Why We Don't Know Our Enemy

By Robert Scheer, AlterNet. Posted August 9, 2006.

A new book by the former co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission tells the inside story of how Bush has tried to squelch examination of our actual enemies.

Hysteria over the barbarians at the gate has destroyed republics from Rome to Germany. Will President Bush's post-Sept. 11 America meet a similar fate?

In the name of stopping the new bogeyman of international terrorism, our government has claimed an unfettered right to torture foreigners, eavesdrop on citizens and reorder the world with our military might. It is a policy that depends for its domestic political success on the specter of an enemy whose power and purpose must never be subject to logical and factual inquiry, lest it lose its power to alarm.