The Anti Bush Thread

[Intbel]

Endgame for the Constitution

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The Bush administration has done more damage to Americans and more harm to America's reputation than any other administration in history. Yet, a majority of Republicans still support Bush. This tells much about blind party loyalty.

By encouraging the move offshore of American jobs and manufacturing, Bush has run up tremendous trade deficits that have undermined the world's confidence in the dollar as the reserve currency. Recently, both Chinese and Russian government officials warned of the dollar's shaky status. The fall in confidence in the dollar is evidenced by the sharp run-up in the price of gold. In January 2001 the price of gold was about $240 per ounce. Today the price is $660 per ounce.

The price of gasoline has risen from around $1.30 per gallon to over $3.00 per gallon. Obviously, Bush's war in the Middle East did not ensure the oil supply.

On Bush's watch, three million US manufacturing jobs have disappeared. Tens of thousands of highly qualified US engineers have lost their employment. US job growth has fallen six to seven million jobs behind population growth. Recent college graduates are employed as waitresses and bartenders.

Illegal immigration has continued to explode. While Bush spends $1 trillion and many lives trying to control borders in the MIddle East, America's borders remain undefended and over run. Bush advocates amnesty for the illegals who have invaded America while Bush invades distant countries.

On false pretenses Bush invaded Iraq, a country that comprised no threat to America. American high explosives have devastated Iraq and its infrastructure and killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, people who Bush claims to be bringing freedom and democracy.

All stability has disappeared from Iraq. Iraqis now live in fear of one another as well as fear of American troops. On April 28 Iraqi vice president Adil Abdul-Mahdi said that 100,000 Iraqi families have been uprooted by the sectarian violence unleashed by Bush's overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Not content with the uncontrollable mayhem he has brought to Iraq, Bush hopes to expand the catastrophe by attacking Iran. The US Secretary of State, sounding like the warmonger she is, says the US may ignore the United Nations and attack Iran on its own initiative. This would be the second time that the Bush administration initiated wars of aggression--war crimes under the Nuremburg standard established by the US.

Bush claims that he is higher authority than both US law and international law. In the past, US presidents vetoed laws with which they disagreed. Bush signs the laws and ignores them.

Bush has declared himself to be the sole judge of the limits of his powers--a claim that violates Bush's oath of office to uphold the US Constitution. Bush has set aside the Bill of Rights by detaining people indefinitely without charges, by kidnapping and torturing people, and by spying on Americans without warrants. These are actions that are illegal under law as well as unconstitutional. All of these violations of law and the Constitution are serious impeachable offenses.

Yet. Congress is supine as the Bush regime exercises dictatorial powers. The exercise of these dictatorial powers by the executive is a far greater danger to American liberty than are Muslim terrorists.

Bush's apologists claim that only terrorists have anything to fear. However, unaccountable executive power is inconsistent with free societies. America is no exception. Unless Bush is impeached and turned over to the war crimes court in the Hague, Americans will never reclaim their liberties from an executive branch that has established itself as the sole judge of the limits of its powers.

As Jacob Hornberger, president of the Future of Freedom Foundation wrote last month, "we now live in a nation in which the president has the omnipotent power to ignore all constitutional restraints on his power." Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration said that Bush "is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

The Bush regime's practice of excessive secrecy and denial of information to Congress allows the regime to avoid judicial review of its power claims. Bush ignores Congress and evades the courts.

When President Richard Nixon made excessive claims for presidential powers, principled Republicans revolted and helped to bring down Nixon. Today's Republicans are loyal only to power. They have no principles. By supporting Bush, Republicans are bringing down America.

[Intbel]

By Paul Craig Roberts

Is the Bush Regime a Sponsor of State Terrorism? A powerful case can be made that it is.
In the past three years the Bush Regime has murdered tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and an unknown number of Afghan ones.

US Marines, our finest and proudest military force, are under criminal investigation for breaking into Iraqi homes and murdering entire families. In an unprecedented event, General Michael Hagee, the Marine Corps commandant, has found it necessary to fly to Iraq to tell our best trained troops to stop murdering civilians.

General Hagee found it necessary to tell the U.S. Marines: “We do not employ force just for the sake of employing force. We use lethal force only when justified, proportional, and most importantly, lawful.”

The war criminals in the Bush Regime have dismissed the murders as “collateral damage,” but they are in fact murders. Otherwise, there would be no criminal investigations, and the Marine commandant would not be burdened with the embarrassment of having to fly to Iraq to lecture US Marines on the lawful use of force.

The criminal Bush Regime has now murdered more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein. The Bush Regime is also responsible for 20,000 US casualties (dead, maimed for life, and wounded).

Bush damns the “axis of evil.” But who has the “axis of evil” attacked? Iran has attacked no one. North Korea has attacked no country for more than a half century. Iraq attacked Kuiwait a decade and a half ago, apparently after securing permission from the US ambassador.

Isn’t the real axis of evil Bush-Blair-Olmert? Bush and Blair have attacked two countries, slaughtering their citizens. Olmert is urging them on to attack a third country—Iran.

Where does the danger to the world reside? In Iran, a small religious country where the family is intact and the government is constrained by religious authority and ancient traditions, or in the US where propaganda rules and the powerful executive branch has removed itself from accountability by breaking the constitutional restraints on its power?

Why is the US superpower orchestrating fear of puny Iran?

The US government has spent the past half century interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, overthrowing or assassinating their chosen leaders and imposing its puppets on foreign peoples. To what country has Iran done this, or Iraq, or North Korea?

Americans think that they are the salt of the earth. The hubris that comes from this self-righteous belief makes Americans blind to the evil of their leaders. How can American leaders be evil when Americans are so good and so wonderful?

How many Serbs were slaughtered by American bombs released from high above the clouds, and for what reason? Who even remembers the propagandistic lies that the Clinton administration told us about why we absolutely had to drop bombs on the Serbs?

Wasn’t it evil for the US to bomb Iraq for a decade and to embargo medicines for children? When US Secretary of State M. Albright was asked if she thought an embargo that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children was justified, she replied, “yes.”

The former terrible tyrant ruler of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, is on trial for killing 150 people. The US government murdered 500,000 Iraqi children prior to Bush’s invasion. When the US government murders people, whether Serbs, Branch Davidians at Waco, or Iraqi women and children, it is “collateral damage.” But we put Saddam Hussein on trial for putting down rebellions.

Gentle reader, do you believe that the Bush Regime will not shoot you down in the streets if you have a rebellion?

[conan]

Why is the US superpower orchestrating fear of puny Iran?

I suspect it is pointless to introduce a note of sanity into this thread, but "fear of puny Iran" is the result of:
1. Iranian enthusiasm for martyrdom, demonstrated by the Iranian Army's practice of clearing minefields during the Iran-Iraq war by sending hordes of teenage boys charging into them.
2. The compulsory prayer for "Death to Britain and America" in every mosque in the country, every week.
3. The sponsorship of Hezbollah and other terror groups by Iran.
4. Iran's claim to world-wide jurisdiction for its interpretation of Sharia, together with its efforts to enforce this law on everyone else - as demonstrated by the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and its offer of a bounty to anyone who killed him.
5. Iran's total disregard for international agreements, demonstrated by the seizure of the US embassy in 1979.
6. Iran's nuclear weapon development programme.
7. Iran's threat to erase Israel from the map.

Far from "orchestrating" fear of Iran, the US has been remarkably gutless. The seizure of its embassy was an act of war, and should have been dealt with accordingly, but the response was one of hand-wringing impotence. The slaughter of over 200 US soldiers on a peacekeeping mission in Lebanon was another act of war which also met with no response. Having encouraged the Iranian regine to believe that aggression will meet with no resistance, the US must now face the prospect of a nuclear attack on Israel, or an Israeli strike at Iran. [/quote]

[blondy]

conan, you are a smart man.