I've been hesitant to post about such a heavy topic for fear of being too alarmist...but the time for inaction has long past. There are those who would consider these posts too much, overwhelming and proposing unlikely events. I hope, I sincerely deeply pray that they are incorrect, and I hope I am wrong in the worst possible way about all of these issues. But if I'm not, if even 10% of what seems to be developing turns out to be true then I think it's one's duty to speak up. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. As Dr. King jr. said, "silence is betryal."
These people are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States ... and we're going to have no one to blame but ourselves." -- Michael Scheuer, former head of the C.I.A.'s bin Laden unit, to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, February 19, 2007
Paul Slansky shows why the alarm bells are ringing like the summer of 2001 and asks where the hell everyone's outrage is.
Remember how you watched Richard Clarke testifying before Congress in 2004 and wished his warnings had been taken seriously in 2001?
Once you have digested that little bundle of joy, try to tackle
this, seemingly pulled out of 1984 , describing a prelude for a police state.
Bush is now free to declare martial law in response to a natural disaster, a pandemic or a terrorist attack. The congress is powerless to stop him.
Also, Bush recently signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows the president to arbitrarily declare citizens and non citizens “enemy combatants” and imprison them indefinitely without charge. The new law gives Bush the authority to disregard the Geneva Conventions and the 8th amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment and apply “harsh interrogation” which may include torture. The act effectively repeals habeas corpus, the cornerstone of American jurisprudence and the Bill of Rights.
The Military Commissions Act cannot coexist with the US Constitution; the two are mutually exclusive.
I should add that tucked into the abomination known as Military Commissions Act is
a provision that pardons Bush and anyone in his administration of war crimes under the Geneva Convention, crimes which he is likely guilty of.
Don't think it could happend here? Maybe, maybe not, but
this fellow seems to think it could.
Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.
Is this that far-fetched? There were untold abuses during WWII and
Bush considers his perpetual "War on Terra" WWIII.
The
NYT documents how he has already implented the legal justification for such changes, as I noted in
my previous post.
A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law
.
Larry Beinhart
explains what this silly little habeas corpus thing is all about anyway.
Arthur Silber explains what has already been lost right under our very own noses.
Now, I know that conservatives get upset when libertarians bring up Adolf Hitler in the context of the post-9/11 U.S. government assaults on civil liberties (Have you ever noticed that they never get upset when U.S. officials compare recalcitrant foreign rulers to Hitler?), but as I pointed out in my article "A Democratic Dictatorship," when the U.S. government is doing something that Hitler did, while that doesn’t automatically make it bad, it at least should raise some red flags.
As I pointed out in my article "How Hitler Became a Dictator," after the terrorist strike on the Reichstag, which enabled Hitler to secure the Enabling Act that temporarily suspended civil liberties in Germany, a German judge, while convicting one of the defendants, acquitted others, much to Hitler’s chagrin and disapproval. After all, they were obviously "terrorists." How dare that German judge find them not guilty?
So, Hitler decided to implement a new "independent" judicial system within Germany to try terrorists and traitors. Known as the "People’s Court," it became nothing more than a judicial lapdog to carry out prosecutions, convictions, and punishments in accordance with Hitler’s will. In fact, it was the infamous People’s Court that convicted German college students Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends in the White Rose organization and quickly tried and executed them (3 days after their arrest) for treason for distributing antiwar and anti-government pamphlets.
The military tribunals that Bush and the Congress are setting up will supposedly be used only on foreigners, not on Americans accused of terrorism. The reason for that differentiation in treatment is political — the feds know that Americans are less likely to object to this new judicial system if Americans think that will be applied only to "other people," not to them.
How can such a system be reconciled with the legal principle of equal application of the law and the political principle of the rule of law? Answer: It cannot be.
Now back to the other elephant in the room, Iran. For anyone who is still uncertain that there is the possibility of a "preventive" strike on Iran, read the majority of posts I have put up, starting from the very first one.
Silber then asks
what you have done to prevent the next war.He gives advice on what you can do.
