Hey, he and his minions got their war and, with it, millions of dollars for themselves and their cronies. Who gives a damn what the American people think?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/17/prison.parachutes.ap/index.html

As I indicated, though, you never really know. Is China preparing — as alluded to by this article on their recent sattelite knock-out test — to go to war with the United States? Should we read anything into the Bush Administration’s prior language concerning how we’d react to such tests?

Under a space policy authorized by President Bush in August, the United States asserts a right to “freedom of action in space” and says it will “deter others from either impeding those rights or developing capabilities intended to do so.”

The policy includes the right to “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.”— U.S. official: Chinese test missile obliterates satellite (January 18, 2007) CNN.

Every once in awhile, I wonder about the accuracy of my past comment about the possibilities that Bush’s fondness for playing the “national security” card will result in his saying he can’t give up the Presidency in 2008. This seems like a perfect opportunity for him. He’s already stretched our military to the breaking point. And, yet, he can’t stop rattling sabers at other countries. He can’t stop saying things that have people speculating about him potentially invading Iran, or North Korea.

Should we now add China to the list of countries we need to threaten, Bush will dramatically increase the chances that he can play the national security card in 2008.

I don’t blame Bush, by the way. He’s just an ignorant man who I understand has failed at running businesses, failed at running football teams and now — this one I’ve seen for myself — is failing at running the country. But it’s not his fault.

It’s yours.

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those “missing posters” seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft,”or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds — none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field — Mr. Lincoln said, “we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. “We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.” So we won’t.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ‘something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you — or those around you — ever “spin” 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called “The Twilight Zone” broadcast a riveting episode entitled “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.”

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn.”

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11″… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you. — Keith Olbermann’s: We Have Not Forgotten, Mr. President

I, for one, hope that our country will not forgive the President. I would like us to find our balls again. I would like to see us do something to make sure all political parties get the message. Americans are not the pawns of those who would wield power.

Let your vote speak so loudly that even if the machines really are tilted towards the Republican Party, the message will be undeniable.

Meanwhile, I’ve had some conversations with people who suggest that the war in Iraq was justified because we removed Saddam Hussein from power. And, among other crimes he commited that warranted the United States overthrowing his government, these friends say “he used chemical weapons against his own people!”

Well, I suppose the difference here is that, even though we’ve appropriated the country and all its resources, the people themselves aren’t considered “ours.”

Be warned if you visit that link. The article is titled Melting the Skin Off Children and contains some rather graphic photographs of children with their skin melted off, including a very, very young baby.

Now I know why our President doesn’t find torturing adults to be a problem. Next to melting the skin off innocent children, that’s nothing.

We overthrew the government of another country — first because they had weapons of mass destruction. When it was discovered they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, then it was because of the war on terrorism. Only, if you actually were paying attention, then you noticed that there were few terrorists (if any) in Iraq…until we went there. Now it’s swarming with them. Next, we wanted to bring democracy to the people of Iraq, who would welcome us as liberators. Only they haven’t. And they can’t even agree on a Constitution — not even with the United States forcing them to do it.

But now….

A top Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq was demoted Saturday for what the Army called poor job performance.

The official, Bunnatine H. Greenhouse, has worked in military procurement for 20 years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq.

The demotion removes her from the elite Senior Executive Service and reassigns her to a lesser job in the corps’ civil works division.

Ms. Greenhouse’s lawyer, Michael Kohn, called the action an “obvious reprisal” for the strong objections she raised in 2003 to a series of corps decisions involving the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, which has garnered more than $10 billion for work in Iraq.

Dick Cheney led Halliburton, which is based in Texas, before he became vice president. — Erik Eckholm, “Army Contract Official Critical of Halliburton Pact Is Demoted” (August 29, 2005) The New York Times.

Twenty years of experience and a good career. And only now, after criticizing the Bush Administration, do they say she’s doing a bad job and must be demoted.

I recognize that this is totally new to most of you, but I’ve got to tell you something: There are oilmen in the White House. That’s what they all did before they managed to convince the Supreme Court — and later, possibly, just over 50% of the American public — to install George Bush as President. Or it may actually have been Diebold. (Do you really know?)

So oil prices will continue to rise and oil companies will continue to reap major benefits at our expense, so long as we all allow it.

If the stories about Diebold are true, it will take a major reaction of the voting public to override the manipulation of electronic voting machines. But it can be done. In fact, you can start by contacting your congressional representatives to lobby for old-fashioned ballots. Computers are good and valuable, but so is your vote. And the only way to ensure it’s being counted is to have a paper-trail. While votes could still be manipulated, it would be harder and more likely to be uncovered. (Do you really know what happens inside your own computer — let alone theirs?)

Remember, the guy is office is the same one who said, “I think it’s also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life” when talking about our kids dying in Iraq. He’s part of the same group which said it’s important to have the discipline to stick to long-laid plans — and they weren’t talking about just taking over Iraq.

And he’s also — though we know you’ve all forgotten it — the same guy who said, “There ought to be limits to freedom.” And, again — because we know you’ve all forgotten it — the reason he said this was not because of terrorism, or any other such thing, but because someone put up a website that made fun of him.

Inactivity and apathy is what he thrives on. When the time comes to vote, remember his friends and vote. And remember this: You are not his friend.

Not surprisingly — when you consider the hatred the current Administration has for science — the first attempt has only made things worse. Turns out their theories regarding the use of tungsten instead of lead were wrong. Tungsten actually helps lead seep into the water table faster.

But here’s a novel idea: What if we just didn’t start so many illegal and unnecessary wars? After all, so far the only people to benefit have been oil companies.

And that doesn’t even keep the price of gasoline under control.

Anyone remember what the price of a gallon of gasoline was before the Oil President took office? Hint: Prices have almost doubled since January 2000. (Is that in spite of — or because of — the fact that the Bush Administration has filled key positions with recruits from the energy industry?)

At any rate, while our christian President is killing more of our kids and depleting our military reserves, the aftermath of all the bullets leaching into the soil promises to keep his legacy — if not any ordinary people — alive for decades to come.

It’s not really surprising that Americans are unable to appreciate the trouble Bush has wrought upon us. The “christian” right was duped by the homophonic nature of the Bush Family Motto: “The family that preys together, stays together.”

So the Parent-Teacher Association, whose mission is to protect and defend kids — the group frequently speaks out on children’s health, violence and other serious issues for that reason — recently voted 25 to 5 to ban recruiters from the high school campus.

The Bush Administration’s response, like it’s response to every other type of resistance, whether domestic or foreign, is to turn up the heat. You might say they want to “liberate” the children from their parents.

And it turns out the Bush Administration really means it when they say “no child left behind.”

Smith [a US Army spokesman] also pointed out the legality of military recruitment activity on campuses. “The No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to let us have access to these students,” he says. — Can High Schools Ban Recruiters? (May 18, 2005) CBS News Online.

The school has joined in. In response to the Parent-Teacher Association’s resolution, the school has reinforced its policy allowing recruiters access to the children.

As the PTA notes, there’s nothing in their resolution that prevents kids from signing up and there is already a recruiting office near the school. But with the military increasingly lying and cheating in order to obtain more American children to throw at Iraqi bullets — for some reason, the subjugated Iraqis show themselves less willing to do so, or perhaps the American diet just makes our kids’ bodies better at stopping bullets — the PTA doesn’t want them invading high schools.

Fourteen-thousand high schools nationwide already administer the ASVAB. The ASVAB is sort of an SAT for the military for those rare recruiters that don’t tell high school drop-outs and drug addicts to lie about their past.

Some people — no doubt stupid Americans who just hate our country — apparently think that 14-to-18-year-olds just aren’t mature enough to decide whether to break up their families by donating their bodies to the Bush Family.

Personally, I think it shows the genius of the Bush Plan. A few more years of this and teacher-student ratios will be optimized without the need to raise taxes.

After all, we can’t fund an endless oil war and satisfy our domestic needs, too.

There has been a steady withdrawal of information from the public domain in the present administration, and a reluctance to disclose even the most mundane of facts. — Eric Schmitt, “Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil” (January 23, 2005) The New York Times

So ends an article titled “Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil.”

The story is about something with which I don’t think I have strongly negative feelings about — although I think it should certainly concern us as people living in the reputed land of the Free and home of the Brave. American Special Operations Forces have been deployed on American soil as adjuncts — support units — to regular state and federal police and FBI activities.

The article notes the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. That act states, among other things,

From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress; and no money appropriated by this act shall be used to pay any of the expenses incurred in the employment of any troops in violation of this section And any person willfully violating the provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction thereof shall be punished by fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars or imprisonment not exceeding two years or by both such fine and imprisonment. — Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 ” 15, 20 Stat.L. 145

“Posse comitatus” is Latin for “power (or force) of the county” and in this case refers to the use of the military, as opposed to ordinary police, to handle otherwise ordinary law enforcement operations. The Posse Comitatus Act is further codified by 10 U.S.C. 375 and 18 U.S.C. 1385, which forbid direct participation of any member of the Armed Forces in “search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity” unless the law otherwise authorizes it.

The reason the law was passed was that — surprise! — human beings fill the offices of the United States government. These human beings typically belong to specific political parties and have, at times, not been afraid to utilize the power of the government against their political enemies as well as actual declared enemies of the United States. The Posse Commitatus Act, for example, was passed as a direct response to the apparent misuse of federal troops to punish the South after the Civil War.

Now, as I said, I’m not against the idea of the use of American troops to go after actual terrorists in the process of actually attempting to carry out acts of agression on American soil. If it comes down to that….

The thing that worries me, though, is that parting comment from the article:

There has been a steady withdrawal of information from the public domain in the present administration, and a reluctance to disclose even the most mundane of facts. — Eric Schmitt, “Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil” (January 23, 2005) The New York Times

The Bush Administration — as anyone who has done significant reading knows — is a great admirer of communist leaders such as Vladamir Lenin and Josef Stalin.

You don’t believe me? Try doing a little reading. If you’re lazy (and willing to trust writers who have done the research on this already) you can read Rampton & Stauber’s Banana Republicans: How the Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State. The book contains numerous quotes from Republican leaders that are literally taken right from the mouths of communist leaders, and usually concern how best to overpower and suppress people who disagree with you. (Banana Republicans isn’t the only scary source. Earlier this year, there were rumors that a former KGB official, reputed to work for Fox “News”, claimed former KGB officials had been hired by the United States government to spy on Americans.)

But whether we’re talking about Cheney and the commission that set America’s energy policy, after which we ended up with gasoline prices that were considered impossible before the oil men were elected to the Whitehouse, or whether we’re discussing the current use of Special Operations Forces on American soil — potentially against Americans — the Bush Administration has become increasingly secretive about its operations. When it does talk to us, it does so only in Orwellian terms.

My fear is that Orwell — or Bush’s America — is just one step towards Kafka. Secret government may have worked wonders for communist Russia with its KGB. Secret governments have no place in America.

I’d suggest we all get ready for The Siege — coming soon, not to the theater, but to a real life near us.