A Quiet Coup: Cheney/Bush's Steps To Martial Law

by Ed Ciaccio

If U.S. corporate media were not complicit in the Quiet Coup staged by Neoconservatives of BOTH major political parties since December 2000, we would have been thoroughly informed about all of the following, with their implications and ramifications. But corporate media has so much to gain by its complicity, and so much to lose by fulfilling its responsibility in a supposed democracy, that it has gone along with the misinformation, neglect, and cover-ups.

The Democrats refused to contest either the 2000 or 2004 elections, despite glaring irregularities and violations of precedence. Democrats have continued to vote for most of the Cheney/Bush agenda, both foreign and domestic, over the last seven and a half years, with very few exceptions.

Democrats, except for Cynthia McKinney (now Green Party candidate for president), Dennis Kucinich, and Robert Wexler, have refused to support impeachment hearings for Cheney's and Bush's many, many gross violations of Constitutional and international law, let alone their war crimes. In fact, Democratic leaders themselves have been complicit in some of these war crimes, and most Democrats continue to vote funding for the illegal wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, refusing to question the sanity and legality of Bush's "Global War on Terror."

For an outline of the steps to fascism, gleaned from history, see "Fascist America in 10 easy steps" by Naomi Wolf (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment)

The following events and actions are actual and historical, not theoretical, and are by no means exhaustive:

Cheney/Bush's Steps To Martial Law (as of July 21, 2008):

1. Stealing the 2000 presidential election in Florida (with the help of Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was also co-chair of the Florida Bush Election Campaign, and the five regressive Supreme Court Justices appointed by Nixon, Reagan, and Bush, Sr.)
2. 9/11/01 attacks (Bush had been warned numerous times since Jan. 2001)
3. Bush's GWOT - Global war on Terror ("You're either with us, or with the terrorists!")
4. Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (only one member of Congress voted against it)
5. Patriot Act I (obviously prepared well in advance of the 9/11 attacks, it was rushed into law before most members of Congress had read it)
6. Bush's hundreds of "signing statements" basically negating laws passed by Congress with which he disagreed
7. Stealing the 2004 presidential election in Ohio (with the help of Ohio's Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, also co-chair of the "Committee to re-elect George W. Bush")
8. Bush's multiple violations of the original FISA law (revealed Dec., 2005 and admitted by Bush himself)
9. Bush's Homeland Security contract to KBR for construction of "detention centers" across the U.S.
10. The Military Commissions Act of 2006
11. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 (see, especially, Section 1076)
12. National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20
13. H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (the "Thought Crime Act") passed the House 404 to 6, with 22 not voting; Democratic Representative Jane Harman, its prime sponsor, was one notable Democrat who was privy to Bush Administration torture information in 2002. Its Senate counterpart, S. 1959, is still in committee.
14. FISA "Reform" Act (not only granted retroactive AND FUTURE immunity to telecoms for their complicity in Bush's violations of the original FISA Law, but also, implicitly, to Bush, as well as gutting the Fourth Amendment guarantee of privacy).
15. Federal 4th Circuit Appeals Court gives the president sweeping power to deprive anyone -- citizens as well as noncitizens -- of their freedom. The designation "enemy combatant," which should apply only to people captured on a battlefield, can now be applied to ANY people detained inside the United States.

As a result of these steps, the president now has much more power than ever before in U.S. history, certainly more than our Constitution allows him, according to most Constitutional scholars such as Jonathan Turley, Glenn Greenwald, Bruce Fein, and John Dean.

The important question is, what, if anything, will the new president, Obama or McCain, do to reverse any of these steps (except for numbers 1, 2, and 7, obviously)?