The Political Junkies

archived: 15 - 21 Jul, 2007 Back Next

UPDATED: JUL 17, 2007

WE WERE WARNED
[Authored by Ed Ciaccio*]

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
“The Hollow Men” - T.S. Eliot

“Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.”

Hannah Arendt

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is “not done”… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”

George Orwell

“We face a dire reality. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with no end in sight. A nuclear strike on Iran may occur at any moment, based on a “false flag” terrorist attack to be blamed on Iran, as noted by Brzezinski and others. The neoconservative mania of the White House breeds war and hatred abroad. Secret prisons and torture have become routine.”

Cindy Sheehan, July 4, 2007

Among the many rare species endangered by the Cheney/Bush regime over the last six years, too often with the complicity not only of Congressional Republicans, but many Democrats as well, is one which too many of us take for granted: our Constitutional system.

Though this threat to our Constitution has existed as long as our nation has, it has grown much more extreme under Bush, whose administration has been filled with many of those, such as imperial presidency supporters Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who believe in an unrestrained “unitary executive;” and those, such as Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte, who were among many who attempted an alternate U.S. government under the sainted Ronald Reagan, with the surprising assistance of some Democrats, as Sam Husseini reminds us in his article “Killing the Constitution: How I Became a Radical, 20 Years Ago Today:”

Many think they now see through the Democrats' complicity with the Bush administration's illegal wars and unconstitutional actions. If they think this is new, they don't know the half of it.

Exactly twenty years ago today, on July 13, 1987, I witnessed the Democratic Party establishment covering up -- and therefore helping -- the subversion of the U.S. Constitution. It was actually on national TV, but few seemed to care.…

For a while, I was admiring of the co-chairs of the Iran-Contra committee, the Democrats Sen. Daniel Inouye and Rep. Lee Hamilton -- who would go on to co-head the 9/11 Commission and the Iraq Study Commission.

But, following events closely, it became clear Inouye and Hamilton were covering things up. This became glaring on July 13, 1987 when the following exchange took place as Rep. Jack Brooks, a Democrat from Texas questioned Oliver North:

REP. BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the "continuity of government" in the event of a major disaster?

BRENDAN SULLIVAN (North's lawyer): Mr. Chairman?

SEN. INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that, sir?

REP. BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

SEN. INOUYE; May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.

And go into executive session they would. I expected a firestorm about this. It never happened. The media were largely silent, the Chicago Tribune the next day was rare in having a page one story (which I of course didn't see till years later) leading with:

Members of the Iran-contra congressional panels Monday questioned Lt. Col. Oliver North about his alleged involvement in a highly secret government plan that reportedly included suspension of the Constitution in times of national crisis.

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D., Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Iran, immediately cut off discussion of the plan, saying it touched on a "highly sensitive and classified area."

…

And the committee did go into executive session at various points. In his questioning, Brooks was referring to a few articles like the Miami Herald piece of July 5, 1987 by Alfonso Chardy, which I didn't find until much later:

Some of President Reagan's top advisers have operated a virtual parallel government outside the traditional Cabinet departments and agencies almost from the day Reagan took office, congressional investigators and administration officials have concluded.

Investigators believe that the advisers' activities extended well beyond the secret arms sales to Iran and aid to the contras now under investigation.

Lt. Col. Oliver North, for example, helped draw up a controversial plan to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad.

While Husseini has done a great service to remind us how willingly Democrats went along 20 years ago with such plans for a “Shadow Government,” in Bill Moyers’ phrase, more recent events should provoke not just alarm, but genuine vigilance and action on our part.

The 342-page, Orwellian-titled USA PATRIOT Act, which threatens the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, was passed soon after the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks with few, if any, members of Congress having read it. Prominent members such as Senator Patrick Leahy, who, at first, opposed it, changed their minds soon after receiving deadly anthrax in the mail, a crime which has still not been solved. According to some sources, the particular strain of anthrax used in the attacks could only have come from the U.S. Army bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

In December, 2005, the NY Times revealed, and Bush later admitted, that Bush had ignored, more than 30 times, the 1978 FISA law mandating warrants for wiretaps. This lawbreaking has so far gone unpunished.

In early 2006, a Homeland Security contract for $385 million was awarded to KBR, a Halliburton (Cheney’s former company) subsidiary, to build detention centers in the U.S. “…for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space,” according to a February 4, 2006 NY Times article. For years now, under Bush/Cheney’s rule, protesters have been exiled to “free-speech zones” out of the sight and hearing of Bush. Are these “detention centers” the next step?

Bush’s abuse and misuse of “signing statements” to ignore or overrule more than 750 laws he disagreed with, including the McCain Torture Act reinforcing long-existing U.S., U.N. and Geneva Convention prohibitions against torture, has been well-documented.

In October, 2006, the still-Republican-majority Congress, with little Democratic opposition, passed both the Military Commissions Act, which virtually eliminated habeas corpus, and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which made martial law much easier to unilaterally impose by presidential edict.

On May 9, 2007, Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20. As Larry Chin, in a May 21, 2007 Global Research article titled “New presidential directive gives Bush dictatorial power” writes:

This directive, completely unnoticed by the media, and given no scrutiny by Congress, literally gives the White House unprecedented dictatorial power over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and obliterating the separation of powers. The directive also placed the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic ‘security’.

Recently, Bush commuted the sentence of “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s aide who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation of the cover-up of those White House staff members who violated federal law by disclosing the name of a covert CIA operative, ending her effectiveness in tracking WMD’s, endangering (possibly ending) the lives of her contacts abroad, and constituting an act of treason.

Now, after the semi-farce of Cheney’s attempt to create a fourth branch of government unique to him, Bush has obstructed justice by writing letters telling Sara Taylor and Harriet Miers, no longer part of his government, not to testify before the Judiciary Committee. Bush has also refused to provide documents about the “friendly-fire” death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.

As calls for more investigations into Cheney/Bush lawbreaking increase, as talk of impeachment finally breaks through the corporate media blockade, and as the outrage against, and distrust of, Bush and Cheney grow, along with the frustration at Democrats’ ineffectiveness in ending the illegal Iraq occupation and making the Bush/Cheney criminals accountable to the law, this lawless regime’s temptation to provoke a distracting, unifying “incident” with Iran will grow. Such a “false flag” operation is feared and suspected by many of us who have watched this regime over six years, including Cindy Sheehan and Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul, M.D.

Following a meeting earlier in the week with NATO and European Union officials, on July 10, 2007, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Avigdor Lieberman, told Israeli Army Radio, "If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the US will support us."

An air war on Iran by Israel alone (with such tacit U.S./NATO/European approval), by the U.S., or both, would fully ignite the Muslim world, make even more U.S. and European cities terrorist targets, cut off oil supplies from the Persian Gulf, and throw the U.S. and Europe’s economy into a recession.

What if those, such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who counsel against impeachment and advise us to wait for the expected January, 2009 inauguration of a Democratic President who will begin, then, to clean up all the messes created by six years of the Bush/Cheney regime, are whistling past the graveyard of our democracy? What if the 9/11 attacks were, in reality, our own Reichstag fire?

It may be too late, by then, to save our Constitutional system, let alone avert a catastrophic World War. I hope it is not already too late.

______

* Ed Ciaccio is a retired teacher living in Queens County, NY City; an anti-war, peace & justice activist, and a conscientious objector since 1970. After reading Parts 1 and 2 of Dr. Steven Jonas' essay on The "Most Successful" Bush Presidency, Ciaccio writes that he realized that he and Dr. Jonas held similar views. Therefore, he thought TPJ might use his essay as well.

AMERICAN SUICIDE

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorially calls for Congress to end Bush’s occupation in Iraq. The Tribune-Review’s editorial joins a growing number of main stream editorial boards across the United States calling for an end of Bush’s occupation.

What makes the Tribune-Review’s editorial special? Two factors stand out.

First, the Tribune-Review is owned by conservative Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife is certainly no ally of Democrats in general or in progressive philosophy.

Second, the editorial is hard hitting:

Perhaps Jack Murtha put it best: The Pennsylvania congressman, among the first to make the cogent argument that staying the course in Iraq was the exercise in futility that indeed the war has become, says President Bush is delusional.

Based on the president's recent performance, we could not agree more. "Staying the course" is not simply futile -- it is a prescription for American suicide.

We've urged for months to bring our troops home. Now is the time.

"Progress" has become such a nuanced, parsed and tortured term that it no longer has meaning.

The "fledgling" Iraqi government -- how long can it reasonably be called that? -- consistently has not stepped up to the plate.

President Bush warns that U.S. withdrawal would risk "mass killings on a horrific scale." What do we have today, sir?

And quite frankly, during last Thursday's news conference, when George Bush started blathering about "sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved," we had to question his mental stability.

If the president won't do the right thing and end this war, the people must. The House has voted to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April. The Senate must follow suit.

Our brave troops should take great pride that they rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein. And they should have no shame in leaving Iraq. For it will not be, in any way, an exercise in tail-tucking and running.

America has done its job.

It's time for the Iraqis to do theirs.

The tide of thought has clearly turned against Bush and his occupation. The Tribune-Review’s editorial is another nail in the coffin of Bush’s failed policy.

_____________________________________________

UPDATED: JUL 15, 2007

“We’re the party of hypocrites. Vote for us and we’ll lie to you,
we’ll engage prostitutes and we’ll cheat on our wives.”

This is a quote from Vincent Bruno, a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee speaking in response to Sen. Vitter’s apology for a sexual tryst with a prostitute from a DC escort service.

The US House of Representatives voted to start the disengagement of Bush’s Iraqi occupation. The story:

Only four Republicans voted with the Democrats to start the Iraqi disengagement. One a more encouraging note, Democrats held their caucus together save ten votes.

The bill will move to the Senate. At the moment, Democrats do not have the votes to stop a Republican filibuster of the bill. But, the situation in the Senate is more fluid. Democrats came within four votes of the 60 needed to stop a Republican filibuster on a bill containing a proposal by Sen. Webb to give American troops more rest between rotations in Iraq. Seven Republicans joined the Democrats.

Bush has insisted on putting a missile defense “shield” in Europe. Russia has kept its promise to withdraw from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). The CFE strictly regulated the number of weapons deployed in Europe and essentially provided for a scaled disarmament by destruction of excess weaponry.

President Reagan left a legacy of searching for total nuclear disarmament. How far the Republican Party has fallen.

The outing of Valerie Plame’s role as undercover CIA operative has resulted in many story lines: who actually leaked her name; the shadowy role of VP Cheney; and Scooter Libby’s pardon, just to name a few. But, the unfolding story holds more sublime lessons.

In particular, it demonstrates that Bush’s moral relevancy as to public commitments. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post has penned one of the most penetrating explanations of the importance of the Plame episode. He writes:

Bush’s drive to “move on” means that the investigation he promised Americans never comes to pass. Will anyone ask the questions?

Brent crude oil prices are approaching $80 Dollars a barrel; and the rise may be just the beginning:

1. There are the standard reasons to explain the rising prices; world demand for oil is projected to grow faster than anticipated, unexpected production closures, and refineries going off line for repairs. But there are “[g]eopolitical tensions . . . fueling oil prices, analysts said. They include Iran's nuclear dispute and supply disruptions in Nigeria due to insurgent attacks. Heavy-handed efforts by Venezuela and Russia to nationalize their oil industries and use crude as a political tool have also raised supply concerns.”

2. Typically, industrialized nations call on oil producing nations – especially OPEC nations – to increase oil production to force prices down. OPEC is saying no. “Consuming countries have urged the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries to boost output to lower prices. But OPEC has refused, saying supplies are sufficient.” Specifically, “Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, said tightness in supply and international political tensions were pushing prices higher.”

Every 1 cent rise in gasoline prices takes 1 BILLION dollars out of the national economy. With the housing “bubble” broken and rising gasoline prices, hard working Americans are becoming strapped to make ends meet as retail sales fall.

A majority of Americans believe that VP Cheney was a conspirator in the cover up of the investigation to determine who leaked Plame’s name. A CNN/Opinion Research Poll, March 9-11, 2007, MoE ± 3, reveals:
					.
"Do you think Dick Cheney was part of a cover-up to try to prevent the special prosecutor from getting to the truth about who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the news media, or was not part of any cover-up?"
					.
		Part of Cover-up	Not Part of Cover-up	Unsure
		%	%	%
	3/9-11/07	52	29	20

Tumble Weed (Bush) Watch