From: "America Under Attack": Guilty Or Not, Here We Come Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org September 12, 2001 Alternet
...It was only back on PBS, in one of Jim Lehrer's interminable beltway blather sessions, that one got an inkling of what the Bush administration may actually be planning to do, once the final fatality count sinks in and the sadness of the funerals and mourning begins. Then, as everyone expects, Americans will go from shock to outrage. One of Lehrer's mostly conservative experts, Bill Kristol, editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, passed on a high-level leak. Namely, that the U.S. will link Bin Laden to Sadam Hussein.
Recall that Dubya said he would "punish" states harboring terrorists. No one really spent much time discussing what that meant. Now Rupert's emissary was predicting that the game plan might be to ask for a declaration of war against Iraq to "finish the job." (The next morning, the demagogic face of Murdochworld summed up its feelings with this headline on a New York Post column by Steve Dunleavy calling for bombing Kabul and legalizing assassinations: "SIMPLY KILL THESE BASTARDS!") There was no discussion of any evidence implicating Iraq, or explanation of the economics of the oil situation there, which U.S. companies currently tap in abundance. You can bet that as this terrible tragedy is formally cranked up into an ongoing national crisis, there will be even more calls for war. Failing economies often need rely on a good one to get back on track.
So, is another Gulf War in the offing? Will Son of Bush "finish" his father's failed Desert Storm? That is a real possibility, suggesting also that more media manipulation is on the way. The coverage on Tuesday night was tilting in the direction of whipping up the outrage with no alternatives to war even discussed.
This possible Let's Get Iraq scenario wasn't discussed in any depth, perhaps because there is no footage to show yet. But you heard it here first: the road to revenge may just take us back to Baghdad, guilty or not. Will international terrorism be wiped out then? Will we then get the faceless "them"? It was a bit frightening to hear many of the on-air wise man speak of the next steps as a long difficult struggle that will take national resolve and may lead to restrictions on the freedoms we have long prized. This line of thinking could well lead to an antiterrorist campaign targeting domestic protesters as well. Historians will recall that the mysterious fire in Germany's Reichstag set the stage for the rationalizations used in the Nazi terror.