>http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/09/21/107-print.html
>Friday, September 21, 2001 Blank Check By Chris Floyd
>
>"The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate
>force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines
>planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that
>occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or
>persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international
>terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations
>or persons." -- Joint Resolution, U.S. Congress, Sept. 15, 2001
>
>An extraordinary document, unprecedented in U.S. history. Although
>modeled on the Tonkin Gulf resolution that opened the spigots for
>the Vietnam War, and on the narrowly passed measure that belatedly
>gave George Bush I constitutional cover for the vast army he had
>already marshaled in the Persian Gulf, the emergency powers awarded
>last week to George Bush II surpass anything yet seen in the American
>republic.
>
>Never has a president been given such sweeping authority. It's true
>that some have taken it: most notably Abraham Lincoln, who used
>what he called his "inherent powers" to quash civil liberties, jail
>dissidents, even suspend the writ of habeas corpus, the cornerstone
>of 800 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence. But these draconian
>measures -- imposed, after all, when the Union was under sustained
>assault by a million homegrown rebels, not 19 God-maddened criminals
>on a suicide run -- were met with violent protests, Congressional
>investigations, bitter partisan invective and court challenges
>
>Yet there was nary a peep out of the modern guardians of the Republic
>in the Senate as they voted Caesar this dictatorial power. For note
>carefully that it is Bush alone who decides who is a terrorist; it
>is Bush alone who decides what constitutes the "aiding" of terrorism.
>
>The Congressional lambkins of course believe that Bush will not
>abuse these powers. And no doubt he and his Praetorians will show
>the same tender concern for liberty, legality and constitutional
>authority they displayed last year when they sent hired thugs to
>break up the vote recount in Miami, then successfully urged the
>Supreme Court to strip Congress of its clearly defined constitutional
>responsibility to resolve disputed elections, thereby shutting down
>the vote and transforming callow Octavian into the manly Augustus
>who rules today.
>
>Poor lambkins, so trusting. But what else can they do? What can
>any of us do? We must all now trust that this man who can't hold
>his liquor will be able to hold near-absolute power without getting
>drunk on it. We must trust that he will somehow ignore the counsels
>of the conservative faithful who have heretofore molded his thinking
>and guided all his actions.
>
>For these wise guides have been busy defining just who is a terrorist
>-- and a terrorist sympathizer. In U.S. newspapers, on radio and
>television, in weighty journals, they're naming and shaming the
>guilty. The list is long: Anyone who criticizes the president in
>this time of crisis. Anyone who has ever criticized him before.
>Anyone who gives information to the American people about what has
>happened to them and what is being done in their name -- including
>a conservative senator like Orrin Hatch, who was publicly slapped
>down by the White House for speaking without permission.
>
>Anyone who suggests that there may be a complicated historical
>context to the tragedy, one in which America is not entirely without
>a tincture of culpability for helping create the scenario that
>belched forth this hell.
>
>All of these constitute a "fifth column," an "internal enemy," a
>"corps of traitors," we are told by Bush's patrons and mentors.
>Every day, they pour this poison into Caesar's ear -- but we must
>trust that he's not listening. We must trust that although he has
>always believed and embraced their Talebanic precepts before, he
>will now, miraculously, discard them.
>
>We must trust that Caesar will only sip at the cup of power that's
>been given him, just enough to rouse his spirits without disordering
>his senses. For it's entirely up to him now; Congress has abandoned
>its ancient duty to represent the people. If he decides you're a
>terrorist -- you are. If he decides you helped them -- you did.
>Vengeance is his; he will repay.
>
>Don't you feel safer already?
>
>FOG BOUND
>
>In the aftermath of terror, a fog of deceit is rising from the
>Potomac, as deadly as the asbestos haze hanging over Manhattan.
>Congress is being shut out of intelligence briefings; it is to act
>as a rubber stamp, nothing more. Dick Cheney has taken charge as
>"War Minister," as the press approvingly calls him. The new war
>will be run by the same people who ran the last one: the one against
>the "terrorist evildoer" who is still in power 10 years later; the
>evildoer with whom Dick Cheney did $70 million worth of business
>-- after the war -- as head of Halliburton.
>
>The same people who hired a PR firm -- Hill and Knowlton -- to
>control public perception of the Gulf War; who imposed press
>censorship far beyond that seen even in World War II. To this day,
>most Americans don't know what was done in their name during the
>last war; don't know that Bush I was an enthusiastic backer of
>Saddam Hussein, supplying him with arms and materials for weapons
>of mass destruction almost to the day he crossed into Kuwait; don't
>know that American soldiers were ordered to massacre surrendering
>Iraqi conscripts; or that Bush I, with an army on the scene, allowed
>Saddam to slaughter Iraqi rebels trying to overthrow him just after
>the war.
>
>You can't even speak of such things; you sound like a madman, a
>crank raving on the street. There's no context where this history
>can resonate, no way for it to inform the debate on how America
>should respond without repeating past mistakes. It's all hidden in
>the fog, decades of murk; and the fog is rising again.
>
>It's a cold, brutal fact, hard to face, hard to stomach: We are
>all living in a world of lies -- lies that don't even know they
>are lies, because they are the children and the grandchildren of
>lies.
>
>======================
>
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