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Wed 21 Dec, 2005 01:44 pm
BuzzFlash News Analysis
Quote:Dick Cheney has put it on the table as bluntly and thuggishly as a mobster setting down a crowbar.
December 21, 2005
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
It may be the Holiday Season, but for the United States of America we're back to Lexington and Concord.
Dick Cheney has put it on the table as bluntly and thuggishly as a mobster setting down a crowbar. Cheney has said that he, Bush and Rumsfeld are out to seize as much power as they can in the name of a "robust" executive branch. It ain't no executive branch Cheney is after; it's a dictatorship.
As we've said before, call it the Franco regime, the Stalin regime, the Pinochet Regime, the Brezhnev regime, the Bush regime -- they are all the same in terms of dictatorial powers that deny democracy.
Is the American Constitution going to be put through the shredder until there is nothing left but strips of paper to throw out in the trash? Or are some patriotic heroes going to rescue America?
Right now the "Centrist Democrats" are still sitting back acting as if there's no immediate crisis. Their consultants warn them not to appear too radical! As if the dismembering of democracy by Cheney and Bush is not radical! As if the brazen seizure of illegal dictatorial powers is not radical! As if the conduct of an unnecessary war costing thousands of lives, fomenting a new generation of terrorists, and bankrupting America is not radical!
The Bush dictatorship -- and it has clearly and publicly crossed the threshold now -- is not going to tiptoe away. Dictatorships don't. They hang on until they are displaced from positions of power.
If the Democrats don't start yelling fire soon, we'll just be left with the burning hulk of what once was a great democracy. We are on the verge of irreversibly becoming just another dictatorship "ism."
The terrorists have an ally in Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Cheney and Bush have accomplished what Osama never dreamed of achieving: bringing down the American democracy and replacing it with a dictatorship.
And what's more the Busheviks are totally inept at making the right strategic moves in actually confronting the threat of terrorism.
They are like all dictators, arrogant, elitist losers who seize permanent power because they could not hold onto it based on accomplishment -- because they only have a record of ruin to run on.
Meanwhile the John Kerrys of the world act as if they have all the time in the world to "win the next election." As if there were a chance of a fair one in a de facto dictatorship.
The satirist Jonathan Swift ("Gulliver's Travels") would tell us this. For the most part, we are left with a party composed of Democratic fools living in a political world of GOP knaves.
God help us all!
buzzflash
It's more like monarchy with George III.
As near as I can see, there is not even one single actual fact in that article. That is a measure of how strong your case is.
Well, it was actually from buzzflash...oh, and Jonathon Swift DID write gulliver's travels.
The Dems have fallen off the edge of the earth.
They cannot be taken seriously.
This is what happens when the Ultra Libs are left alone with a computer and way too much time on their hands.
Merry CHRISTmas all !!
extremes of any sort are not to be taken seriously. that doesn't mean that democrats OR republicals have fallen off the edge of the earth because of these extremes.
bush's administration is not a dictatorship. it never qualified as such and hardly ever will, it would be impossible within american checks and balances systems.
it is, however, a badly mismanaged governance. democracies make serious mistakes, too.
The "mainstream Democrats" have glommed on to this preposterous demonization of Dick Cheney, therefore, it is safe to say the Democrat party has fallen off the edge of the earth.
High Crimes and Misdemeanors By : RALPH NADER
December Monday 26th 2005
Richard Cohen, the finely-calibrated syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, wrote a column on October 28, 2004 which commenced with this straight talk: "I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But if I were to write the headline for one, it would be 'Impeach George Bush'."
Cohen stated the obvious then. Bush and Cheney had plunged the nation into war "under false pretenses." Exploiting the public trust in the Presidency, Bush had persuaded, over the uncritical mass media, day after day, before the war, a majority of the American people that Saddam Hussein possessed chemical, biological weapons and nuclear weapons programs, was connected to al-Qaeda and 9/11 and was a threat to the United States.
These falsehoods, Cohen wrote, "are a direct consequence of the administration's repeated lies--lies of commission, such as Cheney's statements, and lies of omission."
Fourteen months later, no widely syndicated columnist or major newspaper editorial has called for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Not even Cohen again. Yet the case for impeachment is so strong that, recently, hardly a day goes by without more disclosures which strengthen any number of impeachable offenses that could form a Congressional action under our Constitution. An illegal war, to begin with, against our Constitution which says only Congress can declare war. An illegal war under domestic laws, and international law, and conducted illegally under international conventions to which the US belongs, should cause an outcry against this small clique of outlaws committing war crimes who have hijacked our national government.
An illegal, criminal war means that every related U.S. death and injury, every related Iraqi civilian death and injury, every person tortured, every home and building destroyed become war crimes as a result--under established international law.
There are those on talk radio or cable shows who scoff at international law. They rarely tell their audiences that the United States has played a key role in establishing these treaties, like the Geneva Conventions, and the United Nations Charter. When these treaties are agreed to by the U.S. government, they become as binding as our federal laws.
By these legal standards and by the requirements of the U.S. Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, the war-declaring authority), George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are probably the most impeachable President and Vice President in American history. An illegal war based on lies, deceptions, cover-ups and their repetition even after being told by officials in their own administration--not to mention critical retired generals, diplomats and security specialists--of their falsity should have prodded the House of Representatives into initiating impeachment proceedings. But then, Bush did not lie under oath about sex.
A majority of the American people have turned against this war-quagmire, against its intolerable human and economic costs, against the increased danger this war is bringing to our nation's interests. They want the soldiers to return safely home. In increasing numbers they sense what Bush's own CIA Director, Porter Goss, told the U.S. Senate last February. He noted, along with other officials since then, that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are like a magnet attracting and training more terrorists from more countries who will return to their nations and cause trouble. Many national security experts have said, in effect, you do not fight terrorists with policies that produce more terrorists.
Now comes the most recent, blatant impeachable offense--Bush ordering the spying on Americans in our country by the National Security Agency. This disclosure stunned many N.S.A. staff who themselves view domestic surveillance as anathema, according to Matthew M. Aid, a current historian of the agency.
Domestic eavesdropping on Americans by order of the President to the National Security Agency violates the 27-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act unless they obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. This court meets in secret and has rejected only four out of 19,000 applications.
So why did Bush violate this law and why does he defiantly say he will continue to order domestic spying as he has since 2002? Not because the FISA Court is slow. It acts in a matter of hours in the middle of the night if need be. The law actually permits surveillance in emergencies as long as warrants are requested within 72 hours or 15 days in times of war.
Bush violated the law because of the arrogance of power. Ostensibly, he believes that a vague Congressional resolution after 9/11 to fight al-Qaeda overrides this explicit federal law and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Bush even claims he can unilaterally decide to domestically spy from the inherent powers of the Presidency to fight wars. (To him Congressionally-undeclared wars are still wars).
Other than his legal flaks in the White House and Justice Department making such transparently specious arguments as "good soldiers", the overwhelming position of legal scholars is that Bush and Cheney have violated grave laws protecting the liberties of the American people.
The crime, says Professor David Cole of Georgetown Law School, is "punishable by five years in prison." Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School said that the President ordered such a crime and ordered US officials to commit it.this is a serious felony.what happened here is not just a violation of Federal law, it's a violation of the U.S. Constitutionan impeachable offense."
It matters not that a Republican-dominated Congress has no present interest in moving to impeach Bush-Cheney. What matters is that impeachment in this case--based on the authority of Congress to charge the President and Vice President with "high crimes and misdemeanors"--is a patriotic cause rooted in the wisdom of our founding fathers who did not want another King George III in the guise of a President.
As Senator Russell Feingold said a few days ago: The President is not a King, he is a President subject to the laws and Constitution of the land. Apparently, George W. Bush seems to believe and behave as if his unlimited inherited powers flow from King George III, given the way he has shoved aside both federal law and the nation's Constitution.
Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should resign. They have disgraced their office and bled the nation. They have shattered the public trust in so many serious ways that will only become worse in the coming months.
As soon as I saw BuzzFlash I began to laugh hysterically...