Anti-American Europeans
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
By David Asman
We wish we didn't have to keep presenting examples of how the European media have become obsessively anti-American. But they keep pushing the barrier, now to the point of absurdity.
Tonight, BBC2 begins a three part series, the essence of which is that the U.S. fabricated the terror threat.
Forget 9/11. Forget the Madrid bombing. Don't get riled about bio-weapons or radiation bombs.
Even the name Al Qaeda (search) was just made up by the CIA and the Justice Department to prosecute undesirables.
"In fact, it [Al Qaeda] barely exists at all, except as an idea about cleansing a corrupt world through religious violence."
The most absurd part of the program, called "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," is tonight's episode, in which the filmmaker claims that a dirty bomb exploded in a crowded city would "not be life-threatening."
He quotes a so-called radiation expert: "I don't think it would kill anybody."
The filmmaker received a glowing review in (where else?) The Guardian, in which he said that the terror threat is just like the phony threat of communism during the Cold War.
"In an age when all the grand ideas have lost credibility, fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power."
