Should the powers at the center of the Bush Putsch decide that an ’08 election is not in the best interests of a self-terrorized America, it will mark the fourth coup-d’etat in recent American history. The first was accomplished with bullets in Dealy Plaza 1963, and the other two by means of a stacked and corrupt Supreme Court, Diebold, and voter intimidation and disenfranchisement in 2000 and 2004.
Some believe that so egregious and so numerous are the crimes committed by the Bush/Cheney Administration that they would be foolish to risk being held accountable by voluntarily leaving office, when an easy evasive remedy is so readily at hand, especially since Barak Obama recently went on record in favor of referring possible criminal matters to his new Attorney General for investigation. Hillary Clinton will be hard pressed to make the same assertion. And while McCain surely won’t, the prospect of exacting some form of justice on the Crawford Cowboy and his sneering sidekick Deadeye Dick will surely be compelling and could tip the balance away from the dangerously unstable and belligerent McCain, who offers four (or yikes! eight) more years of McSame.
All of the crimes committed by Bush/Cheney are impeachable (that impeachment has been ‘off the table’ is one of the worst acts of cowardice and abdication of duty in American history); some, but not all are ‘pardonable’. It is not clear whether a President can pardon himself, but as Gerry Ford found out, pardoning an unpopular ex-President is perilous for a new President, and a likely guarantee against re-election, and would be doubly so for a Democrat. In any case, war crimes and crimes against humanity are not subject to pardon. Invading a nation based on lies and killing up to a million people is not pardonable. Nor is bombing infrastructure such as water purification plants or electricity generating installations. Nor is using white phosphorous against human beings. Or depleted uranium. Kidnapping and ‘extraordinary rendition’ are not pardonable. Nor is the use of torture, no matter what sanitized name one cares to give it. After World War II some Japanese servicemen were given life terms in jail for employing ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ against Americans. It was called waterboarding. It was deemed to be torture. It still is.
Even as Dick Cheney appointed himself ‘W’s Vice-President, Poppy Bush consoled himself (he wanted son Jeb in the President’s job) with the ‘fact’ that there would be at least one adult in the White House. Many saw Cheney as being a likely stabilizing influence on the uneducated, inexperienced and undisciplined first son. Wrong again!
Earlier in his career Cheney had been in cahoots with Donald Rumsfeld in pulling off a minor coup inside the Gerald Ford Administration, one which catapulted Rumsfeld into the Secretary of Defense job (he was the youngest ever) and himself into the Chief of Staff’s office. Later he would himself become Secretary of Defense in Poppy’s Administration whence he presided over the invasion of Panama (and much needless death) and then Gulf War I (and even more needless death including burying unresisting Iraqis alive, and the infamous ‘Highway of Death’).
Along the way Cheney developed his quaint notion that a President must suffer no restriction on his powers, especially in ‘time of war’, no matter how curiously defined the latter might be. Having witnessed Nixon’s mixed success with the notion of ‘executive privilege’ and in attempts to ignore bothersome subpoenas, Cheney revived with a vengeance the Nixonian notion that ‘…if the President does it, it’s not illegal.’ Presumably that applies to the VP also.
This has led to the ‘Unitary Executive’ theory, based purely on thin air, which states basically that the War President is above the other two branches of government, and is above the law. With Cheney’s approval White House lawyer (and now professor of law at Berkeley—I know!) John Yoo listed the things the President can do if he darn well pleases. He can invade countries for no reason, he can torture people, he can kill people, he can even poke your eyes out or crush an infant’s testicles in front of said infant’s parents. He can hold his breath ‘til he turns purple. (Prof. Yoo really did say those things, except the last one, and Cheney sneered with delight). Cheney really is the power and the brains behind the torture throne.
Dick Cheney was one of the founders of and signatories to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), whose roster included such names as Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliot Abrams, Scooter Libby, Dan Quale, Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama, William J. Bennet, Gary (although not Jack) Bauer, Zhalmay Khalizad, and others. A who’s who of Leo Strauss influenced neo-cons, some with dual US/Israeli citizenship. Straussian political philosophy posits a small group of true ‘leaders’ (not necessarily the ones you see) who are self-empowered to use deception and ‘noble lies’ to manipulate the population into doing what the leaders know is best. It considers religion as being a useful tool in helping to achieve its goals, an opiate to keep the ignorant masses docile.
PNAC aimed for nothing short of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ of the world; that is, at the end of the Cold War America was poised to be sole ruler both the Earth and space. PNAC called for massive increases in military spending, and for military intervention in such nations as Iraq, Iran, Syria, and North Korea (the latter was dropped from the ‘Axis of Evil’ when it acquired nuclear weapons and became somewhat ‘bully-proof’.) The proposal was shopped to Bush 41, but Poppy wouldn’t buy. Heck he wouldn’t even go after Saddam when he had the chance (Cheney at the time explained that going into Baghdad would lead to a ‘quagmire’. Bingo!) Nor was Clinton interested in ‘full spectrum dominance’ but then George W came along and became putty in Cheney’s pudgy hands.
One little problem—before they could begin conquering the world, Cheney and the PNAC people knew that they would need ‘a New Pearl Harbor Event’, something to ‘catalyze’ the American people into going along with the Plan. Just like magic, 9-11 occurred, perhaps the ultimate Straussian ‘noble lie’, and the rest is history, or perhaps the beginning of the end of it. Those buildings sure looked like they fell as a result of controlled demolition, and there is compelling seismic, video, audio and eyewitness evidence that they did just that.
Furthermore, in May of 2001, by presidential order, Cheney assumed direct control of all military wargame and drill operations. This meant he was solely in charge of the seven overlapping NORAD drills and wargames on the morning of 9/11, that prevented Standard Operating Procedure from being implemented, and any of the hijacked planes being intercepted. Many of the simulations involved hijacked planes flying into buildings in Washington and New York. Life imitated simulation.
Indeed, Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta was in the Presidential Emergency Operating Center with Vice President Cheney as Flight 77 approached Washington, D.C. On May 23, 2003 Secretary Mineta testified to the 9/11 Commission:
"During the time that the airplane was coming in to the Pentagon, there was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, "The plane is 50 miles out." "The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to "the plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the Vice President, "Do the orders still stand?" And the Vice President turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?"
In other words, the order was that the plane (or more likely missile) was not to be intercepted. Both the White House and Pentagon possess sophisticated anti-plane/missile defense systems. No plane or missile could have struck either structure unless emitting a ‘friendly’ code, or unless the system was purposely shut down, something that would not happen in the event of a simulated attack.
In the aftermath of the greatest domestic crime in American history, both Bush and Cheney resisted all calls for an investigation. As with the Kennedy assassination, the FBI had the matter ‘solved’ on the very day of its occurrence. (‘It was Oswald.’ ‘It was Osama’. Case closed.) Similarly, when they could no longer resist demands for an inquiry, a board akin to the hugely discredited Warren Commission was appointed with strict limits on its focus, then starved of cash and other tools to do the job. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice at first refused to testify, and relented only on condition that other White House personnel not be required to do so. Bush and Cheney would agree to appear only together, unsworn, and only for an hour (later amended). Thousands of requested documents were withheld from the Commission, which did not even attempt to answer some very basic questions, such as why Building Seven, untouched by airplanes and experiencing only minor fires, seemed to collapse as the result of a controlled demolition, an event admitted to by World Trade leaseholder Larry Silverstein (who, along with his daughter fortuitously skipped work on the morning of Sept. 11th.)
Please recall also that when Bush/Cheney could no longer resist calls for an investigation, Mr. Bush appointed, of all people, Henry Kissinger to the job, something the New York Times described as an Administration choice “to contain an investigation it has long opposed”. Not that there was much physical evidence to investigate; structural steel had long since been barged to China to be melted down. Ground Zero was never treated as a crime scene. Thermate, a patented form of Thermite containing sulphur and used for cutting steel in controlled demolitions was recovered from the remains of the North and South towers and samples are in the possession of distinguished Physics Professor Steven Jones of Brigham Young University, who can be seen with them on Brasscheck [1]TV, and who makes an irrefutable argument for controlled demolition being the cause of the WTC collapses.
Full Spectrum Domination is not going as well as planned. Afghanistan is probably lost (as the Russians or the British or common sense might have predicted), Iraq has become the quagmire that Cheney had earlier avoided, plans to attack Iran will be harder to sell to a ‘once bitten’ American public, and a second false flag operation might not work as well as the first one. Americans are catching on, and catching up to the rest of the world. Invasion, torture, and murder are crude tools of foreign policy which tend to reflect badly on their perpetrators. Still, one can’t be squeamish in establishing another Thousand Year Reich. ‘Five Deferment’ Dick' had ‘other priorities’ than serving in Viet Nam as a young man, but is lavish in the expenditure of life and limb, other people’s lives that is, in America, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
But whatever happens, for Cheney and PNAC there is no turning back. The clash of civilizations is upon us and will eventually include China. Bush and Cheney are so steeped in death and delusion that it is by no means certain that King George and Vice Regent Dick will be going anywhere anytime soon.
And as to the rest of the world? Well, there’s that famous Cheney quote: ‘Go @!#% yourself.’ Indeed.
John S. Hatch is a Vancouver writer and film-maker.
http://www.freakishlyfinefilms.com [2]