Bush’s Secret War on America

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/23/2056/

Bush’s Secret War on America
by Evan Whitton

Florian von Donnersmarck’s haunting film The Lives of Others is a warning to us all. It shows how the East German secret police, the Stasi, went about their deadly work of spying on 17 million citizens.It is a stretch, but not impossible, to see the US President, George Bush, as the new Erich Honecker, the dictator of East Germany from 1971 until the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

Apart from lying, politicians tend to be overly fond of running other people’s lives. There is a wickedly hilarious scene in Keating: The Musical in which the opposition leader, John Howard, clumps up and down the catwalk rasping: “I want powerrr!”

The events of September 11, 2001, gave Bush the excuse to procure absurd legal advice that, as commander-in-chief in a war on a high-order abstraction, terrorism, he has the power to do what he liked with the lives of millions at home and abroad.

He soon signed a secret executive order instructing the National Security Agency’s 30,000 operatives to spy without a warrant on US citizens. Whatever certain lawyers or judges might say, this was plainly unlawful under the Fourth Amendment (1791) to the US constitution. It states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The unlawful violations of people’s security remained hidden for more than four years until The New York Times revealed them in December 2005.

Bush periodically renewed the order and the former attorney-general John Ashcroft had to certify it was legal, but James Comey supervised a re-evaluation soon after he became deputy attorney-general in December 2003.

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It seems the Patriot Act was enacted to illegally spy on American citizens to invade and gather data on all areas of our lives, including all of our personal information and potential vulnerabilities, to certainly strip us of our power as citizens and potentially attempt to confiscate our personal property as well.

Homeland Security is allowed "in the event of a national emergency" to invade and seize assets in your personal bank boxes.