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Paul Craig Roberts is starting the New Year off with his 'pen blazing,'
asking whether neo-cons are planning another terrorist attack in 2006.
A former conservative Wall Street Journal columnist and Reagan Cabinet
member is again on the warpath against President Bush and his gang of thugs,
calling Bush's actions for spying on Americans treasonous and one more reason
for a 2006 impeachment of "Hitler in the Oval Office."
A feisty Paul Craig Roberts, a former Asst. Sec. of the Treasury
during the Reagan years, is starting off the New Year with his "pen blazing,"
comparing the Bush administration to the Nazi regime while ending his latest column,
called "A Criminal Administration," with the ominous possibility of
another huge terrorist attack in 2006 orchestrated by the neo-cons"
"September 11, 2001, played into neoconservative hands exactly
as the 1933 Reichstag fire played into Hitler's hands. Fear, hysteria, and national
emergency are proven tools of political power grabs. Now that the federal courts
are beginning to show some resistance to Bush's claims of power, will another
terrorist attack allow the Bush administration to complete its coup?"
And those are mighty harsh words, seemingly coming from the likes of a 1960's
radical.
But what makes even more disturbing are the words are coming from the voice
of the heartland of America and from a man who, for years, was considered a
calming conservative voice, well-respected on Capital Hill and in the right
wing media.
So what has happened to America when influential conservatives like Roberts
are sounding the alarm and openly calling Bush Hitler? The answer is fascism.
And as he points out in his latest Bush critique, all the signposts clearly
show we are not far away from that gloomy prediction.
One clear sign, says Roberts, is Bush's reaction and the media's complicity
in the recent NSA spying story, where Bush exonerates himself from any wrongdoing
by branding the person who leaked the information as "giving aid and comfort
to the enemy,"
Adding that this was a similar tactic used by Hitler in Nazi Germany, Roberts
made these comparisons in his recent article:
"the Bush administration has defended its illegal activity and set the
Justice Department on the trail of the person or persons who informed the New
York Times of Bush's violation of law. Note the astounding paradox: The Bush
administration is caught red-handed in blatant illegality and responds by trying
to arrest the patriot who exposed the administration's illegal behavior.
"Bush has actually declared it treasonous to reveal his illegal behavior!
His propagandists, who masquerade as news organizations, have taken up the line:
To reveal wrong-doing by the Bush administration is to give aid and comfort
to the enemy.
"Compared to Spygate, Watergate was a kindergarten picnic. The Bush administration's
lies, felonies, and illegalities have revealed it to be a criminal administration
with a police state mentality and police state methods. Now Bush and his attorney
general have gone the final step and declared Bush to be above the law. Bush
aggressively mimics Hitler's claim that defense of the realm entitles him to
ignore the rule of law."
Besides Roberts' harsh words, what hurts even more than Bush's flaunting of
the law, is the mainstream media's willingness to give the him a free ride,
allowing obvious criminality to be swept under the journalistic rug, covering
the NSA spying story like a second-rate dog and pony show.
Roberts then goes on to logically point out how Bush's actions resemble Hitler
since there was no real necessity for him to bypass the established internal
mechanisms for obtaining sensitive and secretive national security warrants
under the Foreign Intelligence Service Act (FISA).
Under FISA and its secret FISA court, Bush already has the power to spy on suspected
terrorist suspects without doing it under the table through the Pentagon or
the NSA. The act also permits Bush and his cronies to even spy first and obtain
a warrant later if time is of the essence.
So Roberts then asks the provocative question: Why would Bush totally ignore
the law and the FISA court?
"It is certainly not because the court in its three decades of existence
was uncooperative. According to attorney Martin Garbus (New York Observer, 12-28-05),
the secret court has issued more warrants than all federal district judges combined,
only once denying a warrant," said Roberts.
"Why, then, has the administration created another scandal for itself on
top of the WMD, torture, hurricane, and illegal detention scandals?
He then goes on to further illustrate two possible reasons:
"One reason is that the Bush administration is being used to concentrate
power in the executive. The old conservative movement, which honors the separation
of powers, has been swept away. Its place has been taken by a neoconservative
movement that worships executive power.
"The other reason is that the Bush administration could not go to the FISA
secret court for warrants because it was not spying for legitimate reasons and,
therefore, had to keep the court in the dark about its activities."
"What might these illegitimate reasons be? Could it be that the Bush administration
used the spy apparatus of the U.S. government in order to influence the outcome
of the presidential election?"
In closing, Roberts draws some chilling analogies among Nixon, Clinton and Bush,
saying the former Presidents wrongdoings bringing impeachment hearings, pale
in comparison.
Asking why the federal courts and Congress haven't properly addressed the Bush
Administration crimes, he fears the system may already have been so corrupted
that democracy, freedom and the American system of checks and balances are already
a thing of the past.
"Why is the Justice Department investigating the leak of Bush's illegal
activity instead of the illegal activity committed by Bush? Is the purpose to
stonewall Congress' investigation of Bush's illegal spying?" said Roberts.
By announcing a Justice Department investigation, the Bush administration positions
itself to decline to respond to Congress on the grounds that it would compromise
its own investigation into national security matters.
"What will the federal courts do? When Hitler challenged the German judicial
system, it collapsed and accepted that Hitler was the law. Hitler's claims were
based on nothing but his claims, just as the claim for extra-legal power for
Bush is based on nothing but memos written by his political appointees.
"The Bush administration, backed by the neoconservative Federalist Society,
has brought the separation of powers, the foundation of our political system,
to crisis. The Federalist Society, an organization of Republican lawyers, favors
more "energy in the executive." Distrustful of Congress and the American
people, the Federalist Society never fails to support rulings that concentrate
power in the executive branch of government. It is a paradox that conservative
foundations and individuals have poured money for 23 years into an organization
that is inimical to the separation of powers, the foundation of our constitutional
system."
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