Friday, November 03, 2006

Words of Power # 30: Will the Republic Survive Beyond This Mid-Term Election?



Mr. McCain demanded the apology while electioneering for a Republican congressional candidate in Illinois.
He was speaking of how often he had been to Walter Reed Hospital to see the wounded Iraq veterans, of how "many of them have lost limbs."
He said all this while demanding that the voters of Illinois reject a candidate who is not only a wounded Iraq veteran, but who lost two limbs there, Tammy Duckworth.
Support some of the wounded veterans. But bad-mouth the Democratic one.
And exploit all the veterans and all the still-serving personnel in a cheap and tawdry political trick to try to bury the truth: that John Kerry said the president had been stupid.
And to continue this slander as late as this morning - as biased or gullible or lazy newscasters nodded in sleep-walking assent.
Sen. McCain became a front man in a collective lie to break sticks over the heads of Democrats - one of them his friend, another his fellow veteran, legless, for whom he should weep and applaud or at minimum about whom he should stay quiet.
That was beneath the senator from Arizona.

Words of Power # 30: Will the Republic Survive Beyond This Mid-Term Election?

By Richard Power

NOTE: The USA's 2006 mid-term elections are of profound and global importance. So I know my many friends and colleagues throughout the world, who read Words of Power for its focus on global risk and security issues, will indulge me as I focus on this do-or-die showdown over the next few days.

The USA has undergone a disturbing transformation over the last six years. And Sen. John McCain's degeneration into the of US politics is an exemplary example of this sweeping and tragic change.

At least 2,826 (as of Nov. 11, 2006) men and women of the US military (and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) have lost their lives in Bush-Cheney’s foolish military adventure in Iraq. And for what? The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich. Nothing more.

The Bill of Rights has been effectively neutralized. The whole of the US Constitution hangs by a thread. The Geneva Accords have been effectively neutralized. Our national prestige has gone into the toilet with the Korans of those detainees held illegally in our name.

The federal government’s record-breaking surpluses, inherited from the Clinton-Gore years, have been gutted and turned into record-breaking deficits through reckless and unfair tax cuts.

We have lost six years we could not afford to lose in the struggle to mitigate and adapt to global warming.

Political pimps have prostituted the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and other vital agencies to corporatist johns….

And the regime that has driven this transformation is an illegitimate one. The last two Presidential elections were stolen – in 2000, Gore was robbed of Florida, in 2004, Kerry was robbed of Ohio.

But the run-a-muck corporatists who want to Enronize the USA into their own boondoggling cash cow have suffered blows. Their juggernaut has been slowed. There is now fear behind the malice in their eyes. They are staggering. But they must be put away in this round. Or else…

Throughout the world, the bitter fruit of a failed foreign policy and national security strategy is ripening:

Iraq has become the debacle that many of us, including intelligence professionals, military officers and career diplomats warned it would. Drastic action must be taken. Our own Dien Bien Phu is not far off. Meanwhile, North Korea is now a nuclear power, Iran’s influence in the Middle East has been strengthened exponentially, much of Latin America has turned its back on the USA and extended its hand to China, Russia and Iran, and joint military exercises are now being conducted by former geopolitical enemies Russia and China…

On the domestic front, the stench of corruption and perversion is overpowering, because the rot is being turned up and exposed to the sunlight, Abramhoff, Delay, Foley, Cunningham, Nye, Libby…The hazmat teams of federal and state law enforcement investigators have revealed the first layer of the filth, but there is more to come…I call it the “Elliot Ness factor.”

Can a mid-term election be stolen?

Not as easily, for four reasons:

1) The machinery has been damaged, taking out DeLay and Abramhoff not only carried a message, it busted up some of the machine’s most expensive gears

2) There is finally widespread voter disgust with both the Bush-Cheney regime and the Congress that has enabled it

3) There is finally widespread suspicion about election fraud (thanks to the hard work of Brad Friedman, Mark Crispin Miller, Bev Harris, Ari Rubin and others, and to high-profile personalities like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Lou Dobbs who took it mainstream)

4) It is harder to steal hundreds of local elections than it is to still one Presidential election that could be narrowed down to three or four precincts in one or two states, especially since, as I believe to be the case, there are federal and state investigators looking closely at what is going on. (They succeeded in stealing selected Senate races in 2002, and my guess is that they will attempt to do the same this year, in an attempt to hold the line in the Senate. I am particularly concerned over the close races in Virginia, Missouri and Tennessee.)

But if indeed they retain both the House and the Senate, you will know it is over.

And remember, even if the Democrats overcome election fraud and succeed in taking one or both houses of Congress, we will not be at the end of the struggle, we will be at the beginning.

The USA will be plunged into a Constitutional crisis, because the Democrats will fulfill their responsibility to conduct oversight. They will want to take sworn testimony. They will issue subpoenas. Bush-Cheney will not recognize their authority to do so. This regime is already on record as saying that the President is above the law, and that his decision is the final one, not the US Supreme Court’s.

Furthermore, just as the last gasp of real oversight and true independence on the part of the US Congress was cut off by the Anthrax attack on the US Senate, I fear this Congress will become the target of threats and attacks from either the lunatic fringe of the right-wing or from Al Qaeda itself which fears nothing more than that the USA will return to sanity and the Good. (Al Qaeda has not needed to expend its assets on an attack in the USA since 9/11, because the Bush-Cheney regime has been doing such an effective job of weakening the USA at home and abroad. For Osama Bin Laden, the ascension of Bush-Cheney was a dream come true.)

As we head to this do-or-die showdown, with the fate of the Republic in the balance, Keith Olberman continues his heroic stand on MSNBC, and I urge you to read these excerpts from “Special Comment,” and send him messages of gratitude, encouragement and comradery:

There is no line this president has not crossed - nor will not cross - to keep one political party in power.
He has spread any and every fear among us in a desperate effort to avoid that which he most fears - some check, some balance against what has become not an imperial, but a unilateral presidency.
And now it is evident that it no longer matters to him whether that effort to avoid the judgment of the people is subtle and nuanced or laughably transparent....
The senator, in essence, called Mr. Bush stupid.
The context was unmistakable: Texas; the state of denial; stuck in Iraq. No interpretation required.
And Mr. Bush and his minions responded by appearing to be too stupid to realize that they had been called stupid.
They demanded Kerry apologize to the troops in Iraq.
And so he now has.
That phrase - "appearing to be too stupid" - is used deliberately, Mr. Bush....
So now John Kerry has apologized to the troops; apologized for the Republicans' deliberate distortions....
This president must apologize to the troops for having suggested, six weeks ago, that the chaos in Iraq, the death and the carnage, the slaughtered Iraqi civilians and the dead American service personnel, will, to history, "look like just a comma."
This president must apologize to the troops because the intelligence he claims led us into Iraq proved to be undeniably and irredeemably wrong.
This president must apologize to the troops for having laughed about the failure of that intelligence at a banquet while our troops were in harm's way.
This president must apologize to the troops because the streets of Iraq were not strewn with flowers and its residents did not greet them as liberators.
This president must apologize to the troops because his administration ran out of "plan" after barely two months.
This president must apologize to the troops for getting 2,815 of them killed.
This president must apologize to the troops for getting this country into a war without a clue.
And Mr. Bush owes us an apology for this destructive and omnivorous presidency.
We will not receive them, of course.
This president never apologizes.
Not to the troops.
Not to the people.
Nor will those henchmen who have echoed him....
True domestic terror:
Critics of your administration in the media receive letters filled with fake anthrax.
Braying newspapers applaud or laugh or reveal details the FBI wished kept quiet, and thus impede or ruin the investigation.
A series of reactionary columnists encourages treason charges against a newspaper that published "national security information" that was openly available on the Internet.
One radio critic receives a letter threatening the revelation of as much personal information about her as can be obtained and expressing the hope that someone will then shoot her with an AK-47 machine gun.
And finally, a critic of an incumbent Republican senator, a critic armed with nothing but words, is attacked by the senator's supporters and thrown to the floor in full view of television cameras as if someone really did want to re-enact the intent - and the rage - of the day Preston Brooks found Sen. Charles Sumner.
Of course, Mr. President, you did none of these things.
You instructed no one to mail the fake anthrax, nor undermine the FBI's case, nor call for the execution of the editors of the New York Times, nor threaten to assassinate Stephanie Miller, nor beat up a man yelling at Sen. George Allen, nor have the first lady knife Michael J. Fox, nor tell John McCain to lie about John Kerry.
No, you did not.
And the genius of the thing is the same as in King Henry's rhetorical question about Archbishop Thomas Becket: "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

Here is the full text of the 10-31-06 statement by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA):

October 31, 2006
Statement of John Kerry Responding to Republican Distortions, Pathetic Tony Snow Diversions and Distractions
Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:
“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they're crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.
I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.
The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.
Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.”

SOME RELATED POSTS:
Hard Rain Journal 9-27-06: The Republic Strikes Back!
Words of Power #28: On 9/11/06, Ask Yourself "Is This My Country?"
Hard Rain Journal Weekend Edition (9/9-9/10): Five Years into the Era of the National Insecurity State, Some Context & Continuity
Hard Rain Journal 9-7-06: While ABC Catapults the Propaganda, Bush’s “Key Ally” Makes Peace with Al Qaeda
Hard Rain Journal 9-3-06: Remember, Remember the First Week of September
Hard Rain Journal 8-22-06: The Central Theme of Future Historians will be Betrayal, Just Ask Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, Spike Lee & Valerie Plame Wilson
Hard Rain Journal 7-25-06: As the Next Bait & Switch Get Pulled, Remember Osama Bin Laden & the Child Brides of Afghanistan
Hard Rain Journal 7-5-06: Al Qaeda Endorsed Bush-Cheney in 2004, But US Mainstream News Media Chose to Ignore It
Hard Rain Journal 6-19-06: Coulter, Beck and The Death of The News
Hard Rain Journal 6-15-06: Foreign Affairs survey of 100 US policy leaders grades Bush-Cheney "failed" at 1.8 out of 10
Hard Rain Journal 6-14-06: Wrongly Premised “War on Terrorism” has Increased Danger from Terrorism, and Ignored Greater Risks
Words of Power #23: A Reality Check, What A Real World War on Terrorism Would Look Like, and a US Mid-Term Election Strategy
Words of Power #21: Judith Miller, Ken Lay, Florida, 9/11 and The Return of The Forbidden Truths?
Words of Power #15: Bring Me the Head of Osama, Nero Fiddles while the Planet Burns, Religion as the Crystal Meth of the People, & The Democrats' Plan
Words of Power #13: What You Need To Know About The Port Security Scandal
Words of Power #21: Judith Miller, Ken Lay, Florida, 9/11 and The Return of The Forbidden Truths?

Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net

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