George orWell Bush

Is the Bush administration interested in protecting Americans and helping to structure a peaceful world? Or is it bent on creating a police state, using lies and raw power to advance the interests of a few corporations, with no conscience as to the consequences for most of the world?

The evidence could not be clearer, from only this past week.

With little notice and less real debate, the Republican dominated House passed a permanent extension of the Patriot Act. Because of the fear of terrorism, its supporters were able to shift the burden of proof to those who opposed it. This is utterly backwards.

The Patriot Act, most of it never a reasonable idea, was passed as an emergency measure to combat terrorism in the U.S. It is an axiom of the American system that rights cannot be violated without compelling and demonstrable reason, if then. Supporters have failed to demonstrate how the Patriot Act has effectively prevented terrorist activities since it was passed. Therefore, on its face, its renewal, and its many intrusions and violations of basic rights, is unjustified. (Some of its provisions are outlined below.)

Also this week, reports surfaced of how the FBI is using its investigative powers to "fight terrorism." It gathered some 3,500 pages of documents on a few civil rights and antiwar protest groups, including 1,173 pages on the American Civil Liberties Union and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace.

Who in their right mind believes that the American Civil Liberties Union is recruiting suicide bombers? What genius in Washington is suspicious that Greenpeace is planning to bomb some urban subway system? We just passed the 20th anniversary of the sinking of the Greenpeace ship by French intelligence, because of that group's anti-nuclear protests. The idiocy and infamy of that act has apparently become obvious to everyone in the world except the Bush administration's FBI.

It would seem that a far more effective method of fighting terrorism would be to gather foreign intelligence on biological, chemical and nuclear terrorist threats, through covert networks like the one recently destroyed by high officials in the Bush administration when they revealed the name of the covert CIA agent in charge of it.

While the Bushwhackers want to spend taxpayer money gathering useless information on fellow citizens, violating privacy and attempting to intimidate political opponents engaged in constitutionally protected dissent, they are trying furiously to limit public access to information that graphically illustrates their own police state tactics and moral degeneracy at Abu Ghirab and Guantanamo. This is so important to them that Bush is threatening to veto the entire $442 billion defense bill if it contains provisions to regulate treatment of detainees or to investigate treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.

Also last week, the Bushheads went to court yet again to prevent the release of more photos and video showing abuses at Abu Ghirab prison in Iraq.

As the involvement of Karl Rove and Scotter Libby threatened to highlight the already demonstrable fact that the Bushers consciously lied to Congress, the American people and the world in order to justify an unprovoked and ruinous war---and with the Harris poll showing that 65% of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq---Bush rushed his appointment to the Supreme Court to distract the media. He chose a judge so tied to corporate interests and right wing Republicans that one blogger's (billmon) metaphorical description of him as a "made man" in the Bush crime family is more apt than amusing.

But the Bushmaulers are apparently unchastened by the horrendous state of Iraq they've created, and its new status as the world incubator for terrorists. A story repeated on many blogs but which originated in a conservative newspaper reports that vice president Dick Cheney ordered the Pentagon to draw up contingency plans for a bombing attack on Iran, including nuclear weapons.

Contingency plans in themselves are at least theoretically prudent, but we are talking about the likely inspirational leader of the attack on Iraq. The Strategic Air Command has identified some 450 targets in Iran. The story concludes:

“As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing -- that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack -- but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.”