Reply #4: I suspect this story will kind of disappear or get reinvented with....... [View All]

with a new euphemism to muffle the critics.

Homeland Insecurity:
Phoenix, Chaos, The Enterprise,
and The Politics of Terror In America

Prior to the 11 September terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, two conditions defined American politics. In regard to foreign affairs, the United States was universally recognized as the world's only super power. And today that condition remains unchanged: no other nation comes close to matching America's military might.

But domestic politics was defined by doubts about the legitimacy of the Bush Administration. Al Gore had won the popular vote by an overwhelming majority, and Bush had acquired his presidential powers through a combination of nepotism and voter fraud in Florida, blatant media bias, and a judicial coup d'etat by the right wing of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Before the terror attacks, the stench of venality clung to Bush like cigarette smoke and stale beer after a night of bar hopping. Since the attacks, his standing in the polls has nearly doubled, and there's been no more talk of an oil crunch, or the ailing economy, or of the looting of pensions plans down ten to twenty percent, or of looting of Social Security and Medicare to pay for the war of revenge, or of Republicans losing Congress in 2002.

This second, overarching condition--the inherent illegitimacy of the Bush Administration--must be remembered when considering how the apocalyptic events of 11 September changed the domestic political landscape. Symbolically, they wiped the slate clean. The U.S. remains the most powerful nation in the world, but Bush's legitimacy is no longer an issue. As a result, all the moral and psychological prohibitions on the reactionary right have been lifted, and all the anger and frustrations it cultivated during the Vietnam War, and the Carter and Clinton Administrations, is poised to be unleashed under the aegis of counter-terrorism, not only on the usual suspects--foreign enemies sitting on vast oil reserves, suspected terrorists, and domestic dissidents--but on the unwitting, flag-waving American public as well.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/homeland1.html