The latest warning from the Department of Homeland Security about how everyone should buy plastic sheets and duct tape to protect themselves from biological and chemical attacks (George Orwell, eat your heart out) is the latest step by the US government to make the unthinkable sound reasonably manageable, while at the same time scaring the bejesus out of the citizenry in order to justify doing just about anything they see fit in the name of “homeland security.”

The first thing on Mr. Ridge's checklist of things every citizen should have–“a battery powered radio to listen for instructions from authorities.”

Mr. Ridge isn't the first down this path. A study by the Office of Technology Assessment on the effects of nuclear war (PDF courtesy of the Atomic Archives) in 1979 was referenced by a Reagan administration official a few years later when he told a congressional committee that all the people of the US needed to be safe from the fallout of a nuclear attack was a “foot of dirt over their storm cellar.”

The Bush administration seems pretty nonchalant about the idea of using nukes itself in a war agains Iraq. And, apparently, it's thinking about conducting bio warfare too. The US initiated secret bioweapon research that could violate the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.

The Bush Administration rejected a protocol calling for inspections to verify compliance with the treaty.

So, here we are, preparing to go to war with Iraq, ostensibly because they won't let inspectors come in and verify that they aren't developing illegal weapons of mass destruction, while at the same time not allowing inspectors to verify the US isn't manufacturing illegal weapons of mass destruction.

“Not a fair comparison,” I hear some people shouting. “Iraq is a rogue nation, part of the 'Axis of Evil.'”

Well, they learned it from the best of rogue nations. Who gave tacit approval in the 80's to Iraq's use of chemical weapons on its own people and on Iran? Who encouraged them to go to war with Iran? Who has failed to sign on to treaties banning weapons like land mines, refuses to let its military officers be subject to international law, has promoted terrorism against regimes it doesn't like, and has invaded smaller neighbors at least a dozen times when they so much as spoke a discouraging word? The US did, baby. We're the rogue nation of rogue nations. We're the hyperpower, as the French call us, and we do what we damn well please.

The Bush administration is putting money into Star Wars again, and into biowarfare, and into other projects of their ilk because (at least until 9/11/01) they thought they could make a war with nukes, gas and germs winnable. Now, with “asymmetric warfare” (aka terrorism, suicide bombers, etc.) on the table, they've installed the Department of Homeland Security to convince Americans that with a little plastic wrap, some duct tape, and (heaven forbid) a foot or two of earth over their basement windows, the US can win that kind of war no matter who's fighting it.

That, as we say around here, is a bug.