This is from Steven Grant’s ‘Permanent Damage’ column over at comicbookresources – an extremely scary look at the way things in America could go – and while this is a ‘worst-case scenario’ thing its still quite interesting…
When the Ghost insists on sticking with Iraq (despite that country’s president saying America’s free to leave whenever it wants, though that may be just for consumption by Iraqi constituents, but if it is it’s basically putting an official stamp on the widespread perception of the American army as an occupation force) until it has fully achieved “American-style democracy,” it’s difficult to know for sure what he means. Since his grandfather Prescott was involved in the ’30s in a planned coup to replace Roosevelt with a military dictator ala Mussolini (BBC radio has just done a documentary on it, so you don’t have to take my word for it) and was a major financier of smear campaigns against Democratic Congressional candidates in the post-war ’40s, and the Ghost himself has railed against the Constitution as “a goddamned piece of paper” and praised the value of a dictator as long as that dictator was him, it’s kind of open to interpretation. Certainly his behavior in the White House indicates he doesn’t seem to believe it has anything to do with the rule of law or a system of checks and balances. And in the last week or so he has been on a real tear of trying to rule by fiat rather than process.
First it was the White House staff summoned by Congress to testify about possible White House involvement in the Justice Dept.’s replacement of a number of U.S. attorneys on apparently purely political grounds (one replacement shut down an Enron-level financial fraud case for no apparent reason, it was recently revealed); the Ghost ordered those subpoenaed to refuse to testify. Because he truly believes Congress has no right of oversight on any White House action, or to cover up the interference that Congress suspects? It’s looking a lot like both. New information shows the Ghost’s svengali Karl Rove sticking his nose into attorney appointments as far back as 2002, though the result didn’t do much for the Republican cause (the attorney ended up prosecuting Republicans who backed his appointment), and supposedly no-longer-existing e-mails sent between the White House and the DoJ on a backchannel computer network provided by the Republican Party to transfer documents and information they didn’t want on the public records keep cropping up. Undoubtedly Congress will now go to court to enforce the subpoenas – those summoned are already threatened with contempt of Congress charges – and this could turn into a major Constitutional brouhaha just in time for next year’s elections.
Then Rep. Peter DeFazio, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee with full security clearance, asked for a look at the plans the White House drew up to maintain “continuity of government” in the event of a major crisis, the White House, after initially agreeing, simply told him no. No explanation. Ironically, his main objective in reviewing the plan, details of which are known to no one outside a tiny White House clique but which have been effectively given the force of law via the Ghost’s signature, was to be able to soothe the growing number of Americans who see in the secret plan a conspiracy by a tiny clique to seize power, using a national emergency as an excuse. This “conspiracy theory” crops up periodically, but the White House sure hasn’t been doing much lately to deny it credibility, especially as reports continue to suggest that Dick Cheney, who has consistently shrouded all his movements and records in as much secrecy as he can muster, is the one who really makes the decisions in the administration, even when counter-arguments come from other advisors en masse, as when he was recently pushing very hard (and presumably still is) for military action against Iran. If you’re of a paranoid bent, you can easily see the Ghost’s recent policy signings as setting up a row of dominoes waiting to be knocked over: our most aged battleship, the Enterprise, has been sent into the Persian Gulf to replace more modern craft there; any sort of Iranian incursion on the Enterprise provides an excuse to attack Iran; our invasion of Iran prompts another terrorist attack on American soil; a state of emergency is declared; the “continuity of government” contingencies that no one, not even those allowed to know, are allowed to know about. And Prescott Bush’s ’30s dream is suddenly our reality.
That chain isn’t original with me, by the way. It’s now a meme, spreading across the country. Not helping matters is the Ghost’s latest policy signing, authorizing asset seizures of anyone caught aiding the “Iraqi insurgency.” Asset seizures, which generally come well before any trials of the accused, are nothing new, and neither is their potential for abuse, but the White House said the main targets were those smuggling men or weapons over Iraqi borders. But how many of them live in any jurisdiction where the USA holds sway, let alone the USA itself? The rationale for the executive order is interesting: did you know we’re in a state of national emergency? Why? Because we’re not doing well in Iraq. He doesn’t bother to explain how that constitutes a state of domestic emergency, but he knows one exists – because he signed it into existence with an executive order in 2003. And it’s on the basis of his own executive order that this follow-up has cropped up.
It hasn’t escaped the notice of most who’ve read the order that the language is vague enough that it could easily be turned to target many Americans: those – the 60% and growing – who now oppose our military entanglement in Iraq and the Middle East. Or Congressmen who threaten to do anything to stop the war, or challenge the Administration. Or writers who document Administration abuses, and especially anyone who might take to the streets to formally protest Iraq policy. All government agencies are now “directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order.” Given the frequently-repeated White House canard that criticism of administration policy is in effect giving aid and comfort to the enemy by encouraging them, we could be facing a period in our history even longer and darker than the past seven years. This has been the era of executive orders and signing statements – once practices very limited in scope and application – being treated with the force of law when American law, at a federal level, is only supposed to come from Congress. But now the Ghost views his office as having the force of law – the only force of law, given how many times he has ordered government agencies to ignore laws passed by Congress – and has set up a system of “laws” built one on top of another that are used to rationalize each other. The big question now is whether this is the form of government we’ll be living under from here on in, or whether Congress and the Courts will do anything to return things to how that “goddamn piece of paper” says they’re supposed to be. ”
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