“US President George W. Bush said today that a controversial domestic spying program that some critics say is illegal was necessary in light of new threats on an audiotape from Osama bin Laden,” reports the Herald Sun. “Listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously. When he says he’s going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it,” said Bush, and that’s why the government needs to know what books you check out of the library. “I take it seriously. And the people of NSA take it seriously. And most of the American people take it seriously as well.” Bush tells us the Bill of Rights must be sacrificed because “al-Qaeda” has placed “operatives inside of our country. They blend in with the civilian population. They get their orders from overseas. And then they emerge to strike from within.” Never mind that since nine eleven not one “al-Qaeda” terrorist has been apprehended and convicted of plotting against the United States.

None of this snooping has anything to do with terrorism. It has to do with American citizens opposed to the Bush administration and the mass murder schemes of the Straussian neocons. “Over the last several months, it has been revealed that the FBI, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency have each set up apparently independent covert operations to monitor the constitutionally protected political activities of citizens opposed to the Bush,” explains Joel Bleifuss. “The FBI has issued tens of thousands of national security letters, extending the bureau’s reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans. Most of the U.S. residents and citizens whose records were screened, the FBI acknowledged, were not suspected of wrongdoing,” the Washington Post reported. According to information released under a FOIA request, the FBI’s targets included people involved in a “vegan community project” in Indianapolis, the Catholic Worker movement and its “semi-communistic ideology,” Code Pink, the anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice, Greenpeace and attendees of the Third National Organizing Conference on Iraq, which was held at Stanford University in May 2005. According to the documents, in some cases the FBI received information about those under surveillance from informers within the targeted groups. In other words, COINTELPRO is alive and well and sifting through your credit card and medical records.

It has nothing to do with the dead Osama bin Laden and everything to do with books written by people such as William Blum, books we are absurdly told are on Osama’s reading list. Of course, most Americans don’t care about such things and a startling large number of them believe there is nothing wrong with the government violating the Fourth Amendment. Obviously, millions of Americans have no use for the Constitution. In fact, millions of Americans believe the Bill of Rights is an excuse for terrorists to attack America. It took more than a hundred years to get the populace in this state of ignorance. Now they are beginning to pay for it.