Every time the Bush Administration and the Right Wingnuts inside it has wanted to do something, they have done it. In fact, they have been willing to flaunt the very concepts of what they have wanted and what they are willing to do to achieve it.
In the mid-90s, most of what comprised the original Administration under Dubya signed onto a group called the Project for a New American Century (PNAC).
Under the guise of a likeminded think tank, they sent letters to Bill Clinton urging him to go to war with Iraq.
In fact they even wrote up their own doctrine of what American Foreign Policy should look like. It was a tale of a new empire, one with strategic targets in the Middle East that would help the U.S. exert power and gain expansive controls over in the other side of the Atlantic.
In this document, they even acknowledged how difficult it would be to obtain American support for such enterprising military missions and pointed out that if perhaps a new Pearl Harbor were to occur, then Americans would be swayed to their line of thinking.
You can question or deny the legitimacy of theories claiming Bush either let it happen on purpose (LIHOP) or made it happen on purpose (MIHOP) but one way or another the PNAC members got their ultimate wish and it came in the horrific form of 9/11.
The facts remain that they quite openly discussed needing an event like 9/11 to occur and that fairly detailed Presidential Daily Briefings (see below) got to Condi Rice and Bush himself and were purposely disregarded.
They followed up what had to be the worst attack on American soil ever with a very small number of troops to go after the culprit. All the while setting their targets on their very first PNAC target: Iraq
From 1997 on, the PNAC had been writing op-ed pieces, letters to important policy makers, they were even so blunt as to publish articles in the Weekly Standard discussing how to attack Iraq. They had their 9/11 and within days (if not minutes) they were going after the target they really wanted. Osama Bin Laden and Afghanistan was a side trinket to the American people to buy Bush's tough guy persona and support a new meme.... the "global war on terror".
Now this is old news to people that aren't tuned into the brainwashing the corporate media feeds you every day, but it certainly makes these next few articles all the more startling to those with an observant eye.
First (and this too may be old news to some) to put this whole thing in perspective we must point this out. Bush has been sending our entire National Guard to Iraq leaving us virtually helpless at home. All the while the Administration has been building it's own Army in Iraq. The reports I've seen puts the "Blackwater" mercenaries at least 48,000 troops strong and they do not follow the chain of command the regular US Forces do. In fact the only command they follow is whereever the almighty dollar leads them. They are Bush's personal soldiers, bought and paid for by your tax dollars and controlled by him and his cronies. They are not accountable oncesoever to the American people.
What difference does that make? Well he might very well need them to enforce his next big coup which he so boldly sent along on May 9th. He issued National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20 which basically say that should a catastrophic event occur, he can take control of the entire government to, and I shit you not, "ensure Constitutional government".
He who so strongly believes in the Constitution that he subverts law at every opportunity to test it's boundaries. He who was rumored to have said that the Constitution is, "just a goddamned piece of paper".
Yep that's the guy I want having control and exerting "Constitutional" authority in the time of a catastrophic emergency. Although he leaves that terminology, "catastrophic emergency" open for events that happen rather frequently.
According to the Progressive:
It defines a “catastrophic emergency” as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government function.”
Well that could be a tornado or a hurricane which happen frequently every year and all of a sudden Bush has the right to basically declare martial law.
If I could play the odds in Vegas, I would think based on their previous track record of hinting at what they plan to do, that this catastrophic event occurs before the Democrats face the polls in 2008. This bunch has proved ignorant to the will of the people and willing to do whatever it takes (steal elections, smear friend and foe, break every law in the book) to obtain more power than any Administration before it and they will not back down and give that power up for anyone.
So the question becomes, should the next "terrorist attack" that the Bush Administration purposely refused to defend us against (see: refusal of funding to secure ports and nuclear power plants, cutting funding to first responders, sending national guardsman overseas) or the next hurricane Bush refused to prepare FEMA for occurs, and Bush takes over with his own personal army to command...
When do you take your country back?
Or is the nobility of freedom and liberty not worth the effort any more?
You decide.
-Rp
