The I word.... - Page 2

conraddobler · April 23rd, 2007, 10:39 AM

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Originally Posted by 40yearfan

Hey, I'm German. What kind of slam is this guy making about my ancestors? Is he saying we are followers with no original thoughts of our own? Talk about racism at it's finest. This guy should be horsewhipped and then drawn and quartered.

I think he's talking about WW2 and the Jewish thingy.

The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

40yearfan · April 23rd, 2007, 10:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by conraddobler

I think he's talking about WW2 and the Jewish thingy.

The Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Does it sound familiar? Killing someone just because he made fun of your ancestors?

Just trying to prove a point.

Divide Et Impera · April 24th, 2007, 10:05 AM

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,4084076.story

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George McGovern: Cheney is wrong about me, wrong about war
The 1972 presidential nominee strikes back at the vice president for comparing today's Democrats to the McGovern platform.
By George S. McGovern, GEORGE S. MCGOVERN, a former U.S. senator from South Dakota, was the Democratic nominee for president in 1972.
April 24, 2007

VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment. Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party beyond recognition. The city where the vice president spoke, Chicago, is sometimes dubbed "the Windy City." Cheney converted the chilly wind of Chicago into hot air.

Cheney said that today's Democrats have adopted my platform from the 1972 presidential race and that, in doing so, they will raise taxes. But my platform offered a balanced budget. I proposed nothing new without a carefully defined way of paying for it. By contrast, Cheney and his team have run the national debt to an all-time high.

He also said that the McGovern way is to surrender in Iraq and leave the U.S. exposed to new dangers. The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.

In the war of my youth, World War II, I volunteered for military service at the age of 19 and flew 35 combat missions, winning the Distinguished Flying Cross as the pilot of a B-24 bomber. By contrast, in the war of his youth, the Vietnam War, Cheney got five deferments and has never seen a day of combat — a record matched by President Bush.

Cheney charged that today's Democrats don't appreciate the terrorist danger when they move to end U.S. involvement in the Iraq war. The fact is that Bush and Cheney misled the public when they implied that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks. That was the work of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda team. Cheney and Bush blew the effort to trap Bin Laden in Afghanistan by their sluggish and inept response after the 9/11 attacks.

They then foolishly sent U.S. forces into Iraq against the advice and experience of such knowledgeable men as former President George H.W. Bush, his secretary of State, James A. Baker III, and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft.

Just as the Bush administration mistakenly asserted Iraq's involvement in the 9/11 attacks, it also falsely contended that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When former Ambassador Joseph Wilson exploded the myth that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear materials from Niger, Cheney's top aide and other Bush officials leaked to the media that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent (knowingly revealing the identity of a covert agent is illegal).

In attacking my positions in 1972 as representative of "that old party of the early 1970s," Cheney seems oblivious to the realities of that time. Does he remember that the Democratic Party, with me in the lead, reformed the presidential nomination process to ensure that women, young people and minorities would be represented fairly? The so-called McGovern reform rules are still in effect and, indeed, have been largely copied by the Republicans.

The Democrats' 1972 platform was also in the forefront in pushing for affordable healthcare, full employment with better wages, a stronger environmental and energy effort, support for education at every level and a foreign policy with less confrontation and belligerence and more cooperation and conciliation.

Cheney also still has his eyes closed to the folly of the Vietnam War, in which 58,000 young Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese died. Vietnam was no threat to the United States.

On one point I do agree with Cheney: Today's Democrats are taking positions on the Iraq war similar to the views I held toward the Vietnam War. But that is all to the good.

The war in Iraq has greatly increased the terrorist danger. There was little or no terrorism, insurgency or civil war in Iraq before Bush and Cheney took us into war there five years ago. Now Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism, a bloody insurgency against our troops and a civil war.

Beyond the deaths of more than 3,100 young Americans and an estimated 600,000 Iraqis, we have spent nearly $500 billion on the war, which has dragged on longer than World War II.

The Democrats are right. Let's bring our troops home from this hopeless war.

There is one more point about 1972 for Cheney's consideration. After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.

Who was the real loser of '72?

THE VICE PRESIDENT spoke with contempt of my '72 campaign, but he might do well to recall that I began that effort with these words: "I make one pledge above all others — to seek and speak the truth." We made some costly tactical errors after winning the nomination, but I never broke my pledge to speak the truth. That is why I have never felt like a loser since 1972. In contrast, Cheney and Bush have repeatedly lied to the American people.

It is my firm belief that the Cheney-Bush team has committed offenses that are worse than those that drove Nixon, Vice President Spiro Agnew and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell from office after 1972. Indeed, as their repeated violations of the Constitution and federal statutes, as well as their repudiation of international law, come under increased consideration, I expect to see Cheney and Bush forced to resign their offices before 2008 is over.

Aside from a growing list of impeachable offenses, the vice president has demonstrated his ignorance of foreign policy by attacking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria. Apparently he thinks it is wrong to visit important Middle East states that sometimes disagree with us. Isn't it generally agreed that Nixon's greatest achievement was talking to the Chinese Communist leaders, which opened the door to that nation? And wasn't President Reagan's greatest achievement talking with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev until the two men worked out an end to the Cold War? Does Cheney believe that it's better to go to war rather than talk with countries with which we have differences?

We, of course, already know that when Cheney endorses a war, he exempts himself from participation. On second thought, maybe it's wise to keep Cheney off the battlefield — he might end up shooting his comrades rather than the enemy.

On a more serious note, instead of listening to the foolishness of the neoconservative ideologues, the Cheney-Bush team might better heed the words of a real conservative, Edmund Burke: "A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood."

40yearfan · April 24th, 2007, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divide Et Impera

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,4084076.story

Psssst George. You lost to Tricky Dick and it wasn't even close.

Divide Et Impera · May 6th, 2007, 11:21 AM

http://www.boston.com/news/local/art...ush/?page=full

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Author drafts a novel case against Bush

By Lisa Kocian, Globe Staff | May 6, 2007

NEEDHAM -- You are a grand juror deciding whether to indict President George W. Bush and his closest aides. You wade through legalese, listen to testimony from FBI special agents, and try to decide if the leader of the free world committed conspiracy to defraud the United States by going to war with Iraq under false pretenses.

You are in the fictional world of a former federal prosecutor, Elizabeth de la Vega. Today, de la Vega returns to her hometown of Needham to talk about her novel, "United States v. George W. Bush et al."

The book is set in a grand jury hearing room, where over seven days a prosecutor sets out the case against the Bush administration. The movie rights have been optioned by writer-director Robert Boris, who may begin filming this summer, de la Vega said.

The 1969 Needham High School graduate has already gained the dubious distinction of appearing on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report." With his usual straight-faced sarcasm, Stephen Colbert referred to the novel as "just some fancy folderol candy floss for fun."

De la Vega is scheduled to speak this morning at the Needham Lyceum at First Parish in Needham Unitarian Universalist, as part of a swing through the area that includes Jimmy Tingle's Off-Broadway Theater in Somerville and the Cambridge Forum.

As a federal prosecutor for 21 years, de la Vega, 55, worked on cases involving bank robbery, fraud, kidnapping, and organized crime. In one particularly high-profile case, she helped convict three Northwest Airlines pilots in 1990 of flying under the influence of alcohol. After retiring in 2004 as an assistant US attorney, de la Vega turned her attention to the war and how it has been covered.

"I was pretty appalled at the level of discussion, especially about legal issues, and about the prewar intelligence and whether or not it had been unintentionally misrepresented," said de la Vega, who lives in Los Gatos, Calif. "It was clear to me that the conduct of the Bush administration was exactly the same as the type of fraudulent conduct that's prosecuted around the country every week."

She said she prepared for the book the same way she would build an actual case. She combed through intelligence summaries, congressional testimony, White House press briefings, and public remarks made by the defendants, who also include Vice President Richard Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell.

In her introduction, de la Vega argues that the president committed fraud on a scale far worse than perpetrated by Enron Corp. executives, who bankrupted the company while lining their pockets with millions of dollars. Acknowledging that she doesn't expect Bush ever to be indicted, she says that for some Americans the suggestion that the president lied is akin to "a Baptist minister announcing during vespers that he's a cross-dresser."

One of the fictional witnesses is named after her childhood best friend, Linda Campbell.

Now Linda Hasenfus, and still living in Needham, she said the two have known each other since they were 10 years old, when de la Vega was Betsy Lamb and their favorite hangout was the public tennis courts.

"We used to ride our bikes down and play tennis until we got kicked off by the adults and sit under the mulberry tree until we could get back on," said Hasenfus, who teaches English as a second language in Brighton.

Hasenfus described her friend growing up as idealistic and with "a little hippie in her.

"She was always politically aware and politically active."

Hasenfus said she shares de la Vega's political leanings.

"I think the message of the book is really important and I think the way she went about it was very unique and a really interesting perspective on the whole matter," she said.

Although de la Vega presents her fictional case with an attorney's eye for legal detail, she still tries to have fun with the atmospherics. In a nod to her origins, she refers to Cape Cod and the homegrown institution of --what else?-- Dunkin' Donuts.

De la Vega has also given book talks in California; the Seattle area; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and Minnesota's Twin Cities, where she appeared with Garrison Keillor of "A Prairie Home Companion" fame.

Boris, who plans to co-write, produce, and direct the movie version, directed and wrote "Oxford Blues," starring Rob Lowe, and wrote "Blood Feud," on Bobby Kennedy and Jimmy Hoffa.

He called de la Vega's fictional indictment "a brilliant, clever, insightful idea" that sets her book apart from the many others about the decision to go to war.

"It's a classic courtroom drama," he said. "I just love the idea of bringing back a kind of political theater."

LoyaltyisaCurse · May 6th, 2007, 11:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 40yearfan

Psssst George. You lost to Tricky Dick and it wasn't even close.

pppssstt... that was not the point of the article, but it comes as no surprise you choose to focus on the above BS instead of the real points discussed.

Divide Et Impera · May 10th, 2007, 06:24 PM

Hmmmmm....

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Former...eney_0510.html

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Former Powell aide says Bush, Cheney guilty of 'high crimes' Nick Juliano
Published: Thursday May 10, 2007

A former top State Department aide to Colin Powell said today that President Bush and Vice President Cheney are more deserving of impeachment than was Bill Clinton.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, said on the public radio program On Point Thursday that "Bill Clinton's peccadilloes ... pale in significance" when compared to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" of Bush and Cheney.

Wilkerson did not directly call on Congress to begin impeachment hearings, and he brought up impeachment in response to a caller's question. Early in the show, however, he observed, "This administration doesn't know how to effect accountability, in my opinion."

Wilkerson's comments were first reported by pro-impeachment Web site AfterDowningStreet.org.

"The language in [the Constitution] about impeachment is nice and precise -– it's high crimes and misdemeanors," he said. "You compare Bill Clinton's peccadilloes for which he was impeached to George Bush's high crimes and misdemeanors or Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors, and I think they pale in significance."

Taking a historical view of impeachment, Wilkerson said he believed the Founding Fathers would be surprised that more presidents had not been impeached.

"I do believe that they would have thought had they been asked by you or whomever at the time of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia 'Do you think this will be exercised?' they would have said 'Of course it will, every generation they'll have to throw some bastard out.'"Wilkerson said. "That's a form of accountability too. It's ultimate accountability."

Asked about the high crimes of the current administration, Wilkerson said the American public was duped into supporting a war in Iraq.

"I think we went into this war for specious reasons," he said. "I think we went into this war not too much unlike the way we went into the Spanish American War with the Hearst press essentially goading the American people and the leadership into war. That was a different time in a different culture, in a different America. We're in a very different place today and I think we essentially got goaded into the war through some of the same means."

Divide Et Impera · May 29th, 2007, 02:14 PM

Wow!

http://www.constitutioncoalition.org/

Quote:

Why Bush and Cheney Must Be Impeached
Filed under: Constitution — admin | May 27, 2007 @ 6:45 pm (Views: 20)
Note: The author grants anyone the permission to freely publish, copy, or distribute this article, provided that nothing is added or deleted and that no changes are made. However, permission to publish or copy does not grant the publisher or copier any exclusive rights, nor any right to exclude others from publishing or copying this article.

High Crimes

Why Bush and Cheney Must Be Impeached

by Wallace Hoffman

There are two types of people-those who loyally support George Bush and Dick Cheney because they believe what they say, and those who vehemently oppose them because they see what they do. This is, of course, an oversimplification, but it nonetheless illustrates the stark contrast between the image these men project in public and the real character they reveal in private.

For example, reporter Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue relates that in a meeting with President Bush and Congressional leaders in the Oval Office about renewing the USA Patriot Act, an aide pointed out, "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution." Bush allegedly screamed, "Stop throwing the Constitution in my face. It´s just a goddamned piece of paper!"

Articles of impeachment should have been filed against President George Bush on the spot for violating his oath of office to "preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution of the United States. President Bush sees the Constitution not as a sacred document that preserves the rights and freedoms of the American people through limited government, but as an obstacle to his agenda.

America is not just a geographical place on a map or a group of loyal patriots who love their country, but a set of principles which have defined us as a nation for over 230 years. These principles have been held in contempt by the Bush administration.

No one is above the law

For four years, from 2001 to 2004, President Bush blatantly violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to wiretap American citizens without the permission of the FISA court, a felony punishable by up to five years in prison or a fine not to exceed $10,000, or both. This act was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 as the result of President Nixon´s illegal use of the FBI and CIA to spy on American citizens. It was meant to serve as a check on executive power by providing oversight by the judicial branch, which would ensure that such spying did not violate citizen´s rights.

By secretly authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to invade the private communications of American citizens, Bush also violated the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In doing so, he has dishonored his oath of office to uphold the Constitution.

From 1978 to 2001, a total of 13,102 requests were submitted by the government to eavesdrop on American citizens without a single one ever once being denied by the FISA court. Even in times of emergency, the government allows eavesdropping up to 72 hours (or 15 days in time of war) without a warrant. Therefore, there is no excuse for Bush ignoring the court, unless perhaps he had no valid reason for spying and therefore did not want the court reviewing his actions.

FBI director Robert Mueller testified on February 2, 2006, that the NSA warrantless surveillance program had not revealed a single Al Qaeda terrorist in the United States since 9/11. The reason is simple: Al Qaeda insurgents have learned to use couriers instead of phones to relay their messages.

President Bush has said, "If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration." We should take him at his word. Even the President of the United States is not above the law.

Honesty in government

In 2004, President Bush said, "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires-a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we´re talking about chasing down terrorists, we´re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It´s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

This was classic Bush assuring the public that he was doing one thing while doing another, because for the past four years the National Security Agency (NSA) had been secretly wiretapping American´s communications under Bush´s authorization, as noted above.

One of the major goals of President Bush was reforming Social Security, which he claimed was on the verge of bankruptcy, not mentioning the fact that converting Social Security to private accounts would cost taxpayers about two trillion dollars. This despite the assurances of economists who claimed that the Social Security Trust Fund would be solvent until at least 2054. Yet during Bush´s first five years in office, $809.3 billion was raided from the Social Security Trust Fund. Thus almost a trillion dollars was taken from the trust fund and used to finance other functions of government. Meanwhile, Bush advocates giving Social Security, medical, welfare, and education benefits to illegal aliens, who are not even citizens of this country.

Here is another case of Bush deception. NAFTA, the "free trade" agreement enacted in 1994, is being super-sized to the North American Union (also called the Security and Prosperity Partnership or SPP), despite the fact that NAFTA has been a dismal failure for the American public, enriching multi-national corporations while outsourcing millions of American jobs. It was NAFTA that destroyed the small farms and businesses in Mexico, forcing the Mexican people to migrate to the United States to find work, creating our huge immigration problem.

The North American Union (like the European Union) is a plan to merge the United States, Mexico, and Canada into one economic free trade area without borders and thus provide the unobstructed movement of commerce, people, and capital. This agreement was made in Waco, Texas on March 23, 2005 by President George W. Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox, and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. Over a year later on May 15, 2006, President Bush went on TV and said, "The United States must secure its borders," knowing full well that he had previously made the agreement with Mexico and Canada for open borders. The President had lied to the American people. This is why the Bush administration has never stopped illegal immigration.

Mexico´s police, military, and public officials are corrupt from top to bottom. We are further separated by language and have incompatible political systems, cultures, ideals, and traditions. Canada harbors numerous terrorist organizations. It is absurd to argue that America would become more secure and prosperous through a policy of cooperation and open borders. Furthermore, a country without borders is no longer a nation!

The North American Union is to be implemented not by submitting its agenda to the U.S. Congress for review and approval, but through regulations, agreements, directives, and executive decrees between business and government that avoid legislative oversight. Like the NAFTA treaty, it establishes a government body whose laws supercede those of the United States. The Bush Administration is trying to implement this plan in secret before the American people can find out about it. Once in place, it will transfer the wealth of America´s middle class to Mexico, while enriching corporate elites, making the United States a third-world nation.

Under the North American Union, scheduled to be completed by 2010, there would be no illegal aliens. Citizens of Mexico, Canada, and the United States would be free to travel throughout the North American continent and live where they want. Furthermore, over 100 million Mexicans would want to collect welfare, health care, and all the other social benefits available for Americans. This would destroy the United States as we know it.

Mexico´s foreign minister Jorge Castaneda, speaking to Mexican journalists in a November 2002 interview said: "I like very much the metaphor or Gulliver, of ensnarling the giant [the United States]. Tying it up, with nails, with thread, with 20,000 nets that bog it down; these nets being norms, principles, resolutions, agreements, and bilateral, regional and international covenants."

This steady erosion of our sovereignty by international governing bodies, the devastation of our economy, and the jeopardizing our national security through a policy of open borders, is a travesty that borders on treason.

Public officials are public servants, not rulers

There are no kings, rulers, or royalty in America. All public officials, including the President of the United States, are public servants of We the People. Even the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the military (not of the nation) has no power over any civilian who has not broken the law, whether in time of peace or in time of war. Even those who work in the civil service or the executive branch of government must only obey the orders of the President as such dictates apply to their job, and even then they are free to quit at any time. Only those in the military must obey the orders of the President, and even then only if those orders are legitimate and according to the rules of war and international treaties such as the Geneva conventions. While Americans should respect the office of the President, Americans do not owe allegiance to the President, but only to the Constitution and their country. Only kings or dictators demand loyalty from the people.

We are a nation of laws, not of men. Only Congress has the authority to make the law. The President is a public servant whose duty is to enforce the law. He cannot, therefore, be above the law or make the law or interpret the law. Only a king or dictator considers himself above the law, and there are no such tyrants allowed in America.

There is no such thing as a unitary executive, an imperial presidency, or an executive branch that is beyond the checks and balances established by the Constitution. The wartime powers of the President are restricted to his powers as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. The Constitution is not abolished in time of war. Only the Congress can declare war, and this power cannot be delegated to the President without destroying our system of checks and balances. There is no authorization for pre-emptive war in the Constitution, nor can any such power be delegated to the President as Commander-in-Chief.

Bush and Cheney have violated this principle by seeking to concentrate all power in the executive branch of government and refusing or ignoring the oversight of Congress and the Supreme Court. Also, instead of vetoing a bill, President Bush has issued over 750 signing statements asserting his authority to ignore or circumvent those portions of the law he deems unconstitutional. This invalidates the laws passed by Congress, usurps the function of the Supreme Court to interpret the law, and destroys the separation of government power.

Freedom of speech

Americans owe allegiance to the Constitution, their country, and the ideals for which it stands, not to the government or to the president. Our twenty-sixth President Theodore Roosevelt said, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we should stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American republic."

Thomas Paine said, "It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government." And Thomas Jefferson said, "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism."

After 9/11, President Bush stated, "You´re either with us or against us," This implies that those who disagree with the administration´s policies are either unpatriotic or on the side of the terrorists. Even those who objected to the later loss of their rights under the Patriot Act were classified as a threat. Former attorney general John Ashcroft said, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." And White House press secretary Ari Fleischer warned Americans that they had better "watch what they say."

This threat to Americans by our own government is a violation of our First Amendment right to free speech. Such threats and intimidation are an insult and an outrage. The right of an individual to say what he thinks on any subject, both in time of peace and war, is the bedrock upon which our national security rests, since it is free speech that serves as the people´s check on the powers of government. But the Bush Administration would have us think that it is the suppression of free speech that is in the interest of national security. Even the name of the Patriot Act suggests that those who oppose its provisions are unpatriotic. Thomas Jefferson said, "When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." John Kennedy said, "When you make free speech impossible, you make revolution inevitable."

Rather than answer their critics, Bush and Cheney have conducted a campaign to silence them, making dissent appear unpatriotic, seditious, and an act of insurrection. They have sought to nullify the right of free speech in order to grant them arbitrary power.

Fiscal responsibility

During the first five years that President Bush has been in office, the national debt has increased from $5.7 trillion to $8.35 trillion! While politicians magnanimously assure voters that there will be no new taxes, the national debt is actually a tax on future generations; that is, your children and your grandchildren, whose standard of living will be reduced accordingly.

Each year politicians spend more than they take in, further increasing the national debt. Taxes are spent not on reducing the national debt, but only on paying the interest on the national debt, which comes to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The war on terror costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars each year, with government corruption costing billions more. Bush, Cheney and Congress are bankrupting the country.

No wars of aggression

When you or I lie, it usually affects one or a few individuals. However, when the President lies, it affects the lives of everyone in the country and around the world. Thus a Presidential lie is a far more serious offense than an individual lie.

Bush and Cheney lied repeatedly to engage us in an aggressive, preemptive war in Iraq by claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda, even though U.S. intelligence contradicted these claims. Such lies are an international war crime because they have cost thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, untold suffering and destruction, and hundreds of billions of dollars. Preemptive war is also a violation of international treaties and the U.S. Constitution.

Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson said, "President Bush has...committed the same crimes of aggression that led to convictions at the Nuremberg trial." In other words, under the Nuremberg standard, the President is a war criminal.

The United States has used weapons in Iraq that are banned under international law, such as napalm, white phosphorus, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium, causing great harm to the civilian population. This too is a war crime.

In May 2005, the London Sunday Times published the Downing Street Memos in which a British intelligence chief revealed that as early as July 2002, before the Iraq war, Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action and that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Thus intelligence was being manipulated to justify the war. Conquering Iraq would give the United States control of the Middle East and its vast oil supplies, eliminate a major threat to Israel, and ensure American global dominance.

In September 2002, the Bush administration lied that Iraq was purchasing aluminum tubes for use in uranium centrifuges to enrich uranium in order to build a nuclear bomb, even though intelligence had conclusively shown that the tubes were precisely the same dimensions as those used in a conventional Iraqi rocket program.

In his January 23, 2003 State of the Union address, Bush lied that Saddam Hussein had sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson proved this claim to be false, and publicly stated that the intelligence was "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat," the identity of Wilson´s wife (Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent), was leaked to the press in revenge for Wilson´s challenge to the administration´s claims. Disclosing the name of an undercover CIA agent is a crime under federal law.

Inalienable rights

"He asked me who I was. I said I´m a human being." Thus responded an Iraqi civilian who was taken prisoner and brutally tortured. He had committed no crime.

On March 19, 2003 the United States invaded Iraq. On April 28, 2004, a series of photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison were shown on 60 Minutes II, showing for the first time the degrading, cruel, and inhuman treatment of prisoners captured in Iraq. Later, incidents of torture surfaced at other facilities such as Guantanamo, Bagram, and secret CIA facilities. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose job is to uphold and enforce the law, hastily pieced together a "legal" basis to justify torture and to excuse those responsible from accountability for breaking the law!

FBI e-mails reveal that President Bush had directly authorized torture by Executive Order. Both Vice-President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were also aware that torture was being used. Prisoners were even transported to "black sites" in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Romania, and Poland where they could be interrogated and tortured unknown to the public. To escape responsibility, the Bush administration has defined torture as that which causes organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or death. Otherwise it is not torture.

Intelligence experts stress that the information obtained under torture is unreliable, since under duress a prisoner will say anything to stop the pain. Furthermore, the use of torture endangers our own troops when captured by the enemy, since by flouting international law we thereby lose our own claim to humane treatment. Finally, torture destroys our international reputation as the protector of human rights.

When on December 30, 2005, Congress passed Senator John McCain´s bill banning torture, Bush made a public display of signing the legislation into law. Then in private he issued a signing statement that said that he would interpret the bill "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary executive branch...and consistent with the constitutional limitations on judicial power." In other words, the President stated that he had the power to act on his own terms and that neither Congress nor the Supreme Court could intervene.

Americans are the only people in the world whose founding documents-the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution-recognize inalienable rights. The word "inalienable" means that such rights are inherent in man´s nature and are beyond the jurisdiction of government. The only purpose of government is to protect man´s rights.

In all other governments of the world, human rights are granted as privileges that may be revoked by government at any time. When the government violates inalienable rights, the government itself becomes a criminal.

Until Bush and Cheney came to power, the United States had been like a shining beacon of light on a hill in defending the human rights of all nations. The Bush administration extinguished that light. Before the Iraq war, we looked upon the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Gulag as barbaric and inhumane. We looked upon their dastardly deeds with scorn and contempt, and their leaders as little more than primitive savages. Now we look at the enemy and it is us. We can no longer look down from the transcending heights, because we have reached the depths that we abhorred. We have fallen into the abyss. We were once a great country not because we were the most powerful nation on earth, but because we had compassion and respect for human rights. The Bush administration has defiled forever the image that was once America.

Torture is not just an impeachable offense, but an international war crime. It violates the U.S. War Crimes Act, the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and other international treaties that we have signed. The Bush administration must answer for this outrage. There is no excuse for torture. Impeachment is the only means to redeem us in the eyes of the world. Where there is no accountability in government, anything goes. Not to speak out and oppose this heinous act is to become an accessory to the crime. To condone torture is to declassify oneself from the human species.

Jesus Christ gave us the golden rule. He also said to love our enemies. This does not mean that we approve of what they do, but that we do not use their methods. Anyone who sanctions torture has no claim to being a Christian.

Separation of military and civilian law enforcement

The very definition of tyranny is when all power is concentrated in a single ruler who makes, enforces, and interprets the law. To protect our freedom, the Founding Fathers separated these powers into three branches of government called the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches, with a system of checks and balances. Power was further dispersed between state and federal governments.

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act, which was signed by President Bush on October 17, 2006, erodes the separation of power between the state and federal government. It allows the President in an emergency to declare martial law and assume control of all state National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to suppress dissent or disorder. This change in command from the state governors to the President concentrates greater power in the federal government. Since the President is already commander in chief of the military for use outside the United States, granting him such powers for use within the Unites States makes him a virtual dictator.

Another check that the Founding Fathers placed on government power was to put a civilian (the President) in charge of the military to keep the military subordinate to the civil power. This keeps the military separate from civil law enforcement and means that military personnel cannot search, seize, or arrest civilians. This makes good sense since military personnel are trained to fight wars and kill enemy combatants, not serve as peace officers. It is the difference between a government of liberty, and a government of force.

The Posse Comitatus Act was enacted in 1878 to prevent the President from deploying military troops within the United States and using them for domestic or civilian law enforcement. Its passage ended the military occupation that took place during the Reconstruction period after the Southern states were defeated in the Civil War.

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act repeals the Posse Comitatus Act. In doing so, this act violates the principles of American government, the separation of powers, and makes it easier for the President to declare martial law. Recall that FEMA, after the destruction caused at New Orleans by hurricane Katrina, sent in soldiers to confiscate citizen´s weapons instead of providing aid. Was this simply a drill to see how citizens would react to the violation of their Second Amendment rights?

Habeas corpus

On September 30, 2006 the President and Congress violated the U.S. Constitution by passing the Military Commissions Act. This act effectively creates two governments in the United States-one under which American citizens retain the illusion of living under Constitutional government, and the other a police state under which "enemy combatants" can be imprisoned, interrogated, tried, and punished without any Constitutional or human rights. It also gives the President the power to transfer a U.S. citizen from one system of government to the other by simply declaring him an "enemy combatant." Thus anyone who objects to anything the President says or does can simply be declared an "enemy combatant" and disappear into the American Gulag. Without the knowledge of the American people, our country has been transformed into a police state, and the President had been given the powers of a dictator. A greater feat of magic and deception has never been performed on the face of the earth.

The Military Commissions Act revokes habeas corpus for enemy combatants, thereby allowing anyone to be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with a crime. It legalizes torture and revokes provisions of the Geneva Conventions. It gives the President and other top government officials amnesty for any war crimes committed. (This despite the fact that only the President, not Congress, can grant pardons.) This is an outrage of the highest order. We do not want a Congress that passes laws which excuse lawbreaking, but a Congress that holds public officials accountable to the law. Furthermore, to give amnesty for war crimes committed is a confession of guilt for such crimes.

President Bush and Cheney know that many of the laws that have been passed since 9/11 are unconstitutional. By creating two separate systems of government, the legality of these laws cannot be disputed, since anyone who challenges such laws can simply be declared an enemy combatant and transferred from one system, where he has constitutional rights, to the other, where he has none. It also relieves Bush and Cheney from any accountability.

There is more. Much, much, more. We now have an American Gestapo.

Winston Churchill said, "The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

Habeas corpus, which protects an accused person from being imprisoned without first having a hearing in a court of law, has now been revoked after being the centerpiece of English law for the past eight hundred years.

This means that anyone who is a patriot must now live in greater fear of his own government than of terrorism itself. The greatest threat to our country is not terrorism, but our own government, which can usurp our rights and destroy our freedom. Terrorists cannot overthrow the United States, but our own government can.

The Supreme Court said in the case Ex parte Milligan (1866), that "it is the birthright of every American citizen when charged with crime, to be tried and punished according to law...The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances."

If Americans win the war on terrorism and lose their Constitutional rights, they will have lost everything.

Land of the free

Under the Bush Administration, our own government, not the terrorists, is destroying our freedom. Author Mark Crispen Miller in his book Cruel and Unusual states: "The current crisis is more serious than Bush´s wish to broaden his authority...The regime´s goal is to abort American democracy and to impose on the United States another form of government entirely."

The form of government towards which we are headed is, if not a police state under martial law, certainly one in which the executive branch has supreme power and where all our rights and freedoms are suspended in the name of terrorism. James Madison said, "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

Hermann Goering, the Nazi commander of the German air force, stated at the Nuremburg trials that "the people can always be brought to do the bidding of their leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

James Madison, father of the U.S. Constitution, said that "the fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad."

And Senator Russell Feingold, the only Senator who voted against the Patriot Act, said:

There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country where the police were allowed to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country where the government is entitled to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept our e-mail communications; if we lived in a country where people could be held in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, the government would probably discover and arrest more terrorists or would be terrorists, just as it would find more lawbreakers generally.

But that wouldn´t be a country in which we would want to live, and it wouldn´t be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that country wouldn´t be America.

....Preserving our freedom is the reason we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without a shot being fired if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people in the belief that by doing so we will stop the terrorists.

The police state that Feingold described has almost arrived. While you are away from home, FBI agents can enter your home and install a keystroke logger on your computer to record everything you type and every web page you visit. They can monitor books your have checked out of the library or bought at the bookstore. They can listen to conversations between you and your lawyer while you are in federal prison. The CIA, which was created to spy on foreign governments, can now spy on American citizens within their own borders. They can do all this while assuring you that your freedoms are protected. Many of the new standards apply not only to apprehending terrorists, but to any criminal investigation. Americans no longer have to do anything unlawful to get that feared knock on the door.

Transparency in government

Secrecy is the enemy of a free republic.

Reporter Nat Hentoff said, "No other national administration, in my more than forty years of covering the state of the Constitution´s health, has more persistently protected itself from scrutiny-and public oversight-than George W. Bush´s executive branch and, particularly, his Justice Department."

All the powers of the government come from We the People. Therefore, we have the right to know what our government is doing. Furthermore, the government is supported by our taxes, and this also gives us a further claim to know what we are getting for our money.

Representative William Delahunt, Democrat from Massachusetts, said: "It appears that the American people feel that the government is intent on prying into every nook and cranny of people´s lives, while at the same time doing all it can to block access to government information that would inform the American people about what is being done in their name." Neither Congress nor the people know what the Bush Administration has done under the cloak of secrecy. All we have is the assurance of President Bush himself: "Trust me."

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 required that presidential papers be made public after a chief executive left office. However, Bush nullified this act by signing Executive Order 13233 on November 1, 2001, which sealed all presidential papers after 1980. Can the President annul a previous act of Congress simply by issuing an executive order? Is it just an interesting coincidence that the first former vice president (under Ronald Reagan) whose papers will now be closed to public scrutiny is George H.W. Bush?

In 2002 Congressman Henry Waxman held a hearing on secrecy in the Bush Administration and found that the administration had undermined "laws that are designed to promote public access to information...while laws that authorize the government to withhold information or to operate in secret have repeatedly been expanded. The cumulative result is an unprecedented assault on the principle of open government."

Freedom of the press

Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."

One of the purposes of our First Amendment rights of free speech and the press is so that the public can be given the information it needs to protect itself from corruption in government, business, and any threat to its liberties. However, today the press is controlled by huge corporations and advertisers who determine what the public gets to know. News which opposes the agenda of the corporate elite is suppressed, and those who criticize government or corporate polities or sponsored political candidates may find their character smeared, ridiculed, or their arguments dismissed out of hand.

Disney owns ABC, Viacom own CBS, General Electric owns NBC, TimeWarner owns CNN, and Murdoch own FOX. Today, ten major corporations own virtually every print, radio, and television outlet. What this means is that news has become a commodity used to entertain or manipulate the masses, with the truth being of secondary importance. Such news sources can no longer be expected to serve as a watchdog or check on the federal government because it goes against corporate interests.

What is often overlooked is that journalists and editors may at times unconsciously censor the news themselves in order to gain or retain access to important government sources and officials.

News of what is actually happening in the Iraq war is carefully screened before being distributed to the public. News has become propaganda to support government policies and business agendas. Because of this, millions of Americans have turned to the internet to learn what is actually happening in politics and world affairs. The internet has become the people´s means of communication and protecting their rights.

Because the great mass of people obtain their news from main media sources, such people often ridicule the small informed minority who try to wake them up to the reality of their plight through public demonstrations. They deride the very people who are trying to save their lives and their country at the expense of their own time and money.

The right to privacy

Private citizens have the right to exclude the federal government from their private lives. This means that if you have not committed a crime, there should be no records of your private life in any database of the FBI, the CIA, or any other federal agency. Medical, employment, educational, financial, credit card records, etc., should all be confidential. However, under names such as Total Information Awareness (TIA), MATRIX, and other secret spy programs largely unknown because they are classified, information is being collected on every citizen and stored in a massive database. When word is leaked to the public, and public outrage forces the government to close such spy programs, they are simply renamed and shifted to another department of government. With the merging of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies after 9/11, the result is a massive police state being set up by the government. Any citizen who opposes government policies could suddenly find his name on a "no-fly" list (which currently has an estimated 70,000 names), unable to find employment, or unable to collect federal benefits such as social security.

The massive invasion of citizen´s rights under the Bush Administration makes one wonder if the Bush Administration is fighting a war against terrorism, or engaging in a campaign of terrorism itself.

The rule of law

President Bush is the chief executive or chief law enforcement officer of the country. His duty is to enforce the law. Yet he has refused to enforce the immigration laws and close the borders to ensure the safety and security of the American people. This has resulted in twelve to thirty million Mexican citizens unlawfully invading our country. Thus he has violated his oath of office to the Constitution under Article IV, section 4, which declares that the United States shall protect the States against invasion.

By refusing to enforce our immigration laws, the President has undermined respect for the rule of law. This disrespect for the rule of law is contagious and has spread across the country to both law enforcement officers, the public, and illegal aliens. The President seems to think that the law is simply whatever he says it is, and holds himself unaccountable to either the Congress or the courts.

Almost three thousand people were murdered in the 9/11 collapse of the Twin Towers. Over three thousand people a year are murdered in the United States by illegal aliens, who then flee to Mexico to escape justice. Women are gang raped, citizen´s property is stolen or destroyed, and gangs overrun the country dealing illegal drugs and spreading violence. As the chief law enforcement officer, the President is directly responsible for these crimes by refusing to enforce our immigration laws and secure the border.

The FBI estimates that in the United States today, there are about thirty thousand violent gangs with eight hundred thousand members. One of the most infamous of these gangs is a Hispanic gang known as MS-13, which has operations in thirty-four states. Mexican gangs move up to $100 million in illegal drugs each day across the U.S. border with Mexico. This alone is reason enough to build a fence along our 2500-mile long southern border. Such a fence would only cost about $10 billion dollars, or the amount spent in about two months fighting the Iraq war.

An invasion occurs when one nation seeks to take over another nation. The invasion of the United States by illegal aliens is part of a stealth plan called Reconquista (Reconquest) to retake the Southwestern states that Mexico lost during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Mexicans want to repeal the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase. They claim that our land is theirs, that they are the original inhabitants of this continent, and that Americans are the illegal aliens. This overlooks the fact that if it were not for the United States, Mexico would not even exist. Why? Because when Napoleon III´s troops conquered Mexico and captured Mexico City during the American Civil War, installing Maximilian on the throne, it was the threatened intervention of the United States that forced Napoleon III´s troops to withdraw and return to France.

The Reconquista radicals believe that the time will come when Hispanics will be the majority of the population in the Southwestern states and can then vote to secede from the United States and unite with Mexico, reclaiming California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of other western states. By 2004, the Hispanic population of California had reached 34 percent, Arizona 28 percent, New Mexico 43 percent, and Texas 34 percent.

Many Americans were enraged to see thousands of Hispanics carrying Mexican flags during the nation-wide street protests that occurred in this country in March, April, and May of 2006. Some carried signs which read, "This is our continent, not yours!" At one school, Hispanics flew a Mexican flag above an inverted American flag. Many of these Hispanics refuse to learn English and have no intention of obeying our laws. They want the benefits of American citizenship while remaining loyal to Mexico. The goal of some extremist groups is to completely eradicate anyone of European dissent from the North American continent. Their goal is to make the United States, Mexico. Thus the greatest threat to America does not come from Islamic terrorism, but from illegal immigration.

The Oath of Citizenship requires all immigrants to entirely renounce allegiance to their country of origin and declare loyalty to the United States and its Constitution. Yet Mexico has granted its citizens the right of dual citizenship so that illegal aliens who are in the United States, and American citizens of Hispanic dissent, can remain loyal to Mexico.

Why are the citizens of another country, marching and demanding rights from our country instead of their own government? Other countries owe nothing to us, so why do Americans think we owe something to other countries? There are 6.5 billion people on the earth, with populations of third-world countries increasing exponentially. Does anyone think that we can provide for all these people? With a national debt of eight trillion dollars and our infrastructure sold to foreign nations, the United States is not the richest nation on earth, but one of the poorest. Americans have simply been living beyond their means and passing the bill to future generations.

Some illegal aliens bring into our country diseases long thought to be eradicated, such as leprosy, tuberculosis, malaria, polio, venereal disease, whooping cough, hepatitis, and dengue fever. Because hospitals under federal law must provide free emergency services to illegal aliens, eighty-four hospitals in California have had to close and declare bankruptcy.

President Bush advocates a guest worker program because he claims that there are jobs that Americans won´t do. This is another Bush lie. Statistics show that in every job classification– even low-paying, menial jobs-the majority of workers are Americans. Furthermore, in every job category there are Americans looking for work who can´t find it because illegal aliens have already taken the job, and who must then go on welfare.

Farmers claim that they can´t harvest their crops without illegal aliens. However, if farmers were deprived of cheap labor, they would be forced to modernize by buying machinery to do the work of field hands, which would increase productivity and make up for labor costs.

Thomas Sowell reports, "Many of the illegals are working in agriculture, producing crops that have been in chronic surplus for decades. These surplus crops are costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars in government storage costs and in the inflated prices created by deliberately keeping much of this agricultural output off the market."

Illegal labor also hurts businesses who pay fair wages and who abide by the law, since they must compete with businesses who hire illegal aliens at rock bottom wages and who often pay no taxes or benefits.

The United States cannot employ an underclass of illegal aliens to perform its slave labor without building resentment on the part of the illegal aliens, and an attitude of elitism on the part of those who employ them. This creates a lower and an upper class in America, and one of our American principles is that there are no classes in this country.

The Mexican government will never enact reforms so long as Mexicans can migrate north to seek jobs instead of demanding domestic change at home. Mexico is a country rich in natural resources, but because government corruption, Mexico remains a country of the extremely rich and the dirt poor. American compassion for illegal aliens is destroying both our own country and Mexico. It is only the elites of both countries who profit.

In 1775 when the British invaded the American colonies, it was the Minutemen who first came to our defense. Now that our country is invaded by four million Mexicans a year, it is the modern-day Minutemen who are defending our borders at the expense of their time, money, and at the peril of their own lives. These vigilant Americans, whom President Bush called "vigilantes," are doing the job that President Bush won´t do. The President has refused to apologize for his remark.

Twenty percent of the Minutemen include Hispanics and other non-white volunteers. Hispanics and blacks resent illegal aliens because they must often compete with them for low-wage jobs. Hispanics who are legal immigrants and loyal Americans who earned their citizenship, often waiting years to get it, also resent giving benefits to illegal aliens while they pay the bill.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution states, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." What this means is that so-called "anchor babies" born to illegal aliens in this country are not automatically American citizens. Only legal immigrants and native citizens are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and since the mother is a foreign citizen owing allegiance to and subject to the jurisdiction of her own country, so is her baby. No country in the world grants automatic citizenship to a baby born of a foreign mother. Granting automatic citizenship to a baby born to illegal aliens rewards its parents for breaking the law. Rewarding people for breaking the law is a violation of the law.

While the Supreme Court has ruled that "anchor babies" are by birth U.S. citizens, this ruling can be overturned by Congress. Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution states that in cases of appellate jurisdiction, the Supreme Court is subject to the exceptions and regulations made by Congress. This means that Congress can pass legislation refusing to grant citizenship to babies born to foreign citizens by simply including a st