Some folks wouldn’t recognize tyranny if it jumped up and bit them on the ass

tiggers thotful spot

19 years ago

Cross-posted at dailyKos (where there has been a lot of DLC style centrism afoot!)

Since the beginning of the Bush regime, we’ve established that

o President Bush can order American citizens held incommunicado without any charge, indefinitely

o President Bush can order the execution without any trial of an American citizen in a car in Yemen

o President Bush can approve the torture of prisoners or have them ‘disappeared’ to other countries where they will be tortured

o President Bush can divert funds allocated by Congress for one war for waging another war

o President Bush has the power to wage war against another country without a declaration of war and without proving that the situation was a dire emergency

tyr·an·ny
NOUN:
pl. tyr·an·nies
A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended. Its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war…and in the degeneracy of manners and morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

— James Madison

It’s sometimes easier to start, I suppose, with the obvious debt-funded fraud resulting from this undeclared unnecessary war against Iraq. All that dealing out of no-bid Halliburton ’emoluments’ and Presidential Medals of Freedom and ‘offices’ for suddenly redeemed Iran-Contra felons and torture lovers. It’s a lovely investment opportunity, according to Richard Perle! This kind of stuff really pisses off Al Franken. Good for him.

But we hardly even need to discuss that. I’m more concerned with the malignant aspects Madison was warning us about that have been staring us right in the face.

I’m more concerned that some don’t dare call it imperial for fear of alarming Joe and Jane America living comfortably with their simple mythology. Uh oh! I did a bad thing! FOX News might say I’m unpatriotic.

I’m more concerned that the President can start a war and kill thousands of people, because he felt like it — the intelligence was being fixed around the policy — and there is no accountability. I’m more concerned that when some of us suggest to our Democratic representatives that there be accountability, a bunch of them are off trying to figure out ways to deploy more troops to Iraq or to enlarge the size of the army that President Bush can now send off to die as he pleases.

Jose Padilla, an American citizen, can be held indefinitely because President Bush sez he’s a terrist. Due process?

Ahmed Hijazi, an American citizen, was executed using a Predator missile. Not driving an American car, perhaps?

Justice Dept. Memo Says Torture ‘May Be Justified’

Extraordinary rendition refers to a procedure practiced by the government of the United States (and possibly aided by other western countries) whereby criminal suspects are sent to countries in which torture is routinely used in interrogation…As described in various reports in the media, suspects have been arrested, blindfolded, shackled, and sedated, and transported by private jet or other means to the destination country…In a number of cases, suspects to whom the procedure is believed to have been applied later appeared to be innocent.

The civics lesson of the Iran-Contra scandal was simple: No matter how powerful or well-intentioned, presidents cannot secretly fund wars without the consent of Congress. But according to Bob Woodward’s new book, President Bush apparently never learned that axiom…

Woodward alleges that in July 2002, the president secretly began to finance the war in Iraq with no authorization from Congress. He says $700 million was siphoned from operations against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and into planning an Iraq invasion. The president allegedly took the money from one of the two supplemental spending bills passed after September 11 and left lawmakers “totally in the dark.”

Now does this sound like Congress has the power to declare war to you?

Go massive … Sweep it all up. Things related and not…

How about this?

The memo, first published on May 1, contains the recorded minutes of a July 23, 2002, meeting of senior British cabinet officials and advisers. The memo reports that British intelligence chief Richard Dearlove stated, based on meetings with U.S. officials in Washington, that President Bush was determined even then to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq “through military action” and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”…”The Americans had been trying to link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks; but the British knew the evidence was flimsy or non-existent. Dearlove warned the meeting that ‘the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.'”

Madison warned us. Bush is getting away with it. Democrats are not fighting it enough. Don’t tell me the war in Iraq isn’t immoral, no matter what Joe and Jane America think. And don’t tell me it isn’t helping kill the myth of what America is supposed to be, because the evidence is overwhelming.

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