richard
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Will we become a police state if there's another attack?
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Feb 26 01:53 UTC 2006 |
From the San Antonio Express:
"The greatest threat to America's democracy is not terrorism but
governmental secrecy, said Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob
Woodward, whose reporting almost 35 years ago pierced the veil of
secrecy behind Richard Nixon's presidency.
Although a massive, coordinated attack on the country, making 9-11 look
like a "footnote," is still possible, the nation faces a greater threat
from the federal government's current secrecy drive, Woodward told an
audience in San Antonio on Tuesday.
"Democracies die in darkness," Woodward told the 500-person crowd of
mostly business and community leaders as part of Trinity University's
policy maker breakfast series, a 25-year tradition.
The Bush administration, which gave Woodward remarkable access for his
two books on the administration's war on terror, "Bush At War," in 2002
and "Plan of Attack," in 2004, has cloaked its decision-making in "an
immense amount of secrecy," he said, "too much, in my view."
The administration says it needs to work in secret because of the
nature of the Iraqi war and the surprise tactics terrorists rely on.
Having a year to work on his latest book, about Bush's decision to
launch the Iraqi war, he said, allowed him to gather an immense amount
of information from a variety of sources.
He then wrote a 21-page memo to the president, outlining what he had
learned.
Jokes aside about whether the president reads 21-page memos, Woodward
said he was given 31/2 hours to interview the president. He called it
the longest interview a sitting president has ever granted.
The resulting book, "Plan of Attack," tries to offer "understanding and
perspective, not to condemn, or endorse, but to explain" what happened
during the 16 months he said it took Bush to decide to go to war.
"And make no mistake, it was Bush's decision," he said, although he
called Vice President Dick Cheney "a steam rolling force" in the
process.
At the beginning of his talk, Woodward asked for a show of hands from
those who voted for Bush in 2004.
Most in the crowd raised their hands.
But fewer hands were raised when he asked if attendees believed in
Bush's tax cuts, and whether they agreed with Bush's decision to launch
a secret wiretap program to listen in an unknown number of domestic
communications to overseas telephones without court-issued warrants.
When he asked the crowd if it believed, with the benefit of hindsight,
if going to war was "necessary and wise," fewer than half the room's
hands went up.
Woodward said the possibility of "the Mideast imploding," cannot be
dismissed, and that his darkest fear, shared by some in the
intelligence community, is that terrorists are waiting until "multiple,
high-stakes attacks" can be launched on U.S. cities and targets.
He said, "9-11 will be a footnote, but it could happen, and if it does,
we will become a police state."
Even as he scolded the media's tendency to prophesy the future,
Woodward offered his prediction for the 2008 presidential race.
By all indications, he said, Democrat Hillary Clinton is running.
He noted that Republicans have a long track record of nominating "old
war horses."
Given that, and depending on how things in Iraq proceed, "You're going
to think I'm crazy, but you heard it here first. I think they could
nominate Dick Cheney."
Woodward's views are shared by many that we are heading into dark
times. One more attack and we could well end up essentially a police
state, and with the hard line right wing more firmly entrenched than
ever. One more attack, and Cheney, the dark lord of the republican
right, gets elected president with the willingness to nuke every one of
our enemies.
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