Friday, June 17, 2011

The Persecution of Juan Cole



Bush White House targeted Michigan professor

by Justin Raimondo, June 17, 2011

"The revelation by Glenn Carle, a former CIA official, that the Bush White House sought information on Prof. Juan Cole, an academic and critic of the Iraq war, in order to discredit him is hardly shocking, at least to anyone of my generation. After all, I reached political consciousness during the administration of Richard M. Nixon, whose hijinks – the Watergate break-in, the infamous COINTELPRO operation – are well known. Less well-known is the long history of police state tactics by previous administrations, running all the way back to FDR and Woodrow Wilson, two wartime presidents who set the pace for their successors.....

What I want to know is: who’s on Obama’s enemies list? Because, as sure as Washington real estate prices will continue to rise while plummeting in the rest of the country, these very same activities are continuing under the present administration. The heat is off Prof. Cole, at least for the moment – having endorsed Obama’s latest war, in Libya, the prominent lefty blogger probably has nothing to worry about. However, this administration has so far faithfully emulated its predecessors in so many other important ways that one has to assume the heat is still on the rest of us: indeed, given the Obama administration’s record on national and domestic security, one must assume domestic spying efforts and other covert actions have escalated.

In short, the persecution of Prof. Cole is just one example of America’s emerging police state – emerging into the daylight, that is, because it’s been thriving in the dark for quite some time."

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