The coup that was...here!

4 thoughts on “The coup that was…here!”

1. That memo was writen shortly after 9/11, which apparently made no impression on the Left.

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   1. The people I knew that died that day were work colleagues, so my memories of them as individuals fade as the years pass.  If my cousin had been at work that day it might be a little different.

      But it wasn’t just New York–my sister lives less than 1/2 mile from the pentagon.  And we couldn’t get in touch with her for 2 days.  Scary.

      I signed up to ake the LSAT on 9-12.  I was a little too old to join the military–I thought I’d take my internaltional banking experience add a law degree and try and join the treasury’s financial asset task force to track down terror funding.

      And then George Bush attacked america.  He told us to shop and to be afraid.  He suspended the constitution, he spied on us, he imprisoned us without trial, he tortured us and before you say it was them not us, remember that you are always “us” until you are “them”.

      I couldn’t work for Bush’s government after that.

      Terrorists are not an existential threat to america, they can only kill a few of us.  Suspension of our natural rights, our constitutional rights, by Bush is an existential threat to america as we know it.

      Conservatives talk tough, but they are cowards.  They are willing to give up their freedoms just for the hope of being a little safer.  The founding fathers would be ashamed.

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   2. I see that AS insists on not getting the point, so I’ll try again. This has nothing to do with Right vs Left. It has nothing to do with partisan politics. It has nothing to do with combating terrorists. It has nothing to do with “second guessing.” Nor is it about 9/11, although that was used as an excuse.

      It is about an administration that deliberately wondered, and then decided to ignore the Constitution (and specifically the Fourth Amendment) by acting under the guise of “commander in chief” outside the review of the judiciary. These were not actions taken under fire. They occurred well after 9/11 and went on for many, many months under the “legal” cloak of a long string of memoranda streaming out of John Yoo’s office.

      The latest Yoo memo is only the latest in a long string of rationalizations for actions in which the administration broke the highest law in the land–the Constitution.

      Nor did it stop with surveillance, wire tapping, etc., all of which could have been authorized by the special court established to review such actions in cases of internal threats to security. There was also a U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla, who was arrested in the United States (Chicago) in 2002 and held in a Navy brig for three years without charge. He was accused in the press (but never in court) of plotting to import a dirty bomb from Pakistan. But what at last the Bush administration was ordered to charge him or release him, the dirty bomb allegations were dropped and Padilla was instead charged, in Florida, with a much more minor charge (plotting to kill people overseas–NOT in the USA).

      Maybe AS doesn’t think it could possibly happen to AS. But then again, he could turn out to be some future version of Mahrar Arar, the Canadian citizen seized at JFK airport on Sep. 26, 2002 (while changing planes en route to Canada) and sent to Syria, where he was tortured. Reason: Oops, a case of mistaken identity, similar name in a database and all that, which might have been revealed had he been brought before a judge. Sorry about that Mahrar–except that the Bush administration has refused to apologize, even when asked to do so! [Note to AS about calendars: September 2002 was one full year after the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11/2001.]

      No one that I know about is now, or ever has, challenged the need to discover terrorist plots before they are carried out. And to use available means of surveillance to do so. THIS IS NOT THE POINT.

      The issue is whether the president and all lower officials of the United States government are constrained by law, or whether  the presidents acts as he, and he alone, sees fit in his role as the “commander in chief.” This is the very definition of a military dictatorship, whether Bush wore a fancy uniform or not; he claimed to derive his authority as a result of being the military commander in chief! This case strikes directly at the very basis of our republic, a nation under law, and the president’s oath to uphold the Constitution.

      There really is no defense for these actions. Yoo’s memoranda were complete fictions written to justify the baser impulses of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld (but not, as it now emerges, many senior officers of the Justice Department). The only questions are:

      –How can it possibly be that George W. Bush has not been impeached for spiking the United States Constitution–repeatedly? (Most especially in light of Bill Clinton’s impeachment for stretching the meaning of “is.”)

      –In casually ignoring–to say nothing of defending–this well-documented, undisputed set of actions by this president, WHAT HAVE WE BECOME AS A PEOPLE?  

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2. Regardless of the author, I was amazed how this rather lengthy piece of legislation was just waiting on the shelf for the right moment.  

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