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John Yoo's Legal Groundwork for Subverting the Republic
If history gets this recent era right, future textbooks will have to show that the US narrowly averted a carefully planned but thorough and unmistakable conspiracy to subvert the rule of law and the process of democracy from 2001-2008. For three years, since writing End of America, I have been arguing that the Bush team sought irretrievably to subvert our liberty. Fortunately, this appalling and conceivably irrevocable subversion of the tenets of freedom was narrowly averted by citizens at every level -- from the grassroots to the courts -- resisting in time. But the release this week by the Justice Department of the "secret memos" sought valiantly by the ACLU confirms that Bush's legal architects were building up the framework for something even scarier than our most anguished projections.
You can see the documents themselves online -- but, as usual, there is a gap between the cautious journalistic interpretation of the event and the dense legalese in which they are written, and no one yet has really explained to citizens who are not attorneys what these memos claimed to give Bush the right to do. This is my initial reading of these documents:
Most dramatically, one memo asserts that Bush can deploy the military within the United States -- all of the military if he so wishes -- overriding Posse Comitatus, which has kept us safe from military policing for over a century. As many heard me warn in October and November of last year, when the first troops were sent to US streets, history shows that once the military is deployed domestically to "keep order" in a civil society, it is over. This memo is especially galling, since last fall's red alert from us was met with alarm by citizens but by ridicule by mainstream media outlets. Turns out we were right. This `deployment' memo proves that Bush indeed, as we feared, wanted the power to deploy military for domestic policing purposes, a mission that Northcom spokesmen denied -- apparently falsely -- when a few critics from non-mainstream platforms raised the alarm last November about the deployment of the First Brigade from Iraq to the US. This memo shows that Bush sought the power to deploy any number of U.S. military into the U.S. itself for any reason he chose; direct them to rip through your home without a warrant, even if you have not been charged with anything; seize material and documents; and even gave Bush the power to use deadly force against you -- yes, you, innocent US citizen -- "in self-defense." In your homes and streets -- not on a faraway battlefield. Major David Antoon confirmed that this power -- to send US military to control, arrest and even shoot US civilians in self-defense -- was in Bush's hands last fall when I asked Antoon about it. Turns out this memo shows Bush indeed wanted to have that power.
Another memo would give the power to Bush -- at his discretion -- to close down or censor newspapers, radio and the Internet - override the First Amendment in the interest of "national security." So if he had deployed, say, ten brigades -- 37,000 warriors -- in key cities (he deployed three before the election and 20,000 are due to be deployed domestically by 2012 unless we stop it), you would not be able to hear about it through the news media if he invoked this power to suspend free speech. And if you protested -- if you dared -- well, his actions would have been -- thanks to John Yoo and others, who will go down in history along with the criminal Nuremberg lawyers as one of Satan's willing attorneys -- perfectly legal.
Yet another memo gives Bush not only the right to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant" and hold him or her indefinitely - a danger we knew about, and one that we have tried hard to alert citizens to, a warning that has seemingly penetrated collective consciousness. The newly released memo demonstrates that was the very surface of the powers over US citizens Bush claimed. For three years when I have cautioned citizens about this power Bush invoked to seize US citizens as "enemy combatants" I reassured them that he did not yet have the power to torture US citizens, "only" drive them mad through prolonged isolation in a navy brig. Well, this memo asserts Bush's right to do whatever he wants to innocent US citizens in this kind of custody, and rejects the notion that Congress would have any role in how US citizens are held or treated -- say, by the hypothetically deployed military - on US soil. It seems also to claim the right to hold innocent US citizens in domestic military custody while Bush has the right to do anything he wants to them. Anything he wants. Remember this is an administration in which Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld and Cheney have now been proven by Jameel Jaffer's revelations in Administration of Torture to have known about and okay'd not just waterboarding as a policy but ok'd the discretion for interrogators to use tactics such as electrodes attached to genitals, sexual assault, threats against family members, suffocation, the beating of prisoners' legs to "pulp," and in some cases the covering up of their murders. This memo gives Bush the authority to do those things if he wants to innocent US citizens.
Still another memo gives Bush the right to ignore any international treaties -- to take over any country, say, or render and citizen anywhere, and do whatever he wants to the citizens of any country against any law, without consent of Congress.
The Washington Post called these memos "legal errors." We need to stare them in the face and understand them: they are evidence that the groundwork was laid out that gave the president the legal power effectively subvert the Republic. We need to understand the full darkness of what we narrowly escaped -- for now, our work is hardly begun. We need to build these lessons into our history and to use the terror they represent to dismantle the last of Bush's evil legacy -- a legacy that could have been activated by any US president in the future, including Obama or McCain -- and see these memos for what they are: the revealed architecture of an intended edifice of what amounts to treason again our republic and against all of us, regardless of belief, station of life, or political party.
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While we justifiably rail against the tyranny of the Geo W Bush former administration and the rat's nest of unconstitutional laws it left behind to destroy freedom, let us not stray our focus from more immediate events. The new federal education secretary on March 11 or 12, 2009, stated that to allow 50 states to go their own way in education was a bit much. Having opposed states' rights during the 1960's struggle for civil rights legislation and beyond, it is time to consider erosion of local (read, state) control. Our children are being "educated" by studying to pass a federally mandated test, confine their learning to federally mandated areas. The many good schools are now suffering with this federal control simply because there were some schools who failed to teach everyone in their care. Ever since the misapplication of one-person, one-vote in the case of school funding (see, Serrano v Priest, a 1969 California case), truly local (read, county) control of funding has given eliminated. Rather one state, one vote is now the rule. Freedom is slipping away because only a moral and educated populace can support it (this is a paraphrase of Ben Franklin's famous line). Call Congress and demand our people power be returned to local control. We are the salt of the earth. Does the federal government think we have lost our savor? It appears they do and we have.
Wake Up America. The whole government is corrupt and I think we need to hire Donald Trump the fire the whole bunch of them. Do you really think that they are not all aware of this stuff? Have we been dumbed down or what? We need to really have the whole bunch of them investigated. Don't trust any of them except a few.
It's horrifying to learn how close we have come to living under tyranny. Perhaps it would have taken the sight of our own military troops storming local radio and tv stations and newspapers, shutting down the internet to any non-official websites to make us notice what was happening.
It's chilling to remember the quip made by George Bush at one point about how things would be easier if the US was a dictatorship - as long as he was the dictator. It would have been extra funny to his henchmen, who at that moment were diligently working to make it a reality. How do we prevent this in the future? If a president takes an oath to uphold the constitution, and then secretly proceed to rip it to shreds, ish't that treason?
Naomi are you an agent provocateur? Why are you spreading the word that it's over? It's not over, we've only entered another phase in this inexorable inevitable chaotic disintegration process. We've surrendered to much in apathy and fear, been extorted, robbed and betrayed by our own institutions too long to recover in our sentient lifetimes and we are going to leave a big mess for our children just like in "The Road".
I used to struggle, a year ago, to imagine some socio/political events sufficient to render such a world as Cormac McCarthy's characters traversed in his book "The Road". How could it be made plausible and manifest? It was fantastical, of course, right?
Well wonder no more pilgrim, read today's (March 9,2009) announcement and assessment of our most likely shared global futures and retreat then with me to the stockade, the safehouse, the inner keep and compound with our mates and children and whatever weapons we can get in whichever rump state we happen to inhabit and seek and struggle only then to survive and retain some elements of kindness in our humanity.
Good luck, everyone.
Treason indeed. It's a Bush/Walker family tradition to act in it's own interests, it's money interests, even if it may risk accusations of treason when revealed to scrutiny.
I really want to know where John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez and the rest of the fascisti that permeated the justice department during the Bush years got their educations? Where did they learn that these things were legal and acceptable, let alone moral? What curriculum featured courses in Dictatorship 101, Introduction to Totalitarianism, or First studies in Machiavelli? These guys passed with flying colors and are aptly fitted to work in the justice system of the third reich. However their behavior in America is criminal and they should be prosecuted to the full extent of the real law, not the fantasy they tried to concoct.
Please. They never learned that it is "legal and acceptible, let alone moral". They knew what few Americans really understand: if you have control of Congress, the Executive Branch, and effective control of the Supreme Court, the law is what the President says it is. It doesn't matter how wrong, immoral, seditions, or outright traitorous the President and his sycophants are, as long as there is no avenue of effective protest, the President can effectively get away with murder. He can effectively ignore any law that he doesn't like. The ONLY recourses that actually matter are appeals to the Federal courts and Congress, and being able to stop any movement in Congress that he doesn't like puts a gun in one of his hands. A Supreme Court that is on his side puts a gun in the other.
Had Congress remained majority Republican after 2006, it's quite possible that the 2008 election would have never happened.
The Yoo memos are just that, memos. Bush and gang can quickly dispel any doubts the public might have as to whether he intended to rely on them for individual actions, or to apply them across the board by claiming dictatorship. All they have to do is produce documentation that no dictatorship would ever be permitted. You know. A Yoo memo clarifying the issue. Oh, wait, there are no memos discussing the negatives. We'll just have to wait until they all go to trial for treason, I guess.
I'm sure this was all a massive coincidence. If one were to suggest it was a conspiracy, one would be a conspiracy theorist.
No, just more observant than the majority of the sheep.
Naomi Wolf is a great fearless patriot who is almost alone in outlining the frightening dimensions of the Cheney-Bush conspiracy.
Congratulations Naomi!
There needs to be a big news page about these memos and this post by N. Wolf, instead of a big news page about octo-mom.
And yet again - a crystal clear reason to fully investigate and prosecute the actions and crimes of Bush and his gang of crooks. Somebody please call President Obama - and tell him that looking backward is the only real defense against the John Yoos and DICK Cheneys to come.
We didn't get to the bottom of Nixon's crimes because Jerry Ford helped his old buddy out and pardoned the sumbitch and the Iran Contra mess - which in some ways was more dangerous to the Constitution than Watergate was swept under the rug in a flood of presidential pardons. This history gave gutless draft dodgers like Cheney and W the nerve to try their tricks.
Sending the criminals of the Bush administration to jail would help keep America safer than any academic review of the perils that we avoided with the election of Obama.
I don't know what is shocking or so surprising. Open eyes were all it took to see exactly what Bush was doing with his "power." I have to agree with sisterdebmac. The only thing nobody really knew about was how Bush had totally pulled the rug out from under the economy! Bush should have been impeached long ago and should have left office in shame. Then, he should have been prosecuted for the horrific damage he has done to this country. The fact that he wasn't impeached and / or prosecuted is the shocking part. Where are those prosecutors who went after Clinton like mad dogs? If anyone was guilty of any crimes, it's Bush. Yet everyone just closed their eyes or looked the other way.
The article and comments I've read so far represent a well-managed Hegelian dialectic. As a construction worker new to this perspective my web surfing took me to US Army TRADOC -Training and Doctrine. The newly and hurriedly published Field Manual 7.0 (combined with other FM's) promulgates exactly what the Army will be doing soon within this country. "Full spectrum fighting" rehearsals in Iraq are designed for the US population. "Stability mechanisms" such as civilian support, i.e. handing out water bottles, Katrina style, WILL NOT occur unless the Army is called in to engage the enemy with "Defeat mechanisms." That's killing.
We didn't escape Bush looting our citizenry... these memos may have been 'subversions' to scare people away from the actual damage done to us by stealing our livelihoods, investments, and ability to counter their plunder.
"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society,
they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes
it and a moral code that glorifies it." -- Fred Bastiat
One title sums up the Bush years.
"The Duty Myth."
There is only one functional error in this essay. These legal opinions gave Bush no actual special powers or privileges. Only the constitution offers specific and limited powers to the country's executive, as an expression of a social contract between the government and the governed. I could find and pay someone to write me a legal opinion that I am the master of the universe, but that does not make it so. What it does further prove, however, is a valid legal basis for charging Bush with treason. I am of course referring to the constitutional definition of treason, as per article 3 section 3, and specifically for "levying war" against the people of the United States. That is what these memos clearly state in purpose and do evidentially demonstrate.
We know that the Bush administration has implemented several of the policies these memos give him cover for, even though they were unconstitutional. We also know that it has compelled corporations like AT&T to provide material support for these illegal activities. It isn't hyperbole to think that Bush could have compelled the media or other institutions to remain quiet about whatever he did somewhere in the US (in fact, he did convince the NYT to sit on it's investigative work about warrantless wiretapping for more than a year). If people don't know what's being done, if there's no recourse to the victims, if companies whose support he needs are compelled to cover up his actions, then it doesn't matter what the constitution says. Bush in fact committed unconstitutional acts - were there any consequences? Were any of the legal scholars who protested the little that was known taken seriously? No. The constitution and our laws did not fully protect us from our government over the past few years. And that's the truly scary part.
Until or unless there are real consequences and accountability, until past acts are repudiated and reversed, the very idea of constitutional government in the United States is already dead and even the present administration remains illegitimate.
Hmmm... terror-by-authority with intent to plunder enormous wealth.
in other words: Republican governance for fun and profit.
cont'd
It would appear that they - especially Cheney - were disappointed to hear what they were told: that our military was too stretched, and therefore unsupportive of empiric adventurism. All I can say, if this is a fair guess as to the outcome of that visit, is: Whew. (And suck on THAT, Zbig.)
* So - close call. And it's not over yet. The PTB are still in a position to take over the global economic system, at fire sale rates. And so the Overlord gang could still get their wish, as voiced - audaciously arrogantly - by one of their banking boys to a congressional hearing years ago, to the effect that 'we will have a one world government, whether by choice or by force'. Meaning, obviously, the force of circumstances. Crisis equalling Opportunity.
We have been warned. But also: we are better prepared, to deal with such a world-controlling scenario. Thanks to such technology as the internet. And to such keen-eyed warriors for The People as Naomi Wolf.
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