Military Dictatorship - US

Generals' Revolt Threatens Obama Presidency

dlindorff — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:57:14 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

If an article by Gareth Porter in run by InterPress
is correct that CentCom Commander Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq
Commander Gen. Ray Odierno, backed by a group of lower-ranking
generals, are planning to mount a public campaign to try and undermine
President Obama’s plan for a withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months, Obama
needs to act fast and nip this dangerous act of insubordination in the
bud.

It was a similar act of insubordination on the part of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff that effectively destroyed the Clinton administration
almost from day one. Recall that one of President Clinton’s first acts
following his inauguration was to make good on a campaign promise to
end discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military. His
initial order was to simply end the ban on homosexuality in the
military. But the Joint Chiefs publicly rebelled, and Clinton caved,
coming up with the ridiculous and unworkable “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
policy, under which gays and lesbians could serve in the military, but
had to hide their sexual orientation or face ouster.

When Clinton, as commander in chief of the armed forces, allowed
his generals to defy his orders, and, instead of sacking them all for
insubordination and stripping off their stars, left them in their
offices and surrendered to their objections, he didn’t just cave in to
the military. He also alerted the Republican opposition that he was a
political pushover.

Obama, on a much more serious issue—the conduct of and termination
of a war—is now apparently being more or less openly defied by his top
generals, who after all get their glory and power by having troops in
battle, and who are also worried that a collapse of the puppet regime
in Iraq could leave them looking like losers. They are thus opposing a
pullout from Iraq (and a hardly precipitous one at that!) out of
self-interest and self-preservation.

If Commander in Chief Obama allows this insubordination and
political opposition to exist among his senior generals, his presidency
is toast. He will be a prisoner to a militarist policy in Iraq and
Afghanistan that will drag down his presidency in the same way that
Lyndon Johnson’s presidency was destroyed by the generals running the
Vietnam War. Furthermore, just as Republicans in Congress saw Clinton’s
weakness in his dealings with the Joint Chiefs and began dogging his
every move, they, and Obama’s opponents among the Blue Dog Democrats in
Congress, will see weakness and move against him.

There is only one answer to this challenge to presidential
authority: President Obama must sack both Petraeus and Odierno, and any
other general who tries—openly or behind the scenes--to move
politically against his military strategy and orders. The model for
this action is President Harry Truman—widely viewed, whatever his
faults, as a forceful leader—who fired the popular Gen. Douglas
McArthur when McArthur went behind his back to Republicans in Congress
to push for a wider war in Korea.

This is not just a matter of salvaging an Obama presidency. It is
also a profound constitutional issue. There is no greater threat to
democratic freedom than a military that refuses to accept, or that
actively works to undermine civilian authority. Generals and admirals
certainly have a right to object to the decisions made by their
commander in chief, but they cannot act in defiance or those decisions
while in uniform. Admiral William Fallon took the right course of
action. Opposed to Bush/Cheney administration plans to attack Iran, he
chose to resign his post as CentCom Commander and to resign from the
military. If Gen. Petraeus and Gen. Odierno oppose Obama’s plan for a
pullout from Iraq, they should do the same and then speak out if they
wish.

For the past eight years, the biggest threat to American democracy
was that a president and vice president attempted to convert the office
of president into a military dictatorship, with the position of
commander in chief subsuming and replacing the position of president.
Now the danger is that the nation’s top generals are trying to
eliminate or emasculate the president’s role as commander in chief,
making the generals the leaders of the nation’s military. Both dangers
are equally threatening to constitutional government.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now
available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Chemical Genocide

ninammam — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:28:20 -0500

I wonder if this "New Administration will stop the Chemical Genocide with Chemtrail's and Vaccination's.

http://educate-yourself.org/ct/

http://imageevent.com/firesat/strangedaysstrangeskies?z=3&c=4&n=1&m=-1&w=4&x=0&p=14

I Was a Victim of the Government’s Absurd and Over-Hyped War on Terror

dlindorff — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:37:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

I was injured thanks to the government’s ridiculous airport
security program last week on a US Air flight from Chicago to
Philadelphia. I also saw how pointless the whole thing is, if the
supposed goal is really to prevent airline hijackings.

First, my injury. Because of a silly fear that I might blow up a
plane with explosives tucked into my running shoes, I, along with
everyone else in the security checkpoint line at O’Hare, including
two-month-old babies wearing little booties, had to doff my footwear.
Clad in just socks, I tried to maneuver my way around a metal counter
that held those plastic trays carrying my laptop, my shoes, my belt and
change and keys, and my carry-on bag, and in the process my unprotected
big toe hit a sharp piece of metal protruding from the table.

The metal sliced right under my toenail, making a painful and
bloody cut into the soft tissue under the nail. Cursing and bleeding, I
made my way through the metal detector, and collected my goods.

Now, inside my bag, unbeknownst to the Transportation Security
Administration inspectors, was a bottle of mouthwash. It was larger
than the approved 2-oz size, and it was not in an approved sealed
plastic bag. But TSA inspectors looking into their video screens at the
X-Ray machine didn’t see it, because I made sure that it was vertical
as it passed through. All they saw was a little circle of plastic.
Likewise, on an earlier flight, I had made my way aboard with a Swiss
Army knife. By standing it in my carry-on bag so that it would be
vertical for the X-Ray, I was able to slip it through and onto the
plane.

Now clearly I’m not a terrorist (though for a time, thanks to my
anti-Bush, anti-war journalism, and an expose about the TSA’s “no-fly”
list abuses, I was on the watch list, and would get a circled “S”
written on my boarding passes that ensured that I would be pulled aside
to have my carry-on luggage hand searched). But if I were a terrorist,
I sure wouldn’t try to commandeer a plane with a jackknife. I’d want
something bigger. But that would be simple. One could easily carry on a
10-inch blade the same way. If one were nervous about doing that, it
could be a ceramic or better, a Plexiglas blade—plenty dangerous, but
invisible to X-rays and metal detectors.

For that matter, if I were into suicide bombing and wanted to
manufacture a liquid explosive, why on earth would I try to do it by
smuggling on two large jars of ingredients, when I could just put them
in plastic baggies and carry them aboard in my pockets? Unless you
happen to be singled out for special handling, nobody at the security
checkpoints pats you down. They just have you walk through the metal
detectors while TSA inspectors are busy patting down randomly selected
elderly nuns and racially profiled people, like unfortunate Sikh men
wearing turbans.

Any dedicated terrorist hijacker could figure out numerous ways to
get explosives and weapons onto a plane past these security
arrangements.

And that’s not even counting having the weapons smuggled into an
airport gate area along with all the goods that are offered for sale
there, where they could be picked up after a hijacker had already
cleared security. There is no way that all the newspapers, magazines,
clothing, trinkets, bottles of booze and personal hygiene products,
etc., are screened adequately as they are brought in each day to fill
the concession stands for the day’s business. First of all, one would
have to open and check every bottle and box offered for sale.

If you were genuinely worried about protecting against hijackers,
you would have those inspections at the entrance to each plane, not at
the entrance to the terminal, and you wouldn’t have all that commerce
inside the security zone. Ah! But what a roar of outrage we’d hear from
the business community if that lucrative business venue were eliminated!

Which brings me to the real question: Why do we have all this
pointless and easily breached security, not to mention a list that
contains an astonishing one million names of suspected “terrorists”?

Clearly, the security program is not about protecting the flying
public, or the nation’s tall buildings. That could be done much more
cheaply by putting air marshals on all flights, the way they do at El
Al, the Israeli airline that has never had a successful hijacking.

No, this is all about heightening the fear level of the American people, to routinize us to living in a police state.

The truth is, nobody is really interested in trying to hijack
planes anymore. First of all, the “crash into buildings” tactic is
dead. Pilots are now flying armed in armored cockpits that cannot be
easily entered, and would not accede to a terrorist’s demands any
longer, knowing what happened last time. And passengers would not sit
passively in a cabin takeover attempt, either. As a result, we don’t
have to worry about such things any longer.

The ease with which security could be breached, and the fact that
it hasn’t happened now for seven years, is evidence enough that nobody
is even trying to do it.

So let’s do away with all this time-consuming, costly, and politically motivated nonsense before I injure my other big toe.
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Time for Congress to Stand Up in Its Own Defense: Impeach Bush and Cheney N

dlindorff — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:24:50 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The last couple of weeks have brought confirmation—as if it were needed—even in the corporate media, that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the gang of thugs and sycophants around them in the White House, engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie the country into a war in Iraq.

The release of a confessional book by former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan and the subsequent release of a long blocked report by the Senate Intelligence Committee make it clear that Bush, Cheney & Company deliberately lied to Congress and the American public back in 2002 and early 2003 about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (there was none). McClellan also states that Bush and Cheney conspired to “out” CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame Wilson, as part of a compaign to prevent her husband from exposing a major part of that campaign of lies: the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

It would be hard to overstate the extent of or the damage caused by these crimes that are now exposed to the light of day.

Beginning in 2001, making the most cynical use of the tragic killing of nearly 3000 Americans in the 9-11 attacks, Bush and Cheney moved to aggrandize as much power as possible in the executive, and then, to consolidate that power grab, engineered a full-scale war against Iraq, enabling them to claim that any opponent of their dictatorial usurpation of power was a traitor to the nation.

It was all a lie.

Saddam Hussein had no links to Al Qaeda, and he had no nuclear program. He had no weapons of mass destruction. His country was broken, thanks to years of international sanctions and war.

As a result of these lies, we have a country that no longer even remotely resembles what the Founders had intended. The Congress has been shorn of its once exclusive authority to legislate, and even its Constitutional power to investigate the executive branch has been successfully defied. It is now an atrophied relic. The federal judiciary, right up to the Supreme Court, has been packed with administration sycophants and Federalist Society advocates of unfettered executive power.

We also have been saddled with an unwinnable war in the Middle East that has claimed the lives of 4500 Americans, destroyed the lives of another 30,000—or perhaps several hundred thousand, if we add in all those suffering psychological damage, or genetic damage from exposure to depleted uranium weapons. That war has also killed over 1 million innocent Iraqis, including countless chiildren, destroyed their country, bankrupted this nation, and made the US a pariah and a rogue state in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Most Americans long since came to the conclusion that the Bush administration was a gang of idiots. Just watching their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster unfold was enough to make that clear. But the new reports from McClellan and from the Senate Intelligence Committee should make it clear that this was not just stupidity. The disasters that have befallen this nation, or that it has brought on the rest of the world, over the past eight years have been the result of deliberate lying and deceit and of the conspiratorial policies of a cabal of leaders whose goal from day one was undoing the Constitution and establishing the presidency as a kind of dictatorship.

Most of the corporate media have been unable to bring themselves to state this clearly. They edge around the issue by talking about the White House having been “misleading” or “untruthful.” And little is said about the lasting damage that has been done to the Republic and the Constitution, or about what is to be done about a still bloody war that never should have been fought in the first place.

The answer is clear. Impeachment proceedings should be initiated against both Bush and Cheney. These two arch criminals must not be permitted to leave office with their titles intact. They need to be tossed out in disgrace, and then indicted for war crimes and for crimes like perjury, conspiracy and perhaps treason.

We are already seeing the long-term damage that has been wrought. John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee for president, is saying that the president’s use of the National Security Agency to spy, without any court order, on tens or hundreds of thousants, or perhaps millions of Americans, is legal, and would continue under a McCain administration. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has said that he would continue Bush’s use of “signing statements” to ignore Congressional legislation that he felt impaired his Constitutional powers as president.

The nation is at a dangerous crossroad. Either Congress reasserts its authority now, via impeachment, drawing a Constitutional line in the stand in defense of Article I of the Constitution—the article that defines the power of Congress as absolute in terms of passing legisation—or it forever surrenders that role, leaving us with what can only be called a dictatorship.

We clearly cannot count on the next president, whoever that may be, to surrender powers usurped by the current one. What leader in history has willingly and voluntarily surrendered authority, after all?

Such power must be wrested back by Congress, and the only way for that to happen is impeachment—a course laid out clearly by the authors of the Constitution for just such a crisis.
____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Protect your right to Biological privacy! Oppose DNA Database Act!

mappw — Mon, 19 May 2008 14:02:11 -0400

Protect your right to Biological privacy! Oppose DNA Database Act! Dear Friends, Please respond to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) bulletin below. Then forward it to all who you know, as quickly and broadly as possible. We need to add our comments against a Federal DNA database in order to put a stop to it. We only have until today, Monday, to add our comments, to protect our biological right to privacy. Click the link below for more information - http://www.ccrjustice.org/get-involved/action/oppose-sweeping-new-federa... Click the link below to take action by adding your own objections - http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail... ____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ ____ center for constitutional rights Friends, Under a new plan, the government could take your DNA and keep it on file permanently if you are arrested at a demonstration on federal property. Take action today to stop the government from giving itself sweeping new powers to create DNA databases. Please read this alert for background on the plan and immediately go here and click on the yellow "Add Comments" balloon to file public comments with the government to oppose the plan. The government is only accepting comments until this Monday, May 19, so take action today! At the end of 2005, a little-noticed provision was slipped into the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) reauthorization bill that provided the federal government with the power to collect and permanently keep DNA samples from anyone arrested for any crime whether or not they are convicted, any non-U.S. citizen merely detained by federal authorities for any reason, and everyone in federal prison. Now the government is trying to put the DNA Fingerprint Act into practice. Federal agencies would be required to take DNA samples from: Individuals arrested for the most minor of crimes, such as peaceful protestors who are demonstrating on federal property. Countless numbers of visitors from other countries who are pulled aside in airports by the Transportation Security Administration. Lawful immigrants seeking admission to this country, whether at the land border or in passport control at the airport. Go here for more information on the law. This is a dangerous invasion of privacy. Our DNA is not a fingerprint - it contains vast amounts of sensitive medical information about us. And Congress held no hearings on this dangerous legislation, even though it: threatens the privacy of millions of Americans; would disproportionately affect people of color; and turns the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" on its head. The Justice Department recently issued proposed regulations on the implementation of the law and is seeking public comments. Go here and voice your opposition to the federal government collecting and permanently storing our DNA. (See the end of this email for suggested talking points.) CCR will also be submitting extensive comments and notifying the press of this important story so the government can't slip their plan by without the public knowing. Congress failed to oppose this dangerous new law - it's up to us to let them know that the we oppose the government collecting people's DNA, and that we care about our privacy. Please take action today. Sincerely, Vincent Warren CCR Executive Director ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here are some reasons to oppose this plan, which you can use in your comments: Innocent people do not belong in a criminal DNA database. The underlying statute that permits this is wrong and goes against basic principles of our justice system. The regulations interpret the statute as broadly as possible, giving the FBI and other federal agencies the authority to take DNA in far too wide a range of cases. DNA is not a fingerprint - it contains vast amounts of sensitive medical information about us. The Justice Department's decision not to require destruction of the biological samples once the DNA profile is uploaded to its database exacerbates the potential for our genetic privacy to be violated and opens the door to the potential of familial searching. The regulations will add a disproportionate number of people of color to the database, potentially making those communities an increased target for law enforcement and further aggravating the already existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The regulations estimate that potentially more than one million new samples will be added to the database a year, yet the FBI's laboratory is currently receiving for processing only 75,000 offender samples each year. The requirement to collect, profile and upload such a massive number of DNA samples will flood the system and create huge backlogs, which may ultimately hinder criminal investigations, rather than help them. The regulations contemplate federal agencies contracting with third parties to collect and store DNA samples. Outsourcing the handling of this most sensitive information to multiple collection and storage sites will almost certainly lead to abuse, the creation of "shadow databases," and error, potentially undermining public trust in DNA as an effective investigational tool. Take Action: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail... Center for Constitutional Rights ll 666 Broadway 7th floor NY, NY 10012 ll 212-614-6464 ll www.ccrjustice. org

A Manchurian Candidate in the White House?

dlindorff — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:34:28 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

With a viral campaign underway via email, right-wing radio, and on the street suggesting that Barack Obama is a black “Manchurian Candidate,” secretly trained as a Muslim fanatic who will insinuate himself into the White House, thence to undermine all that we hold dear, perhaps it is time to look at the Manchurian Candidate we already have in the White House, who, together with his handler over in Blair House, has pretty much done all the damage already.

George Bush came to office in 2001 promising a new era of integrity, civility and “compassionate conservatism,” an era of humble American foreign policy, and a bi-partisan approach to government.

What did we actually get?

Once in office, this chameleon president almost immediately set out to embroil the country in a major war in the Middle East against the nation of Iraq. The game plan was laid out at the president’s first National Security Council meeting, attended by Vice President Dick Cheney (the man holding Bush’s controller), Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neal (who later spilled the beans about the session).

Bush also famously ignored all warnings about the imminent attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. How much he and the rest of the administration knew about that attack in advance, or whether elements within the administration may have even helped it along, remains the subject of considerable interest and investigation and may never be answered, but it is clear that there were ample warnings about it, and he did nothing—even rudely blowing off a briefer who tried to alert him to the danger. Moreover, it is known that Israeli Mossad agents (who we know have close ties to both the US intelligence apparatus and to the Neocons who infest the Bush White House) did indeed have advance knowledge, and were set up across New York Harbor with a video camera to tape the attack on the Twin Towers (they were subsequently arrested by New Jersey police, only to be later released and sent back to Israel, through intercession by the US government). As well, we know that unidentified people made a killing by placing negative bets, called “puts,” on the stocks, several days before 9-11, of the two airlines that were hijacked, American and United, and of two investment banks that would be seriously hurt by the building collapses, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. (The puts were placed through an investment bank, Alex Brown, which until a year earlier had been headed by a man who moved over to become the number three person in the CIA.) It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Bush/Cheney administration, at a minimum, wanted an attack on American soil, and a national disaster that would put the country on a war footing.

Certainly instead of rallying the public and defending the nation’s democratic traditions and its Constitution, Bush and his handlers after 9-11 immediately set in motion a concerted scare campaign to undermine both. While urging the public to buy sheets of plastic and duct tape to construct “safe rooms” in their homes, they rammed through Congress a deceitfully named measure, the so-called Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (USA PATRIOT Act), which effectively undermined most of the articles of the Bill of Rights (and which appeared, suspiciously, fully drawn up in bill form, only days after the attacks).

At the same time, the president, only one week after the attacks, obtained an Authorization for Use of Military Force for a military attack on the Taliban government in Afghanistan and on Al Qaeda forces in that country, which he subsequently interpreted broadly as an authorization for a global “war” on terror which he then claimed made him effectively a dictator with absolute power both at home and abroad (the so-called “unitary executive” theory). Under this claim of absolute power as commander in chief in time of war, Bush went on to order the use of torture against captives, foreign and domestic, including US citizens, to strip even US citizens of the right of habeas corpus—that is, the right to have their arrest and detention brought before a federal court—and to establish secret torture centers around the globe and on military installations in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba.

As well, even before the 9-11 attacks, the president began a sweeping program of electronic spying, run through the super-secret National Security Agency, on Americans’ telephone and internet activities. It was and remains a program that deliberately avoids seeking warrants and court approval even by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court—a body that has only rejected some five requests for warrants out of hundreds of thousands sought since its establishment in 1978.

Finally, in a perhaps fatal undermining of the Constitution, the president after 9-11 began a practice of simply refusing to enact or obey laws passed by the Congress, effectively rendering the legislative branch an impotent debating club.

Not content to simply explode or dismantle the legal foundations of the American government and rule of law, Bush and his handlers also went about systematically destroying the country’s basic institutions and even its economy.

The education system was fatally ensnared in a test-driven system called “No Child Left Behind,” which has in short order dumbed down public education to an extent shocking even to this already anti-intellectual society, with many schools simply giving up the teaching of art, literature or history, in order to focus desperately on math and reading in order that their students would do well enough on standardized tests to keep the schools from losing their funding.

The dollar has been cast adrift to become the new Lira as the government has gone on an unprecedented borrowing spree to fund endless war and ever-larger military budgets, while erasing the taxes on the wealthy, the super-rich, and corporations. Banks were given free rein to enter into all manner of risky ventures, leading to the current collapse in credit. Corporations were encouraged to ship their production and jobs overseas. Homeowners were encouraged to spend, spend, spend and to mortgage their homes to the hilt and then some. Towns, cities and pension funds were encouraged to invest in fantastic “structured” products that were actually towering card houses. Domestic car manufacturers were encouraged to build every larger, ever more voraciously gas-guzzling vehicles, pumping out ever larger quantities of carbon into the already overstressed atmosphere.

The nation’s infrastructure—its roads, dams, bridges, levies, airports, veterans hospitals etc.--were left to decay, with predictable results, the most dramatic of which was the loss of an entire city, New Orleans, to a routine Category 3 hurricane (after which, the president did nothing to rescue the survivors or fund a recovery).

Surveying at the appalling wreckage left after eight years of the Bush administration, it is hard to recognize the country that he started out with in 2001. A once proud nation—one that only a few years ago was admired around the world and that now is viewed as a pariah and a rogue state—today trembles before a handful of turbaned fanatics holed up in caves in the Hindu Kush, its trillion-dollar high-tech military colossus fought to a standstill in Iraq and Afghanistan by a few thousand brave men and women armed with RPGs, antique AK-47s and home-made roadside bombs. A nation that once was the envy of the world for its free society now has scientists afraid to report their findings, university professors afraid to support outspoken colleagues, members of Congress afraid to defend their Constitution, citizens afraid of their neighbors, journalists afraid of government criticism, lawyers afraid to defend clients...

Hey, this place starts to look and feel an awful lot like the China I lived in back in 1991!

Forget all the nonsense about Barack Obama being a closet Muslim. We already have our Manchurian Candidate in the White House, and he has largely accomplished what he was programmed to do: destroy the country.

The truth is this: If at the end of their second term, Bush and Cheney were to hop on a plane and fly off to a hideout in the mountains on the Afghan-Pakistan border, leaving a "Nya-nya!" note on the White House dining room table, few people would really be very surprised.
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His most recent book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Crime of the Century: Time for Congress to Stand Up

dlindorff — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 18:38:48 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

Who’s minding the store in Washington?

While President George W. Bush was standing before the members of Congress on January 28 laying out his plans, such as they are, for the final year of his second term in the White House, he was also seriously and perhaps fatally undermining the authority of Congress with a new signing statement, attached to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, in which he declared that he would simply violate or fail to comply with four provisions.

Let me say that again. The president states in writing that he is not going to obey and will not be bound by four parts of a law duly passed by the Congress.

Just so you know that we’re not talking about the naming of a bridge or a new ship, the four provisions of the act which the president is going to ignore are:

* the establishment of a commission to investigate contractor fraud in Afghanistan and Iraq
* the protection or whistleblowers who report contractor fraud from harassment or official retribution
* a requirement that US intelligence agencies respond to Congressional requests for documents
* a ban on funding for any permanent military bases in Iraq, and on any actions that would seek to give the US control over Iraq’s oil resources or oil money.

Now first of all, let’s see what the constitution has to say. Article I, the first actual statement about how our government works, which comes right after the preamble about “We the People,” states unambiguously:

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”

It goes on to state that:

“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections, to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration by two thirds of that House shall agree to apss the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law…If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it.”

Note that there is no asterisk or footnote saying anything about the president having the power to simply ignore those legislative powers or to violate them at will. If he does not veto the entire bill—and in this case he did not, he signed it—it becomes the Law of the Land.

Article I also defines the powers of the Congress expansively, stating that it has the power to lay and collect taxes, to regulate commerce, to coin money, to declare war, ro call forth the militia, and

“to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

Article II goes on to define the powers of the president. It states:

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.”

It goes on to explicitly define and limit the president’s powers, specifically to being “commander in chief” of the armed forces (not of the country or of the government!), to the granting of reprieves and pardons (except in the case of impeachments), to making treaties (subject to Senate approval) and appointing officers to the cabinet and the courts (all subject to Senate approval).

That is it. There are no other presidential powers in the Constitution. Certainly there is no power granted to disobey or ignore Acts of Congress or to violate the law.

And yet here we have the president, at the start of his last year in office, announcing that he will not obey a law duly passed by the Congress that requires his administration to establish a commission to investigate the rampant corruption among private contractors operating in Afghanistan and Iraq, that he will not obey a law barring him from punishing whistleblowers who disclose such corruption, that he will not obey an order that his intelligence services must respond to requests from Congress for information (about such issues as torture of captives, or spying on American citizens, or destroying documents), and that he will not obey an order banning the establishment and construction of permanent military bases in Iraq, and banning attempts to gain US control over Iraqi oil.

Logically one would expect members of Congress in both parties to be up in arms over this illegal and clearly unconstitutional defiance—the more so because both houses of Congress are in the hands of the Democratic Party.

But we have heard not a peep from the “people’s representatives” at this brazen abuse of power.

The reason: Congress is afraid of impeachment.

It is so afraid to confront this usurper president that, incredibly, its members, Republican and Democrat alike, seem happy to surrender not only their own power, but the power of the institution of Congress, to avoid doing what the Constitution calls upon them to do: to impeach a criminal in the White House who has abused his powers of office, who has violated his oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution, and who has broken the law multiple times.

This is an appalling abrogation of responsibility on the part of our elected representatives in Washington, who also took oaths of office committing themselves to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.

How can these hundreds of cowards and traitors in the Capitol, with straight faces, hold hand to heart and pledge allegiance, as they do at the start of every day in Congress? How can they with straight faces go before their constituents and pose as honorable men and women?

The Constitution is clear. It states that:

“The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

Please observe that the word is shall, not may.

Now although the evidence is overwhelming, one can nonetheless debate whether the president broke the law when he went to war in Iraq or whether he knowingly lied about the reasons for that war. One can debate whether he broke the law by personally authorizing torture of captives. One can even debate whether he broke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. These are matters that require hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. But there is no need to hold hearings to decide whether the president has abused his power by declaring his intention to ignore laws passed by the Congress. This is an objective fact. A High Crime has been committed and openly confessed to by the President of the United States. Congress has only to vote on it as an impeachable act to restore its Constitutional authority, and to restore the damaged Constitution.

There is no question here of “diverting” Congress from its important duties. This need not be time-consuming business. Moreover, defending its authority from a usurper is surely the most important thing Congress can do. Neither is there any question of this being “divisive.” Every member of Congress should want to protect the Constitutional authority of the legislative branch from this fatal encroachment which, if unchallenged, renders Congress nothing but a talk shop no better than the local diner. Nor can there be any question about whether the votes are there or not, either to vote for an Article of Impeachment, or even to convict in the Senate. What member of Congress, of either party, would vote to approve and to sanction in perpetuity this or any president’s right to ignore the Constitution and willfully violate laws passed by the Congress—particularly given the likelihood that the next president could be a Democrat?

Here then, is an issue that Congress cannot ignore. Here is an issue that renders ludicrous House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that “impeachment is off the table.” Here is an issue that should inflame every American citizen. Here is an issue that should be put to every candidate for office, including those running for the office of president:

Is President Bush, and is every future president, a dictator, who personally determines what laws are to be obeyed and what laws are to be ignored? Or is the president bound, like the rest of us, by the rule of law and the Constitution?

The choice is now squarely before us all.
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DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net where you may also order a signed hardcover copy of the impeachment book at an author's discount.

Bush's Impeachable Crimes, and the Growing Risks of Martial Law

dlindorff — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 16:49:19 -0500

Hear Dave Lindorff make the case for impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, and talks about the steps that are being taken to lay the groundwork for the imposition of martial law, in a talk given Oct. 21 in West Hartford, CT.

This program was organized by Connecticut activists Marge and David Schneider. The recording was produced by Dori Smith of WHUS Radio in Mansfield, CT.

__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and columnist. His most recent book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

SAY HELLO TO THEIR LITTLE FRIEND: TASER

Bgilmore — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:47:17 -0400

The recent tasering of a student after he questioned John Kerry during a university appearance was a painful example of misjudgment by police officers. In "ganging" up on him both physically and psychologically, they instigated his shock, disorientation, then panic. Yet he was never a threat; nor was he vicious. He was not an "enemy combatant." His questioning was passionate but salient, his only "crime" being wordiness.

Such passion is not unheard of at these events. An aide will usually move in to focus the person's attention on time and decorum. Occasionally it will accelerate to a warning about calling security. No such preliminaries occurred here. The overkill in numbers and brutish behavior created a crisis of fear and an unjustified, wrongful tasering. There was NO justification for introducing this weapon.

The taser was allegedly supposed to be a weapon of last resort in a crime setting. Unbelievably, in this case it was employed for political convenience. In deference to a senator's comfort level, law enforcement officers engaged in conduct that violated the playbook and exacerbated emotions rather than defused them. Misuse of tasers on people innocent of any crime is un-American, incompetent, and insane. For knowledgeable law officers, such cavalier abuse marks a wretched benchmark: the self-fulfilling prophecy.

The incident's larger symbolism was also unmistakable. This student's passion mimicked the frustration of millions who have been anguishing for years while Congress does nothing to stop the serial violence of unchecked greed. They watch passively as innocent people are tortured or killed, and their own sympathizers brutalized.

For six years these tyrants have been soiling in our collective messkits. But instead of stopping them, Republicans close ranks trying to cover it up, while democrats run around waving a diaper trying to change them.

Preemptive overkill rules - because war is now officially permanent.

Imperialism by incrementalism: How to dupe a democracy

Bgilmore — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:40:06 -0400

INCREMENTAL IMPERIALISM: HOW TO DUPE THE DEMOCRACY

Many good people were late in recognizing the neocon agenda for what it is. The following is from an interview of Joseph Wilson that appeared in the documentary Uncovered: The whole truth about the Iraq war.

WILSON: "(In)the first Gulf War, when I came out of Baghdad in 1991, I met with the president of the United States, I met with the senior leadership of both parties, and the one thing that sticks with me to this day is the extent to which each of them had to plumb their consciences to come to a decision on how to vote on the use of force authorization. It had been a moral decision on their part. It had been one that had kept them up at night as they thought their way through this. We owe our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen and our marines nothing less before we send them to battle."

The following outlines the claim to a more realistic interpretation:

-- Not unlike the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the first Gulf War was planned in the boardrooms long before the invasion of Kuwait.

-- The invasion of Kuwait itself was deliberately greenlighted to create the pretext for military force. It was done for power, influence, and to establish a larger U.S. military presence in the gulf region. It signaled a NEW POLICY: INCREMENTAL IMPERIALISM. A military force remained in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A beachhead had been established.

-- During the Cold War, Reagan's actions were consciously measured, and in cases like Grenada, perhaps more symbolic than real. But Panama in the post Cold War period was a dry run for Iraq.

-- The end of the Cold War was not going to be a vindication of American values and constitutional principles. On the contrary, it was poised to start an attack on them, here and abroad, by neocon powerbrokers.

-- The divide between the two periods is called a paradigm shift. That great divide between the end of the Cold War and its demise should have introduced a world intent on building on the accomplishments of détente and undoing the proxy violence that had become a governing principle. Under the dominance of the Cold War narrative, the ability of smaller nations and their subnarratives to influence their own destinies was limited. The end of the Cold war was supposed to signal a relaxation in this rigid system (you could sink a fleet of battleships with the contradictions on both sides), one that institutionalized fear and violence in regions like Eastern Europe and Central America. Wholesale tyranny as policy was passe, and a restoration of constitutional principles and those of real human rights (beyond lip service) was held up as the standard.

Who would have thought it would be the United States to trample on its own values and forge an imperialist course?

-- After the success of the Gorbachev-Reagan détente, a short but chilling article appeared in the back pages of a major American newsmagazine. It was an interview with a senior, unnamed Pentagon official on the question of the U.S. military's need for a new mission now that détente had removed the Soviet Union as its traditional enemy. The official replied that they were conducting extensive research on weaponry and were looking seriously at Iraq. The clear inference was that Iraq made a good fit as a replacement enemy - not because of any demonstrated threat to the United States, but solely on the basis of the amount of its weaponry.* The article was not disturbing for any implications it posed about military overreach, but for what could happen in the hands of the politically unscrupulous who give the military its orders.

What happened here and how was it received? One interpretation is that military officials were engaging in their usual behaviors by tracking the weaponry of unstable regions and nations. A politician's interpretation is that they were scouting for a replacement enemy, crunched some numbers and looked at some indicators, and figured out they could sell it on Iraq.

It was America's first MBA WAR.

Change the brand name but keep the concept, subnarrative truths be damned. Sell it with groupthink. (They killed a few astronauts with that technique, too).

Some of us took an interest in ending the decade-long Iran-Iraq war, but the truth is that it only ended when it was no longer useful for the U.S., when the Reagan policy was replaced by the Gorbachev-Reagan détente. ...Or in other words, when it was convenient. So we give it a pass because it preceded the end of the Cold War. Things would be different now because the right values had won out and so much fire did not have to be fought with so much return fire.

Where were the diplomats then? Where were the overtures to both Iran and Iraq? Where were the apologies for the sins of the Cold War? For the policy of destroying fledgling democracies in the middle east, not saving them? Where was diplomacy period?

Does anyone really think that moral people will ever buy into the view that you can "create" an enemy for self-serving reasons, exploit it as an "ally" when convenient and self-serving, then exploit it as an "enemy" when convenient and self-serving? That the strategy of "wrong-footing" a leader is de facto a justifiable pretext for war? How moral was the active support for a horrific decade-long war between two neighbors? And so the first increment of imperialist intent was launched without so much as a care for the innocents who would suffer in a region where innocents had perpetually suffered. And for what? For the greater narrative of a mutually self-serving East-West policy.

(They'll welcome us as saviors? Throw flowers in our path? The same people who saddled them with their dictator? What kind of a fool narrative was that?)

The proponents of imperialism had to work so much harder to sell the 2003 Gulf War. For that they had to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, then sell the public on it before the prophecy became fact. The result is that now we have a hotbed of terrorism in Iraq. Now there are puny elements of al Qaeda in the country. And the innocents suffer beyond comprehension as imperialism seeks to crown itself as the dominant story and dominant truth that crushes all other stories and all other truths.

Mission accomplished… for the duped.

And as for all that alleged hand-wringing about voting for the first Gulf War? That question was posed to Mrs. Cheney regarding her husband, who at the time was serving as Secretary of Defense under Bush I. She responded that he slept fine at night.

That comes as no surprise. People who disdain accountability - even that for which they were elected - never lose sleep over their vicarious kills.

- end -

* This decision was an evil irony when you consider that Iraq was part of America's axis of capitalist blowback - its Middle East Contra - along with the Nicaraguan contras to fight the '79 Sandinista victory, and the Mujihadeen to fight the '79 Soviet Afghan invasion – all compliments of the U.S. Treasury. My suspicion is that Iraq's initiation of the Iran-Iraq war was actively greenlighted for the purpose of punishing Iran after its 1979 revolution, though I offer no evidence. Matters surrounding Iraq are shrouded, with some Brits disagreeing with American views on the extent of the latter's involvement in the 1963 overthrow of Kassem. It's interesting, though, to hear Wilson confirm that Hussein viewed his actions as allied with American interests. Maybe it's because Glaspie was very convincing, and it wasn't the first time.