It has happened here, the USA we knew is no more
By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
November 21, 2002—The final nail has been driven into the coffin of that great experiment in government of, by and for the people. George W. Bush has gotten his wish: This is now a dictatorship and he is the dictator.
History will record that the death blows were delivered by the Democratic Party. An awful but inescapable truth.
The party turned a blind eye to the stolen 2000 presidential election. The Democratic congressional leadership shrugged at the 5–4 Supreme Court ruling declared Bush the winner, then decreed that not one of its US senators would back House Democrats in their challenge of Florida's electoral votes. Without an investigation, they accepted the administration's claims about Sept. 11, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, and bought into the phony "war on terrorism," allowing the US military to kill thousands of innocent Afghanis. For what? To "smoke out" Osama and make gone with al Qaeda, except when that didn't work out, it was to get rid of the Taliban and replace it with a government friendly to US oil interests—oops, the official line was "democracy." Whatever the goal du jour was, the Democrats marched behind it, even after they learned the administration had secretly set up a shadow government—one of those just in case things, you know, which included no members of Congress.
Then there was the little matter of the anthrax which was only sent to two Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senator Patrick Leahy. That was enough to keep them and their Democratic colleagues in line. And those that stood up for us—Rep. Cynthia McKinney and Senator Paul Wellstone—were kicked out or, in the case of Wellstone, died in an auspicious plane crash.
While Bush's pronouncement of an "axis of evil" (which first encompassed North Korea, Iran and Iraq, but now has been expanded to include Cuba, Libya and Syria) and decree of endless wars sent chills through the Democrats, that didn't deter them from voting, nearly sight unseen, for the USA PATRIOT Act, which has nothing to do with patriots or patriotism but in an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act. Oh well, giving up a few rights for security is a good thing, eh?
Nor did the Democrats raise a howl when Bush released The National Security Strategy of the United States, or as Online Journal Contributing Writer Rose Ann Thomas called it, The National Security Strategy of the United States Empire, which serves notice on the world that "Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States."
In this dusted off and spruced up version of a document that has been kicking around since 1950 (the origins are in National Security Memorandum No 68, written under the supervision of State Department hawk Paul Nitze during the Truman administration) is the answer to "why do they hate us?" but the Democrats couldn't see that either. It has been easier to buy into victimhood than to acknowledge that the good old USA has been the global aggressor and, if the Bush administration wasn't behind or complicit in Sept. 11, we got back a bit of what we have dished out.
And it has been Democrats, as well as Republicans, who have been sounding alarms about terrorist attacks. Former senators Gary Hart, a Democrat, and Warren Rudman, a Republican, were at the forefront, maintaining it was not a matter of "if" a terrorist attack would occur, but "when." In their infamous document, the Hart-Rudman Report, embraced by so many of the left as well as the right, they called for the establishment of an anti-terror cabinet level agency. Well, now the horror is upon us, isn't it?
On a recent Nightline, Hart, who is alleged to have presidential ambitions again, said, with a straight face, in regard to the Sept. 11 attacks that Washington "had no idea planes would be flown into buildings."
Never mind that the French thwarted just such an attack on the Eiffel Tower in 1994 or that the US military had been playing "what if" games about hijacked airliners being flown into buildings, including the White House and the Pentagon.
The Senate Democrats could have denied Bush the power to wage war on Iraq if our former buddy, Saddam, didn't give up the "weapons of mass destruction" the Reagan-Bush administration supplied him or helped him build—i.e., if he has any left after the Gulf War Poppy Bush waged on him. Instead, the Democrats again chose to be rubber stamps for the junior Bush.
So many of you had hopes that the 2002 election would be the beginning of putting things right; that a majority of Democrats would be elected to both houses and the new year would bring about an open, independent and fair investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, and impeachment hearings for Bush, Cheney and the Felonious Five on the Supreme Court would finally get underway. You didn't count on another stolen election—this time with little to no way of proving it—coupled with the bungling of spineless Democrats who were afraid of standing up for the people lest the corporate media eat them alive.
Then you put your hopes on Nancy Pelosi who will be the new House minority leader, replacing Richard Gephardt. Pelosi had barely landed the position when she sold you out, announcing that she supported the Homeland Security Department bill and that she would stand behind Bush if he goes to war against Iraq.
Tuesday, despite all your efforts—phone calls, letters, faxes, emails—the Senate Democrats delivered the coup de grâce, with all, save eight* and one independent*, voting for the Homeland Security Act of 2002 that turns what is left of the Constitution into window dressing.
Tom Ridge is right when he said, "This is a day for the history books." The history books will note this as the day our democratic republic ended in a whimper to be replaced by a corporate-controlled fascist dictatorship led by Dictator George W. Bush.
Having violated their oath of office to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic . . ." and "well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office" we entrusted them with, there is no need for the members of Congress to return in January. They have done their damage in turning the country over to its domestic enemies and we can forego the expense of a US-style Politboro to rubber stamp Dictator Bush's decrees.
* Voting against the Homeland Security Act of 2002:
Daniel Akaka (D-HI),
Robert Byrd (D-WV)
Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Ernest Hollings (D-SC)
Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Nay
James Jeffords (I-VT)
Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)
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