Mar. 26, 2006 - 17:05 MST

FEAR

I've had this article from The Denver Post since February 19, it sits there nagging at me. Written by James Oatman who owns a book and database-packaging firm in Boulder, Colorado. He previously worked for United Press International and Reuters. It is, I think, pertinent and getting more so as time goes by. Here in full:

DUCK AND COVER: THE U.S. CULTURE OF FEAR

"Fifty years ago this month, February 1956: Sitting in Miss Bowen's fifth-grade music class in Park Hill Elementary School, we knew what to do when the klaxon sounded and Miss Bowen called out: "Duck and cover !" We slithered out of our chairs and under the desk, hands covering our heads for protection. I nervously glanced out the window, fully expecting to see a bright flash followed by a mushroom cloud, probably centered over Colfax and Eudora three blocks away. In those days everyone knew were threatened by "the Communists," who might drop a nuclear bomb any day without a warning."

"A couple of years later, patrol leaders in Doc Chapman's Boy Scout Troop 28 met in his living room once a month on Sunday morning. These sessions included the good dentist's paeans to J. Edgar Hoover, erstwhile enemy of "the Communists."

"For as long as I remember, Americans have been threatened by someone plotting to take away our freedom. Mostly it was the Communists about to drop a bomb or maybe meeting in cells in someone's basement. Did those cars parked on Clermont Street in the evening belong to Communists meeting in a cell up the street ? I often wondered."

"In the 60s, of course we had to fight the Communists in Vietnam so we wouldn't have to defend our freedom in california, if not City Park. The Cold War had turned hot."

"In the 1990s, the Communists more or less went away along with the Soviet Union. But a decade later a new threat appeared -- and this one was real: "the terrorists," not fundamentalist Muslims, mind you; these were "terrorists" who could be anywhere, even in line to board a plane, wearing shoe bombs like Richard Reid, or calling your neighbor on a cell phone."

"But now it seems the constant drum-beat of threat and fear, duck and cover, for half-century was drowning out the real threat: the threat from ourselves."

"It turns out that in the United States circa 2006 you can be arrested, put in jail, never charged with a specific act, never allowed to consult a lawyer and never see a judge to protest your innocence. All it takes is the word from President George W. Bush that you are an "enemy combatant" and that may well be the last that anyone hears from you."

"How did Bush know you were an enemy combatant? Well, maybe the National Security Agency tapped your phone or read your e-mail without a warrant, contrary to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. After all, doesn't the unitary executive have the right to do that, no court warrant required ? Just ask the attorney general."

"We have met the enemy, and it's us. It's us so long as we don't write Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar, "Not in the U.S.A. !"

"This isn't a country where we lock up people without a trial or a lawyer -- is it ? It used to be that's what "the Communists" did." Tap our phones, read our e-mail, examine what books we're reading at the library without any review by a court ? Sounds like someone we used to take pride in resisting. Not here does the president decide unilaterally to ignore laws passed by Congress that he doesn't particularly like -- does he ?"

No doubt that Al Qaeda would love to repeat Sept. 11, even though I laugh at the notion that taking off my shoes before boarding a plane at DIA is going to prevent this. No, the shoe routine serves a different purpose: it underscores the sense of fear we're all meant to feel and that's meant to excuse the disregard for the law and the Constitution, the fear that's meant to numb our sensibilities as our individual freedoms fade and finally disappear."

"I have no doubt that when our freedoms finally disappear entirely, it will be at the hands of someone who was elected urging us to duck and cover. Its already begun."

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In today's The Denver Post is an article by Ved Nanda, who is Evans University Professor and director of the International Legal Studies Program at the University of Denver. In his article he reports that Geo. Bush still advocates "preemptive war," although has tempered his line just a wee bit.

Len Ackland, Journalism professor, CU-Boulder; director, Center for Environmental Journalism has an article in The Denver Post today also. Headed "Nukes of the future" that starts out going into the ancient history of Rocky Flats citing headlines in the Post Of March 23, 1951 "There's good news Today: U.S. to build $45 Million A-Plant in Denver."

And he goes on to say, "While the differences between 1951 and 2006 are striking, haunting similarities exist also. The big difference is that today the public has been made aware that Rocky Flats, with its thousands of workers, was a mismanaged nuclear bomb factory producing plutonium bombs used to trigger much more explosive hydrogen bombs. The public knows that secrecy -- in the name of "national security' -- allowed the government and plant operators to hide environmental and other crimes from the public."

Further on he says, "Today despite the fact that the world barely escaped a disastrous nuclear war during the U.S. - Soviet Missile Crisis and despite current bipartisan concern over issues such as nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, most citizens and their journalist "watch-dogs" are leaving nuclear weapons decisions to the "experts" once again." "And once again, similar to 1951, the nation's nuclear establishment is planning to increase the production of nuclear weapons, this time througha benign-sounding effort called the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" program." "Under it, the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore weapons labs are already engaged in head-to-head competition to design new hydrogen bombs by the end of this year. Future warheads would form "a family of modular nuclear weapons," one Department Of Energy task force stated last year.

Seems like the dogs of horror and fear are still on the loose, being whipped into frantic action by those in power who use paranoia to keep us trembling and allowing the wheels of fear to grind us as grist.

So, seems to me that calls and e-mails to our senators are in order -- hopefully that might help.

Am I paranoid ? Yes, about what our administration is attempting to do to us. I am in deep FEAR . . . . . . . . . . .

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