Global Eye
Insanity Defense
By Chris Floyd
Published: June 30, 2006 (Moscow Times)
That the United States, once touted as the "world's
greatest democracy," is now ruled by a presidential
dictatorship is a fact beyond any serious dispute.
Indeed, except for a bare majority on the Supreme
Court -- which will disappear with the retirement or
demise of the aging Justice John Paul Stevens, who
wrote the Court's stinging rejection of Bush's
kangaroo military tribunals this week -- the nation's
political establishment seems to have accepted this
revolutionary system with remarkable docility, even as
its lineaments are further exposed week by week. The
Bush Administration no longer bothers to hide the
novel theory of government upon which its rule is
based, but declares it openly, in court, in Congress,
everywhere.
The theory holds that the president has the arbitrary
right to ignore any law that he feels is an
unconstitutional infringement of his power -- and a
law is automatically unconstitutional if the president
feels it infringes on his power. This neatly squared
circle makes Congress irrelevant and removes the
judiciary from the loop altogether. Thus, the only
effective instrument of power left in the land is the
"unitary executive": the fancy modern name that the
legal minions of President George W. Bush have given
to the ancient concept of "tyranny."
The true nature of this presidential dictatorship has
been laid bare in a harrowing new book from reporter
Ron Suskind, "The One Percent Doctrine." Suskind, who
once coaxed the regime's defining ethos from an
arrogant Bushist -- "We're an empire now, and when we
act, we create our own reality" -- paints a portrait
of an administration drunk on lawless power, a junta
operated from the shadows by the grim and literally
heart-dead husk called Vice President Dick Cheney and
his long-time companion in skulduggery, Defense
Secretary Don Rumsfeld.
As Suskind notes, it was Cheney who enunciated the
certifiably paranoid principle that governs the
regime's behavior: If there is even a 1 percent chance
that some state or group might do serious harm to the
United States, then America must respond as if that
threat were a certainty -- with full force,
pre-emptively. Facts, truth, law are unimportant; the
only thing that matters is the projection of
unchallengeable power. "It's not about our analysis,
or finding a preponderance of evidence," Cheney said.
"It's about our response."
This is plainly madness. Whether the insanity of the
"doctrine" is genuine -- i.e., a pathological panic
reaction by gutless, pampered fat-cats scared of the
slightest murmur from the dusky tribes out there,
beyond the iron gates and razor wire of privilege --
or if, more likely, it is simply the chosen
rationalization for a gang of predators tired of the
few restraints that constitutional government has
placed on their lust for loot and domination, the end
result is the same: The most powerful country in the
history of the world is being run by moral degenerates
in thrall to a lunatic policy.
Suskind's book is full of chilling passages, such as
one about the pointless tortures inflicted, at Bush's
explicit suggestion, on Abu Zubaydah, a mentally ill
al-Qaida flunky. His capture in March 2002 was
trumpeted as a "major victory" in the war on terror,
the bagging of a "top terrorist operative." But
interrogators quickly realized that he was just a
low-level factotum with multiple personality disorder
and no knowledge of al-Qaida operations or strategy.
So the administration had to create another reality.
Told that Zubaydah had revealed nothing of value under
ordinary interrogation, Bush first whined to CIA boss
George Tenet ("You're not gonna make me lose face on
this, are ya?"), then pointedly asked: "So, do these
harsh techniques work?" He was referring to the
"torture memos" drawn up at his order by the White
House legal team -- Machiavellian documents which
declared that anything less than deliberate murder or
permanent maiming should no longer be regarded as
torture, The Washington Post reports.
Bush's sinister nod and wink were clearly understood.
The wretched Zubaydah was "waterboarded," beaten
repeatedly and threatened with death. He was battered
with white noise and deprived of sleep, and his
medication was taken away. His broken mind snapped
completely. He began spewing out whatever his
tormentors wanted to hear, fantastic tales of plots
aimed at targets all over America -- meat for
countless "terror alerts" whenever the political
situation called for a nice, juicy scare to goose the
rubes.
But perhaps the most revealing moment in Suskind's
book is a brief vignette that captures the
quintessence of Bush's callous disregard for the
American people -- and the regime's strange,
preternatural calm in the face of imminent attack. In
August 2001, while Bush dawdled on his Texas dude
ranch, the entire national security system was, in
Tenet's words, "blinking red" in expectation of a
major terrorist strike. On Aug. 6, a CIA official
brought the infamous "Bin Laden Determined to Strike
in U.S." memo to Crawford and read it out personally
to the president. In response, he got nothing but a
snide dismissal: "All right, you've covered your ass
now."
That was it. Bush had nothing else to say about this
stark threat of impending slaughter. He had no
questions, no advice, no commands -- just smirking
contempt. Even if we give Bush every benefit of the
doubt, even if we put the most charitable construction
possible on his behavior, the very best you could say
of his reaction is that it represents a blood-curdling
degree of depraved indifference and criminal
negligence worthy of Nero.
Beyond this "best-case" scenario, you tumble into an
abyss of ever-darker implications, a deep murk that
may never be dispelled. But what we know, what is
plain as day, is bad enough: Tyranny has come --
aggressive, remorseless, murderous, mad.
Annotations
The One Percent Doctrine
Ron Suskind, Simon & Schuster, June 20, 2006
Power Grab
New York Review of Books, June 22, 2006
Bush-s signing statements: Constitutional crisis or
empty rhetoric?
Nieman Watchdog, June 27, 2006
Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws
Boston Globe, April 30, 2006
Cheney Aid is Screening Legislation
Boston Globe, May 28, 2006
Bush Could Bypass New Torture Ban
Boston Globe, Jan. 4, 2006
Bush Ignores Laws He Inks, Vexing Congress
Associated Press, June 27, 2006
George W. Bush, Edgar Allan Poe, and the Use and Abuse
of Presidential Signing Statements
Presidential Studies Quarterly 35, no. 3, September
2005
Memo Offered Justification for Torture
Washington Post, June 8, 2004
