PRESS FORWARD TO INVESTIGATE AND DOCUMENT ALL BUSH-CHENEY CRIMES all

Let President Obama play his game. Maybe he will be an improvement for those progressives fighting for change, maybe he will not. So far he is so full of conciliation and friendliness towards his enemies that it is difficult to imagine him leading progressives anywhere but a ditch. Then the conservatives he embraced will shoot us in that ditch. Thank you, Mr. Friendly Pseudoprogressive.

The crimes of Bush and Cheney are legion. They need to be unearthed and documented. No doubt Pelosi will also be a conciliator to these criminals, looking forward and all that rot.

I do think Obama has made FOIA easier, so that should help get documents, ie. it will help active citizens get those documents. Congress needs to investigate the Bush administration now and not let the economic catastrophe be used as a smokescreen.

Investigate the Death of Tim Russert Appoint an Independent Prosecutor

Given the closeness of Tim Russert to the Vice-President and due to his special role in disemminating the hundreds of lies told by the Bush-Cheney administration to justify the war on Iraq and the possibility that he was murdered his death should be investigated. A complete autopsy should be done.

A special prosecutor should be appointed.

Conyers should move to protect potential impeachment witnesses so they don't end up like Tim.

Oil Prices and the Attack on Iran

Earlier I speculated that the high price of oil might fend off an attack on Iran because it would be bad for the economy. Oil prices have risen substantially as Bush allowed the dollar to fall on world markets. Of course high oil prices are a boon to the core Bush constituency, fossil fuel folks and fossils in general.

Currently we are told that market forces are making us pay closer to the real cost of petroleum products. This could be a boon to green energy production and conservation of energy, but what if it is more of a cynical manipulation? What if Bush and Cheney are visiting the Gulf states and Saudi constantly to facilitate an oil production scheme that facilitates United States and/or Israeli mediated attacks on Iran?

Hopefully the rise in oil prices have reflected market forces rather than a cynical imperialist manipulation to raise oil prices and oil price expectations. However, if the public expects high priced fuel then an attack on Iran will be more manageable by the dictatorship, oops, I mean the unitary executive, mainly big Dick Cheney. This will facilitate docility by the public in the event of an open war on Iran.

Such scenarios includes driving up the oil prices to something in the area of the expected prices that result from attacking Iran. This price rise may have been achieved already but we keep on hearing about five and six dollar a gallon gasoline so maybe that is the price they think they can gouge out of compliant U. S. citizens.

Of course when they do their open war on Iran. Oil facilities and such are expected to be disrupted. Then the Sunni oil pumping nations pump extra oil. Perhaps more oil is being stockpiled as well.

An unparalleled catastrophe is likely to result from these "noble efforts", how convenient for big D and little b.

The higher fuel prices after attacking Iran could be declared a national emergency by the Cheney and his Charlie McCarthy in the oval office. Who knows what unpleasantness might result from attacking Iran? What better reason to cancel elections than that? Of course this makes the congress and these Persian Gulf States all co-conspirators in the effort to shut down the 2008 elections.

Was Tim Russert Murdered by Cheney and Company?

Although Tim Russert is being lionized as a great journalist I will always remember the way he savaged liberals. Wasn't he the one that asked Presidential candidate Dukakis about his wife being raped and murdered? "Would you be for the death penalty then?", he hectored

I see he was the "go to" man for Dick Cheney as Cheney spread his lies about Iraq and just about everything else in the world. Russert is a co-conspirator. Now he is dead! Is Cheney preparing for an investigation and eliminating his co-conspirators?

If so, who is next? Who knows too much and might talk? Russert may have been willing to testify that Cheney told him specific lies. Who knows, maybe he felt betrayed by those lies. I don't know.

What about the autopsy? Of course a heart attack can be easily induced.

How about the next election? Will Cheney and stooge cancel the election by declaring a national emergency. They easily implemented
legislation to facilitate that end, didn't they?

RUMORS OF BOMBING IRAN CONTINUE

Unfortunately, we continue to see folks predicting that the United States will intensify its military aggression against Iran. Of course the Democrats did nothing to stop the war in Iraq and it is rather obvious that the both Obama and Clinton will continue the war just as much as McCain will. Of course the routing and military defeat of U. S. forces
would spoil their plans much as it did in Vietnam.

Considering the right-wing tenor of the debates the two democratic candidates have with each other it is impossible to be critical of third party candidates. Neither party and no candidate has much to offer the average American, the working American, Joe Sixpack, the hoi polloi.

The soaring costs and dramatic declines in our standard of living are essentially ignored by these ivy league snobs who accuse one another of
being impolite about something. Each seeks to prove his or her adeptness at serving the same capitalist system that is destroying our vital ecosystems today. The only thing real about the debate is the almost visible leash each candidate has about her neck leading to the hand of big money and big investors. "WILL WORK FOR BIG MONEY"
is stamped on their collars. Arf!

Of course Clinton has really played the subtle white supremacist and male baiter with some finesse. Still, every time you step on a cracker you hear it crack and that is the way it has always been with the blacker than black Clinton cult. Obama is obviously being crucified by the patriotic right-wing "invade the world" racists and those, like Clinton, who pander to their prejudices.

Nor will the endless crimes of Bush and Cheney be prosecuted by this Congress or any regime run by Obama or Clinton. It is a very cozy two party dictatorship and justice might screw up the duopoly. No one of a progressive ilk will let this issue lie.

Bush and Cheney, like Pinochet and Fujimori need to be fully prosecuted for their crimes. Permanent organizations need to be established to pursue justice in these matters.

Of course the Obama and Clinton supporters who are naive and really hope for an end to imperialist war and really want to see women liberated and the chains of racial and national oppression broken, all these people should be worked with to see through the lies once they are
more thoroughly exposed in the case of Obama, a sort of stealth candidate with a very sparse track record.

The point is that progressives should be promoting and fostering revolutionary and radical reformist ideas while organizing inside and outside the two parties to raise political consciousness in every sector of
the working and other oppressed folk. Permanent and semi-permanent institutions need to be buillt by the democratic revolutionary self-organization of the people. Parallel popular institutions should be created that can do what big business and capitalism can not, foster human liberty in a liberated society. Furthermore, the organized people can engage in production for their own use.

Neither candidate seems to notice the lack of true democracy. They pretend the two party system is democracy but it is not the democracy or the working an other oppressed people. It is a democracy of the rich and for the rich. Of course Obama and Clinton are just excellent self-promoters who cut others down with similar skill. They are fabulous fundraisers who serve the rich and powerful. They have as much to do with the average American as any other millionaire or billionaire, next to nothing if that.

Both Obama and Clinton demonstrate a complete ideological servility to the big investors and owners of society and the world today. "YES BOSS!" is their underlying political slogan whatever they say to us, the "rubes". They are confident that American workers will never independently organize themselves. Of course the legal framework for labor in the United States is like a prison cell, one of their favorite solutions to problems like real democratic input, prisons.


Will Bush-Cheney launch air strikes on Iran? They are already bombing Iraq daily. Yes, they are bombing Iraq in much the same way they bombed South Vietnam. Its the same old crap it was back then, U. S. Imperialism trying to dominate the world by bombing it.

What are the slogans that all the candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties share? BOMB AND IMPRISON". But don't forget you have the freedom to wear a flag lapel pin or not, and be crucified for it when you don't!

Will Bush-Cheney strike out at multiple nations one bright morning? In an undemocratic society like the United States this is not impossible.
Indeed it has been happening for decades and centuries. Will he use nuclear weapons? I think mere notification of Congress by the President that he is bombing Iran constitutes presidential dictatorship.

If Obama or Clinton really cared about progressive ideas and values they
very probably wouldn't be candidates for the White House! The "YES BOSS" vetting took place long ago!

So who are the agents of democratic change in society? Not the two
parties of big money and big government working with and for big money. No, they are our keepers and our oppressors.

BUSH CHENEY ESCALATE MILITARIZATION OF SPACE UNDERLINING THE NEED FOR THE DEMILITARIZATION OF SPACE

With the decision to destroy a military satellite, or at least to try to destroy one, it is clear that the Bush-Cheney administration has decided to follow China's example. China destroyed a satellite of its own earlier in the year with one of its own space weapons. I suppose that China was demonstrating to the world its military prowess in this area. They too claimed that they were somehow tiding up the heavens with another missile. Of course we need to remember that both China and Japan have extensive space programs of their own that include manned and unmanned missions. Proliferators are proliferating.

I saw something about the probability that the U. S. satellite will actually be hit by the U. S. missile sent to destroy it. This is the kind of thing you hear about when they are testing antimissile missiles. Anti-missile missiles tend to miss their targets. They are more properly designated anti-satellite MISSilesThey have a low probability of hitting their targets. A satellite is, physically speaking, a lot like a missile because it is an object going tens of thousands of miles an hour.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the U.S. could not hit its own reentering satellite? Of course hitting a satellite in orbit should be relatively easy since an orbit in the near vacuum of space would be highly predictable. A reentering satellite is another matter since it would be buffeted by the atmosphere upon reentry. It would skid this way and that, and might even break apart before a missile catches up to it.

So it's the bullet hitting a bullet problem except these bullets may go ten or twenty times the speed of more earthly bullets. Wiley Coyote has much the same problem trying to hit the Road Runner with a boulder but at much slower velocities.

Frankly, the whole era of satellite technology could be severely compromised or even ended if any capable party blows up the right satellites or otherwise introduces orbiting debris where communications and other vital satellites orbit. Goodbye satellite tv, internet and gps. Maybe the system is more robust than I think but the militarization of space seems likely to lead to more debris rather than less. Nightmare scenarios are endless.

A particle the size of a piece of sand, perhaps a hard metallic pellet, could annihilate a large satellite if it hit the right place at the right speed. If thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of these were to be orbited in vital satellite routes those satellites would be in grave danger.

The extreme aggressiveness of the United States toward many nations after 9-11 only intensified its already existing efforts to create a unipolar world where everything would be the U. S. way or the highway. This aggressiveness has led to nations like North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran,among others, to develop their missile technology so they can have the deterrence of satellite destruction in their quiver. Of course debris-filled satellite bombs could be deployed just waiting for a command from the ground to detonate. These nations are puny compared to the military might of the United States but they still could destroy our way of life and inflict great damage on us nonetheless. The peaceful regulation of earth and space is far more beneficial to nations than harsh competition and war.

These common sense observations underline the necessity and urgency of an international disarmament process that includes all wmd capable parties. Disarmament needs to include a ban on all satellite based weapons and anti-satellite weapons. Peace is more practical than war and a prohibition of certain weapons like nuclear weapons, mines and these space weapons makes us all a lot more secure. It looks like we are seeing more and more deployers of these weapons over the years and the more we have the more the necessity of disarmament. Sooner or later one of these parties will deploy anti-satellite weapons in a way that changes life on earth for a long time. Who knows, even this effort by Bush-Cheney to blow up a reentering satellite could lead to unintended consequences.

If the powers that be cannot resolve these threats our future may end up in the hands of the revolutionary peoples of the world because it is they who suffer from militarization on earth and in space and it is they who benefit by taking all political, economic and military power into their own hands for their own benefit. Surely the average chinese, russian, african or american has no need for weapons of mass destruction or those who hold the world hostage with them. Period.

SCOTT RITTER CONCERNED ABOUT BUSH-CHENEY INITIATED WWIII TOO!

Scott Ritter has provided reliable expert opinions United States warmaking in the middle east since he was a UNSCOM arms inspector disarming the Saddam Hussein regime. Of course he is now a famous critic of the second invasion of Iraq. Now he is warning about the President and the man holding the President's marionette strings, Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Ritter summarizes how the so-called "Hadley Rules" closed the door to negotiations with Iran earlier in the Bush administration. Steven Hadley is Condeleeza Rice's replacement as National Security advisor. Hadley appears to have implemented a policy dedicated to maintaining a "mortal enemy" status vis-a-vis Iran. Now Hadley is presumably pressing for military attacks on Iran.

Mr. Ritter focuses his critique on the Vice President's office which he asserts has taken over virtually all matters of National Security policy in this administration. He goes so far as to assert that, "Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy power in America today." Wouldn't that mean that the President should be impeached for not doing his job and that Cheney should be impeached for supplanting the President for all practical purposes?

Mr. Ritter argues that the Armageddon focused religious beliefs of this administration are compelling the creation of a military confrontation in the belief that this somehow is the fulfillment of some divine plan or prophecy.

Maybe we should impeach Bush-Cheney before they screw up the world even more by bombing Iran.

Bush's World War III 'Solution'

By Scott Ritter, Truthdig
Posted on October 23, 2007, Printed on October 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65846/

Don't worry, the White House is telling us. The world's most powerful leader was simply making a rhetorical point. At a White House press conference last week, just in case you haven't heard, President Bush informed the American people that he had told world leaders "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." World War III. That is certainly some rhetorical point, especially coming from the man singularly most capable of making such an event reality.

Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are busy writing jokes, but the president's reference to Armageddon, no matter how cavalierly uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming context. Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response to a reporter's question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles Bush so. In a way, this makes what the president said even more disturbing, since we now have an insight into the vision, and related terminology, which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of George W. Bush.

When I was a weapons inspector with the United Nations, there was a jostling that took place at the end of each day, when decisions needed to be made and authorization documents needed to be signed. In an environment of competing agendas, each of us who championed a position sought to be the "last man in," namely the person who got to imprint the executive chairman (our decision maker) with the final point of view for the day. Failure to do so could find an inspection or point of investigation sidetracked for days or weeks after the executive chairman became distracted by a competing vision. I understand the concept of "imprinting," and have seen it in action. What is clear from the president's remarks is that, far from an innocent rhetorical fumble, his words, and the context in which he employed them, are a clear indication of the imprinting which is taking place behind the scenes at the White House. If the president mentions World War III in the context of Iran's nuclear program, one can be certain that this is the very sort of discussion that is taking place in the Oval Office.

A critical question, therefore, is who was the last person to "imprint" the president prior to his public allusion to World War III? During his press conference, Bush noted that he awaited the opportunity to confer with his defense secretary, Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following their recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. So clearly the president hadn't been imprinted recently by either of the principle players in the formulation of defense and foreign policy. The suspects, then, are quickly whittled down to three: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney, and God.

Hadley is a long-established neoconservative thinker who has for the most part operated "in the shadows" when it comes to the formulation of Iran policy in the Bush administration. In 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then the deputy national security adviser) instituted what has been referred to as the "Hadley Rules," a corollary of which is that no move will be made which alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal enemy of the United States. These "rules" shut down every effort undertaken by Iran to seek a moderation of relations between it and the United States, and prohibited American policymakers from responding favorably to Iranian offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaida; they also blocked the grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic diplomatic initiative, including a normalization of relations with Israel. The Hadley Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious manner, with the National Security Council becoming involved in the muzzling of former Bush administration officials who are speaking out on the issue of Iran. Hadley is blocking Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security Council, from publishing an Op-Ed piece critical of the Bush administration on the grounds that any insight into the machinations of policymaking (or lack thereof) somehow strengthens Iran's hand. Leverett's article would simply underscore the fact that the Bush administration has spurned every opportunity to improve relations with Iran while deliberately exaggerating the threat to U.S. interests posed by the Iranian theocracy.

The silencing of informed critics is in keeping with Hadley's deliberate policy obfuscation. There is still no official policy in place within the administration concerning Iran. While a more sober-minded national security bureaucracy works to marginalize the hawkish posturing of the neocons, the administration has decided that the best policy is in fact no policy, which is a policy decision in its own right. Hadley has forgone the normal procedures of governance, in which decisions impacting the nation are written down, using official channels, and made subject to review and oversight by those legally and constitutionally mandated and obligated to do so. A policy of no policy results in secret policy, which means, according to Hadley himself, the Bush administration simply does whatever it wants to, regardless. In the case of Iran, this means pushing for regime change in Tehran at any cost, even if it means World War III.

But Hadley is simply a facilitator, bureaucratic "grease" to ease policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet of a national security infrastructure increasingly kept in the dark about the true intent of the Bush administration when it comes to Iran. With the Department of State and the Pentagon now considered unfriendly ground by the remaining hard-core neoconservative thinkers still in power, policy formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice President Cheney and the constitutionally nebulous "Office of the Vice President."

Cheney and his cohorts have constructed a never-never land of oversight deniability, claiming immunity from both executive and legislative checks and balances. With an unchallenged ability to classify anything and everything as secret, and then claim that there is no authority inherent in government to oversee that which has been thus classified, the Office of the Vice President has transformed itself into a free republic's worst nightmare, assuming authority over almost every aspect of American national security policy at home and abroad. From torture to illegal wiretapping, to arms control (or lack of it) to Iran, Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy power in America today. While there are some who will claim that in this time of post-9/11 crisis such a process of bureaucratic streamlining is essential for the common good, the reality is far different.

It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this has never been truer than in the case of Cheney. What Cheney is doing behind his shield of secrecy can be simply defined: planning and implementing a preemptive war of aggression. During the Nuremberg tribunal in the aftermath of World War II, the chief American prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Today, we have a vice president who articulates publicly about global conflict, and who speaks in not-so-veiled language about a looming Armageddon. If there is such a future for America and the world, let one thing be certain; World War III, as postulated by Dick Cheney, would be an elective war, and not a conflict of tragic necessity. This makes the crime even greater.

Sadly, Judge Jackson's words are but an empty shell. The global community lacks a legally binding definition of what constitutes a war of aggression, or even an act of aggression. But that isn't the point. America should never find itself in a position where it is being judged by the global community regarding the legality of its actions. Judge Jackson established a precedent of jurisprudence concerning aggression based upon American principles and values, something the international community endorsed. The fact that current American indifference to the rule of law prevents the international community from certifying a definition of criminality when it comes to aggression, whether it be parsed as "war" or simply an "act," does not change the fact that the Bush administration, in the person of Dick Cheney, is actively engaged in the committing of the "supreme [war] crime," which makes Cheney the supreme war criminal. If the world is not empowered to judge him as such, then let the mantle of judgment fall to the American people. Through their elected representatives in Congress, they should not only bring this reign of unrestrained abuse of power to an end, but ensure that such abuse never again is attempted by an American official by holding to account, to the full extent of the law, those who have trampled on the Constitution of the United States and the ideals and principles it enshrines.

But what use is the rule of law, even if fairly and properly implemented, if in the end he who is entrusted with executive power takes his instructions from an even higher authority? President Bush's relationship with "God" (or that which he refers to as God) is a matter of public record. The president himself has stated that "God speaks through me" (he acknowledged this before a group of Amish in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004). Exactly how God speaks through him, and what precisely God says, is not a matter of speculation. According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush told him and others that "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." As such, at least in the president's mind, God has ordered Bush to transform himself into a modern incarnation of St. Michael, smiting all that is evil before him. "We are in a conflict between good and evil. And America will call evil by its name," the president told West Point cadets in a speech in 2002.

The matter of how and when an individual chooses to practice his faith, or lack thereof, is a deeply personal matter, one which should be kept from public discourse. For a president to so openly impose his personal religious beliefs, as Bush has done, on American policy formulation and implementation represents a fundamental departure from not only constitutional intent concerning the separation of church and state but also constitutional mandate concerning the imposition of checks and balances required by the American system of governance. The increasing embrace by this president of the notion of a unitary executive takes on an even more sinister aspect when one realizes that not only does the Bush administration seek to nullify the will of the people through the shackling of the people's representatives in Congress, but that the president has forgone even the appearance of constitutional constraint by evoking the word of his personal deity, as expressed through his person, as the highest form of consultation on a matter as serious as war. As such, the president has made his faith, and how he practices it, a subject not only of public curiosity but of national survival.

That George W. Bush is a born-again Christian is not a national secret. Neither is the fact that his brand of Christianity, evangelicalism, embraces the notion of the "end of days," the coming of the Apocalypse as foretold (so they say) in the Book of Revelations and elsewhere in the Bible. President Bush's frequent reference to "the evil one" suggests that he not only believes in the Antichrist but actively proselytizes on the Antichrist's physical presence on Earth at this time. If one takes in the writing and speeches of those in the evangelical community today concerning the "rapture," the numerous references to the current situation in the Middle East, especially on the events unfolding around Iran and its nuclear program, make it very clear that, at least in the minds of these evangelicals, there is a clear link between the "end of days" prophesy and U.S.-Iran policy. That James Dobson, one of the most powerful and influential evangelical voices in America today, would be invited to the White House with like-minded clergy to discuss President Bush's Iran policy is absurd unless one makes the link between Bush's personal faith, the extreme religious beliefs of Dobson and the potential of Armageddon-like conflict (World War III). At this point, the absurd becomes unthinkable, except it is all too real.

Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation's greatest founders, made the separation of church and state an underlying principle upon which the United States was built. This separation was all-inclusive, meaning that not only should government stay out of religion, but likewise religion should be excluded from government. "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself," Jefferson wrote in a letter to Francis Hopkinson in 1789. "Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent." If only President Bush would abide by such wisdom, avoiding the addictive narcotic of religious fervor when carrying out the people's business. Instead, he chooses as his drug one which threatens to destroy us all in a conflagration derived not from celestial intervention but individual ignorance and arrogance. Again Jefferson, in a letter written in 1825: "It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."

Nightmares, more aptly, unless something can be done to change the direction Bush and Dobson are taking us. The problem is that far too many Americans openly espouse not only the faith of George W. Bush but also the underlying philosophy which permits this faith to be intertwined with the governance of the land. "God bless America" has become a rallying cry for this crowd, and those too ignorant and/or afraid to speak out in opposition. If this statement has merit, what does it say for the 6.8 billion others in the world today who are not Americans? That God condemns them? The American embrace of divine destiny is not unique in history (one only has to recall that the belt buckles of the German army during World War II read "God is with us"). But for a nation born of the age of reason to collectively fall victim to the most base of fear-induced theology is a clear indication that America currently fails to live up to its founding principles. Rather than turning to Dobson and his ilk for guidance in these troubled times, Americans would be well served to reflect on President Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered in the middle of a horrific civil war which makes all of the conflict America finds itself in today pale in comparison:

"Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.... [T]hat He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"

God is not on our side, or the side of any single nation or people. To believe such is the ultimate expression of national hubris. To invoke such, if one is a true believer, is to embrace sacrilege and heresy. This, of course, is an individual right, granted as an extension of religious freedom. But it is not a collective right, nor is it a right born of governance, especially in a land protected by the separation of church and state.

The issue of Iran is a national problem which requires a collective debate, discussion and dialogue inclusive of all the facts, and stripped of all ideology and theocracy which would seek to deny reasoned thought conducted within a framework of accepted laws and ideals. It is grossly irresponsible of an American president to invoke the imagery of World War III without first sharing with the American people the framework of thought that produced such a comparison. Such openness will not be forthcoming from this administration or president. Not in the form of Stephen Hadley's policy of no policy, designed with intent to avoid and subvert both bureaucratic and legislative process and oversight, or Dick Cheney's secret government within a government, operating above and beyond the law and in a manner which violates both legal and moral norms and values, and certainly not in the president's own private conversations with "God," either directly or through the medium of lunatic evangelicals who embrace the termination of all we stand for, and especially the future of our next generation, in a fiery holocaust born from the fraudulent writings of centuries past.

The processes which compelled George W. Bush to speak of a World War III are intentionally not transparent to the American people. The president has much to explain, and it would be incumbent upon every venue of civic and public pressure to demand that such an explanation be forthcoming in the near future. The stakes regarding Iran have always been high, but never more so than when a nation's leader invokes the end of days as a solution.

A former Marine Corps intelligence officer, Scott Ritter was a chief inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq from 1991 until 1998. He is the author of several books; "Target Iran," with a new afterword by the author, was recently released in paperback by Nation Books.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/65846/

HIGHTOWER LAMENTS THE DEFACTO SUPREMACY OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH BECAUSE OF A DO NOTHING CONGRESS

The post below from AlterNet is an expression of Jim Hightower's concerns about runaway Presidential power. I broadly share his concern and hope that we can all alert the American people about the dire threat to our democratic rights and basic liberties that are now posed by a campaign to bomb Iran. Unlike Iraq, which never had anything or any policy to harm the United States Iran is in a position to inflict serious damage to regional military forces and the oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf. Bush's bellicose rhetoric is already driving up the price of oil which will most likely be unaffordable if the bombing of Iran takes place, and Bush and Cheney obviously intend to bomb.

Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
Posted on October 23, 2007, Printed on October 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65450/

Where is Congress? It's way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being trampled, the very form of our government is being perverted, and nothing less than American democracy itself is endangered -- a presidential coup is taking place. I think of Barbara Jordan, the late congresswoman from Houston. On July 25, 1974, this powerful thinker and member of the House Judiciary Committee took her turn to speak during the Nixon impeachment inquiry.

"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total," she declared in her thundering voice. "And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."Where are the likes of Barbara Jordan in today's Congress? While the BushCheney regime continues to establish a supreme, arrogant, autocratic presidency in flagrant violation of the Constitution, members of Congress largely sit there as idle spectators -- or worse, as abettors of Bush's usurpation of their own congressional authority.

Why it matters

Separation of powers. Rule of law. Checks and balances. These may seem to us moderns to be little more than a set of dry, legal precepts that we had to memorize in high-school history class but need not concern us now. After all, the founders (bless their wigged heads!) established these principles for us back in 17-something-or-other, so we don't really have to worry about them in 2007. Think again. These are not merely arcane phrases of constitutional law, but the very keystones of our democracy, essential to sustaining our ideal of being a self-governing people, free of tyrants who would govern us on their own whim. The founders knew about tyranny. The monarch of the time, King George III, routinely denied colonists basic liberties, spied on them and entered their homes at will, seized their property, jailed anyone he wanted without charges, rounded up and killed dissidents, and generally ruled with an iron fist. He was both the law and above the law, operating on the twin doctrines of "the divine rule of kings" and "the king can do no wrong."

(Alert: Ready or not, the following is a high-school refresher course on American government. There will be a test.) At the front of the founders' minds was the necessity of breaking up the authority of their new government in order to avoid re-creating the autocracy they had just defeated. The genius of their structure was that legislating, administering, and judging were to be done by three separate but coequal branches, each with powers to check the other two, and none able to aggregate all three functions into its own hands (a result that James Madison called the very definition of tyranny). Just as important, to deter government by whim, all members of the three branches were to be subject to the laws of the land (starting with the Constitution and Bill of Rights), with no one above the law. As Thomas Paine said, "The law is king."

These were not legal niceties but core restraints designed to protect citizens from power grabs by ambitious autocrats. Such restrictions also make our country stronger by vetting policies through three entities rather than one. This balanced authority helps avoid many serious policy mistakes (or at least offers a chance to correct them later), and it is intended to prevent the one mistake that's fatal to democracy -- allowing one branch to seize the power to rule unilaterally.

Of course, sound schemes are oft screwed up by unsound leaders, and we've had some horrible hiccups over the years. John Adams went astray early in our democratic experiment by claiming the unilateral authority to imprison his political enemies; Abe Lincoln took it upon himself to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson launched his notorious Palmer Raids; FDR rounded up and imprisoned Japanese-Americans; J. Edgar Hoover and the infamous COINTEL program spied on and arrested thousands in the Vietnam War years; and Ronnie Reagan ran his own illegal, secret war out of the White House basement.

In all these cases of executive excess and abuse, however, outrage flowed from the public, courts stood up to the White House, congressional investigations ensued, and the American system regained its balance relatively quickly. As Jefferson put it when he succeeded Adams and repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts, "Should we wander [from the essential principles of our government] in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

This time is different

Now, however, come two arrogant autocrats like we've never seen in the White House. George W and his snarling enabler, Dick Cheney, are making a power grab so unprecedented, so audacious, so broad and deep, so secretive, so stupefying, and so un-American that it has not yet been comprehended by the media, Congress, or the public. The dictionary defines "coup" not just as an armed takeover in some Third World country, but as "a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one affecting a change of government illegally or by force."

Constantly waving the bloody flag of 9/11 and swaggering around in commander-in-chief garb, the BushCheney duo are usurping authority from Congress, the courts, and the people, while also asserting arbitrary power that does not belong to the presidency. Their coup is changing our form of government, rewriting the genius of the founders by imposing a supreme executive that functions in secret and insists that it is above the law, unaccountable either to congressional oversight or to judicial review.

As Al Gore pointed out in a powerful speech he gave last year (read it here), the BushCheney push for imperial power is much more dangerous and far-reaching than other presidential excesses for a couple of big reasons. First, the Bushites make no pretension that they want these powers only temporarily, instead contending that a super-powerful presidency is necessary to cope with a terrorist threat that they say will last "for the rest of our lives." Second, they are not merely pushing executive supremacy as a response to an outside threat, but as an ideological, right-wing theory of what they allege the Constitution actually meant to say.

Called the "unitary executive theory," this perverse, antidemocratic construct begs us to believe that the president has inherent executive powers that cannot be reviewed, questioned, or altered by the other branches. Bush himself has asserted that his executive power "must be unilateral and unchecked." Must? Extremist theorists aside, this effectively establishes an executive with arbitrary power over us. It creates the anti-America.

The list of Bushite excesses is long...and growing:

• Their sweeping, secret program of warrantless spying on Americans -- in direct violation of a long-standing federal law intended to forestall such flagrant intrusions into people's privacy.
• The usurpation of legislative authority by attaching "signing statements" to laws passed by Congress, openly asserting Bush's intention to disobey or simply ignore the laws. He has used this artifice to challenge over 1,150laws, even though the Constitution and the founders never conceived of such a dodge (signing statements were concocted by Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general, and were pushed at that time by a young Reaganite lawyer who is now ensconced for life on the Supreme Court, Sam Alito).
• Suspension of habeas corpus for anyone whom Bush deems to be an "enemy combatant"-allowing innocent people to be detained indefinitely in prison without charges or civil trial, subjected to abuse and even torture, and denied access to judicial review of their incarceration (thus usurping the power of the courts). The routine and illegal assertion of "executive privilege" to stonewall Congress's legitimate efforts to perform its constitutional obligation of executive oversight and to prevent the questioning of top officials engaged in outright violations of American law.
• The assertion of a "state secrets" doctrine to prevent citizens and judges from pursuing legitimate lawsuits on the spurious grounds that even to have the executive's actions brought before the court would endanger national security and infringe on executive authority.
• An ever-expanding grab bag of autocratic actions, including using "national security letters" to sidestep the courts and spy on American political groups and individuals with no connection at all to terrorism; censoring executive-branch employees and government information for political purposes and using federal officials and tax dollars to push the regime's political agenda; and, of course, outright lying to Congress and the public, including lying for the most despicable purpose of all -- putting our troops, our public treasury, and our nation's good name into a war based on nothing but hubris, oil, and ideological fantasies (including Bush's latest blatant lie that "progress" in Iraq warrants the killing and maiming of additional thousands of American troops -- none of whom comes from his family).

Democratic capitulation

What we have is a lawless presidency. But our problem is not Bush. He is who he is -- a bonehead. He won't change, and why should he? He's getting away with his power grab! So he has no reason to step back, and every reason to keep pushing and to keep trying to institutionalize his coup.

Rather, our problem is those weaselly, wimpy, feckless members of Congress who have failed to confront the runaway executive, who have sat silent or (astonishingly) cheered and assisted as their own constitutional powers have been taken and their once-proud, coequal branch has been made subservient to the executive.

In the first six years of BushCheney, the Republican Congress operated as no more than a rubber stamp for the accretion of presidential power, shamelessly surrendering its own autonomy in a burst of mindless partisan zeal. Too many Democrats just went along, either buying the lies or being cowed by the unrelenting politics of fear and intimidation whipped up by Bush and Cheney. (The Bushites are still using these bullying tactics, as when they demanded this past summer that Congress legalize their illegal domestic spy program and CIA chief Mike McConnell warned publicly that "Americans are going to die" if Democrats failed to pass it.)

Which brings us to the new Congress run by Democrats. Where are they? Yes, I know they have only slim majorities and that the GOP uses veto threats, filibusters, and demagogic lies to fight them -- but, come on, suck it up! At least stop voting for "the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." For example, the party now in charge did indeed cave in to Bush's summer demand that it legalize his warrantless spying on Americans (a Lowdowner sent an email to me saying he hopes Bush gets caught smoking pot, because then the Democrats will immediately legalize it).

The founders would be stunned that Congress has failed to assert itself. They saw checks and balances not as an option but as an obligation, a fundamental responsibility that goes to the very heart of each lawmaker's oath faithfully to support and defend the Constitution.

It's important to note that Congress is not a weak institution. It has powerful muscles to flex, including control of the purse, which Congress used in 1973 to tell Nixon, "No, we will not provide money for you to extend the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia." Nixon had to back off. Legislators also have clear constitutional mandates to oversee, probe, and expose presidential actions (remember the extensive Fulbright hearings in the '60s and the Church investigations of the '70s, for example). Members of Congress have wide-ranging subpoena power, as well as something called "inherent contempt" power to make their own charges against outlaw executive officials and to hold their own trials. And, of course, they have impeachment power -- which the founders saw not only as a way to remove an outlaw president (or veep or cabinet officer), but also as a means to compel a recidivist constitutional violator to come before the bar of Congress and to be held accountable. The process itself, even if it does not lead to conviction in the Senate, is educational and chastening, putting the executive branch back in its place.

None of this is about making a partisan attack on BushCheney. It's really not about them at all. Rather, Congress must find its backbone because our democracy cannot function without a vigilant legislative branch. Outlaw presidents must finally leave office, but their precedents live beyond them if left unchecked. As historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote of the power-grabbing Nixon administration, "If the Nixon White House escaped the legal consequences of its illegal behavior, why would future presidents not suppose themselves entitled to do [the same]?"

Bang pots and pans

Sam Adams, the organizer of the Boston Tea Party, knew that it is the citizenry itself that ultimately has to do the heavy lifting of democracy building. "If ever a time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats of government," he declared, "our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."

That's us. And now is that time.

What can we do? We can do what millions have been doing-only more of it, more insistently, more loudly, more creatively. Our friend Molly Ivins, just before she died this year, urged us to start "banging pots and pans" to make the bastards hear us. Raise a ruckus through street demonstrations, peace actions, visits (and/or confrontations) with lawmakers, political campaigns, alliances with military families, religious ceremonies, coalitions with constitutional conservatives, outreach to young people, and grassroots media action, including blogs, email blasts, call-in radio, letters to editors, op-eds, bumperstickers, and whatever you've got. Make a mighty noise.

Don't forget our friends in office. Such Democrats as John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, and Dennis Kucinich are all over Bush and Cheney with investigations, subpoenas, censure motions, impeachment bills, and exposes -- not only on the war, but most emphatically on constitutional abuses. Thank them, find out what you can do to help them, demand that your own Congress critter join them.

And here's a creative idea from Garret Keizer. I have no idea who he is, but he wrote a punchy piece in the October issue of Harper's Magazine (read it here) that I like and that Lowdowners might want to embrace. He's calling for a general strike. Not by unions, but by us-you and me. As a symbolically appropriate day, he suggests the first Tuesday of November, the traditional date for our elections -- this year, Nov. 6. He dubs it "The Feast of the Hanging Chads."

A general strike means that We The People, as many of us as possible, would disobey the inept, corrupt, undemocratic (add your own adjective here) system by withholding our presence at for least one day. Don't go to work. Stay home. Better yet, take some political action. Also, don't go to the mall, the supermarket, or the bank; don't use your credit card or make any commercial transaction. This would be the ultimate affront to the corporate president who so pathetically told us after 9/11 that our highest patriotic response to the attack was to "go shopping." So don't fly, use your cell phone (hard, I know), watch TV, or otherwise participate. Sometimes, silence is the loudest sound of all. As Keizer says, "As long as we're willing to go on with our business, Bush and Cheney will feel free to go on with their coup."

On one level, the strike is against the war, against Bush thumbing his nose at the American majority that has already emphatically said -- OUT! -- and against the Democratic leadership that can't seem to muster the will to rein in the Bush administration. On another level, however, this is a strike for the Constitution, a strike against the betrayal of the rule of law and our democratic ideals. It's a strike for the America we thought this was. It's an affirmation that the people are the only "larger force" that can stop the BushCheney coup and make America whole again.

From "The Hightower Lowdown," edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, October 2007. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author of Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/65450/

IMPEACH BUSH-CHENEY TO PREVENT NUCLEAR WAR

It is difficult to predict the future with any degree of accuracy. Nonetheless the drumbeat and campaign to attack Iran has clearly begun. It appears that a decision has been made to make yet another war of aggression against an oil rich nation. Iran has the capability and disciplined troops to genuinely inflict damage upon United States military forces and oil installations throughout the region. In response, Mr. Bush will use nuclear weapons and declare a state of emergency, 2008 elections will be cancelled.

A former Reagan economist has essentially expressed the same sort of scenario. My point is that an impeachment movement, a grass roots movement that won't take no for an answer could hamstring the apolacalyptic leaders in the White House.

Remember, impeachment would put the Bush-Cheney administration on the defensive Their many acts of violence and corruption
would be opened for public exposure. The Senate may or may not convict but the Bush-Cheney clique could be weakened enough to prevent their plans for nuclear war.