lands that the average American cannot find on a map and, thus, lack scare value. To keep the peril alive for Americans, we have the Underwear Bomb Plot.

What will be next? An elaborate head of hair laced with nano-thermite? The "war on terror" is a far greater threat to Americans than all the terrorists in the world combined. This is so because the "war on terror" has destroyed the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Americans are now helpless in the event someone in government decides that some constitutionally protected behaviour, such as free speech, or a contribution to a children's hospital in Gaza constitutes "aiding and abetting terrorism."

On January 5, a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia gave away the most essential protection of liberty by declaring that the US government is not bound by law during war. The ruling absolves Washington from complying with America's own laws and international laws, such as the Geneva Conventions. It makes a mockery of all war crime trials everywhere.

The rationale offered by the court for refusing to uphold the law came from Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who said that America had been pushed by war past "the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust." By "adjust" she means "be set aside" or "be thrown out."

The US Supreme Court has refused to defend both the Constitution and the principle that government is not above the law. Last Dec.14, the Supreme Court refused to review a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia, which dismissed a torture case with the argument that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military's detention of suspected enemy combatants." In other words, neither US nor international laws against torture can be enforced in US courts.

The "war on terror," which is enriching Halliburton, Blackwater (now operating under an alias), and the military/security complex, while denying Americans health care, is running up debt that is a threat to Americans' purchasing power and living standards. The contrast between America's sanctimonious rhetoric and the murder of civilians and torture of prisoners has destroyed America's reputation and caused Europeans as well as Muslims to despise the US. The sacrifice of the Constitution and rule of law to a hyped "terrorist threat" has destroyed the heart and soul of America herself. As a poet wrote, "our world in stupor lies."

Paul Craig Roberts was assistant treasury secretary during President Reagan's first term. He is the author of Supply Side Revolution: An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington

 

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