by Middle Class Warrior
The Bush administration was undoubtedly the most fascist in the history US. It started a contrived war in Iraq, began the war with a preemptive attack on one of the bunkers that Saddam Hussein was believed to be in and followed that attack with a blitzkrieg that would have 'shocked and awed' hardened Nazis during World War 2.
Bush even mentioned he thought a good president had to establish his commander in chief credentials by starting a war. His 'mission accomplished' landing on the USS enterprise was very similar to scene in the Nazi propaganda film, Triumph des Willens, in which Hitler descended from the clouds to be greeted by an adoring crowd at a huge Nazi rally.
We now know that Bush was well aware that the Iraqis did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Bush even told Tony Blair that he planned to paint a U2 spy plane in UN colors and then fly over Iraq hoping to provoke a missile launch. He would use the missile launch as a pretext to invade Iraq.
We also know that Vice President Dick Cheney ignored the Geneva Conventions and continually asked for harsher interrogation techniques.
The 'go-to-guy' in the White House was John Yoo. He authorized enhanced interrogation techniques that were taken out of a Chinese communist interrogation manual during the Korean War. Yoo signed numerous other memos that indicate his legal skills were substandard or he was little more than a legal 'yes man.' John Yoo provided a faulty legal justification for many activities that are unconstitutional including the torture of a US citizen.
Yoo also authored the October 23, 2001 memo asserting that the President had sufficient power to allow the NSA to monitor the communications of US citizens on US soil without a warrant because the fourth amendment does not apply. Or, as another memo says in one of its footnotes, "Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."
Congress had forbidden the NSA from conducting surveillance in the US for many years and had even set up the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court for obtaining special wire taps.
Bush also ran covert 'black site' secret prisons in Egypt and Eastern European countries and authorized extraordinary rendition of at least 100 foreign nationals off of the streets of Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East.
The Bush administration in 2002 considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb to arrest a group of terror suspects. An unprecedented use of military power, The New York Times reported.
Vice President Dick Cheney and several other Bush advisers at the time strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were suspected of plotting with al Qaida, who later became known as the Lackawanna Six.
Clearly the Bush administration operated outside the law. In Al Gore's book, "
The Assault on Reason," he tells us that Julius Caesar created a similar situation in ancient Rome when the republic ended. Caesar did not disband the Senate, but kept it intact, to give the people some false sense of control.
The idea that a tyranny does not exist as long as there is a semblance of a body of elected officials in government is naive. A legislative body must have power to determine the laws of the land. If that power rests instead with an executive who writes his own law, then the country is no longer a democracy, it is a fascist dictatorship.
Yes, George W. Bush has stated he'd prefer to be a
dictator at least three times, according to BuzzFlash.com:
"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier." Describing what it's like to be governor of Texas.
(Governing Magazine 7/98)
--
From Paul Begala's "Is Our Children Learning?"
"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush joked.
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CNN.com, December 18, 2000
"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, " [Bush] said.
--
Business Week, July 30, 2001
In summary, the Bush administration exhibited most of the features of fascism: the over reliance of the military, ignoring of international law, the launch of a preemptive attack on Iraq, the authorization of torture, the suspension of habeus corpus for enemy combatants, the warrantless surveillance of US citizens and the will to use the Armed Services in the US to arrest terror suspects. Of course, GWB was the man on the white horse.
The supreme irony is that many conservatives feel they are the only ones, who as strict constructionists, who really understand the US Constitution. I guess someone like John Yoo must have a different constitution than the one I have been reading since I was in middle school.
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