Seven Years of Homeland Security in the Global War on Terror

This OP is based on two articles by Tom Engelhardt

Journey to the Dark Side
The Bush Legacy (Take One)

The $100 Barrel of Oil vs. the Global War on Terror
The Bush Legacy (Take Two)

The first, take one, as introdution has these words from an inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

-- Emma Lazarus, 1883

With these high-spirited words, he lists five personal stories, generally overlooked, but have in commen they emerged in December.

Only the first one has been up here on the board. About the Icelandic women, Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lilliendahl, who routinely went on a shoping and amusement trip to NY, but ended up humiliated, shackled, deprived food and drink for 24 hrs before she was deported .. ...because she 12 yrs ago had overstayed her visa.

The story is welldocumented in a thread here in Breaking News


Of the other names, no traces are on this board.

Their stories in brief.

Zakariya Muhammad Reed (born Edward Eugene Reed, Jr.), an American, firefighter and National Guard veteran and Muslim of faith, who regulary crosses the US/Can border to visit his wife's family, has since he committed the 'crime' of submitting to "Toledo Blade" a critical readers comment on the GWB administration, been harrassed every time he does a crossing. Accordingly he chooses his port of arrival based on the size of the detention waiting room he knows he'll end up in.


Nabil Al Yousuf, a senior aide to the ruler of the Persian Gulf state of Dubai, always has the same "galling" experience on entering the country:

"A U.S. airport immigration official typically takes Yousuf's passport, places it in a yellow envelope and beckons. Yousuf tells his oldest son and other family members not to worry. And Yousuf -- who goes by 'Your Excellency' at home -- disappears inside a shabby back room. He waits alongside the likes of 'a man who had forged his visa and a woman who had drugs in her tummy'… He is questioned, fingerprinted and photographed."

Same "galling" experience everytime.

Comment: Hey, that's not a good way to treat the second biggest investor in your country. This guy is of the ruling class, but obviously not of bin Laden or ibn Saud family, but even they may for 'same "galling" experience everytime', have reason to send their kids to Australia now.


The story of Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, a Yemeni microbiology student, captured in a U.S.-Pakistani operation in Karachi a few weeks after 9/11 on suspicion of helping to finance al-Qaeda operations, is from Craig Whitlock's article about the Jordanian secret service and its detention facilties serving as a CIA black site. The major one operating.

The student was provenly brought to that detention center and has not been seen since.


Another Yemeni, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, was picked up by the Jordanians in Amman in 2003 and tortured into signing a "full confession" (to acts he had not committed).

He survived detention and of his horrors has given a detailed report here.


Five more fates of a criminal, basic evil, interrogation system reported. Not meaning they are the only ones of that month, they're the ones communicated, written somewhere by someone.

Not everybody, like Erla has a blog and ability of written expression, ...or calling the press, who hardly will be interested unless someone is tasered to death.

Even if it is an interrogation system that might have exicsted since start of the cold war, it has with this war on a non-material notion gone completely astray, all together, gone to the embodiment of pure evil.

Not only the shivering but weird fact about that war is, there's no land, plenty of enemies, but no declared entity to fight, except what by the powes are declared culprits and subjects of fear. Coincidently it has create the golden halfmoon of oil, spanning from central Asia cross the ME over Africa's Horn to Nigeria and Mahgreb

Really it is the War of Fear, because we don't know our enemy but only suspect both his appearence and intentions according to what ms and govt want us to believe.

39% of Americans are either "very worried" or "somewhat worried" to fell victim of terrorisme, nationwide survey shows, when in reality every time an American steps outside his home his risk of falling victim to accident or homocide is many times greater. Hundreds, if not thousands, I think.

But how we all would like to go back to pre-9/11 security, because the question to be asked with these enormous efforts in the trillion dollar range on this percieved threat against the internal security of US, what have we got for those money. ??? ...none of what was promised..
Forget the lies and deceptions on WMD and AQ ties, they also told us --when the war for oil question was declined-- that it was to secure our 'cheap' oil. Don't send me link hunting, but to that degree it was said. To secure our... ..oil.

What has this operation of securing suplies lead to then?

Round 9/11 01 the price was hoovering around 20$ a barrel ..USD.
Less than 6½ years later it broke the 100$ mark.

Read the articles, in the mild --or the subject in mind, should we say harsh-- light of hindsight, it's hard to say no conspiracy.

With gross manipulation, and knowingly decieving the American people it becomes more and more evident, what a corrupt administration is up to, eating out of the hand of Mephisto. Their True Master. He cares and gives them what they want in return of loyalty.

Just look, now you've got Department of Homeland Security. What a 'wonderful' name btw.

Domestically, a distinctly un-American word, "homeland," entered our everyday world, was married to "security," and then "department," and suddenly you had a second defense department, whose goal was simply to make the American people "safe." Alone on the planet, Americans would now be allowed a "safe haven" of which no one could rob us.

Yes, to me that very un-american word has a clear reference to nazi iconography and its affiliated philosophies. "Heimat" was a magic word in Hitler's and Goebbles' speeches. It connects so beautifully with patriotic.

From Seattle to Tampa, Toledo to Dallas, fear of terrorism became a ruling passion - as well as a pure money-maker for the mini-homeland-industrial complex that grew up around the new Department of Homeland Security. A thriving industry of private security firms, surveillance outfits, and terror consultants was suddenly among us. With its help, the United States would be locked-down in an unprecedented way - and to do that, we would also have to lock down the planet by any means necessary. We would fight "them" everywhere else, as the President would say again and again, so as not to fight them here.

Beside from being good for making the easy (and big) buck, I don't think the word even existed prior to 2001. Heartland was/is an American word.. but "Homeland?" Gime a break!

Then for a close, other aspects of homeland and security regarding your personal liberties and privacy are not touched here.

This op is only about the physichal changes taken place within the last 6-7 years. Even if it all should be reversed with evil Dubaya gone Paraguay and a new president and admin macigally to restore both peace and rest to the places they had broken.. the oil would never drop back on 20$ a barrel.

It's also about how much more risky life has become in all aspects of life, and most of all why nobody says ENOUGH is ENOUGH !! ...and stops the maniacs.

Before it's ALL too late.

[edit on 10/1/2008 by khunmoon]

*bump*

This thread is meant for discussing if 7yrs of HS rule have made you any more safe. ...but maybe the OP was a bit long.

Essentially --when we have to live w terror-- do you think you are more secure with or without a Department of Homeland Security ?

Wow, good post Khun! Star and a flag.

No, I don't feel better protected with our "Homeland Security". I feel oppressed and looked upon with suspicion.
I'm no stranger to that, I'm a scary-looking kind of guy. I exude a sense of "dangerous". But...
A year or two before 9/11, I turned it all around. I stopped being so selfish and criminal-like in my attitude. I made a point to be a better person.
Then 9/11 happened and we all of the sudden had to change (we didn't, but...) into a paranoid community.
It's funny. Thieves worry more about getting ripped off than any victim. Thieves KNOW that there are people who covet and steal, therefore making them more worried about being ripped off. I KNOW this, because I used to be a thief.
Let's apply that to our Governments actions.

We have "Homeland Security" to keep terrorists from infiltrating our way of life. I think the administration has done more to destroy our security than any "terrorist".
Sidenote: 2 weeks after 9/11, I was sitting in my van in Rondout, IL. watching trains at a lovely place I've gone to for 35 of my 38 years. (Dad brought me in the early 70's to do the same thing) Never had a problem. It's a popular place for railfanners because it's a crossing of two lines and has high traffic. There were always a few cars sitting here with railfanners sitting in them, listing to rail traffic on scanners.
So, this one day, two weeks or so after 9/11, I'm sitting there watching trains go by and a Metra (Chicago's commuter rail service) cop pulls up behind me. He sits back there for a few minutes (normal, running tags) and then gets out of his squad and strolls up to my van window.
Now, the Metra cops are very, very used to railfanners. 99% of the railfanners, I'm sure, are brilliant people with a multitude of talents. Good people. I've never met a railfanner who wasn't polite, helpful and extroverted. I'm sure the Metra cop knows this.
So, he pops up next to me and asks what I'm doing here. I tell him...(duh) "Watching trains." He asks me where I live (even though I know normal procedure made him run my plates). I answer "Libertyville" (which is right next to Rondout) and he then asks for proof of ID. No biggie. I'm clean.
He takes my Licence and goes back to the car to run it and I just sit there, finishing my lunch, waiting for the 1:45 CP Southbound to go by.
10 minutes later, he comes back to the window, hands me my licence back and proceeds to tell me I am now on a watchlist and if I ever return and get run again on Railroad property, I will be arrested on Federal Charges and risk 20 years in jail.



I, being the normal railfanner, strike up a conversation with him before he splits, and we talk all about how new, very strict, guidelines have been implimented concerning security surrounding right-of-way owned by the railroads. He said that in the two weeks or so since the attacks, he's been given bookloads of new rules and directives for keeping out non-rail personnel. He goes on to confirm he knows what railfanner's intentions are, but, there could be no exeptions.
Now, last year, I ran into another (different) Metra cop while getting coffee at the gas station. I ask him if the law's been relaxed or if it still applies. He says he knows a lot of the normal railfanners on his patrol and
doesn't give them a hard time. He directs them to the places they deem okay for railfanners and the cops KNOW if something fishy is going on where the railfanners are, the railfanners themselves will call the cops.
The laws still exist. Many have been expanded or sharpened.
Do I feel safer? No.
Has it affected me, personally? Yes. I feel restricted.
I have YET to feel terrorized by foreign miscreants.
I am actually worried a hell of a lot more about how my freedoms are being taken away one-by-one for the sake of "my own good", by a government I'm not sure we've elected.

My answer to you, khunmoon, is...

No.

Good post K,
Cuhail

Whau.. you a trainspotter too..!? Great post big C, and thanks for sharing that bit of personal history.

I used to spot trains too, still does but modern trains aint the same. The atmosphere of rail is gone, now you can't tell whether its a train or a plane.

To get back on topic, I'd say, with every new design added to our enviroment things tend to get more alienated and with paranoid measures of control added, you get the authoritarian, and in the final end tyranic society.

It's no good for trainspotters or anyother.. ... but for that elite, some believes run the show.