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A Lawless and Incompetent Leadership Bush at the Tipping Point By Ralph Nader

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 12 March 2006
3 comments

Wars and conflicts Governments USA

03/11/06 "Counterpunch"

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, two top outlaws smashing our country’s rule of law and democratic liberties, are testing the American people’s resistance. Every day they are testing. Every day they think by flaunting the words, "war on terror", they can get Americans to concede more and more of what makes the United States a constitutionally-abiding government under the rule of law.

You know what? With not enough exceptions, they are right. Day by day, we’re giving up what our forefathers fought to bequeath us since that famous Declaration of Independence of 1776. They were determined that people in this country would not be arrested without charges and jailed indefinitely, that they would not be tortured, or sent to be tortured in dictatorial regimes, or deprived of habeas corpus to take their incarceration to our courts of law, or be snooped on at the whim of the President and his deputies or that people in faraway lands would be destroyed in the tens of thousands due to a fabricated war-invasion-quagmire.

They instituted a constitution so that people would not be jailed without "probable cause", or be lied to about taking this country and its soldiers to war, or have shoved aside the checks and balances represented by American courts and the Congress. All these are being done by two pro-Vietnam war draft dodgers!

What does all this tell you about all of us out there in the great United States of America? A giant yawn of "who cares" by citizens, nearly two-thirds of whom now have turned against these two White House fabricators in poll after poll regarding the war, the surrender to Big Business, the gross incompetence in managing taxpayer dollars and the Katrina disaster.

But listen, the rumble of resistance and opposition is getting louder and not just from the increasing number of public demonstrations around the country.

A new Zogby poll reports that 72% of American soldiers serving in Iraq think the U.S. should get out within the next year, including 58% of the Marines! Three-quarters of National Guard and Reserve units support withdrawal within 6 months. Every month, more former high-ranking military officers, intelligence officials and diplomats are declaring their opposition to the war.

For a few examples of many: Retired four-star General, Joseph P. Hoar, who commanded the U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf after the 1991 war, described the Iraq war as "wrong from the beginning". Similar tough criticism has come from John Deutch, former head of the CIA, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter and Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to the first President Bush.

Retired General William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency and security adviser to Ronald Reagan, wrote that the Iraq war "is serving the interests of Osama bin Laden, the Iranians, and is fomenting civil war in Iraq." He describes the Iraq war as "the most strategic foreign policy disaster in U.S. history."

More recently, internal memos of criticism or dissent, Inspector General reports from Defense the Justice Department, and former highly-positioned staff within the Bush Administration, like Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell, are taking apart the public relations sheen concocted by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld triad.

Now comes the conservative American Bar Association—400,000 lawyers—whose House of Delegates has overwhelmingly approved a task force report accusing President Bush, in polite legal language, of violating both the Constitution and federal law. ABA President Michael S. Greco sent it to Mr. Bush with a cover letter dated February 13, 2006 . (Report full text)

The mass media, which has finally produced many exposes of the Bush war, ignored the significance of this condemnation by the nation’s largest body of lawyers, written in part by attorneys who have served in the FBI, CIA and NSA. It should have been page one news.

There comes a tipping point, however, when the opposition of the establishment, the public opinion of the citizenry, the disgust of the soldiers—their spreading casualties, diseases and mental traumas - and the corruption of the large corporate contractors to whom much of the military’s functions have been outsourced, all congeal and overcome the cowardliness of most members of Congress. Then a surge of Congressional followers and allies of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), war veteran and leading voice against the Bush Iraq policies, will come to the forefront.

The illegal, disastrous (to both Iraqis and Americans) Iraq war is now almost three years of quagmire old. The chaos and bloodshed are worsening.

It is time to make the spring of 2006 the tipping point period for constitutionalism, justice and a sane foreign and national security policy. More yawns must turn into growls from outside Washington, DC. See http://www.DemocracyRising.US for more information.

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Forum posts

  • Impeachment is the answer. But the Republican Senators are eiher dumb, deaf or blind to what Bush has been doing. They stand in line behind Bush, kneeling to kiss his rump, wriggling in joy to carry out his bidding, no matter how stupid. I don’t know if it is cowardice, fear of losing their juicy careers and positions, the huge flow of funds, the tremendous opportunities for wealth, the easy living, or whatever. Somehow they don’t feel the slightest compulsion to defend, protect and preserved the constitution. Until the next elections, they they will all turn very patriotic, very justice minded, and will scream to the housetops that they tried to restrain a tyrant, but for some reason were not able to get around him. During every investigation all Republican Senators make remarkable speeches adulating Bush, confirming that everything is going very smoothly and that critics are completely loony. They expend all effort in avoiding any mention of Bush complicity in anything. He cannot do any wrong, in their view. To them, his pretentions of being above the law are reasonable, because we are all in the trememdous grip of terror of Osama whom someday they will catch and punish him. But meanwhile we must be very afraid of the terrorists, who are everywhere, hiding in every dark corner, in every country, so we must be ever vigilant and take off our shoes when boarding planes, and not crarry nail-clippers, or consult web services for tabooed subjects, like criticising Bush or we will be visited by secret police who will justly incarcerate us without warrant, hold us indefinitely, and apply the famous Bush torture and abuse, because they want to know the truth.
    And some day we may get some approximation of the truth. But right now we are in the firm alligator grip of a tyrant who firmly believes that as the favorite of God he is above all law, and has spat on the Constitution.
    Peter Fredson

    • Since all of them, Democrats and Republicans alike, seem to be living in an entirely fantasy world, they are insane by definition. Send them all to the local mental home. You don’t need any paperwork; just tell the CIA to "render" them there. Hoist them on their own petards.

  • Folks, it’s ALL about the lack of access that Americans,and to a large extent europeans, have to TRUE and ACCURATE info on what is REALLY going in in the World at large.For example,Washington could be on fire, Right Now! and if the Mass Media dosen’t "air" the incident,then it dosen’t exist!!.Back in the "old days"(pre-radio,.tv,auto),days,no,weeks could go by before info from 100’s-1000’s of miles away got to our ears out here in the heartland!!!The entire continent of India could have just sunk into the ocean and most Americans could go for Months! ,before we would hear about it!!Bottom line, Our entire reality is FED TO US by the Mass Media.Now what if that media ,as a group, decided to manipulate our perception of reality???What if the Mass Media,collectively, was OWNED& controlled by a PARTICULAR ethnic group who,intentionally, decided to do JUST THAT!! Let’s say this ethnic group decided over 100 years ago to SLOWLY take over the world media and SLOWLY manipulate the info we recieve in order to get populations to do their bidding(start wars to generate $$$$ for example)What if this SAME ethnic group also Controlled the World banking cartel??? MY,MY, the possibilities are endless!!
    ..............Now, what if I could provide a list of CEO’s of the U.S. media...would you take the time to read it?? What if the list of owners was contrary to everything you have been led to believe up to this point??Would you be able to restructure your cultural belief system(BRAINWASHING)??
    ...............LET’S SEE!!!
    .............PARTIAL,repeat,PARTIAL LIST OF OWNERSHIPS
    …”in the beginning”-Cohn,Fox,Laemmle,Mayer,Warner bros..Zukor)…”the motion picture moguls”
    1.time-warner aol cnn—Gerald Levin
    2.warner music universal studios-Edgar Bronfman(also seagrams alcohol& cocaine,heroin)
    3.time warner publishing-Norman Pearlstein
    4.ABC disney miramaxtouchstone etc.-Bob&Harvey Weinstein
    5.viacom-Sumner Redstone(Murray Rothstein) Leslie Moonvies et al.
    6.paramount-Sherry Lansing
    7.usa network-Barry Diller
    8.fox-R.Murdoch
    9.Speilberg......no 1st name neccessary(just like Striesand...huh??)
    10.Columbia pictures-Amy Pascal
    11.early ABC-L Goldenson
    12.early nbc-David Sarnoff&R.Sarnoff
    13.early cbs-W.Paley&L.Tisch
    14.A.P. wireservice-M.Silverman
    15.n.y. times&Wall st.Journal&washington postAND MANY OTHERS-Sulzberger&Graham Family
    16.chair&ceo of DOW JONES&Co.Peter Kahn
    17. Vanity Fair- Si & Donald NEWHOUSE
    18.Google: “who runs the porno industry” for a real eyeopener!!
    NOTE THE ETHNIC CONNECTION------ This is but a SMALL portion of the list of "JEWS"(may or may not be semites.Most are Western Russian Ashkenazi) who TOTALLY control the U.S media............most of us sub humans(read the TALMuD) GOYIM’ don’t have a clue about the above info......and as the few of us who DO, know- The long term goal of the Zionist World Domination Movement clearly specifies,among it’s protocols, the Zionists should infiltrate or CREATE,if neccessary, and control, ALL sides of all political & social philosophies and the media and the educational system...and of course the ECONOMY(rothschils/schiff/warburg).!!!!!..........................
    , P.S.- "he who controls the media ,controls the minds of the masses"..J. Goerbels