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