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Is the Government Exaggerating the Threat of Terror for Political Purposes?


The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security - Janet Napolitano - just told congress that the U.S. might be facing the greatest threat of terrorist attacks since 9/11:

And in some ways, the threat today may be at its most heightened state since the attacks nearly 10 years ago.

We should be afraid ... right?

Well, as I've repeatedly noted, FBI agents and CIA intelligence officials, constitutional law expert professor Jonathan Turley, Time Magazine, Keith Olbermann and the Washington Post have all said that U.S. government officials "were trying to create an atmosphere of fear in which the American people would give them more power".

Indeed, the former Secretary of Homeland Security - Tom Ridge - admits that he was pressured to raise terror alerts to help Bush win reelection.

Given that so many have said that terror warnings have been used for political purposes, is it possible that the current warnings about heightened threats are also politically motivated?

Well, Congress is currently voting on whether or not to renew the Patriot Act.

There is a lot of opposition to renewing the Patriot Act (and see this) and so - if people were going to use terrorism fearmongering for a political purpose - this would be a logical time to use it.

Indeed, fearmongering has been connected with Patriot Act extensions before.

Specifically, in 2006 - only hours after sensors in a U.S. Senate office building detected a nerve agent - key Senators suddenly reversed direction and announced a capitulation to the White House's demands on the renewal and expansion of the Patriot Act.

And when Congress was originally asked to pass the Patriot Act in late 2001, the anthrax attacks which occurred only weeks earlier were falsely blamed on spooky Arabs as a way to scare Congress members into approving the bill. Specifically:
Indeed, many people have questioned whether or not the anthrax was intentionally sent to scare people. For example:
  • Senator Patrick Leahy said:
And I think there are people within our government -- certainly from the source of it -- who know where it came from. [Taps the table to let that settle in] And these people may not have had anything to do with it, but they certainly know where it came from.
  • The American bioweapons expert who actually drafted the current bioweapons law (the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989), who holds a doctorate of law magna cum laude and a Ph.D. in political science, both from Harvard University, and teaches international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, served on
    the Board of Directors of Amnesty International (1988-92) and represented Bosnia-Herzegovina at the World Court, and who "advised the FBI in its initial investigation of the anthrax letters", is convinced that the anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the Patriot Act and the later Military Commissions Act. He has said:

    Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy were holding it up because they realized what this would lead to. The first draft of the PATRIOT Act would have suspended the writ of habeas corpus [which protects citizens from unlawful imprisonment and guarantees due process of law]. Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, come these anthrax attacks.

Remember, the government now admits that the anthrax was made in a government lab by government personnel (although the government's theory about who did it doesn't match the facts).

Whether or not the anthrax was actually mailed as a false flag attack, it is clear that it was used to drum up fear.

The bottom line is that fear of terrorism makes people stupid, and so we should at least question whether the government is selling fear for political purposes.

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