BUSH'S DOMESTIC SPYING: HOW AMERICA IS RAPIDY BECOMING POLICE STATE

[Guest guest]

Originally published June 22 2006

Bush's domestic spying: How America is rapidly becoming a police state

For years I've been warning my readers about the coming police state

and the abusive use of power by the Bush administration. This year,

we have learned that President Bush -- or should I say King George

Bush -- personally authorized domestic spying on American citizens by

the National Security Agency (NSA). In articles that have appeared in

the New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post and other national

news papers, George Bush admitted that he personally signed off on 30

illegal surveillance wiretaps, and furthermore, he defended the

practice, explaining that wiretapping American citizens was saving

American lives because of the war on terror. Furthermore, he

explained he was doing everything in his power under the laws of the

Constitution to protect U.S. citizens and their civil liberties.

The degree of doublespeak being used by George Bush in that statement

is extraordinary. His lack of historical context is utterly jaw-

dropping. The man is becoming the Stalin of the United States. He is

destroying our civil liberties and the Constitution, while

simultaneously claiming that he is protecting the Constitution and

the civil liberties of the American people. What could be more

sinister than using our own intelligence services to spy on the

American people? This is more than a little reminiscent of the secret

police of Nazi Germany.

 

 

The purpose of the Constitution is to put a check on tyranny

A professor of constitutional law at the Georgetown University Law

Center, Susan Lo Bloch, said that Bush was " taking a hugely expansive

interpretation of the Constitution and the president's power under

the Constitution. " That's a nice way of saying it. Actually, Bush is

making up his own laws and his own power as he goes along. Actually,

he is destroying the Constitution because he is making it

increasingly irrelevant with each transgression of the limitations of

power set forth by the Constitution.

For those who may not know, the purpose of the Constitution was

explicitly to limit the power of government over the people. It was

created by the founders of the United States out of the very real and

genuine fear that any sufficiently centralized system of power,

especially a governmental system of power, would eventually become

abusive and exploitive, and begin to serve its own purposes rather

than those of the people.

 

The founders created the Constitution to specifically limit the power

of the federal government and the power of the president, and George

Bush has trampled the Constitution to such a degree that to think

he's actually defending it is utterly laughable.

 

For one thing, the Constitution says that only Congress can declare

war, yet George Bush, like his father, has taken us to war without a

Congressional declaration. It is an illegal war, using falsified

intelligence to drag the American people into the desert version of

Vietnam. Now he is saying that spying on the American people is

justified and that the rights granted by the Constitution can be

thwarted. George Bush is intent on spying on the American people and

he is defending this act. In fact, in his statement to the American

people, he lashed out at the press, which he claimed has endangered

the American people by going public with this information.

 

 

Public knowledge is a " danger " to national security!

Such a sentence could have come, word-for-word, out of Hitler's

mouth. The press must not go public with the secrets about the

illegal domestic citizen surveillance program, because the government

is protecting you, didn't you know? The government is protecting your

civil rights. The government is protecting you from terrorists, and

how is it doing that? It is running secret spy programs. It's spying

on you and your fellow citizens illegally, unconstitutionally,

unethically, immorally and without any legal justification

whatsoever.

There is no doubt that these acts are federal crimes. Add this to the

list of crimes committed by the Bush administration, including the

condoning of torture, the illegal kidnapping of American citizens,

the detainment of those prisoners without charging them, the

violation of the Geneva Convention with prisoner torture, and the use

of weapons of mass destruction against the Iraqi people. Depleted

uranium, which is a nuclear weapon of mass destruction, is being used

by U.S. troops on an almost daily basis in Iraq.

 

 

American democracy is rapidly giving way to a police state

The things I'm mentioning here are only part of the story. Clearly

what we have in the United States today is a police state. We no

longer have a democracy. We are no longer operating under the

Constitution, because our own national leaders will not honor it.

They believe that violating the Constitution in any way that can help

them stay in power and achieve their political war-mongering goals is

more important than the rights granted to the American people by the

Constitution, and the limitations on government powers that have been

demanded by the Constitution.

Bush's line of thinking on this is that the ends justify the means,

no matter who has to be tortured; no matter who has to die. No matter

who has to be invaded, bombed, killed or have their property taken

from them, or their houses raided by federal agents. No matter what

has to happen, in George Bush's mind, it's worth it to " get the

terrorists. " He can invoke the terror scare to insist on just about

any transgression against the civil liberties of the American people.

That is the most frightening thing of all.

 

The actions of President Bush and his administration are far more

terrifying to me -- as someone who understands American history and

world history -- than any actions taken by the terrorists, because a

group of terrorists can destroy one building, but a group of power-

hungry national leaders -- who are willing to do anything to justify

their personal political agenda -- can destroy an entire nation, and

that's what I see this administration doing right now.

 

It's tearing the foundation of this nation apart, one Constitutional

amendment at a time, and if this does not end now, it is soon going

to be too late to reverse it. We're going to end up as a fascist

police state, a war-mongering global aggressor and a nation that is

hated by all and feared by many. It will be a nation that will

inevitably find itself in military conflicts with other nations of

the world. We've got to reverse this trend. We have to learn how to

make peace with ourselves and our global neighbors, and stop fanning

the flames and trampling on our citizens' rights in order to achieve

some geopolitical or military goal.

 

 

Where does the tyranny end?

I have a question for you: If president Bush would secretly sign off

on top-secret surveillance programs that would violate laws -- to spy

on Americans citizens in their own homes and in their own jobs -- and

if this administration would actively engage in the torture of

political prisoners, and would even refuse to outlaw torture, then

what would this administration not do? Is there anything it would not

do to achieve its political agendas?

Where does this end? It should have ended when it met up with the

boundaries set forth by the Constitution. It should have ended with

the very first invasion of Iraq by George Bush, Sr. Congress should

have stood up and declared it illegal and impeached the president

then for engaging in an illegal war, but Congress has no backbone.

Our representatives and senators have been steamrolled by this Bush

group for far too long, and they refuse to invoke and support the

laws of the land set forth by the Constitution of this once-great

nation.

 

I have another question for you: If you think terrorists are a

threat, who is going to fight the terror from within? Who is going to

stand up against these criminals running our country who are tearing

it apart from the inside out? It should be our senators; it should be

Congress, it should be our people, it should be the media, but right

now, it is no one.

 

The only exception may be Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who is, despite

his official party affiliation, really a Libertarian. How far will

this go on? We already know about secret prison camps positioned all

over the world, used by the United States. We know about Guantanamo

Bay. Now the president has openly admitted to spying on American

citizens with a domestic surveillance program. What's next? Do we

have our own U.S. Gestapo? Are people going to disappear in the

middle of the night and be taken to torture facilities? Is Bush going

to go on the air and say that's justified too, because we're helping

to stop terrorists, and damn the press for printing anything about

secret prison camps, secret kidnappings, torture and interrogation of

American citizens?

 

 

The free press is America's last defense against tyranny

This is the purpose of the press; to stop these criminals from

turning the American people into cannon fodder for their private

political war. The press must investigate and print the truth. The

press must go public with this, because without the press, frankly,

there would be nothing left to stop this aggressive power grab.

It's time to stand up and say, " Enough is enough. No more secret

prisons. No more torture and kidnapping. No more interrogations of

American citizens. No more domestic spying on our brothers and

sisters. No more trampling on the Constitution in the name

of 'stopping terrorists.' No more fabrication of intelligence. No

more invading other countries just because it pleases the current

corrupt leaders of our nation. No more fixing of elections. "

 

It's time to stand up now and safeguard these United States of

America, and any failure to do so, very quickly, will undeniably mean

the end of this great nation. All we will be left with is the USSA: A

police state where your rights are limited to whatever the president

thinks you should have.

 

http://www.counterthink.org/019444.html