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In other news, investigative reporter Max Fuller has linked many of the atrocities in Iraq to government militias trained, equipped and advised by Americans. Seymour Hersh, in the New Yorker, found that the United States government is funding Sunni groups with ties to al-Qaeda in order to oppose Hezbollah.

The US government is still holding and almost certainly torturing (“interrogating”) hundreds of civilians in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not to mention intimidating, coercing and commiting violence toward civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Representative Don Young, R-Alaska, said “congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.” Young claimed he was quoting Abraham Lincoln; when it was shown that Lincoln never said this, but that it was a mistake taken from Insight magazine, he refused to correct the record.

And on September 11, 2006, David McMenemy detonated a car bomb in front of a women’s health center on the mistaken belief that it provided abortions. No media outlet covered this act of terrorism.

Few people are aware of the “Army of God” and its anti-abortion crusaders, even though Clayton Waagner, one of its main members, sent Planned Parenthood and other groups 554 letters filled with white powder and a note saying “You have been exposed to anthrax...We are going to kill all of you.” Waagner declared, “I am a terrorist...It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a nurse, receptionist, bookkeeper, or janitor, if you work for the murderous abortionist, I’m going to kill you.”

So what’s my point? The United States is engaged in a “War on Terror.” What does that even mean? The Federal Criminal Code (Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113b, Section 2331) defines terrorism as “activities that involve violent...or life-threatening acts...that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State and...appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping....”

In short, for the United States to be engaged in a “War on Terror,” it would have to be at war with itself, as the government commits acts of terrorism (funded through taxes paid by all of us), and some of its citizens commit terrorism against fellow citizens. Yet the popular media, of which the government is the primary source of information on foreign affairs, has worked hard to link the word “terrorist” with “Arab” or “Islamic” in the public imagination.

Edward Peck, former US Chief of Mission in Iraq, discussing the government’s definition of terrorism (which he helped write) said on Democracy Now, “Yes, well, certainly you can think of a number of countries that have been involved in such activities. Ours is one of them.” Racist implications of equating “Arab” with “terrorist” aside, it’s pretty clearly misleading when Peck, formerly the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism as well, admits the United States meets its own definition (not to mention individuals and groups acting without state sanction, such as the Army of God).

I think this explains why the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (the “torture bill”), passed by Congress and signed into law, provides the Bush administration immunity from prosecution for war crimes retroactively to 9/11. Seriously. “No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien detained by the United States...since September 11, 2001.”

It’s time we started asking some tough questions about what the “War on Terror” really means.