http://www.centrexnews.com/columnists/skousen/2001/1123.html
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION THE MOST DANGEROUS, THUS FAR
by Joel Skousen
www.joelskousen.com
WORLD AFFAIRS BRIEF
November 23, 2001
Copyright Joel M. Skousen
Partial Quotations with attribution permitted.
Cite source as Joel Skousen's World Affairs Brief (http://www.joelskousen.com).
[Excerpt] I never imagined that any US administration could surpass the egregious and treasonous acts of the Clinton administration. However, the Bush administration has not only failed to stop, overturn or dismantle any of the significant evil acts of the former administration, but it is continuing the cover-up of illegal government activities: e.g., surveillance without a warrant, withholding of crucial intelligence regarding national defense threats, corruption of evidence in ongoing investigations, money laundering, collusion with judges to imprison whistleblowers, and massive drug control and importation schemes to finance black budget operations. While most Bush administration advisors claim conservative leanings, in reality all belong to the same internationalist group (Council on Foreign Relations) to which advisors in previous administrations have belonged. This Council is dedicated to subtly eroding American sovereignty and even encouraging its demise, an objective hardly in line with its members' professed dedication to American values.
Why is the Bush administration more dangerous than the lawless corruption of the Clinton-Reno days? Simply because the current administration does it under the cover of an even bigger lie: that what they do is out of genuine love of country, duty to God, patriotism, and love of the Constitution. In short they claim to be God-fearing, constitutional conservatives, and nothing could be further from the truth. Each of these national leaders, including Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Ashcroft have agreed to follow a control agenda formulated by others who do not respect God, nor the Constitution, nor national sovereignty. This administration is dangerous because its lies are believable. Clinton's lies were not.
The Bush administration is rapidly undermining many American constitutional rights, in the oft-repeated name of fighting terrorism. Local police forces are being corrupted into serving as federalized police under a variety of circumstances. Indeed, the administration is now openly talking about instituting a federal police force, under the aegis of "increased coordination." Bush all too willingly signed legislation federalizing airport security workers, even though he claimed to oppose it. The US is now in a continuous state of emergency, which justifies tremendous expansions of federal powers. Though Bush ostensibly champions religious liberty, the Justice Department has failed to intervene in the ongoing oppression of certain fundamentalist Christian churches in their battles with the IRS over improper tax control of churches. Verbiage is cheap and goes a long way toward keeping Christians thinking that they have one of their own in the White House. It's hard for most people to detect a lie when the person is telling them what they want to hear.
Speaking of lies, this administration is engaging in cover-ups that will exceed the Clinton record. Not only has Attorney General Ashcroft refused to prosecute any of the Clinton-Reno crimes, he has refused to even meet with those who have the evidence, in particular Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch and former Clinton impeachment prosecutor David Schippers, who is representing FBI agents who have evidence of official Justice Department suppression of evidence in the OKC bombing. There are other would-be whistle blowers who are also having no luck with justice. No conservative with crucial evidence on government wrongdoing has been able to gain meaningful access to the White House or the Justice Department in this, the supposed paragon of all conservative administrations.
The Bush administration is also rapidly undermining our defense against strategic threats (Russia and China) while claiming to be building up our military forces. In fact, we are wasting our military stores in an interventionist war in Afghanistan that only superficially has anything to do with terrorism, and that primarily serves US and Russian oil interests and increases the number of countries that hate America. While a billion dollars a month goes down the drain in this war, the money we need to counter the more dangerous long term threats continues to diminish. Despite the propaganda, it isn't the tiny "rogue nations" with cobbled-together, second-rate weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that are the big threat--it's the two predator nations in the world that provide those rogue states with weapons and material on an ongoing basis. Not only do Russia and China continue to finance, train and feed terrorism (albeit through client states), but both of these nations are also building for a much larger future world war with first-rate, high tech WMD--with the potential of mass delivery systems.
Worse, this administration is continuing the pattern followed by all US governments since Roosevelt of assisting the transfers to Russia and China of dangerous military technology --including technology enhancing their delivery capability. The administration also continues to prohibit intelligence agencies from alerting the American public to the continuous pattern of Russian cheating on all NBC weapons treaties. It is especially telling that Russia never allows for meaningful verification of disarmament. While some disarmament is, indeed, going on (we know this because US corporations are being paid by US taxpayers to dismantle a variety of older Russian arms), US inspectors are never allowed to inspect the newest secret Russian military production facilities, nor enter the huge underground factory and defense complexes Russia is building in the Ural Mountains. Meanwhile, the US chastises Russia and China verbally for continual violations of anti-proliferation treaties--but never imposes meaningful sanctions.
As George W. Bush ended a 3-day summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin, he waxed eloquent about engaging in more unilateral disarmament. Bush is proposing to cut America's nuclear arsenal by about two-thirds--something Clinton wanted to do but couldn't get away with. Russia kept making all the sounds about reciprocating, but carefully avoided committing to hard numbers. With great bravado, Bush displayed his magnanimity by committing the US to proceed anyway. What the American public doesn't realize is that usually there are secret protocols and agreements signed during these summits which determine future foreign policy. Years later, word of these agreements (like Kennedy's secret agreement during the Cuban missile crisis to not attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro) leaks out and threatens to undermine the public's confidence in government. President Bush is now moving to make sure this danger of future exposure is minimized.
George W. Bush signed another executive order that speaks volumes about his involvement in the systematic denial to the American public of any information that might point to an overarching global conspiracy. He modified the law on access to Presidential papers to exclude anything former presidents or their families may wish to keep hidden from public view--most importantly conversations between the President and his lawyers and advisors which would reveal much about how establishment controllers direct the presidency. Mind you, these are not purely private records the president is trying to protect , but matters of government actions the public has a right to know about. John Dean, the former White House Council who blew the whistle on Richard Nixon, wrote the following cogent analysis on this order, which merits an extensive quote:
"On November 1, President George W. Bush signed his latest effort to govern by secrecy - Executive Order 13233. The Order ends 27 years of Congressional and judic ial efforts to make Presidential papers and records publicly available. In issuing the Order, the President has pushed his lawmaking powers beyond their limits. As President watchers know, we have a President who likes secrecy. He has hired only tested leak-proof and loyal staffers, effectively sealing the Bush White House. He has had his records as the Governor of Texas hidden, shipping them off to his father's Presidential library, where they are inaccessible. He has stiffed the Congressional requests for information about how he developed his energy policy--refusing to respond...not since Richard Nixon went to work in the Oval Office has there been as concentrated an effort to keep the real work of a President hidden, showing the public only a scripted President, as now.
"While this effort was evident before the September 11th terrorist attacks, the events of that day have become the justification for even greater secrecy. The mystical veil of 'national security' has been cast over much of the Bush administration. There were the secret arrests of terror-related suspects (currently over 1000 publicly unknown people). There was the expansion of the wiretap granting powers of a secret federal court hidden within the Department of Justice. There was, and continues to be, an apparent policy of precluding news organizations and congressional leaders from access to anything other than managed and generic news about the war in Afghanistan.
"The Executive Order suggests that President Bush not only does not want Americans to know what he is doing, but he also does not want to worry that historians and others will someday find out. Certainly that is the implicit message in his new effort to preclude public access to Presidential papers--his, and those of all Presidents since the Reagan-Bush administration. There is, however, no justification whatsoever for this latest effort to hide the work of past, present, and future Presidents. [Dean is very wrong here. There must be some powerful reasons why or Bush wouldn't go to all the trouble to issue an executive order about it. Some people are very much afraid there are secrets that will leak out, even years later]
"There has been some confusion about the meaning of the President's actions in addressing Presidential papers. He has not repealed the existing law, as some have asserted, because he does not have that power. But he has sought to significantly modify the law, and made its procedures far more complex, cumbersome and restrictive. In doing so, he has exceeded his executive powers under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.
"White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer has tried, unsuccessfully, to spin Executive Order 13233 as doing nothing more than implementing the existing law, but in fact, the Order does much more. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when pressed during his briefing, Mr. Fleischer dodged the tough questions, or said "that's a matter for the lawyers." Fleischer contention that the Order is innocuous would not hold up under close scrutiny, and so he avoided that scrutiny.
"Under the 1978 Presidential Records Act, virtually all of a former President's records are to be made publicly available by the Archivist twelve years after that President leaves office. There are narrow exceptions for papers that still must be withheld for national security reasons. [not narrow at all since the courts almost always back any government assertion of secrecy, however flimsy] But the 1978 statute specifically states that among the material to be released by the Archives twelve years after a President leaves office are his confidential and private communications with his advisers (White House staff and Cabinet Departments). The existing law does not provide an exception for withholding "attorney-client" or "attorney work product" materials.
"Through Executive Order 13233, President Bush has sought to re-interpret the 1978 law. To put it briefly, the Order adds and enumerates privileges upon which a former or incumbent President can block release of a former President's materials....Bush's Executive Order makes clear that he reads the law as entitling a former or incumbent President to assert a laundry list of privileges: the state secrets or national security privilege; the communications with advisors privilege, the attorney-client and attorney work product privileges, and the deliberative process privilege.
"...the most remarkable change the Executive Order effects is that it gives not just a President, but also a Vice President, the power to invoke executive privilege over his papers. [VP Cheney, who I believe is one of the real powers behind the control of George W. Bush, must not want his communications with the President made public.] The Presidential Records Act includes Vice Presidential records. But it does not give a former Vice President the right to invoke executive privilege - for Congress does not have the power to do so. Indeed, under the Constitution, the executive privilege is unique to the President. Bush's Order is nothing less than absurd in purporting to grant the power to invoke this privilege to the Vice President, (and may only feed suspicion that Dick Cheney's role is more Presidential than may be appropriate to his office).
"What appears to have provoked President Bush's action is the fact that some 68,000 documents from the Reagan presidency were waiting at the White House when Bush arrived, ready for release by the National Archives.
These documents passed the twelve-year deadline for public release on January 12, 2001, but their release has been stalled by the Bush White House until now. The documents are believed to contain records that Papa Bush, as Reagan's Vice President, is not happy to have made public. They also contain papers of others now working for Bush, who might be embarrassed by their release. [Reagan was very much under the control of his advisors and the Powers That Be do not want that information public].
"More troubling than the Order's throwing a monkey wrench into the process of releasing Presidential papers, however, is the President's penchant for secrecy. Secrecy provokes the question of what is being hidden and why. If President Bush continues with his Nixon-style secrecy, I suspect voters will give him a Nixon-style vote of no confidence come 2004. While secrecy is necessary to fight a war, it is not necessary to run the country. I can assure you from firsthand experience that a President acting secretly usually does not have the best interest of Americans in mind. It is his own personal interest that is on his mind instead. [or in this case, the interests of a group controlling the American government that must remain secret.]
"The Bush administration would do well to remember the admonition of former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in his report on government secrecy: ‘Behind closed doors, there is no guarantee that the most basic of individual freedoms will be preserved. And as we enter the 21st Century, the great fear we have for our democracy is the enveloping culture of government secrecy and the corresponding distrust of government that follows.' " [End of Dean quote--and well said]
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