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There is nothing traditional about the current war in Iraq. There is no
clearly defined or uniformed enemy, there is not even a front line or a
foreseeable conclusion to what the president has described as
"unending war." Most important, this was not a war based on an
attack against us – the Iraq War was an illegal preemptive strike
– which is something that violates every aspect of all the rules of war,
because in Bush’s world, any country can now be attacked for just
thinking about opposition to the United States, or to our policies.
This is a situation that the USA has not faced before, because
international law forbids "preemptive military action," for acts
believed to be ‘potentially pending.’ Had the president and his
advisors been able to prove that an attack was actually eminent that might
have been different, but all the intelligence they used to support that
theory has been proven false. Not only is this a war against shadows, the
War-on-Iraq was and is illegal. Now it appears that when we are at war,
Bush believes there is only one branch of government – and because of his
interpretation of the Second Amendment – no laws can be valid if those
laws seek to reign in his power over either the military or the population.
Everything about this war and its continuing fallout is very difficult
to keep up with, primarily because everything we are trying to understand
is either illegal or secret, because this president does not trust
congress, the courts or the American public. What we got instead of candor
was layer upon layer of half-truths, self-justifications and outright lies.
After stealing his first election Bush was lurching though his
destruction of most of our treaty obligations around the world when
September eleventh came around. Almost immediately, without consultation or
inquiry Bush came to the Oval Office to announce that we had been attacked
by terrorists. (No proof was provided except some grainy video that
purported to show a number of "terrorists" of Arab descent
boarding the ill-fated flights – undamaged passports however seemed to
survive the explosions and fires that obliterated the towers, but no one
questioned that anomaly). Very soon on the heels of these revelations Bush
demanded and obtained a License to Kill, from the Congress of the United
States.
kirwanesque.com
/politics/2002/p29.htm and thus began this War on Shadows!
The theft of the election coupled with the License, created that
belligerent tone that we have lived with from that day to this. In
translation we are seeing utter distain for representative government,
which has become the hallmark of this presidency. Early on it was clear to
George if not to everyone else, that he need not fear anyone or anything in
this country – because he got away with stealing this nation’s highest
office, along with being allowed to claim absolute proof, within days of
the attack that precluded any evidence that a crime had been committed.
This was insured by the government’s haste in destroying all traces of
the wreckage of the towers in the interest of restoring normalcy to New
York City. At that point Bush and his handlers began his real presidency
– and that consisted of a new and completely secret "presidency’
that would soon become a refutation of everything legal, moral, or ethical,
that had preceded his occupancy of the office. Most important there would
be no consequences for whatever he and his advisors chose to do (he
attributes this to his powers under the Second Amendment). So when laws
were inconvenient, Bush overrode them, to hell with the congress, with the
United Nations, or with the courts: By the time he decided to attack Iraq
he had become a legend in his own mind, the Commander-in-Chief of the
World! But reality has finally found its way to the surface, no matter how
deeply it might have initially been buried; and that is where the mighty
Bushwhacker finds himself today.
His administration sold this reckless behavior as absolute safety no
matter what the threat, while the stench of the burning towers still filled
the air. Now is the time to revisit all his actions in light of the laws
that he has broken, and in light of all the death and carnage created, he
and his people need to be charged with each and every broken law.
Many began by believing, that Bush believes what he says; yet too many
fail to notice that he has no use for the rule of law, or for the continued
viability of the country or the public. Bush has a love affair with the
title of Commander-in-Chief, which is actually trumped by the powers vested
not in his military capacities, but in the Office of the Presidency – in
our society. This may also be why he thinks that his military title applies
to every citizen and not to just the military.
Why was so much effort spent on the destruction of any and all
contradictory evidence of what really happened, before during and after the
fact of that dark day we know as September 11? Why was the possibility of a
major-crime, never seriously considered?
When we suddenly pulled out of Afghanistan and began to thunder-on about
Saddam Hussein, a restive public began to wonder aloud about the strength
of his assurances. Instead of a serious and determined investigation – he
gave us a reorganization of the entire security service of the United
States that resulted in a white elephant called HOMELAND Security. This was
supposed to insure the "Sharing of All Intelligence &
Information" between agencies at all levels – another major failure
– if one is to believe the excuses given for retaining the excessive
intrusions of the USA Patriot Act. Since Katrina, the entire world has now
witnessed how ineffective this throwback to bureaucratic bungling really is
when it counts. This misbegotten government has failed at everything they
have tried to do!
In the real world we have seen the hands of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz,
Pearle and Rove reaching out from beneath the cloak of National Security to
manipulate events and secret no-bid contracts, in furtherance of the
illegality of the War on Iraq. The Bushwhackers put the world and the
public through years of childish displays about the accuracy of their
"intelligence, and the "wisdom" of their military actions
that were somehow averting another attack upon the United States by simply
"staying the course!" Why has so inept a leadership been allowed
to continue for five long years?
What was really happening in the War on Shadows was torture and
double-speak about the truth of what this misguided attack brought to the
planet. The blatant end-runs-around the laws were apparently greatly aided
by Bush’s original appeal to the American public’s passion for the
absolute need of safety and security, regardless of the real costs
involved in national stature and international reputation as well as to our
way of life. Safety and Security were used by Rove in the name of National
Security as a reason to abandon all that this country was supposed to be
about, and apparently in the spirit of me only, many bought into
that farce.
One of the lessons in Iraq; was that the administration has grudgingly
learned that people who seek freedom will fight and even die for their
right to existence – because whenever basic human rights are surrendered
in exchange for token guarantees of "freedom"- ‘then those
who gave their freedoms away shall have neither freedom nor security.’
The Bushwhackers have reached too far, and their justifications are being
questioned everywhere. We attacked Iraq without an exit plan, because we
did not plan on leaving. There was no real plan for victory – because
when they invaded Iraq, the Bushwhackers assumed victory, and in the Bush
playbook, whatever they choose to think IS reality – ‘the rest of
the world just needs learn to live with whatever they decide is truth.’
These Shadow Enemies are right out of Orwell’s 1984!
To argue that Iraq is becoming secure because of some bogus elections
that we have so generously gifted them with (only our latest in the long
list of what this war was really supposed to be about), is only the most
recent lie. Now the Iraqi public is beginning to smell something ugly that
may have come with balloting and the delay in counting the votes. If Bush
gave them the same freedom and democracy that he took from us – in
the two elections that he stole – then what has happened in Iraq till now
will be mild compared to the backlash that the possibility of election
fraud in Iraq could bring.
What is "freedom" if you cannot leave your house, what is
democracy if you can vote, but cannot walk the streets in public? No
figurehead worthy of the name can openly fly into Baghdad Airport today
(why did Cheney recently have to sneak into Iraq), because he might well
have been assassinated! It’s as dire and as simple as that. Spending on
that war is approaching a trillion dollars (when all the secret deals are
factored in) – given the needs of this nation, was this really a
judicious use of our money?
Never forget that we started the War on Iraq – it had nothing to do
with 911, or anything else except the bloodlust of the Bushwhackers to
steal what they could not get in any other way. They failed because they
did not understand the depth of commitment that people the world over have,
to their own lives and to their own beliefs. Apparently the Bushwhackers
still have not learned the lessons of Vietnam, despite the fact that Rummy
was also the US Secretary of Defense back when US helicopters had to flee
from the rooftop of the Embassy in Saigon. They had puppet governments in
Vietnam, and ‘elections’ too, but we still lost! Since we obviously did
not learn that lesson of history are we now going to repeat that whole sad
litany all over again?
In Iraq, the Bushwhackers were probably banking on how quickly Americans
had been willing to allow all that they had worked for to be usurped by the
tin-solder imposter that by then, Bush had become.
There are also continuing complications created by violating the Geneva
Conventions, in renaming those (including women and children) who were
swept up in viper-raids as enemy combatants, and not as prisoners of
war. That debate became super-charged when torture was discovered, among
those in US custody. This became an even more toxic subject when
over-flights were discovered that were taking CIA prisoners to secret
prisons in other countries – for torture. In the eyes of the resistance
this only added fuel to the case for removing the USA from Iraq.
The Bushwhackers were not the first, or the only ones to seek the path
to American Empire. Since the end of the Second World War every US
president has added something to the creation of the ground on which this
nightmare was built. Part of that groundwork has always been government
spying on the innocent public. In the 1950’s, the Cold War began changing
almost everything that most Americans cared about by the open propagation
of unfounded fears. The Army-McCarthy Hearings of the House Un-American
Activities Committee was one example. Those hearings created baseless fears
that infected the public mind, while they actively created blacklists and
nightmares that continue to this moment: After McCarthy faded, the FBI
picked up the cudgel with Cointelpro (1956-71) which became Carnivore.
"In 1997, the FBI deployed the second generation program, Omnivore.
According to information released by the FBI, Omnivore was designed to look
through e-mail howstuffworks.com/email.htm
traffic traveling over a specific Internet service provider (ISP) and
capture the e-mail from a targeted source, saving it to a tape-backup drive
or printing it in real-time. Omnivore was retired in late 1999 in favor of
a more comprehensive system, the Dragon Ware Suite, which allowed the FBI
to reconstruct e-mail messages, downloaded files or even Web pages." howstuffworks.com/web-page.htm
That is just the public part of the FBI portion of one program that was
designed to spy on Americans, and that agency is possibly the least
effective of all who do this on a routine basis. Spying on US citizens is
not new, but under the USA Patriot Act the government wants to make it a
permanent part of how life is lived here and now.
If we really are at War, then why have we not had public trials for our
"enemies"? Predator drones have executed numbers of people the
government says were hated enemies of ours (more and more shadow warriors,
faceless and virtually nameless, in a war without end). A great many other
so-called major figures seem to have died during the actions of our fighter
pilots, and our ground forces, along with lots of women and children, but
we have yet to explain those missions, due to National Security, of course!
With all our technology why can we not capture some of our enemies
alive, and put them on trial in a courtroom, where the proceedings can be
watched by the public – instead of just executing them in the field? For
that matter where is Osama Bin Laden ("You can run but you can’t
hide!" – Bush said when he invaded Afghanistan) – So where is
Osama bin Laden?
Few will believe that what has happened - could have happen here. But
fear (both real and imagined) is killing imagination and attempting to
limit life in vastly more unacceptable ways. Change may be as certain as
death and taxes, but values like responsibility and consequences should
never be negotiable – at least not when the future of one’s nation or
possibly even the world may be at stake.
If as Bush says "We Are At War!" then where are the profits
and the jobs that once flowed from manufacturing the weapons of war that we
are using up at obscene rates? Of course China now makes our flags, our
uniforms and probably most if not all our weapons systems – but that’s
just the New World Order spreading the wealth around a little. Where are
the taxes on the wealthy that would have the most to lose, if this nation
had really been attacked? The rich are not paying for the wars, in
fact they continue to directly profit from the tax-cuts and the no-bid
contracts given so freely by their President and their Congress.
Bush wants America to believe not what has happened, but what he says
will happen to a country and a region that he has attempted to utterly
devastate. Which part of his plan is he loyal to? What about the damage the
Bushwhackers have done to this nation? How does he plan to compensate the
dead on all sides for all those "missteps" while he was playing
at being the Commander-in-Chief of the World? Who will lead us out of
Katrina’s aftermath, and who will be responsible to the public for the
failures of this administration both at home and abroad? The War-on-Terror
may be a War upon Shadows, but there still must be internationally
recognizable rules by which to govern all the actions undertaken in this
effort. This despot and his entire cabal must be stopped by legitimate
inquiries, because while the entire debacle is finally beginning to
unravel, this must be prevented from ever happening again!
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