-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: July 28, 2007 12:14:00 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Fwd: The Threat Of Martial Law Is Real <located>
In a message dated 7/27/2007 10:57:06 PM Pacific Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
If ordered to turn their guns and bayonets on their fellow
Americans, would our
"heroes" in uniform follow their consciences, and their oaths to
"uphold and
defend" the Constitution of the United States? Or would they
follow the orders
of their Commander in Chief?
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
From: "Jim S." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: July 28, 2007 12:59:39 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: The Threat Of Martial Law Is Real
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------
"America is a nation founded on the principle that all human life
is sacred...
Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not
ethical."-- G.W.
Bush on the occasion of vetoing Congressional bill on stem cell
research. June
20, 2007
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18080.htm
*The Threat Of Martial Law Is Real*
By Dave Lindorff
07/27/07
"ICH" -- The looming collapse of the U.S. military in Iraq, of
which a number of
generals and former generals, including former Chief of Staff Colin
Powell, have
warned, is happening none too soon, as it my be the best hope for
preventing
military rule here at home.
From the looks of things, the Bush/Cheney regime has been working
assiduously to
pave the way for a declaration of military rule, such that at this
point it
really lacks only the pretext to trigger a suspension of
Constitutional
government. They have done this with the active support of
Democrats in
Congress, though most of the heavy lifting was done by the last,
Republican-led
Congress.
The first step, or course, was the first Authorization for Use of
Military Force,
passed in September 2001, which the president has subsequently used
to claim --
improperly, but so what? -- that the whole world, including the
U.S., is a
battlefield in a so-called "War" on Terror, and that he has extra-
Constitutional
unitary executive powers to ignore laws passed by Congress. As
constitutional
scholar and former Reagan-era associate deputy attorney general
Bruce Fein
observes, that one claim, that the U.S. is itself a battlefield, is
enough to
allow this or some future president to declare martial law, "since
you can always
declare martial law on a battlefield. All he'd need would be a
pretext, like
another terrorist attack inside the U.S."
The 2001 A.U.M.F. was followed by the PATRIOT Act, passed in
October 2001, which
undermined much of the Bill of Rights. Around the same time, the
president began
a campaign of massive spying on Americans by the National Security
Agency,
conducted without any warrants or other judicial review. It was
and remains a
program that is clearly aimed at American dissidents and at the
administration's
political opponents, since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court would
never have raised no objections to spying on potential terrorists.
(And it, and
other government spying programs, have resulted in the government's
having a list
now of some 325,000 "suspected terrorists"!)
The other thing we saw early on was the establishment of an
underground
government-within-a-government, though the activation, following
9/11, of the
so-called "Continuity of Government" protocol, which saw heads of
federal
agencies moved secretly to an underground bunker where, working
under the
direction of Vice President Dick Cheney, the "government"
functioned out of sight
of Congress and the public for critical months.
It was also during the first year following 9/11 that the Bush/
Cheney regime
began its programs of arrest and detention without charge -- mostly
of resident
aliens, but also of American citizens -- and of kidnapping and
torture in a chain
of gulag prisons overseas and at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.
The following year, Attorney General John Ashcroft began his
program to develop a
mass network of tens of millions of citizen spies -- Operation
T.I.P.S. That
program, which had considerable support from key Democrats (notably
Sen. Joe
Lieberman), was curtailed by Congress when key conservatives got
wind of the
scale of the thing, but the concept survives without a name, and is
reportedly
being expanded today.
Meanwhile, last October Bush and Cheney, with the help of a
compliant Congress,
put in place some key elements needed for a military putsch. There
was the
overturning of the venerable Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which
barred the use of
active duty military inside the United States for police-type
functions, and the
revision of the Insurrection Act, so as to empower the president to
take control
of National Guard units in the 50 states even over the objections
of the
governors of those states.
Put this together with the wholly secret construction now under way
-- courtesy
of a $385-million grant by the US Army Corps of Engineers to
Halliburton
subsidiary K.B.R. Inc. -- of detention camps reportedly capable of
confining as
many as 400,000 people, and a recent report that the Pentagon has a
document,
dated June 1, 2007, classified Top Secret, which declares there to
be a
developing "insurgency" within the U.S, and which lays out a whole
martial law
counter-insurgency campaign against legal dissent, and you have all
the
ingredients for a military takeover of the United States.
As we go about our daily lives -- our shopping, our escapist movie
watching, and
even our protesting and political organizing-we need to be aware
that there is a
real risk that it could all blow up, and that we could find
ourselves facing
armed, uniformed troops at our doors.
Bruce Fein isn't an alarmist. He says he doesn't see martial law
coming
tomorrow. But he is also realistic. "Really, by declaring the U.S.
to be a
battlefield, Bush already made it possible for himself to declare
martial law,
because you can always declare martial law on a battlefield," he
says. "All he
would need would be a pretext, like another terrorist attack on the
U.S."
Indeed, the revised Insurrection Act (10. USC 331-335) approved by
Congress and
signed into law by Bush last October, specifically says that the
president can
federalize the National Guard to "suppress public disorder" in the
event of
"national disorder, epidemic, other serious public health
emergency, terrorist
attack or incident." That determination, the act states, is solely
the
president's to make. Congress is not involved.
Fein says, "This is all sitting around like a loaded gun waiting to
go off. I
think the risk of martial law is trivial right now, but the minute
there is a
terrorist attack, then it is real. And it stays with us after Bush
and Cheney
are gone, because terrorism stays with us forever." (It may be
significant that
Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for president,
has called for
the revocation of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force
against Iraq,
but not of the earlier 2001 A.U.M.F. which Bush claims makes him
commander in
chief of a borderless, endless war on terror.)
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee,
has added an
amendment to the upcoming Defense bill, restoring the Insurrection
Act to its
former version-a move that has the endorsement of all 50 governors
-- but Fein
argues that would not solve the problem, since Bush still claims
that the U.S. is
a battlefield. Besides, a Leahy aide concedes that Bush could sign
the next
Defense Appropriations bill and then use a signing statement to
invalidate the
Insurrection Act rider.
Fein argues that the only real defense against the looming disaster
of a martial
law declaration would be for Congress to vote for a resolution
determining that
there is no "War" on terror. "But they are such cowards they will
never do that,"
he says.
That leaves us with the military.
If ordered to turn their guns and bayonets on their fellow
Americans, would our
"heroes" in uniform follow their consciences, and their oaths to
"uphold and
defend" the Constitution of the United States? Or would they
follow the orders
of their Commander in Chief?
It has to be a plus that National Guard and Reserve units are on
their third and
sometimes fourth deployments to Iraq, and are fuming at the abuse.
It has to be
a plus that active duty troops are refusing to re-enlist in droves-
especially
mid-level officers.
If we are headed for martial law, better that it be with a broken
military.
Maybe, if it's broken badly enough, the administration will be
afraid to test the
idea.
~~~
[Dave Lindorff is the author of "Killing Time: an Investigation
into the Death
Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal." His book of CounterPunch columns
titled "This
Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press.
Lindorff's newest book
is "The Case for Impeachment," co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
He can be
reached at:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ]
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