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CounterPunch
September
11, 2002
Donald Rumsfeld:
The Most
Dangerous Man in Washington
by
Alexander Cockburn
At 2.40 PM, September 11, 2001, Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld was commanding his aides to get "best info
fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H."--meaning Saddam
Hussein--"at same time. Not only UBL"--the initials
used to identify Osama bin Laden. "Go massive." Notes
taken by these aides quote him as saying. "Sweep it all
up. Things related and not." We can thank David Martin of
CBS for getting hold of these notes and disclosing them last
Wednesday.
This was our Donald, thinking fast as
he paced about the National Military Command Center, seeking
to turn the attack into a rationale for all sort of unrelated
revenges and settlings of accounts. For Rumsfeld, as for his
boss, as for so many, it was a turning point in his career as
a cabinet member in the Bush II presidency. The year had not
been a happy one for this veteran of the Nixon and Ford eras,
the man who gave Dick Cheney his start in the upper tiers. Rumsfeld
speedily became the target of Pentagon leaks about his abject
failure to take control of the vast Pentagon pork barrel, last
best trough in the US economy.
In the wake of the attacks Rumsfeld swiftly
learned to revel in his role as America's top exponent of bully-boy
bluster. And he's kept it up, running rings around Colin Powell,
whose pals are now leaking stories that Powell may throw in the
towel at the end of Bush's present term.
Small wonder. Rumsfeld has humiliated
Powell, reaching a peak in effrontery when, a few weeks ago,
he contradicted decades-worth of formal US foreign policy and
declared that Israel had every right and every reason to occupy
the West Bank and have settlements there.
The specter of military government here
in the US lurks eternally in the imagination of fearful constitutionalists,
right or left. There's a lot more reason for these fears today,
particularly after the Patriot Act shot through Congress.
Today the FBI can spy on political and
religious meetings even when there's no suspicion that a crime
has been committed. Dissidents can get labelled "domestic
terrorists" and be the target of every form of snooping.
The PATRIOT Act allows "black bag"
searches for every sort of record that might shed light on suspects,
including the books they get out of a library. Computers and
personal papers can be confiscated and not returned even if an
indictment is never lodged against the suspect. Such secret searches
can take place even in cases unrelated to terrorism.
The Justice Department argued in two
federal cases that the president has the power to indefinitely
detain without any charges any person, including any U.S. citizen,
designated as an "enemy combatant." Furthermore the
administration argues that the president's conduct of the war
on terrorism can't be challenged and that civilian courts have
no authority over the detentions.
The Justice Department argues that people
designated "enemy combatants," can be put behind bars,
held incommunicado and denied counsel. If the detainee does get
a lawyer, their conversations can be bugged.
In such manner we are saying goodbye
to the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendments.
Back to Rumsfeld. The Defense Secretary
is currently trying to get the Pentagon greater authority to
carry out covert ops. He also wants Congress to agree to have
a new undersecretary of defense, responsible for all intelligence
matters.
Now blend these proposals in with the
erosions of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the US military
to have any role in domestic law enforcement. Shake the blender
vigorously and you have the Rumsfeld cocktail, with an Ashcroft
cherry. A defense under-secretary may soon b able to target YOU,
(or the antiwar couple in the apartment next door), bug your
phone and computer, burglarize the place, grab you, stick you
in prison and let you rot.
All legally. That's what we call military
government, the way we teach the Latin American officers mustered
for training at Fort Benning to do things in their countries,
plus hanging electrodes on the testicles and nipples of those
slow to confide who their teammates were in the anti-war group
mentioned above. Remember, there's a strong lobby here for torture
too.
Try holding a placard up, when George
Bush is driving by. Kevin O'Neill had a good column last Thursday
in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette describing what happened when
demonstrators against President Bush being herded inside a fence
at Neville Island for his Labor Day visit.
"Police called this enclosure the
designated free-speech area, though anyone who had signs praising
the president was evidently OK to line the island's main street
for the motorcade.
"The mini-Guantanamo on the Ohio
was set up strictly for security reasons, of course. Those who
pose a genuine threat to the president are expected to carry
signs identifying themselves as such, as a courtesy. Hence the
erection of the Not-OK Corral.
"Bill Neel of Butler just doesn't
get it, though. He's 65 and can remember a time when our entire
country was a free-speech zone. So when he refused to get inside
the fence with his sign, he was arrested, cuffed and detained
in the best place for inflammatory rhetoric, the fire hall.
"Neel's confiscated sign said, "The
Bushes must truly love the poor -- they've made so many of us."
For holding this contrary opinion in the censored speech zone,
Neel was given a summons for disorderly conduct."
Today's Features
Anis Shivani
How to
Survive in Ashcroft's America
Pierre Tristam
Abusing
the Sorrows of 9/11
David Krieger
Resisting
Bush's
"Relentless War"
Jerre Skog
9/11 One
Year Later:
Remember the Others, Too
Dave Marsh
Illegal
Music?
A Sampler's Delight
Norm Dixon
How the
Warmongers Have Exploited 9/11
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- War Talk As White Noise:
Anything to Get Harken and Halliburton
Out of the Headlines;
- First Hilliard, Then
McKinney: Jewish
Groups Target Blacks Brave Enough to Talk About Justice in the
Middle East; Intimidation
is the Name of the Game; Smearing
"Insane" McKinney As Muslims' Pawn;
- The Missing Terrorist?
Calling Scotland
Yard: "Where's Atif?"
- They Never Booed Dylan!:
Tape Transcript Shows
Famed Newport Folkfest Dissing of Electric Dylan Not True. The Catcalls were for Peter
Yarrow!
- New Shame from the Liffey
Shrike
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