Metropolis

"Our greatest fear is that terrorists will find a shortcut to their mad ambitions when an outlaw regime supplies them with the technologies to kill on a mass scale."
-- George W. Bush

A legitimate fear indeed from the fearmonger-in-chief. But what about the far more likely scenario: that these short-cuts to mass destruction will be supplied not by outlaw regimes, but by "lawful" states?

What if, say, some hard-line element in the Chinese military slips a bit of chemical fireworks to a ragtag group looking to wreak freelance hell on the West? Or the Taliban's patrons in Pakistan's secret service provide their jihadic soulmates with nuclear ready-mades from that country's bristling atomic arsenal? Or a zealot in India's Hindu extremist government decides to usher in the world-ending age of Kalki with his nation's nukes? What then?

All these scenarios represent a much more imminent possibility than the doom-crying threat now attributed to the brokenbacked regime of Saddam Hussein. Yet we don't hear calls to bomb Beijing or incinerate Islamabad from the sternly pursed lips of President Can't-Chew-a-Pretzel.

Of course, beyond the ever-increasing likelihood of bad juju leaking out of one of America's many business partners, there lies the most realistic possibility of all: that the "shortcut" technology of mass murder will come from the United States itself. Because God knows, America's gilded "guardians" won't be able to stop it. Even the much-censored report on the Sept. 11 attacks issued this month by the U.S. Congress makes clear the horrendous record of lies, laxity and criminal negligence that constituted the response of the United States' $30 billion security apparatus to the red-flag warnings before the terrorist assault.

If the apparatchiks couldn't stop a massive attack in broad daylight by 19 marked men -- we now know that most of them had been rumbled by various intelligence services, and two were even roommates of an FBI informant -- how can we possibly expect them to prevent some far more obscure but equally deadly threat: say, a disaffected player in the depths of America's gargantuan military complex shuffling some atrocious whizbangery to a well-heeled foreign terrorist? Or to a shifty middleman willing to buy -- and sell -- with no questions asked?

No, the genie is long gone from the bottle in regard to "shortcut technologies." They are out there, in endlessly mutable forms, with an almost infinite range of possibilities for their sale, transfer and deadly application in the "war against civilization." Of course, it was "civilization" that developed these technologies and loosed them on the world in the first place. They were expressly designed -- by the "civilized" world -- to kill large numbers of people as quickly and indiscriminately as possible: the precise strategy followed by the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Even now, avatars of civilization like Donald Rumsfeld are working with billions of secret dollars in secret labs to develop ever-more deadly weapons for secret armies: fearsome new weapons of mass destruction, "precision" ordnance to incinerate and obliterate human matter without mercy -- and sci-fi torture implements to control "unruly" crowds with blistering rays that induce illness, boil skin, scramble brains and destroy nerves.

And all of these weapons can be directed against anyone on earth -- including U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil -- at the unchecked, unchallengeable order of civilization's supreme leader, George W. Bush, who has now openly claimed this power for himself, The Associated Press reports. This chilling announcement was merely the public unveiling of a secret presidential directive issued a few weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, and first noted here in November 2001. As we said then, Bush's license to kill is deliberately vague. The definition of those worthy of death is left entirely up to the president: There is no legislative oversight, no judicial review, no public scrutiny. If he wants you dead, he can have you killed. It's as simple as that.

These assassinations are "legitimate," we're told, because "the Bush administration and al- Qaida together have defined the entire world as a battlefield." Hence any action anywhere -- "targeted killing," kidnapping, torture, imprisonment -- can now be justified as a "military necessity."

The measures taken by these "civilized" men go far beyond those necessary for the adequate defense of the country. They are obviously designed to facilitate a system of military dominance abroad and repression at home, whenever it's deemed necessary. If the Regime actually cared about security, it could simply use the overwhelming powers and resources the government has long possessed.

Instead, Bush blocked billions in bipartisan Congressional funding that would have sent immediate assistance to the real front line against terrorism: the police, fire and emergency services of America's communities. Instead, he budgeted $30 billion for a "Homeland Security" department that doesn't even include the failed security apparatus in its "reforms." At every turn, he undercuts international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation, chemical weapons, landmines, money laundering and arms peddling, while his CIA operatives grease the international drug trade for their hired hands, the Afghan warlords.

These are not the actions of someone whose primary concern is security for his people and peace in the world. But they are no doubt an inspiration for terrorists and "outlaw regimes" everywhere. To be successful, Bush says, to be a "great power," you must squander your nation's treasury on technologies of death and dominance; you must scorn law, embrace corruption, operate in secret; you must demonize your adversaries, strike first, kill their civilians -- and subjugate your own people to the arbitrary will of the leader.