9/11 Wasn't When It All Changed
It was when the Cheney/Bush mafia was installed by the supreme court in December 2000. 9/11 was just part of the fascist agenda, the shock and awe justification for changing the country into an autocratic police state with a decidedly techno-christian stench.
This is an excerpt from former republican senator Lincoln Chafee's "Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President", published by NPR.
"Early in December 2000, Senator [Arlen] Specter asked Richard Cheney, our Republican vice presidential candidate, to have lunch with us on Wednesday, December 13. The vote-counting fiasco in Florida was under way and no one knew whether Texas Governor George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore had been elected the nation's 43rd president. Then, the night before we were to meet with Mr. Cheney, the news broke: the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the Florida recount unconstitutional. The Court authorized Katharine Harris, Florida's Republican secretary of state, to declare Bush and Cheney victorious.
We Republicans had won the presidency by a single vote in the Electoral College and a single vote in the Supreme Court. In the executive branch, winning by a whisker is as good as winning in a landslide, but not so in the Senate. For the first time in a century we had a Senate split down the middle, 50-50, with a Republican vice president available to break a tie in our favor. That whisker-thin margin of victory had real consequences to my way of thinking.
It meant that our small club of five moderate Republican votes would be vital to President-elect Bush if he had any hope of getting his legislative initiatives through.
That was why Vice President-elect Richard Cheney came to our lunch that day: Not to say he needed us, but to tell us that he and George W. Bush were in charge and no one else.
In steady, quiet tones, the Vice President-elect laid out a shockingly divisive political agenda for the new Bush administration, glossing over nearly every pledge the Republican ticket had made to the American voter. President-elect Bush had promised that healing, but now we moderate Republicans were hearing Richard Cheney articulate the real agenda: A clashist approach on every issue, big and small, and any attempt at consensus would be a sign of weakness. We would seek confrontation on every front. He said nothing about education or the environment or health care; it was all about these new issues that were rarely, if ever, touted in the campaign. The new administration would divide Americans into red and blue, and divide nations into those who stand with us or against us. I knew that what the Vice President-elect was saying would rip the closely divided Congress apart. We moderates had often voted with President Clinton on things that powerful Republican constituencies didn't like: an increase in the minimum wage, a patients' bill of rights, and campaign finance reform. Mr. Cheney knew this, but he ticked off the issues at the top of his agenda and did it fearlessly. It made no difference to him that we were potential adversaries; he was going down his to-do list and checking off Confrontation Number 1.
Senator Arlen Specter spoke first. As the most junior member, I would have my say last, if at all. I could hardly sit still as I waited to hear my respected friend wade into this outrageous manifesto.And then, in a moment I can only describe as infuriating, Senator Specter took no leadership role in representing the moderate point of view. He acquiesced, and others followed his example."
War as foreign policy with a concurrent fascist police state was always the agenda. 9/11 was just business as usual and the people murdered that day weren't unfortunate collateral damage, they were necessary props in a grotesque stage play. The invasion, occupation and dismantling of Iraq was planned years before 2003 and was only just another piece of the whole, which is a monstrous agenda to subjugate the entire planet to the will of a few through war, famine and disease. In this memoir Chafee shows how Cheney the thug gave his marching orders toward gutting this nation domestically, and how his traitorous colleagues sat back and nodded in agreement.
This is an excerpt from former republican senator Lincoln Chafee's "Against the Tide: How a Compliant Congress Empowered a Reckless President", published by NPR.
"Early in December 2000, Senator [Arlen] Specter asked Richard Cheney, our Republican vice presidential candidate, to have lunch with us on Wednesday, December 13. The vote-counting fiasco in Florida was under way and no one knew whether Texas Governor George W. Bush or Vice President Al Gore had been elected the nation's 43rd president. Then, the night before we were to meet with Mr. Cheney, the news broke: the U.S. Supreme Court had declared the Florida recount unconstitutional. The Court authorized Katharine Harris, Florida's Republican secretary of state, to declare Bush and Cheney victorious.
We Republicans had won the presidency by a single vote in the Electoral College and a single vote in the Supreme Court. In the executive branch, winning by a whisker is as good as winning in a landslide, but not so in the Senate. For the first time in a century we had a Senate split down the middle, 50-50, with a Republican vice president available to break a tie in our favor. That whisker-thin margin of victory had real consequences to my way of thinking.
It meant that our small club of five moderate Republican votes would be vital to President-elect Bush if he had any hope of getting his legislative initiatives through.
That was why Vice President-elect Richard Cheney came to our lunch that day: Not to say he needed us, but to tell us that he and George W. Bush were in charge and no one else.
In steady, quiet tones, the Vice President-elect laid out a shockingly divisive political agenda for the new Bush administration, glossing over nearly every pledge the Republican ticket had made to the American voter. President-elect Bush had promised that healing, but now we moderate Republicans were hearing Richard Cheney articulate the real agenda: A clashist approach on every issue, big and small, and any attempt at consensus would be a sign of weakness. We would seek confrontation on every front. He said nothing about education or the environment or health care; it was all about these new issues that were rarely, if ever, touted in the campaign. The new administration would divide Americans into red and blue, and divide nations into those who stand with us or against us. I knew that what the Vice President-elect was saying would rip the closely divided Congress apart. We moderates had often voted with President Clinton on things that powerful Republican constituencies didn't like: an increase in the minimum wage, a patients' bill of rights, and campaign finance reform. Mr. Cheney knew this, but he ticked off the issues at the top of his agenda and did it fearlessly. It made no difference to him that we were potential adversaries; he was going down his to-do list and checking off Confrontation Number 1.
Senator Arlen Specter spoke first. As the most junior member, I would have my say last, if at all. I could hardly sit still as I waited to hear my respected friend wade into this outrageous manifesto.And then, in a moment I can only describe as infuriating, Senator Specter took no leadership role in representing the moderate point of view. He acquiesced, and others followed his example."
War as foreign policy with a concurrent fascist police state was always the agenda. 9/11 was just business as usual and the people murdered that day weren't unfortunate collateral damage, they were necessary props in a grotesque stage play. The invasion, occupation and dismantling of Iraq was planned years before 2003 and was only just another piece of the whole, which is a monstrous agenda to subjugate the entire planet to the will of a few through war, famine and disease. In this memoir Chafee shows how Cheney the thug gave his marching orders toward gutting this nation domestically, and how his traitorous colleagues sat back and nodded in agreement.
posted by nolocontendere at 6:25 AM
2 Comments:
Yep. War is good for business, good for the banks. Each administration since the start of the last century has to have, as part of it's agenda, some plan of war, to continue the practice and keep the banks in control.
At this stage in the game, all of these little heart-tug blatherings from politicians, such as "affordable health care", "green technology", "welfare", "living wage" etc. mean nothing to me anymore. Not that we don't need them of course (because goodness knows WE DO). They no longer mean nothing to me when they come out of the mouths of politicians because they're simply a means of pacifying a public in order to keep the game of war, amongst other ugly corrupt plans, going. And even when created, such policies never go far enough. They're not supposed so. That would mean and end to war, corporate greed, unnecessary struggle and poverty and other ills.
Sorta like dangling a carrot in front of the eyes of a very hungry rabbit, giving him a nibble, then yanking it away while claiming "But see, I gave you a bite. What do you want? The whole carrot??" while walking back to their field of carrots, paid for by said rabbit.
So well said, nina or norman.
A lot of people like to play the game of "How can we fix this?" by adding bandaids here, marching there, writing letters or voting for this one or that one. Unfortunately, none of it will change anything.
We're at the point where nothing we little people do alters anything substantive. Oh sure, we should be decent people and do what little we can to change our immediate environment for the better, but here's the reality as I see it - the insanity has spun so far out of control that the evil scumbags will have their way until forces way beyond THEIR control will stop them. Meaning natural processes and earth changes deluxe.
Sad to say, that's how bad it's gotten, and all we can do is shake our heads and chronicle the disaster, and at least try to get a chuckle every now and then.
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