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Other Shoe
Waiting for the U.S. to become an open fascist dictatorship is like waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Here's some of the latest clues: (as of November 21, 2003)
Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack [ http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml ]
Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government. Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent. But Franks' scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.
http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml
http://newsmax.com/cgi-bin/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml
Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack
John O. Edwards, NewsMax.com
Friday, Nov. 21, 2003
Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.
Franks, who successfully led the U.S. military operation to liberate Iraq, expressed his worries in an extensive interview he gave to the men's lifestyle magazine Cigar Aficionado.
In the magazine's December edition, the former commander of the military's Central Command warned that if terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government.
Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that ``the worst thing that could happen'' is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.
If that happens, Franks said, ``... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.''
Franks then offered ``in a practical sense'' what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.
``It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.''
Franks didn't speculate about how soon such an event might take place.
Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.
But Franks' scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.
The usually camera-shy Franks retired from U.S. Central Command, known in Pentagon lingo as CentCom, in August 2003, after serving nearly four decades in the Army.
Franks earned three Purple Hearts for combat wounds and three Bronze Stars for valor. Known as a ``soldier's general,'' Franks made his mark as a top commander during the U.S.'s successful Operation Desert Storm, which liberated Kuwait in 1991. He was in charge of CentCom when Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda attacked the United States on Sept. 11.
Franks said that within hours of the attacks, he was given orders to prepare to root out the Taliban in Afghanistan and to capture bin Laden.
Franks offered his assessment on a number of topics to Cigar Aficionado, including:
President Bush: ``As I look at President Bush, I think he will ultimately be judged as a man of extremely high character. A very thoughtful man, not having been appraised properly by those who would say he's not very smart. I find the contrary. I think he's very, very bright. And I suspect that he'll be judged as a man who led this country through a crease in history effectively. Probably we'll think of him in years to come as an American hero.''
On the motivation for the Iraq war: Contrary to claims that top Pentagon brass opposed the invasion of Iraq, Franks said he wholeheartedly agreed with the president's decision to invade Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein.
``I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America. That intent is confirmed in a great many of his speeches, his commentary, the words that have come out of the Iraqi regime over the last dozen or so years. So we have intent.
``If we know for sure ... that a regime has intent to do harm to this country, and if we have something beyond a reasonable doubt that this particular regime may have the wherewithal with which to execute the intent, what are our actions and orders as leaders in this country?''
The Pentagon's deck of cards: Asked how the Pentagon decided to put its most-wanted Iraqis on a set of playing cards, Franks explained its genesis. He recalled that when his staff identified the most notorious Iraqis the U.S. wanted to capture, ``it just turned out that the number happened to be about the same as a deck of cards. And so somebody said, `Aha, this will be the ace of spades.'''
Capturing Saddam: Franks said he was not surprised that Saddam has not been captured or killed. But he says he will eventually be found, perhaps sooner than Osama bin Laden.
``The capture or killing of Saddam Hussein will be a near term thing. And I won't say that'll be within 19 or 43 days. ... I believe it is inevitable.''
Franks ended his interview with a less-than-optimistic note. ``It's not in the history of civilization for peace ever to reign. Never has in the history of man. ... I doubt that we'll ever have a time when the world will actually be at peace.''
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal [ http://guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html ]
The Guardian International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
http://guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html
http://guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4801223-103550,00.html
War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal
Oliver Burkeman and Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday November 20, 2003
The Guardian
International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."
President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.
But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.
French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".
Mr Perle, who was speaking at an event organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, had argued loudly for the toppling of the Iraqi dictator since the end of the 1991 Gulf war.
"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."
Mr Perle's remarks bear little resemblance to official justifications for war, according to Rabinder Singh QC, who represented CND and also participated in Tuesday's event.
Certainly the British government, he said, "has never advanced the suggestion that it is entitled to act, or right to act, contrary to international law in relation to Iraq".
The Pentagon adviser's views, he added, underlined "a divergence of view between the British government and some senior voices in American public life [who] have expressed the view that, well, if it's the case that international law doesn't permit unilateral pre-emptive action without the authority of the UN, then the defect is in international law".
Mr Perle's view is not the official one put forward by the White House. Its main argument has been that the invasion was justified under the UN charter, which guarantees the right of each state to self-defence, including pre-emptive self-defence. On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has questioned that justification, arguing that the security council would have to rule on whether the US and its allies were under imminent threat.
Coalition officials countered that the security council had already approved the use of force in resolution 1441, passed a year ago, warning of "serious consequences" if Iraq failed to give a complete accounting of its weapons programmes.
Other council members disagreed, but American and British lawyers argued that the threat of force had been implicit since the first Gulf war, which was ended only by a ceasefire.
"I think Perle's statement has the virtue of honesty," said Michael Dorf, a law professor at Columbia University who opposed the war, arguing that it was illegal.
"And, interestingly, I suspect a majority of the American public would have supported the invasion almost exactly to the same degree that they in fact did, had the administration said that all along."
The controversy-prone Mr Perle resigned his chairmanship of the defence policy board earlier this year but remained a member of the advisory board.
Meanwhile, there was a hint that the US was trying to find a way to release the Britons held at Guantanamo Bay.
The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said Mr Bush was "very sensitive" to British sentiment. "We also expect to be resolving this in the near future," he told the BBC.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
This may be the key question: Does the purpose justify the means? Or, to rephrase, are the means justified by the higher purpose? (To rid the world of "Evildoers".) And it's clear that the evil, the bad guys, include the Democrats. ( Beautiful young shock troops for Bush at http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/28/bush/?ref=null or at http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/07/28/bush/print.html .) It seems that the Republican Party of the future will be one firmly indoctrinated in the belief that the opposition is illegitimate. ``As conservatives, we share a zeitgeist that is not shared by liberals, . . . As conservatives, we don't hate America, . . . The life of a liberal is hell. It is not possible to have a debate, a discussion, with someone who at their root, at their core, hates everything this country stands for but doesn't hate it enough to leave.'' (Ibid.) And what is this new zeitgeist, not shared by liberals? A clue: ``hundreds of clean-cut collegians were on their feet, shouting "KARL! KARL! KARL!" Then the chant changed, and they were screaming "USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!" their faces hard and triumphant atop blue suits and evening gowns as they belted out the letters. They screamed and screamed and then erupted in wild cheers. It was the first night of the 55th biennial college Republican convention at the Capitol Hilton in Washington, and around 1,000 young people had gathered for three days to hear speakers like Rove, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, former U.S. Sen. Bob Barr and right-wing polemicist David Horowitz. On the Hilton's second floor they organized, plotted strategy for the 2004 election, and generally paid homage to President George W. Bush, whose grinning visage appeared on everything from T-shirts to handbags. Even more, they gloried in Americanness, a state that many seem to regard as both quasi-religious and the exclusive provenance of their party.'' (Ibid.) You couldn't find more devout followers in Hitlerjugend. Back to the key question: Are the means justified by the higher purpose? Hitler certainly thought so. There is certainly no valid logical argument against that view. Only ethical and moral ones -- and those depend on your own convictions.
So, are you a fascist or are you not a fascist, at heart? That is the question!
All who are not, raise up in defense of America and the great and God-inspired American Constitution!
And you who find yourself to be fascist, consider this: You are responsible for breaking America up, for ultimately causing a second Civil War and the break-up of America and all that America stands for.
The last comments was by Leif Erlingsson, November 21, 2003.
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Copyleft © 2003 Leif Erlingsson or author.
Updated 21 November 2003