Robert Parry: Pretending That Bush is Not a Tyrant

via AlterNet:



Pretending That Bush is Not a Tyrant

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted June 30, 2008.

If you listen to Bush's legal advisors, questions about the limits of his authority might not be hypothetical anymore.



All over the world down through history, political leaders who have engaged in torture and other grotesque crimes of state have justified their actions as necessary to protect their governments or their people or themselves.

It was true when England’s King Edward I had William Wallace – “Braveheart” – drawn and quartered in 1305 for resisting the crown’s rule in Scotland, and a gruesome death was what King George III foresaw for America’s Founding Fathers in 1776 when they stood up to his abuses in the Colonies.

Kings and tyrants often inflicted special pain on people they viewed as challenging their authority and – at such times – they wiped away the rules of justice. But the United States was supposed to be different.

Indeed, reaction to tyrannical monarchs was what compelled the Founders to establish a government of laws, not men, based on “unalienable rights” for all mankind, including protection against arbitrary detention and prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Which is why it was stunning to watch the June 26 hearing before the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution as two representatives of George W. Bush’s presidency responded with disdain when pressed on the administration’s extraordinary vision of an all-powerful Executive operating without legal limits. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/89834/

Sure you'll soon have the fifth.

I suspect that Bush/Cheney have their own 'nuclear option' and scorched Earth gambits prepared in the event that Congress actually starts a serious consideration of an impeachment bill.

(I'm 51). It's hard to believe that they actually condone the criminality. My guess is it's some combination of physical threats (whoever tried to kill Daschle & Leahy was never investigated) and dirt gleaned from the illegal spying that Cheney's been engaged in since taking office.

All their tricks are tried and true, the only thing slightly innovative about this criminal gang is scale.

Too bad he can't get a weekly column in one of the glossies, like the lying pos Bill Kristol

Not because the damage he's done is, by any measure, inconsequential, but that it's so damn pedestrian and blatant. Not one whit of imagination among this bunch, just greed, avarice and wrath, all out in the open for anyone with the eyes to see it.

Their playbook is the sum of short articles and synopses on every tyrant in history - with special attention paid to Stalin, Pol Pot and Hitler, clumsily splattered with a facade of the highest and/or most noble acts of every American President since Washington - especially those who took us to war and are now hailed for their leadership during those times.

It is, because they say it is, and who are we to question their actions? It's not their fault they didn't bother to read the part about consequences. That's where most of the big words are - "beautiful minds" and all that.

Consortiumnews.com is an absolutely crucial resource in these days of nonstop propaganda
(and a flood of trivialities) from the mainstream media. Parry is that rarest of God's creatures:
a real journalist.

So please do what you can to help keep that site going!

MCM

At Consortiumnews.com, our mid-year fundraiser is off to a slow start. So far we've raised only $2,000 toward our goal of $40,000

I received this in my email today from Mark Crispin Miller about Robert Parry. I've never done this before so I'm hoping it's okay to put it in here like this.