Critically, Cheney’s plan was implemented by a man with no formal power or authority, but who appropriated the president’s without a whimper from the Oval Office. Hence, the added need for secrecy. But as long as the Shrubster could go to bed at 9.00 o’clock and still ride his bike, as long as he could avoid paying a fair share of taxes on unearned income from trust funds accumulating since the Civil War, it was OK by him.

Equally critically, the Cheney plan obfuscates not just his authorship, but who benefits: the recently discussed new “triangular traders”. Not this time those who made millions (in North and South alike) trading slaves, for molasses, for rum. This go round, it’s the billionaires, the neocon “intellectuals”, and a small group of corporations and wealthy investors.

Fear is profitable, ask Raytheon and Halliburton and Blackwater. Its contagious and spreads on its own. But it benefits Wall Street, not Main Street. Fear makes people forget their own issues and man the pumps. No point negotiating the union contract, or organizing for national health care, or stopping the creeping privatization of public universities when the house is burning down.

But Cheney’s “one percent” limit for fearsome creatures, written about by Ron Suskind, illustrates that the publicized fears are not rationally based. As do color-coded alerts around the holidays and key Congressional votes. The secrecy and fear that hides Cheney’s authorship does sucker punch normal policy reviews and cost/benefit analyses, and the network of bureaucrats who would do them. (And bolsters the work of neocon think tank “intellectuals” that provide the “rational” foundations for a post-apocalyptic, er 9/11, America.)

Scott Horton’s work illustrates an important element of the plan: the corruption of the DOJ in order to act outside the law, to hide it, and to avoid being accountable for it. It also derails and punishes opponents, including whistleblowers, and their backers. Added to secrecy and fear, retribution clips the opposition, including most ominously, Congressional oversight. That leads to enactment of laws that institutionalize the president’s word as the only law of the land.

Jello Jay, Harried Harmon, Running Reid – take note. The voters are awakening. They are coming. And they are not happy.

anyway;

Make no mistake, the secrecy and intimidation on these issues comes from a single source: the shadow national security apparatus Dick Cheney has been fostering for his own policy purposes, and protection of his network of neocon allies who have birthed and implemented the host of failed policies from acceptance of torture to the end-run of the rule of law at any price.

must post this on all cheney threads

Published on Monday, February 13, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Rumsfeld and Cheney Revive Their 70’s Terror Playbook
by Thom Hartmann

Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are at it again.
Last week, Rumsfeld told the press we should be preparing for “the Long War,” saying of the war this administration has stirred up with its attack on Iraq that, “Just as the Cold War lasted a long time, this war is something that is not going to go away.”

The last time Rumsfeld talked like this was in the 1970s, in response to the danger of peace presented by Richard Nixon.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon returned from the Soviet Union with a treaty worked out by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the beginning of a process Kissinger called “détente.” On June 1, 1972, Nixon gave a speech in which he said:

“Last Friday, in Moscow, we witnessed the beginning of the end of that era which began in 1945. With this step, we have enhanced the security of both nations. We have begun to reduce the level of fear, by reducing the causes of fear—for our two peoples, and for all peoples in the world.”
But Nixon left amid scandal and Ford came in, and Ford’s Secretary of Defense (Donald Rumsfeld) and Chief of Staff (Dick Cheney) believed it was intolerable that Americans might no longer be bound by fear. Without fear, how could Americans be manipulated? And how could billions of dollars taken as taxes from average working people be transferred to the companies that Rumsfeld and Cheney – and their cronies – would soon work for and/or run?

Rumsfeld and Cheney began a concerted effort – first secretly and then openly – to undermine Nixon’s treaty for peace and to rebuild the state of fear.

They did it by claiming that the Soviets had a new secret weapon of mass destruction that the president didn’t know about, that the CIA didn’t know about, that nobody knew about but them. It was a nuclear submarine technology that was undetectable by current American technology. And, they said, because of this and related-undetectable-technology weapons, the US must redirect billions of dollars away from domestic programs and instead give the money to defense contractors for whom these two men would one day work or have businesses relationships with.

The CIA strongly disagreed, calling Rumsfeld’s position a “complete fiction” and pointing out that the Soviet Union was disintegrating from within, could barely afford to feed their own people, and would collapse within a decade or two if simply left alone.

As Dr. Anne Cahn, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1977 to 1980, told the BBC’s Adam Curtis for his documentary “The Power of Nightmares”:

“They couldn’t say that the Soviets had acoustic means of picking up American submarines, because they couldn’t find it. So they said, well maybe they have a non-acoustic means of making our submarine fleet vulnerable. But there was no evidence that they had a non-acoustic system. They’re saying, ‘we can’t find evidence that they’re doing it the way that everyone thinks they’re doing it, so they must be doing it a different way. We don’t know what that different way is, but they must be doing it.’
“INTERVIEWER (off-camera): Even though there was no evidence.

“CAHN: Even though there was no evidence.

“INTERVIEWER: So they’re saying there, that the fact that the weapon doesn’t exist…

“CAHN: Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It just means that we haven’t found it.”

But Rumsfeld and Cheney wanted Americans to believe there was something nefarious going on, something we should be very afraid of. To this end, they convinced President Ford to appoint a commission including their old friend Paul Wolfowitz to prove that the Soviets were up to no good.

Wolfowitz’s group, known as “Team B,” came to the conclusion that the Soviets had developed several terrifying new weapons of mass destruction, featuring a nuclear-armed submarine fleet that used a sonar system that didn’t depend on sound and was, thus, undetectable with our current technology. It could – within a matter of months – be off the coast of New York City with a nuclear warhead.

WAHH!

Just saw the video of Clinton “crying.” Maybe it’s me, but goddamn it looks SO fake. Who the hell does she think we are?!? Just go away to some cushy job on Wall St. Please!

http://www.newsweek.com/id/85609

**if it’s real, Lord please forgive me.

Just watched this the first time myself on TV.

Sorry to disagree with you but I thought it was real. Hilary came across to me as someone who is real, who is truly concerned, and perhaps dismayed that she hasn’t been able to get the message out that this country can be better than is has been under the Bush administration.

Hilary has her faults, but I don’t doubt her sincerity.

May the Lord forgive you. *g*.

I recall well my party screaming at the top of their lungs about the 18 1/2 minute gap.

And the firing of Archibald Cox after the Pres said he wouldn’t interfere with his investigation. The Saturday Night Massacre was the first time I ever wrote my Congressman and Senators. I was 28 years old, and I had been paying attention to politics for many years prior, by the way. Guess I’ve always been a political junkie.

The core of Iran’s fighting ships are several Chinese, French and Iranian made small missile boats. In particular, there are five Chinese Cat-14 fast attack catamarans of very recent design and build. These catamarans are believed to travel at 50 knots (93 km/h), and are extremely stable and mobile. All five are armed with the latest design of Chinese anti-ship missiles. The rest of Iran’s navy consists of around 250 small costal and inshore patrol craft.

It would be nice if you’d include a link on your sources here, but I’m guessing that they are correct. How ironic, too, because the Iranian attack catamarans represent the kind of Navy that Donald Rumsfeld’s transformational thinking would love, and the aircraft carriers and destroyers are like, oh so World War II thinking that Rumsfeld despises.

Are the Iranians stealing pages from Rumsfeld’s playbook?

Bob in HI

I thought the Clinton scene seemed legit. I don’t think she wanted to show as much as she did.

Her best strategy now is to run to the left- and go hard against Bush..

The problem is that Hillary can’t exactly use her major asset, the fact that she is a sitting Senator, to start to develop the credibility she needs to counter Obama and Edwards. If she had actually supported Dodd’s filibuster more actively, or had repeatedly requested that the House investigate Cheney for Unconstitutional acts (a safe position by the way, since she would not have to actually do very much about it), or had more vehemently insisted on holding funds for Iraq unless there was a firm withdrawal schedule…

Well, then she may have been able to illustrate her credibility. But she never championed anything that would counter her vote for the Iraq Authorizing Resolution. That’s been the albatross around her neck. Edwards was able to free himself of that once he was free of the burden of having to make political compromises…after he actually stepped down from the Senate. To that point he was in favor of the invasion and even advised Kerry not to back away from the Authorizing Resolution vote. And Obama never had the albatross.