Will Bush walk away in 2009?

2007-05-30

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/12921/7971
[the original has links, and the quotes are better formatted]

Will Bush walk away in 2009?
by theyrereal
Tue May 29, 2007 at 12:03:22 AM PDT

Obviously, the Democratic Party has chosen to be an impotent, faux-opposition 
party in this bad theater they call "The Two Party System".

We all see now that impeachment is indeed completely "off the table".  So are a 
lot of things, like defunding the war, and giving any opposition at all to "Mr. 
28 percent".

Many of us have had a difficult time picturing how it's going to go in January 
of 2009.  It's hard to imagine Bush and Cheney just walking away from their 
unpopular but apparently supernaturally powerful positions as the leaders of the
Only Superpower On Earth.

Well on May 9, Bush quietly signed a directive that may ensure that he and 
Tricky Dick II don't have to hand over the reigns.

It's called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 
and provides Bush with everything he needs to provide "continuance" of, well, 
whatever he wants to "continue".

  €  theyrereal's diary :: ::

I first heard about this last night, in our own Dailykos' Diary rescue -- 
National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, by phreephallin.
I thought I'd look into it a little more throughly, since it touches on issues 
that I've studied in the past.

Basically the directive states the in the case of a national Catastrophic 
Emergency", the President, along with the head of Homeland Security, can take 
over the government and do whatever they please in order to provide 
"continuance".

Here's the quote right from the White House website:

(b) "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that 
results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption 
severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or
government functions

Sounds innocent enough, right?  But look at that phrase "regardless of 
location".  What the hell is that supposed to mean?  Stephen Pizzo at the 
Smirking Chimp puts it quite beautifully:

Regardless of location? Would that include, say, a terrorist attack on Saudi oil
fields and refineries? That would certainly "disrupt" the U.S. population and 
economy.

"or government functions." Would that include mass public protests such as those
during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras?

But it get better. We may not even have to wait for a real "national emergency" 
to hit before the President can assume the mantle of near-dictator. Under the 
guise of "maintaining government continuity, the President could just sign a 
"NEF" - a National Emergency Finding:"

" As a result of the asymmetric threat environment, adequate warning of 
potential emergencies that could pose a significant risk to the homeland might 
not be available, and therefore all continuity planning shall be based on the 
assumption that no such warning will be received."

Once the President signs "detects" a real or imagined threat, and signs a NEF, 
here's what he gets for his signature:

The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring 
constitutional government.

In other words, to quote the old Christian hymn, "He has the whole world, in his
hands, the whole world, in his hands..."

You can read the entire press release on this at the White House's website, 
listed above.  Ah, but you can't read the whole thing:

(24) Security. This directive and the information contained herein shall be 
protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the 
Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded 
appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.

And another thing I found disturbing about the order:

(22) Revocation. Presidential Decision Directive 67 of October 21, 1998 
("Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations"), 
including all Annexes thereto, is hereby revoked.

Hm, who was President in 1998?  Oh yeah, that other guy.  So whatever Clinton 
decided would work in this regard has been simply tossed out the window and 
replaced with the Bush/Cheney/Gonzales plan for "continuance".  Great.

Now, you might think that this is something that any president has to deal with,
and it certainly is.  However, the Criminal Wing of the Republican Party has 
been working on this for YEARS.

There are many familiar names in the history of nefarious plans to subvert the 
Constitution and intill Martial Law throughout our country.  Cheney.  Rumsfeld.
Oliver North.

Oliver North?  Yup.  Here's a nice article from way back in 2002 entitled 
"Foundations are in place for martial law in the US".  This article was alarming
enough that the Democrats' own Jim McDermott got a little freaked out about it:

I recently read an article published in the Sydney, Australia, Morning Herald 
entitled ``Foundations Are in Place for Martial Law in the United States.''

The author is a man named Ritt Goldstein, an investigative reporter for the 
Herald, and he said that recent pronouncements from the Bush administration and 
national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see 
internment camps and martial law in the United States.

When President Ronald Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua, he issued a 
series of executive orders which provided FEMA with broad powers in the event of
a crisis, such as the violent and widespread internal dissent or national 
opposition against a U.S. military invasion abroad. They were never used.

SNIP (and here comes the juicy part:)

From 1982 to 1984, Colonel Oliver North assisted FEMA in drafting its civil 
defense preparations. Details of those plans emerged during the 1987 Iran-Contra
scandal. They included executive orders providing for suspension of the 
Constitution, the imposition of martial law, internment camps, and the turning 
over of government to the President and FEMA.

A Miami Herald article on the 5th of July, 1987, reported that the former FEMA 
director's, Louis Guiffrida's, deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law
portion of the planning. The planning was said to be similar to one Mr. 
Guiffrida had developed earlier to combat a national uprising by black 
militants. It provided for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes
in assembly centers or relocation camps. Today, Mr. Brinkerhoff is with the 
highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Following a request by
the Pentagon in January that the U.S. military be allowed the option of 
deploying troops on American streets, the institute in February published a 
paper by Mr. Brinkerhoff arguing the legality of this. He alleged that the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878, which has long been accepted as prohibiting such 
deployments, had simply been misunderstood and misapplied. The preface to the 
article also provided the revelation that the national plan he had worked on 
under Mr. Guiffrida was approved by Reagan and actions were taken to implement 
it.

Bush doesn't need FEMA anymore for this, because he has his very own Department 
of Homeland Security.  The Posse Comitatus Act doesn't apply to him, (according 
to him) and all he has to do is decide there's an emergency coming down the pike
to suspend the constitution and start throwing whoever he feels like it into 
camps.

It would be nice to know more specifics about Reagan's plan, but:

Disturbingly, the full facts and final contents of Mr Reagan's national plan 
remain uncertain. This is in part because President Bush took the unusual step 
of sealing the Reagan presidential papers last November.

What we do know is that Cheney and Rummy have were also in on this in the 
1980's.  As Peter Dale Scott reported here, the illegal NSA spying program may 
have started even before 9/11, due to their planning of such "continuance" 
operations:

At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who had been 
defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman and CEO of the drug 
company G.D. Searle. Overall responsibility for the program had been assigned to
Vice President George H.W. Bush, "with Lt. Col. Oliver North ... as the National
Security Council action officer," according to James Bamford in his book A 
Pretext for War.

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear 
attack, but for any "national security emergency," which they defined in 
Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, 
military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or 
seriously threatens the national security of the United States." Clearly 9/11 
would meet this definition.

As developed in the mid-1980s by Oliver North in the White House, the plans 
called for not just the surveillance but the potential detention of large 
numbers of American citizens. During the Iran-Contra hearings, North was asked 
about his work on "a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would 
suspend the American constitution." The chairman, Democratic Senator Inouye, 
ruled that this was a "highly sensitive and classified" matter, not to be dealt 
with in an open hearing.

The supporting agency for the planning and implementation was the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). FEMA was headed for much of the 1980s by 
Louis Giuffrida, whose COG plans for massive detention became so extreme that 
even President Reagan¹s then Attorney General, William French Smith, raised 
objections.

Smith eventually left Washington, while COG continued to evolve. And in May 2001
Cheney and FEMA were reunited: President George W. Bush appointed Cheney to head
a terrorism task force and created a new office within FEMA to assist him. In 
effect, Bush was authorizing a resumption of the kind of planning that Cheney 
and FEMA had conducted under the heading of COG.

Keep in mind, that "back when Reagan was considering invading Nicaragua", our 
current Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, was the number 2 guy at the CIA and 
besides wanting to bomb Nicaragua was a key player in the Iran/Contra 
criminality.

And by sheer coincidence, Cheney's old company Halliburton is now building 
detention camps in the United States to house, oh, just a whole lot of people.  
A 385 million dollar contract, and they're damn proud of it:

Halliburton Press Release
Dailykos: Concentration Camps Being Built on US Soil?
And this one is especially creepy:

Satellite Photographs Emerge of Halliburton's American Concentration Camp 
written by, supposedly, someone doing subcontracting work for KBR. (Kellog Brown
Root, Halliburton's subsiidiary).

I'm gonna quote Stephen Pizzo again to wrap this up:

I don't know. Some days I wonder why I bother. Some days I wonder if Americans 
even deserve the freedoms that are being taken away from us one by one by this 
utterly lawless and un-American, administration.

And then there's Congress. They won't end a war that the vast majority of 
Americans want ended. And now they won't even consider impeaching a President 
who has broken more laws and violated the U.S. Constitution more times in less 
than seven years than all 42 Presidents before him - combined.

Why aren't we in the streets? All of us? Why isn't Pennsylvania Ave blocked by 
protesters every day?

And, remarkably, no member of Congress will be booed off the stage at home-state
Memorial Day picnics this weekend. Why not?

They certainly should be booed, this weekend and every time they appear in 
public. Because they are have just been standing around, doing nothing. Just 
watching, even aiding and abetting, as it's all just slip-slidin' away.

Hitler's Enabling Act

An Enabling Act (Ermächtigungsgesetz in German) was passed by Germany's 
parliament (the Reichstag) on March 23, 1933. It was the second major step after
the Reichstag Fire Decree through which the Nazis obtained dictatorial powers 
using largely legal means. The Act enabled Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his 
cabinet to enact laws without the participation of the Reichstag. The formal 
name of the Enabling Act was Gesetz zur Behebung der Not von Volk und Reich 
("Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the State").
-- 

--------------------------------------------------------
Posting archives: http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/
Escaping the Matrix website: http://escapingthematrix.org/
cyberjournal website: http://cyberjournal.org

Community Democracy Framework: 
http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html

Subscribe cyberjournal list: •••@••.•••  (send blank
message)

cyberjournal blog (join in): http://cyberjournal-rkm.blogspot.com/

Moderator: •••@••.•••  (comments welcome)