%8 Found: WMD

Blogcritics.org: Found: WMD: "Flash! We finally discovered those WMD! The cache included:

...100 explosives, including 60 fully functional pipe bombs, as well as briefcase bombs, land mine components, deto

h! We finally discovered those WMD! The cache included:

...100 explosives, including 60 fully functional pipe bombs, as well as briefcase bombs, land mine components, detonation cord, trip wire, and binary explosives; machine guns and other illegal weapons; some 500,000 rounds of ammunition; a stockpile of chemical agents, including a large quantity of sodium cyanide and acids such as hydrochloric, nitric and acetic acids...

Oh, wait.

Forget it.

That stuff wasn't discovered in Iraq. It was discovered in Tyler, Texas, and it was possessed by right-wing extremists.

Bo-ring!

How much of a threat could chemical weapons be to U.S. residents if these weapons are being held by terrorists within the borders of the U.S.? Clearly, balsa-wood toy gliders in Iraq pose a much greater threat to you and me.

Please, can't we have another story about how we discovered WMD in Iraq, followed by the inevitable retraction? Those are ever so much fun, and the case for the invasion of Iraq, which has killed over 400 Americans and maimed 11,000, gets stronger and stronger with each phantom WMD discovery.

Anyway, the story we're not hearing all that much about is that cyanide-bomb plot, which involves real, actual terrorists and real, actual cyanide that could have killed real, actual American people.

Of course, the problem is that these terrorists aren't the kind that the casting agents at the Bush Administration and the media companies are looking for these days. Wrong type.

For one thing, they worship Jesus Christ, not a "demon-obsessed pedophile", as the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention described Mohammed.

And the President is a card-carrying member of the Jesus fan club, and so is Attorney General John "No King But Jesus" Ashcroft, so it may be difficult for them to draw attention to misguided Christian soldiers. And the press is similarly uneasy about the whole non-brown/non-Muslim threat.

David Neiwert, who won a National Press Club Award for his reporting on domestic terrorism, wishes the threat at home would get a little more attention:

...Frederick Clarkson reported in Salon last month that the DoJ took unusual steps to keep the trial of domestic terrorist Clayton Waagner -- who'd tried to "piggyback" himself on the anthrax terrorist by mailing death-threat letters stuffed with white powder to abortion clinics -- a low-profile case. Likewise, there have been multiple other cases of domestic terrorism in the past year that have failed to receive significant attention.

The fact that a pathology in the press is a primary factor here should not be understated. I've struggled hard and long against the problem of the mainstream media's blinders when it comes to the significance of the extremist right and its activities [and the fact that I now work independently suggests my solution to date]. As Chip Berlet points out in the Clarkson piece:

"Once somebody claims a religious motivation for an act of terrorism," he said, "most people, including reporters and editors, become unglued." If Waagner had been a self-identified Muslim terrorist instead of a Christian terrorist, Berlet observed, "he'd have been lynched by now." Indeed, while news reports invariably note that he is a self-described terrorist, and dutifully quote him as saying so, they also studiously avoid use of the word "Christian."


"The notion of Christian terrorists is a place people don't want to go," Glazier agreed. "And the notion of there being more than one Christian terrorist is a place where people also don't want to go."

Reporters and editors often "fear to offend," added Berlet. "But if it's fair to say if we can see the religious motivations in the Taliban, we ought to be able to see them in Waagner or Eric Rudolph." He notes that although Waagner and his associates in the Army of God "represent a tiny fraction of the wider Christian right, people don't know how to make sense of it." And reporters, he says, "walk away from it."

Though Waagner's crimes fiercely exploited the fears created by 9/11, Berlet says the press has tended to diminish the crimes. For example, he says, most of the stories use the term "anthrax hoax" to describe Waagner's crimes. But "just because a terrorist threat turns out to be a hoax does not mean that it has no effect."

Of course, Neiwert doesn't have as harsh a view of Ashcroft's Jesus freakiness as I do, possibly because he isn't a former Jesus freak like me.

Neiwert:

A number of observers writing about the Tyler case -- notably The Black Commentator and The Intelligence Squad -- have essentially concluded that "John Ashcroft isn't going to make a big deal out of nailing these guys" for one primary reason: "they are essentially a more extreme version of Ashcroft himself." That is: "The Bush men conceal the existence [of] terrorists, as if embarrassed by their own kind."

I can't argue entirely against this conclusion, except to note that the evidence in its favor is not wholly conclusive, and there is evidence contrary to it. If this were the case, would Ashcroft have prominently invoked the federal hate-crimes law in pursuing the notorious case of Darrell David Rice? Wouldn't he have pulled the plug on the FBI's reasonably sound pursuit of domestic terrorism, as described in that Post story?

More to the point, however, is that it is in essence an ad hominem argument that elides the core policy questions about this failure, and in a way lets Aschcroft and Co. off the hook: It explains away the failure to adequately confront domestic terrorism by arguing that Ashcroft and Bush are bad men of poor character. It may be emotionally satisfying to reach that conclusion, but it is not an argument.

It's more important, perhaps, to keep in mind the political dimensions that come into play here. There are, in fact, some fairly obvious political reasons why the Bush administration might not want to confront domestic terrorism as a significant component of the "war on terror".

A few weeks ago, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! radio program tackled the Tyler case. She had on an impressive collection of guests, including Robert Riggs, the chief on-air reporter for the Dallas TV station, CBS-11, that originally broke the significant dimensions of the Tyler case; Brit Featherston [his name is misspelled on the transcript], Assistant U.S. Attorney in Texas; and Robert Jensen, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Jensen had the most telling comment on the case:

I think the reason for that, if I were to speculate -- not being in the brain of John Ashcroft -- is that cases like this -- of domestic terrorism, especially when they involve white supremacist and conservative Christian groups, don't have any political value for an administration, especially this particular administration. Therefore, why -- if one were going to be crass and cynical, why Would they highlight this?

On the other hand, foreign terrorism and things connected to Arab, South Asian and Muslim groups, well those have value because they can be used to whip up support for military interventions, which this administration is very keen on.

Think, if you will, about the different kinds of terror at work here. The war against international terror plays out on a global stage, and as it's been waged so far by this administration, in remote and exotic locales. When Bush invokes the "war on terror," it revolves around images of Arab fanatics and desert combat. It's far removed from our daily realities -- except, of course, for the coffins coming home on military transports, images of which are forbidden to the press.

Politics and motivations aside, a very strong case can be made that the government and the media are ignoring the threat of domestic terrorism in a way that makes everyone in the United States less safe. Neiwert, who knows what he's talking about, makes this case very well. Much more (with many informative links) in his excellent piece here.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003_12_28_dneiwert_archive.html#107257032555368697