Bush Warns of Another 9/11
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Dennis Loo
The perverse and perilous paradox of this presidency is that the more they fail, the more they succeed. (See my article “Fighting Terror with Terror.”)
Bush
parlayed his criminal failure to protect and come to the rescue of New
Orleans and the Gulf Coast due to Hurricane Katrina into getting
Congress to pass in September 2007 the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007.
The Warner Act abrogates the Posse Comitatus Act (the Civil War law
that prohibits the use of federal troops in domestic affairs) and gives
the President the power to declare, on his own say so, a “public emergency” and carry out mass roundups, arrests and detentions.
All
Bush and Cheney need do, in other words, to nullify their record level
of unpopularity is allow – or merely fail to prevent – another 9/11
attack (the attack that Bush warns of in the article below.)
If
they once again fail to prevent a terrorist attack as they did on 9/11,
they will then undoubtedly get their grandest wish: unfettered
executive powers.
The reason that this perverse paradox works
is because their “war on terror” rests upon a specific, immoral logic –
the idea that Americans’ lives are more precious than that of Afghanis or Iraqis or Iranians or Pakistanis and that that it is necessary, and justifiable, to do anything to “protect American lives,” including torture, mass murder, surveillance of all of us, and so on.
So long as the logic of this rationale remains unchallenged,
Bush and Cheney – and their successors (McCain, Obama or Clinton and so
on) – will succeed in consolidating virtually all power in the
executive branch, accountable to no one and to no law. Anything and
everything can be justified according to this reactionary, national
chauvinist logic. The Bill of Rights, US Constitution, Geneva
Conventions, international law and the UN Charter be damned. Nothing
must or will stand in their way.
The Democrats – and Obama and
Clinton in particular – have made it clear that they do not question
the logic of this vicious rationale. Where is the talk in Pennsylvania
between Barack and Hillary right now about the recent revelations of
how from the very top levels of the White House, torture was plotted?
Why are the Democrats mum about this? What kind of leaders are these?
What right do they have to say that they should lead this country and
we should support and vote for them when they haven’t stopped the
torture? Obama can say all he wants that he will shut down Gitmo, but
why hasn’t he done this while in the Senate?
Obama and Clinton
could have and should have filibustered the Military Commissions Act of
2006 that legalized torture and stripped habeas corpus rights from
anyone the president decides is an “enemy combatant.” It isn’t enough
to say you’re against something and vote against it, but then allow it
to nevertheless pass. This is what a filibuster is for. Even the NY
Times said at the time, if you’re going to filibuster anything,
filibuster this.
Since January 2007 the Democrats have had the majority in Congress and all of the leadership posts.
They could have and should have, if they’re really against all of this, repealed the MCA and the Warner Act and Patriot Act.
They
should have defunded the war. They have had the power to do this. Nancy
Pelosi and Harry Reid hide behind the fig leaf that they don’t have the
votes to stop the funding and stop the other tyrannies and crimes
against humanity of the Bush regime. This is disingenuous in the
extreme. They don’t even need the votes to turn out their way, the
leadership can simply prevent a funding bill from coming to the floor.
They could hold hearings that reveal the depravities and atrocities
being committed at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan and they
would have no problem given the impact this would have on public
opinion in repealing the fascistic laws that have been passed to enable
Bush and Cheney’s power grab.
You have to ask yourself, what
road are we on? Where is all of this headed? What would you do if you
were Bush and Cheney and you had their worldview and their agenda?
Would you go quietly into the night? Or would you do what you knew
would give you the power you crave? What has been, after all, their entire record up to this point?
You
have to ask yourself, why would the very same people who have had all
of the power in their hands for years to prevent and expose these
crimes – but haven’t used it
– suddenly, upon getting the presidency, have a moral awakening? If you
stand by for years while a murderer and torturer is doing their filthy
deeds in full view of you, and you did nothing about it when you had
the ability, and thus the blood is on your hands for your failure to
act, why would you suddenly have an epiphany when you now occupy the
highest office in the land? Even if you did suddenly have an epiphany,
wouldn’t the obvious question be: why didn’t you do something about
this back then?
“Bush Warns of the Possibility of Another 9/11”
Big News Network.com
Sunday 13th April, 2008
US
President George Bush has said he believes another 9/11 attack on the
United Sates should be considered a strong possibility and warned that
such an attack could originate from Pakistan.
In an interview
with America’s ABC TV, Mr Bush said: “If another September 11 style
attack is being planned, it probably is being plotted in Pakistan, and
not Afghanistan.”
Bush said if the terrorists were planning such attacks, they would be found out.
During
the interview he also said that Washington had no intention of
attacking Iran, but added that it was the responsibility of the US to
convince the world of Iran’s capacity to enrich its uranium capacities
for a potentially threatening nuclear weapons program.
It was, therefore, in the interest of Washington to pressurise the Iranians to prevent them from enriching their uranium haul.
He said the US was continually gaining knowledge about Iran’s activities in Iraq.
Bush
said the United States would bring Iran to justice if it continued to
try to use agents or surrogates to infiltrate Iraq and harm US troops
and Iraqi citizens.
Asked to clarify “bring to justice,” Bush replied: “It means capture or kill, is what that means.”
Dennis Loo is an
awards winning sociologist, co-editor of Impeach the President: the Case Against
Bush and Cheney, Cal Poly Pomona Associate
Professor of Sociology, WCW National Steering Committee Member, Declare It Now
originator.