Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are at it again.

Last week, Rumsfeld told the press we should be preparing for "the Long War," saying of the war this administration has stirred up with its attack on Iraq that, "Just as the Cold War lasted a long time, this war is something that is not going to go away."

The last time Rumsfeld talked like this was in the 1970s, in response to the danger of peace presented by Richard Nixon.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called "détente." On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said:

"Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear-for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world."

But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford's Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney - and their cronies - would soon work for and/or run?

Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort - first secretly and then openly - to undermine Nixon's treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear.

They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn't know about, that the CIA didn't know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld's position a "complete fiction" and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.

As Dr. Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1980, told the BBC's Adam Curtis for his documentary "The Power of Nightmares":

"They couldn't say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn't find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They're saying, 'we can't find evidence that they're doing it the way that everyone thinks they're doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don't know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.'

"INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.

"CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

"INTERVIEWER: So they're saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn't exist...

"CAHN: Doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It just means that we haven't found it."

But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.

Wolfowitz's group, known as "Team B," came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn't depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. It could - within a matter of months - be off the coast of New York City with a nuclear warhead.

Although Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld's assertions of this powerful new Soviet WMD was unproven - they said the lack of proof proved the "undetectable" sub existed - they nonetheless used their charges to push for dramatic escalations in military spending to selected defense contractors, a process that continued through the Reagan administration.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz helped re-organized a group - The Committee on the Present Danger - to promote their worldview. The Committee produced documentaries, publications, and provided guests for national talk shows and news reports. They worked hard to whip up fear and encourage increases in defense spending, particularly for sophisticated weapons systems offered by the defense contractors for whom many of these same men would later become lobbyists.

And they succeeded in recreating an atmosphere of fear in the United States, and making themselves and their defense contractor friends richer than most of the kingdoms of the world.

Trillions of dollars and years later, it was proven that they had been wrong all along, and the CIA had been right. Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz lied to America in the 1970s about Soviet WMDs and the Soviet super-sub technology.

Not only do we now know that the Soviets didn't have any new and impressive WMDs, but we also now know that the Soviets were, in fact, decaying from within, ripe for collapse any time, regardless of what the US did - just as the CIA (and anybody who visited Soviet states - as I had - during that time could easily predict). The Soviet economic and political system wasn't working, and their military was disintegrating.

But the Cold War was good for business, and good for the political power of its advocates, from Rumsfeld to Wolfowitz to Cheney who have all become rich in part because of the arms industry.

Today, making Americans terrified with their so-called "War On Terror" is the same strategy, run for many of the same reasons, by the same people. And by hyping it - and then invading Iraq to bring it into fruition - we may well be bringing into reality forces that previously existed only on the margins and with very little power to harm us.

Most recently we've learned from former CIA National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia Paul Pillar that, just like in the 1970s, the CIA disagreed in 2002 with Rumsfeld and Cheney about an WMD threat - this time posed by Iraq - even as Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz were telling America how afraid we should be of an eminent "mushroom cloud."

We've seen this movie before. The last time, it cost our nation hundreds of billions of dollars, vastly enriched the cronies of these men, and ultimately helped bring Ronald Reagan to power. This time they've added on top of their crony enrichment program the burden of over 2200 dead American servicemen and women, tens of thousands wounded, as many as a hundred thousand dead Iraqis, and a level of worldwide instability not seen since the run-up to World War Two.

When Hilary Clinton recently noted that the only political card Republicans are any longer capable of playing is the card of fear, she was spot-on right. They're now even running radio and TV commercials designed to terrorize our children ("Do you have a plan for a terrorist attack?"), the modern reincarnation of "Duck and Cover."

Now that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has confessed that many of the terror alerts that continually popped up during the 2004 election campaign were, as USA Today noted on 10 May 2005, based on "flimsy evidence" or were done over his objection at the insistence of "administration officials," it's increasingly clear that the Bush administration itself is the source of much of the "be afraid!" terror inflicted on US citizens over the past 5 years.

It's time for patriotic Americans of all political affiliations, and for our media, to join with Senator Clinton, former CIA official Paul Pillar, and the many others who are pointing this out, and refuse to allow the Bush administration to inflict terror on Americans - and the world - for political gain.

As Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address in 1932, when Americans were terrorized by the Republican Great Depression, the echoes of World War One, and the rise of Communism in Russia:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Indeed, the best hope for the growth of democracy around the world and the survival of individual liberty in the United States is for us to turn away from Rumsfeld's and Cheney's politics of terror and fear, and once again embrace the great vision of this nation, held by her great statesmen and women from 1776 to today. Indeed, they are still among us, as we saw most recently when a brave few senators stood up to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito.

In this election year, we must redouble our efforts to swell their ranks, to involve ourselves in local and national political groups, and to return America to her destiny as the world's beacon of courage, liberty, and light.
(c) 20056 Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, and host is the host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show syndicated by Air America Radio. His most recent book is, "What Would Jefferson Do?"

ONE OF our former Chiefs-of-Staff, the late Rafael ("Raful") Eytan, who was not the brightest, once asked a foreign guest: "Are you Jewish or Christian?"

"I am an atheist!" the man replied.

"Okay, Okay," Raful demanded impatiently, "but a Jewish atheist or a Christian atheist?"

Well, I myself am a 100% atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious character.

THE HISTORICAL CONFLICT began as a clash between two national movements, which used religious motifs only as a decoration.

The Zionist movement was non-religious from the start, if not anti-religious. Almost all the Founding Fathers were self-declared atheists. In his book "Der Judenstaat", the original charter of Zionism, Theodor Herzl said that "we shall know how to keep (our clergymen) in their temples." Chaim Weitzman was an agnostic scientist. Vladimir Jabotinsky wanted his body to be cremated - a sin in Judaism. David Ben-Gurion refused to cover his head even at funerals.

All the great rabbis of the day, both Hassidim and their opponents, the Missnagdim, condemned Herzl and cursed him ferociously. They rejected the basic thesis of Zionism, that the Jews are a "nation" in the European sense, instead regarding the Jews as a holy people held together by observance of the divine commandments.

Moreover, in the eyes of the rabbis, the Zionist idea itself was a cardinal sin. The Almighty decreed the exile of the Jews as punishment for their sins. Therefore, only the Almighty Himself may revoke the punishment and send the Messiah, who will lead the Jews back to the holy land. Until then, it is strictly prohibited to "return en masse". By organizing mass immigration to the country, the Zionists rebel against God and, worst of all, hold up the coming of the Messiah. Some Hassidim, like the Satmar sect in America, and a small but principled group in Israel, the Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City) in Jerusalem, still adhere to this belief.

True, the Zionists expropriated the symbols of Judaism (the Star of David, the candlestick of the Temple, the prayer shawl that was turned into a flag, even the name "Zion") but that was only utilitarian manipulation. The small religious faction that joined Zionism (the "Religious Zionists") was a marginal group.

Before the Holocaust, we learned in the Zionist schools in Palestine to treat with pitiless scorn everything that was "exile Jewish" - the Jewish religion, the Jewish Stetl, the Jewish social structure (the "inverted pyramid"). Only the Holocaust changed the attitude towards the Jewish past in the diaspora, referred to in Hebrew as "Exile".)

Ben-Gurion made some concessions to the religious factions, including the anti-Zionist Orthodox. He released some hundreds of Yeshiva-students from military service and set up a separate "state-religious" school system. His aim was to acquire convenient coalition partners. But these steps were based on the assumption (common to all of us at the time) that the Jewish religion would evaporate anyhow under the burning Israeli sun and disappear altogether in one or two generations.

All this changed in the wake of the Six-day War. The Jewish religion staged an astounding comeback.

ON THE Palestinian side, something similar happened, but against a quite different background.

The Arab national movement, too, was born under the influence of the European national idea. Its spiritual fathers called for the liberation of the Arab nation from the shackles of Ottoman rule, and later from the yoke of European colonialism. Many of its founders were Arab Christians.

When a distinct Palestinian national movement came into being, following the Balfour Declaration and the setting up of the British Government of Palestine, it had no religious character. In order to fight it, the British appointed a religious personality to the leadership of the Palestinian community in Palestine: Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who quickly assumed the leadership of the Palestinian struggle against the Zionist immigration. He endeavored to give a religious face to the Palestinian-Arab rebellion. Accusing the Zionist of designs on the Temple Mount with its holy Islamic shrines, he tried to mobilize the Muslim peoples in support of the Palestinians.

The Mufti failed miserably, and his failure played a part in the catastrophe of his people. The Palestinians have all but obliterated him from their history. In the 1950s, they idolized Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, the standard-bearer of secular, pan-Arab nationalism. Later, when Yasser Arafat founded the modern Palestinian national movement, he did not distinguish between Muslims and Christians. Right up to his death, he insisted on calling for the liberation of the "mosques and churches" of Jerusalem.

At one stage of its development, the PLO called for the creation of a "Democratic secular state, where Muslims, Jews and Christians will live together". (Arafat did not like the term "secular", preferring "la-maliah", meaning "non-sectarian".)

George Habash, the leader of the "Arab Nationalists" and later of the "Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine", is a Christian.

This situation changed with the outbreak of the first intifada, at the end of 1987. Only then did the Islamist movements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, start to take over the national struggle.

THE ASTOUNDING victory of the Israeli army in the Six-day war, which looked like a miracle, effected a profound political and cultural change in Israel. When the shofar sounded at the Western Wall, the religious youth, which had until then been vegetating on the fringe, occupied the center of the stage.

Suddenly it was discovered that the religious education system, which had been set up by Ben-Gurion as a political bribe and contrary to his own convictions, had been quietly turning out a fanatical religious product. The religious youth movement, which had suffered all these years from feelings of humiliation and inferiority, was filled with zeal and started the settlement drive, leading the main national effort: the annexation of the occupied territories.

The Jewish religion itself underwent a mutation. This mutant shed all universal values and became a narrow, militant, xenophobic tribal creed, aiming at conquest and ethnic cleansing. The religious-Zionists of the new sort are convinced that they are fulfilling the will of God and preparing the ground for the coming of the Messiah. The "national-religious" cabinet ministers, that had always belonged to the moderate wing of the government, gave way to a new, extremist leadership with tendencies towards religious fascism.

Israel has not become a religious state. It still has a large secular majority. According to the authoritative Israeli Government Bureau of Statistics, only 8% of Israeli Jews define themselves as "Orthodox" (Haredim), 9% as "religious" (meaning Religious Zionists), 45% as "secular, non-religious" and 27% as "secular, traditional".

However, because of their role in the settlement enterprise, the "religious" have acquired a huge influence over the political process. They have practically prevented any move towards peace with the Palestinians. They have also provoked a religious reaction on the other side.

THE PALESTINIAN resistance to the occupation, which reached a peak with the outbreak of the first intifada in 1987, has given a big push to the religious forces. Until then, these had been growing quietly (not without the encouragement of the occupation authorities, which saw in them a counterweight to the secular PLO.)

The first intifada led to the Oslo agreement and brought Yasser Arafat back to Palestine. But the new Palestinian authority failed in its aim of putting an end to the occupation and establishing a secular Palestinian state. With settlements continually expanding all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian public increasingly tended to support armed resistance. In this struggle, and with the limited means available, the religious factions excelled. A religious person is more ready to sacrifice his life in a suicide attack than his secular cousin.

The anger of the Palestinian public over the corruption that has infected sections of the secular Fatah leadership (but not the ascetic Yasser Arafat, whose reputation remained clean) has increased even more the popularity of the religious, whose honesty is unquestioned.

FOR YEARS I have been haunted by a nightmare: that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would change from a national to a religious confrontation.

A national conflict, terrible as it may be, is soluble. The last two centuries have seen many national wars, and almost all of them ended in a territorial compromise. Such conflicts are basically logical, and can be terminated in a rational way.

Not so religious conflicts. When all sides are bound by divine commandments, the attainment of a compromise becomes far more difficult.

Religious Jews believe that God promised them all of the holy land. Thus, giving away any of it to "foreigners" is an unforgivable sin. In the eyes of Muslim believers, the whole country is a Waqf (religious trust), and it is therefore absolutely forbidden to surrender any part of it to unbelievers. (When the Caliph Omar conquered Palestine some 1400 years ago, he declared it a Waqf. His motive was quite practical: to prevent his generals from dividing the land between themselves, as was their wont.) By the way, the evangelical fundamentalists who dominate Washington at this time also see the Holy Land as a religious property, to which the Jews must return in order to make possible the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Is a compromise between these forces possible? Certainly yes, but it is much more difficult. A devout Muslim is allowed to declare a Hudna (armistice) for a hundred years and more, without condemning his soul to hell. Ariel Sharon, who began the evacuation of settlers, spoke about "long-range temporary arrangements". In politics, "temporary" measures have a tendency to become permanent.

But wisdom, sophistication and a lot of patience are needed to reach a resolution of the conflict in these circumstances.

On the day Arafat died, many Israelis were angry with me for saying (in a Haaretz interview) that we shall yet long for this secular leader, who was both willing and able to make peace with us. I said that his elimination removes the last obstacle to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine and the entire Arab world.

One did not need to be a prophet to see that.
(c) 2006 Uri Avnery Gush Shalom

Ever since the atrocities of September 11th, 2001, there has been a lot of hopeful talk in the Western press about the vast majority of Muslims who are religious "moderates." Being moderates, they necessarily repudiate the theology of Osama bin Laden and disavow terrorism. Nor would they ever dream of killing another human being over a cartoon.

Where are these moderate Muslims? How many of them exist? And how can we best empower them? These are all questions of crucial importance to the future of civilization, and they are questions for which I do not have any answers. But there is another question worth asking in the meantime: How do we recognize religious moderates in the first place?

In May of last year, a report that a copy of the Koran had been flushed down a toilet at Guantánamo Bay sparked the largest protests that Afghanistan has seen in years. At least 16 people lost their lives. These rioters were not moderate Muslims. One sign of religious moderation is not being too sure about the divine origin of any book. Moderate Muslims, therefore, will understand that all texts and doctrines should be susceptible to criticism without fear of violent reprisal. Moderate Muslims surely realize that all books are now candidates for flushing down the toilet. Even conservative Muslims should have realized that the appropriate response to this mode of Koran desecration would have been to flush one of our books down the toilet. These rioters, therefore, were not even religious conservatives by our standards. They were religious lunatics. As are the people who have gathered by the tens of thousands in recent weeks to protest the Danish cartoons of Muhammad and to call for the literal slaughter of those who printed them.

An article in last Sunday's New York Times ("Images of Muhammad, Gone for Good", February 12th, 2006) helpfully observes that the current furor in the Muslim world has arisen, not because the Danish cartoons were especially derogatory, but because most Muslims believe that it is a sacrilege to depict Muhammad at all. Indeed, we tend to forget that protests of this sort are not new, and not, therefore, the result of our invasion of Iraq. How many of us remember that in 1977 a Muslim group took hostages, killed a journalist, and wounded 13 people -- in Washington -- for the high purpose of stopping the U.S. premier of the film "Mohammad, Messenger of God"? Then, as now, the issue wasn't the disparagement of Islam -- although this is also a killing offense -- the issue was the mere depiction of the Prophet. Then, as now, we allowed ourselves to be blackmailed by the petulance of religious maniacs, and the distribution of the film was halted. So let us put this fact on the table once and for all: anyone who thinks that non-Muslims should be obliged to conform to the religious taboos of Islam is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a Muslim moderate.

On the subject of Muslim terrorism, what does a moderate Muslim sound like? He or she will sound something like this:

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims... We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image. We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women." (Abdel Rahman al-Rashed "Innocent religion is now a message of hate." Telegraph. 05/09/2004)

While intelligent people can disagree about how "innocent" the theology of Islam is, a willingness to admit the obvious is a basic requirement of religious moderation. Any Muslim who will not concede that there is a death-cult forming in the Muslim world, is either part of that cult, or an obscurantist -- not a religious moderate.

How will Muslim moderates view women and women's rights? They will feel what any person who is reasonably free of medieval dogmatism now feels. Equal rights for women is not even a question worthy of discussion among religious moderates, and it is not a subject about which moderate Muslims will have the slightest caveat. Anyone who believes that men should determine how women dress, or whether they receive medical attention, marry, divorce, practice contraception, or do anything else with their minds and bodies is not a religious moderate. He (or she) is a religious demagogue on a collision course with modernity.

According to a literalist reading of the hadith (the literature that recounts the sayings and the actions of the Prophet) if a Muslim decides that he no longer wants to be a Muslim, he should be put to death. If anyone ventures the opinion that the Koran is a mediocre book of religious fiction or that Muhammad was a schizophrenic, he should also be killed. It should go without saying that a desire to kill people for imaginary crimes like apostasy and blasphemy is not an expression of religious moderation. A moderate Muslim will see no problem with another Muslim deciding to become a Christian, or a Jew, or an atheist. The essence of religious moderation is the understanding that a person should be free to interpret the data of the universe for himself, without fearing that he will be murdered for reaching an unpopular conclusion. We should note that this is a standard of enlightened tolerance that not even the former folk-singer Cat Stevens (now Yosuf Islam) could muster in response to the publication of Salman Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses:

"Under Islamic Law, the ruling regarding blasphemy is quite clear; the person found guilty of it must be put to death. Only under certain circumstances can repentance be accepted.... The fact is that as far as the application of Islamic Law and the implementation of full Islamic way of life in Britain is concerned, Muslims realize that there is very little chance of that happening in the near future. But that shouldn't stop us from trying to improve the situation and presenting the Islamic viewpoint wherever and whenever possible. That is the duty of every Muslim..."

If even a Western-educated ex-hippie was talking this way, what do you think the sentiments were on the streets of Tehran? As it turns out, it matters if a person believes that the Koran literally emanated from the Creator of the universe. This belief is genuinely incompatible with religious moderation.

"Is he dead yet?" "Well, he's not dead but he's not at all well."

Vonnegut's words came back to me as I watched Coretta Scott King's final gift to the people. Even after her death, her values and all she stood for were given new life through the words of those who new and loved her most. And those words proved powerful enough to draw blood from those in that same sanctuary who, by their actions, have shown that they are the antithesis to all that the Kings treasured. After five years of living in an atmosphere of deceit and fear, it felt good to laugh as people took turns pointing at the naked emperor.

"You snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, malodorous, pervert!!!"

"But I came here for an argument!"

"Oh, I'm sorry, but this is abuse."

Well, as much as the media tried to portray what was said at King's funeral as abuse, nothing could've been further from the truth. Had the Boy King not spent the last five years proving his ineptitude and his distain for ordinary people - not to mention his annoying habit of lying his face off - then not only would Carter's and the Reverend Lowery's words not have struck so close to home, but there wouldn't have been any reason to say them in the first place. George, it all boils down to staying away from places where you just don't belong if you don't want to hear the truth.

"Stupid git."

But the humor didn't stop there. A few days later, we were informed that a shoe bomb hijacking in Los Angeles had been thwarted - four years ago. Now, while I'm listening to the details of this plot being described by the Grand Liar in Chief, I couldn't help thinking about the Python spoof of Sam Peckinpaugh in their sketch titled "Salad Days" or "Scott of the Antarctic" where the focus is on spurting blood - in slow motion.

Now I would assume that George and his handlers figured that Americans would either be scared yet relieved or bowing in thanks to the administration's prowess after hearing of such a magnificent example of fighting terrorism. However, I kept expecting to see Graham Chapman appear from off camera dressed in a military uniform.

"Stop this! Stop this speech! It's too silly!"

Seriously, we're supposed to believe that a re-enforced cockpit door would be blown away - with shoe bombs?

BOOM!

"Oh bloody hell!"

"Sergeant?"

"It's...it's my feet, sir. They seem to be missing, sir."

Has it dawned on any of these people how sadly comedic they've become? How are any of us, here or abroad, supposed to rally around such transparent ineptitude? Of course, I hear that about thirty five percent of the American public is still behind these bozos and the only logical explanation for this came from someone on SNL. They stated that the people who still backed the administration also believed that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs on their way to church.

But the final straw for me came last weekend. Some of you may remember the Monty Python Hunting Film where a small group of "sportsmen" emerge from a country villa randomly firing their rifles. The trumpet soundtrack is consistently interrupted by sporadic gunfire in every direction - except for the intended targets. Eventually, the film ends with the bloody and bandaged hunters returning to the villa with a small bird tied to a stick.

I can't help it and I hope there are enough Python fans out there that can identify with what I am trying to say.

When it becomes completely unavoidable to draw comparisons between the current leadership we suffer under and over the top satire that is almost forty years old, we have a serious problem. We are witnessing the systematic destruction of everything this country was supposed to stand for and there seems to be a sense of helplessness by many to do anything to stop the continuing damage. Consequently, in this most desperate of situations, humor becomes a sort of defense against the insanity which surrounds us.

There have been so many crimes committed by this administration yet, they all seem to go unpunished. And the only thing worse than this inexcusable fact is the tragic comedy that passes for reasoning when administration members are confronted.

"Good God! You've tortured him to death!"

"He's not dead...he's resting!"

Or;

"Listen, you can't spy on Americans without a court order."

"Yes I can"

"No you can't! In order to do it legally you need to obtain a court order. It can't be considered legal if you're just randomly fishing average Americans because you feel like it!"

"Can be."

"No it can't!"

Like the classic Argument Clinic sketch, the frame of debate on any matter regarding the administration's actions is more times than not, reduced to little else than contradiction. Even when they've been inundated with facts or constitutional law or simple common sense by those who attempt to oppose them or hold them accountable, the administration simply counters with "yes we can" or "no we didn't" - and they get away with it.

Back in the sixties, the resonant phrase was "the whole world is watching." Now, almost forty years later, the phrase has been changed to "the whole world is laughing." Granted, it would be nervous laughter we're hearing, especially when considering the very serious consequences confronting all of us, but laughter all the same. But think about it; humor is the one weapon we have yet to use against these criminals. I don't mean comedy skits on television or the clever videos we see on the internet.

We've arrived at the point where all one need do is say "Cheney" in a group of people and the snickering starts, which galls Cheney to no end. As Alessandra Stanley wrote in the week after Shootergate, "Mr. Cheney is accustomed to being feared and despised by his enemies and rivals; he is less used to being laughed at." Ahh, the Achilles' Heel. I think we're onto something here.

Remember the look on George's face when Democrats stood, laughed and applauded during the State of the Union speech regarding the failure of his social security initiative? It was, as the commercial says, priceless! It was an example of the same tactic used by conservatives as far back as the debacle of 2000. Even though the facts were on the side of the opposition, all the Bush defenders needed to do was sit and laugh and shake their heads in front of the cameras. And it worked every time. Maybe the opposition needs to start using that weapon for a change.

The Bush administration, by their own efforts, has gone so far down the road that they've been reduced to little more than a Monty Python sketch. They've turned Osama bin Laden into a modern day Mr. Neutron while Bush bombs the whole world and wonders if there are any figures that show how scared everyone is of our power. They have become a parody of themselves and the public needs to be made aware of it. Maybe, rather than yelling and distressing over why the public just doesn't "get it," the opposition needs to incorporate the same depreciating and disarming humor employed by conservatives.

Think about it. We already have the facts and the laws (at least for now) on our side. As Coretta Scott King's funeral showed us, there are people out there who are more than willing to point and laugh at the naked emperor. Humor, when coupled with the truth, is the greatest weapon there is.

The kindling has been piled high, stuffed with tinder and doused with gasoline. The match has been lit. All it will take is the slightest flick of the wrist to set off the conflagration. We are now living in the interval, the few heartbeats left before the great flame ignites.

The heap of kindling has been a long time building, but in recent weeks, the work has intensified to a fever pitch. With relentless urgency, the American people are being habituated to the prospect of several interrelated upheavals -- new war, new terror attacks -- and the predetermined result of these events: the final, open establishment of presidential tyranny, a militarized "commander state" where executive power is beyond the law, and endless war endlessly prolongs the "emergency measures" of the authoritarian regime.

Making a virtue of necessity, the Bush administration has used the exposure of its illegal wiretap scheme to ratchet up the level of terrorist scaremongering, accelerate its drive toward a military attack on Iran and publicly proclaim its long-held covert doctrine of executive dictatorship. Of course, "commander rule" is already the de facto state of the union, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made clear to the Senate last week, when he refused to deny the notion that the president can contravene any law he chooses under his authority as commander-in-chief. And we have often detailed here the tyrannical powers that President George W. Bush has already bestowed upon himself without objection from the U.S. political establishment, including the power to jail anyone without charges, hold them indefinitely and have them tortured -- or simply murder them in an "extrajudicial killing." The scope of Bush's claimed powers -- arbitrary sway over the life and liberty of every person on earth -- far surpasses that of the most megalomaniacal Roman emperor or totalitarian dictator.

But a militarist state must have war: to justify its draconian rule (and those $550 billion "defense" budgets), to find new fields for dominion and swag, and to seal with blood its illegitimate compact with the people, seeking to make them complicit in its crimes, which are committed in their name, for their "security." We see the latter clearly with the transgression in Iraq, where even mainstream opponents of the illegal war can be heard to cry: "Oh, it's all so dreadful, but we've gone too far to turn back now, sacrificed too many lives; we've got to see it through." This is, of course, just a pale echo of militarists' own position, that dazed and hollow moral nullity induced by greed and murder, best expressed by the ancient Scottish "Commander-in-Chief," Macbeth: "I am in blood stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er."

Fortunately for the militarists, Bush has promised war in abundance. Just this month, the Pentagon released its new strategy, heralding the newly dubbed "Long War" against terrorism, where U.S. forces will be deployed, openly and covertly, "in dozens of countries simultaneously" for decades to come. The plan is designed to "ensure that no foreign power can dictate the terms of regional or global security" -- except, of course, for the dictatorial foreign power emanating from the Potomac. This is the constitution of the new commander state: the eternal "emergency," fomenting endless bloodshed, strife, atrocity -- and reprisals, the terrorist blowback that is the essential lubricant for the war machine.

And a new terror strike on the "homeland" is inevitable. The ground for this attack has been carefully prepared -- whether wittingly or unwittingly is irrelevant now. For whatever the Bush faction's intentions, their actual policies have demonstrably and indisputably stoked the fires of Islamic extremism to new heights of virulence. Meanwhile, their manifest incompetence and callous disregard for the well-being of ordinary Americans -- vividly displayed in the deadly bungling of the Katrina disaster and its corruption-riddled aftermath -- have left American soil virtually undefended against any genuinely serious terrorist attack, i.e. one not carried out by half-wits telegraphing their punches over tapped phones.

For years, a vast infrastructure of authoritarian rule has been constructed behind the facade of ordinary political life -- such as the series of "special authorities" signed by Bush and Pentagon warlord Donald Rumsfeld giving the military absolute power over the nation "in the event of a declared or perceived emergency," The Washington Post reports. This dovetails with such open measures as the Patriot Act and the creation of Northcom, the first military command aimed at the "homeland," which last fall conducted the massive "Granite Shadow" exercise, practicing "domestic military operations" with "unique rules of engagement regarding the use of lethal force," the Post reports.

*[These measures - and many others like them - are the fruit of long cultivation by the Bush Faction. In 1981, then Vice President George H.W. Bush and Colonel Oliver North spearheaded the creation of "a secret government, hidden in hardened bunkers, capable of waging war and controlling the civilian populace" without any input from Congress or the courts, as we reported in the Moscow Times and Counterpunch two years ago. See Deep Cover: Hidey Holes for the American Elite.]*

This infrastructure is part of the context, the granite shadow looming behind many recent events, such as last month's $385 million open-ended contract awarded to Halliburton to build large-scale "detention and deportation" centers around the country, as Pacific News reports. It looms behind the "excitement" expressed by weapons-makers over Bush's plans to build new atomic bombs on a production-line basis, the Oakland Tribune reports, including "low yield" nukes for use in attacks on non-nuclear nations. It looms over Rumsfeld's frenzied push to build a new arsenal of "first-strike" intercontinental and space-based weapons to attack enemies -- or perceived enemies -- with "no warning," as the Pentagon declared this month, UPI reports. You can even see it in the Air Force's decision last week to allow top brass to press their politicized pseudo-Christianity on young cadets without restraint, as Reuters reports -- more of the sinister melding of militarism and religious extremism that characterizes the Bushist philosophy.

And of course, the granite shadow overhangs the entire campaign to foment war fever against Iran, a grim replay of the "Attack Iraq" propaganda, complete with exaggerated threats, manipulated intelligence supplied by dubious exiles, lies about "pursuing diplomacy" while finalizing battle plans, as The Sunday Telegraph reports -- and a complete disregard of the murderous quagmire that will ensue, including the rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide as countries scramble to protect themselves from the "first-strike" triggermen of the Bush faction.

More war, more terror, more authoritarian rule: The fire next time is almost here.
(c) 2006 Chris Floyd

The gravest indictment of the American news media is that George W. Bush has gutted the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter - yet this extraordinary story does not lead the nation's newspapers and the evening news every day.

Nor does the press corps tie Bush's remarkable abrogation of both U.S. and international law together in any coherent way for the American people. At best, disparate elements of Bush's authoritarian powers are dealt with individually as if they are not part of some larger, more frightening whole.

What's even odder is that the facts of this historic power grab are no longer in serious dispute. The Bush administration virtually spelled out its grandiose vision of Bush's powers during the debates over such issues as Jose Padilla's detention, Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination and the disclosure of warrantless wiretaps.

For instance, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has defended the wiretapping program in part by citing the inherent powers of the President to override laws during war time, an argument that the administration also has applied to detentions without trial, abuse of prisoners, launching foreign military operations and committing extra-judicial assassinations.

All Bush has to do, it seems, is deem someone an "enemy combatant" or an "affiliate" of some terrorist group and that person's life and liberty are delivered into Bush's hands, without any impartial evaluation of the evidence.

Unique Authority

But what makes Bush's assertion of authority uniquely dangerous in U.S. history is that his claim of "plenary" - or unlimited - powers as the Commander in Chief are not made in the short-term context of a national crisis or a war with a definable end.

Rather these presidential powers have been asserted during what administration officials are calling the Long War against terrorism, a conflict that could well last for decades and quite possibly forever. Instead of the Long War, it could really become the Endless War.

In other words, the American system of government as the world has known it for two-plus centuries - with its "unalienable rights" and its "checks and balances" - has effectively come to an end.

Yet this earth-shaking development is barely a news story in the United States. Even when prominent Democrats and some Republicans draw troubling conclusions about Bush's megalomania, the major news media barely mentions the protests.

For instance, Sen. Russ Feingold observed in a Feb. 7 speech to the Senate about Bush's warrantless surveillance, "this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world."

But Feingold's declaration, implicitly comparing Bush to King George III, got far more attention on Internet blogs than in the mainstream news media.

Another of the few political leaders who has sounded the alarm is former Vice President Al Gore, who addressed the issue of presidential power in a largely ignored speech on Jan. 16, the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

"An Executive who arrogates to himself the power to ignore the legitimate legislative directives of the Congress or to act free of the check of the judiciary becomes the central threat that the Founders sought to nullify in the Constitution - an all-powerful Executive too reminiscent of the King from whom they had broken free," Gore said.

"As the Executive acts outside its constitutionally prescribed role and is able to control access to information that would expose its actions, it becomes increasingly difficult for the other branches to police it. Once that ability is lost, democracy itself is threatened and we become a government of men and not laws." [See Consortiumnews.com's "End of Unalienable Rights."]

Info War

The Bush administration's obsession with controlling the flow of information also carries a foreboding sense of doom to anyone who believes in a vibrant democracy. It now appears that Bush's concept of a terrorist "affiliate" is sliding inexorably toward covering people who present facts that undermine Bush's "information warfare" goals.

On Feb. 17, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that the battle over information will be a decisive front in the War on Terror and juxtaposed "the enemy" and "news informers" as part of the problem.

"We are fighting a battle where the survival of our free way of life is at stake and the center of gravity of that struggle is not simply on the battlefield overseas; it's a test of wills, and it will be won or lost with our publics, and with the publics of other nations," Rumsfeld said.

"We'll need to do all we can to attract supporters to our efforts and to correct the lies that are being told, which so damage our country, and which are repeated and repeated and repeated. ...

"Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place."

Already, Bush's allies in the right-wing news media have taken to accusing "news informers" and other critics of Bush's policies of "aiding and abetting" the enemy and of committing "treason."

At times, the White House has coordinated these right-wing media attacks with government leaks to target critics, such as the disclosure of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenged Bush's case for war in Iraq.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

So, in big ways and small, the Bush administration has thrown down the gauntlet to Americans who want to protect individual liberties and preserve the democratic Republic envisioned by the Founding Fathers.

But a major obstacle to any unified resistance to Bush's authoritarian model is the failure of the news media to explain these historic developments to the public. More often, the big newspapers and networks have bowed to the administration's news management.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and other key U.S. news outlets only grudgingly admitted that they let the country down before the Iraq War by swallowing Bush administration claims on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

But little has really changed in the past three years, either in the media's structure or in the pecking order of elite columnists. With only a few exceptions, the commentators who bungled Iraq's WMD have survived and are still shaping - or misshaping - public opinion.

Indeed, most elite columnists are still acting as if all is normal - that it's not so strange that Bush is saying that he or his successors can do whatever they want to anyone in the world for the duration of the so-called Long War.

Even after the WMD debacle, most of these editorial writers and commentators continued to behave as Bush's cheerleaders, for instance, praising his Second Inaugural Address on Jan. 20, 2005, for its endless invocation of the words "freedom" and "liberty."

The pundits also have kept spotting glimmers of hope in the Middle East, even as the U.S. position has grown grimmer and grimmer. A year ago, these commentators were hailing Bush for unleashing the cleansing winds of democracy across the Middle East.

But the pundits missed the fact that many of those regional developments were unrelated to Bush's invasion of Iraq. They also didn't catch the possibility that elections might not bring the blessings of peace and moderation that Bush promised.

Like many of his U.S. press colleagues, New York Times foreign policy columnist Thomas L. Friedman pronounced himself "unreservedly happy" about the Iraqi election of Jan. 30, 2005, adding: "you should be, too."

But there was always a dark potential to the pleasing images of Iraqis voting with stained fingers. Rather than pointing toward an exit for the United States from Iraq, the election actually was a way for the Shiite majority to consolidate its sectarian control of Iraq, further isolating and alienating the rival Sunni minority.

However, this sobering possibility was banished mostly to the Internet and other fringes of American media.

At Consortiumnews.com, we wrote that "if the Sunni-based insurgency doesn't give up in the months ahead, American soldiers could find themselves enmeshed in a long and brutal civil war helping the Shiite majority crush the resistance of the Sunni minority. The Sunnis, who have long dominated Iraq, find themselves in a tight corner and may see little choice but to fight on." [See "Sinking in Deeper."]

But the big media was busy waving its pom-poms.

'Tipping Points'

After those Iraqi elections and several other regional developments, Friedman was perceiving historical "tipping points" that foreshadowed "incredible," positive changes in the Middle East. [NYT, Feb. 27, 2005]

To Friedman, this expected transformation of the Arab world would also be a personal vindication for his endorsement of the bloody Iraq War, which has now killed nearly 2,300 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

"The last couple of years have not been easy for anyone, myself included, who hoped that the Iraq war would produce a decent, democratizing outcome," Friedman wrote. [NYT, March 3, 2005]

A lead editorial in the New York Times struck a similar tone, crediting Bush for supposedly inspiring democratic changes in Lebanon and Palestine, not to mention Egypt and Saudi Arabia. "The Bush administration is entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances," the editorial said. [NYT, March 1, 2005]

Over at the Washington Post's Op-Ed page, there was similar applause for Bush and the neoconservative vision of imposing "democracy" on Arab nations by force.

"Could it be that the neocons were right and that the invasion of Iraq, the toppling of Hussein and the holding of elections will trigger a political chain reaction throughout the Arab world?" marveled Post columnist Richard Cohen. [Washington Post, March 1, 2005]

Another influential Post columnist, David Ignatius, also was swept up in the excitement.

"The old system (in the Middle East) that had looked so stable is ripping apart, with each beam pulling another down as it falls," Ignatius wrote. Crediting the U.S. invasion of Iraq for the "sudden stress" that started the collapse, Ignatius wrote, "It's hard not to feel giddy, watching the dominoes fall."

Ignatius hailed what he called "the Middle East's glorious catastrophe" and urged the United States to do what it could to accelerate the process.

"We are careening around the curve of history, and it's useful to remember a basic rule for navigating slippery roads: Once you're in the curve, you can't hit the brakes. The only way for America to keep this car on the road is to keep its foot on the accelerator," Ignatius wrote. [Washington Post, March 2, 2005]

(It's not clear where this Post columnist went to driving school, but few instructors would tell their pupils, who find themselves sliding into an icy curve, to step on the gas.)

Another Washington Post columnist, neoconservative Charles Krauthammer, sounded like a modern-day Trotsky and Robespierre, urging an escalation of Bush's radical strategies. "Revolutions do not stand still," Krauthammer wrote. "They either move forward or die." [Washington Post, March 4, 2005]

This conventional wisdom of Bush bringing democratic enlightenment to the Arab world also permeated the news pages.

"A powerful confluence of events in the Middle East in recent weeks has infused President Bush's drive to spread democracy with a burst of momentum, according to supporters and critics alike," reported the Washington Post in an awestruck page-one article. [March 8, 2005]

Failed Promise

Just a year later, however, it is clear how off-the-mark these columns were. Many of the developments - viewed by the pundits as interrelated and inspired by the Iraq War - were actually reactions to distinct local conditions.

The Lebanese protests against Syrian occupation were not influenced by Bush's invasion of Iraq or his "freedom" Inaugural Address, but rather by growing impatience with the longtime Syrian presence. Those tensions were brought to a head by the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and suspicions of Syrian complicity.

A year ago, a brief revival of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was sparked by the death of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and the desire of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to leave behind a more positive legacy. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Neocon Amorality" or "Bush's Neocons Unbridled."

Another giant hole in the conventional wisdom was that elections - which would likely reflect the angry mood of Muslims at this time - could well take the region in the opposite direction, toward greater religious fundamentalism and extremism.

Contrary to Bush's happy rhetoric about how "history has proven that democracies yield the peace," the reality can be the opposite. Historically, voters in democratic societies often have responded to fear, hate, religious fervor or some other irrational stimuli in supporting political demagogues who provoke unnecessary wars.

Historians can trace this pattern from Ancient Athens to the war fever that Bush released in the United States in 2002 before invading Iraq. While democracies have many admirable qualities, moderation and peacefulness are not always among them.

Anyone with a sense of history and an awareness of the animosities in the Islamic world should not have been surprised that some recent elections served to exacerbate sectarian tensions and bring religious fundamentalists to power.

In Iraq, elections indeed did solidify the power of the Shiite majority over the Sunnis. The pro-Iranian Shiite parties and their Kurdish allies also have consolidated their control of the nation's oil riches, leaving the Sunnis without either political power or oil wealth - and thus creating new incentives for them to fight on.

The year-ago optimism about Palestine also proved to be misplaced. Not only have prospects for peace talks foundered, but a stroke removed Sharon from power and a new crisis has emerged after Islamic militants in Hamas defeated the more secular Fatah movement in a Palestinian election.

Now, rather than hailing those blessings of democracy, Israel and the United States are considering ways to isolate, bankrupt and destroy the elected Hamas government.

Blind Media

So, instead of democracy ushering in a new era of peace and moderation in the Middle East, the opposite appears to be occurring.

By pushing for elections while simultaneously stirring up Islamic fury over Iraq and other issues, Bush is opening the door to more violence, more extremism and more anti-Americanism.

All of these possibilities were logical outgrowths of what was occurring a year ago. Indeed, it should have been obvious to U.S. analysts that elections represented a huge risk amid Muslim animosity over the Iraq occupation, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and long-term U.S. support for Israel and corrupt Arab leaders.

But many leading U.S. columnists were caught off-guard by these developments, much as they were duped by Bush's claims about Iraq's WMD. Yet these error-prone columnists haven't been fired or replaced.

Now, the danger is the media's failure to react to Bush's unprecedented assertion of power inside the United States.

Just as the nation's elite editorial pages misunderstood the reality in the Middle East, most columnists are missing the extraordinary transformation now underway toward a system of American authoritarianism.

They called it "Cyber Storm," and it was a war-game exercise run last week by the Department of Homeland Security. The war game had nothing to do with testing the security of our shipping ports, borders, infrastructure or airports. "Cyber Storm" was testing the government's ability to withstand an onslaught of information and protest from bloggers and online activists.

"Participants confirmed," wrote the Associated Press, that "parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events."

Say what? Online expressions of political opinion are so dangerous that the Department of Homeland Security must war-game scenarios to deal with them? Bloggers are potential terrorists now? Bloggers are the enemy? Last week, as far as DHS was concerned, they were.

We hear a great deal about enemies these days. Don't criticize the war, or you'll embolden the enemy. The enemy is clever and cruel. Stick with the White House and we'll defeat the enemy. Since the Bush administration no longer likes to mention the name Osama bin "Stayin' Alive" Laden in public, lest everyone remember a dramatic promise long broken, any specific definition of an enemy changes with the moment.

Sometimes, the enemy is in Iraq, and we fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. Sometimes, the enemy is in Iran, allegedly toiling with all its collective might to manufacture nuclear weapons. Sometimes, the enemy is in Palestine, where Hamas used George W. Bush's exported democracy to take over the government. Sometimes, the enemy is an American face on a television offering criticism of the White House. Last week, the enemy was a blogger making a political expression.

The enemy is never in Saudi Arabia, though that nation is the very birthing bed of international terrorism. The enemy is never in Israel, though that nation's far-right leadership has been a good deal of the impetus behind the Bush administration's calamitous push into Iraq. The enemy is never in China, even when they smack our planes out of the sky, because they own a substantial portion of our debt. The enemy is never in Pakistan, though that nation's fundamentalist wing allies itself with the Taliban, and though they actually do possess nuclear weapons. The enemy is occasionally mentioned as being in North Korea, but not often, because we want no part of that fight.

For a time, the enemy was in the United Arab Emirates. Two of the hijackers of the September 11 aircraft were citizens of the United Arab Emirates, and the funding behind those attacks was wired through the UAE's banking system. Republican and Democratic Senators believe the UAE has been used as a conduit for the proliferation of nuclear technology.

That was then, however. A company named Dubai Ports World intends to spend $6.8 billion to gain control of the management of shipping ports in New York and New Jersey, as well as in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Miami. Dubai Ports World is foreign-owned, but is backed financially by the government of the United Arab Emirates. In other words, a nation suspected of being a significant player in the September 11 attacks is being allowed to take control of our borders. For the record, US ports handle an estimated two billion tons of cargo annually, with only 5% of that cargo undergoing inspection. The deal has already been granted regulatory clearance by the White House.

We hear a great deal about enemies, both real and contrived. Let us ponder, for a moment, the existence of another enemy so insidious that it operates fully in daylight but beyond control. This enemy seeks to destroy the rule of constitutional law in the United States. This enemy seeks to destroy the seed-corn defense against tyranny in this nation, the separation of powers. This enemy gathers more and more power to itself to achieve these goals, and uses fear and division to do so. This enemy will lie with impunity, stonewall endlessly and ruin anyone who might disrupt its plans.

This enemy stood by and did nothing while a major American city was devoured by the ocean. When New Orleans was drowned, many voices were raised in panicked unison that the White House must do something, and do something now. A conference call was held between key members of the Department of Homeland Security and other administration officials on August 29th, the day the catastrophe began for real. Investigators are seeking the transcript of this call, but administration officials claim the transcript has somehow disappeared. There are many transcripts of calls before and after this one, but the five-hour call on August 29th, the specific call investigators want to see, simply cannot be found.

This enemy deliberately reached out and destroyed the career of a deep-cover CIA agent named Valerie Plame, because her husband dared to criticize the White House about its "uranium from Niger" lie regarding Iraq. Plame, among other things, worked clandestinely to track any person, group or nation that would give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists; in other words, Plame worked to track the individuals this White House never fails to label as the enemy. Her work was derailed and her network destroyed because this White House did not want any discussion of the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, despite miles of claims that the stuff was there.

TruthOut correspondent Jason Leopold reported this week that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is refusing to turn over incriminating emails to special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, emails that allegedly indicate the involvement of Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking administration officials in the unmasking of Agent Plame. "The emails Gonzales is said to be withholding contained references to Valerie Plame Wilson's identity and CIA status and developments related to the inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," reported Leopold. "Moreover, according to sources, the emails contained suggestions by the officials on how the White House should respond to what it believed were increasingly destructive comments [Plame's husband] Joseph Wilson had been making about the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence."

I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, was recently indicted by Fitzgerald for lying under oath during the investigation into this matter. Recently, Libby stated that he was authorized by his superiors to expose the classified name of Valerie Plame. Given his position, Libby's main superior is none other than Cheney himself. Cheney recently claimed that he is authorized by an Executive Order to declassify any information he pleases. "I have certainly advocated declassification. I have participated in declassification decisions," said Cheney this week. "There's an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously it focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president."

This is a new trend for the White House: rendering an illegal act legal retroactively by fiat. The trend manifested itself in another area of illegal activity by the White House, the warrantless wiretapping of thousands of American citizens by the National Security Agency, in defiance of the black-letter law contained within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. For several weeks now, Congress has been threatening to hold hearings on the matter. Bush advisor Karl Rove worked feverishly behind the scenes to keep such hearings from taking place, and has succeeded. Rather than investigate the matter, Congress will instead rewrite the FISA law, thus rendering retroactively legal White House activities that blatantly broke the law.

We hear a great deal about enemies these days, and many of them are quite real and quite perilous. It is difficult to imagine a more perilous enemy, however, than the one operating out of Washington today. This enemy would set itself on high, beyond control or censure, and create of itself that permanent faction James Madison so earnestly warned us of. This enemy deletes or hides evidence of its calumny, or simply alters existing laws that would otherwise derail its plans. This enemy destroys lives out of hand, lives by the tens of thousands, and reaps a pretty profit in the process.

The difference between the enemies we hear about and the one in Washington is simple and deadly: only the enemy in Washington can annihilate the constitutional government we have enjoyed for more than two centuries. The idea that is America cannot be terminated by terrorists or rogue states. Were the nation entire to be somehow obliterated, the idea that is America would endure. Only its keepers can kill it completely. They are well on their way.

"As nightfall does not come at once," wrote Justice William O. Douglas, "neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we all must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become victims of the darkness."

Heil Bush,

Dear Propaganda Ansanger Matalin,

Congratulations you have just been awarded the 'Vidkun Quisling Award' for 2006! Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, Ralph Nader, Vidkun Quisling and last year's winner Volksjudge Johnny (the Enforcer) Roberts.

Without your lock-step calling for the repeal of the Constitution, your support of our two coup d'etats, your constant shilling for the Junta and leading the cover-up of the Cheney fiasco, Iraq and these many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Media Whores," you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award there will be an Iron Cross first class, presented by our glorious Fuhrer herr Bush at a gala celebration at the "Fuhrer Bunker" formally 'The White House' on 03-15-2006. We salute you frau Matalin, Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Vice Fuhrer Cheney