A very chilling article. Yet, plausible? :!:

http://www.rense.com/general77/chens.htm

Cheney Determined To Strike In US With WMD This Summer
Only Impeachment, Removal or General Strike Can Stop Him
By Webster G. Tarpley 7-21-7

The greatest threat now is "a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities."
-- Dick Cheney on Face the Nation, CBS, April 15, 2007

A few days ago, a group of lawyers from western Massachusetts met with the local congressman, Democrat John Olver (this is my Congressman, BTW - usually progressive, but confounding on the issue of impeachment). Their request was that Olver take part in the urgent effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. Olver responded by saying that he had no intention of doing anything to support impeachment. He went further, offering the information that the United States would soon attack Iran, and that these hostilities would be followed by the imposition of a martial law regime here.

According to reports in the British press, the Cheney war party has gained the upper hand in the secret councils of the Bush White House, pushing aside the purported hesitations of Miss Rice, Secretary Gates, and the NATO allies to chart a direct course towards war with Iran:

'The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned. The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo." at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week. "Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.' ("Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran; Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out; President 'not prepared to leave conflict unresolved'", Guardian, July 16, 2007.)

Deluded supporters of the Democratic Party may soon have to throw away their pathetic countdown clocks, those self-consoling little devices that remind them of how much time remains until noon on January 20, 2009, the moment when it is thought that Bush will finally leave office. These countdown clocks make no provision for the Cheney doctrine, which calls for a new super 9/11 with weapons of mass destruction in the US, to be used as the pretext for a nuclear attack on Iran and for martial law at home. Those who think the Republicans cannot hold the White House in 2008 have forgotten that neocons always prefer a coup d'etat to an election. As Cheney told Bob Schieffer of CBS's Face the Nation on April 15, 2007:

'The greatest threat now is "a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities."'

Pelosi and Reid need to toss out their fatuous countdown clocks, and get out their impeachment stopwatches ­ fast.

CHERTOFF'S GUT FEELING FOR TERRORISM

Integral to the Cheney strategy has always been to orchestrate a climate of public terror. As Cheney told WLS in Chicago on Friday April 13: It's important that people remember 9/11." 9/11 remains the basis of every one of Cheney's intrigues. One of Cheney's terror facilitators in this sense is Michael Chertoff, the cadaverous Secretary of Homeland Security. Although an experienced bureaucrat, Chertoff is now contemplating his navel as he searches for new ways to intimidate the American people, who have essentially no natural enemies at all, into the hallucination that they face an acute existential threat of being wiped out from one moment to the next. Chertoff told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune ­ once the voice of isolationism ­ that the US faces an increased danger of attack in the summer of 2007. This wild fabrication, not based on any specific information of any kind that he could cite, Chertoff called his "gut feeling the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer." "I believe we are entering a period this summer of increased risk," said Chertoff. "Summertime seems to be appealing to them. ... We worry that they are rebuilding their activities." The desperate demagogues of the Republican Party are facing a hecatomb at the polls in November 2008. Their idea seems to be that of the fascist Prime Minister Aznar of Spain in March 2004: if you are sure to lose an election, stage a terror attack, declare martial law, and perpetuate your power that way. Aznar was stopped by a general strike of about one third of the entire Spanish people. If all else fails, would Americans be capable of a mass strike against war and dictatorship? We may soon find out.

Chertoff's troubled gut has already given rise to a White House interagency group of top intelligence and law enforcement functionaries that meets every Friday afternoon at 1PM. Will this committee run the coup? Reports followed of dozens of FBI agents fanning out to pursue a "worry list" of some seven hundred alleged leads, including 100 in the New York area. Some of these derived from the recent British terror stunts in London and Glasgow used by MI-5 and MI-6 to smooth the transition from the Tony Blair quasi-police state to the Gordon Brown version of the same thing. MI-5 and MI-6 displayed the same mixture of comic ineptitude and phlegmatic homicide which was their hallmark during the long years when London was the prey of bombs by the "Irish Republican Army," now revealed to have been top-heavy with government intelligence agents who called the shots. The Glasgow airport event consisted of a burning car crashed into a building, the films of which were shown all afternoon the by the US cable news networks. One was tempted to propose a caption: "Only one burning car ­ a good day on the Cross-Bronx Expressway." Yet for one burning car, the world was supposed to stop. These British events had been preceded by several weeks of hysteria about allegedly looming terror attacks against US installations in the Rhein-Main area of Germany, featuring the Wiesbaden spa, all based on CIA claims made to the government in Berlin and relentlessly trumpeted through the controlled media.

A NEW 9/11 THE KEY TO BOLSTERING WESTERN RESOLVE

Chertoff's rationale was illuminated by an interview with Lt. Colonel Doug Delaney, the chair of the war studies program at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a NATO intelligence center. Delaney was addressing the problems raised by the rising Canadian losses in Afghanistan, but he provided a valuable window into the minds of military planners when he observed, in the words of the interviewer: "It may well be that the key to bolstering Western resolve is another terrorist attack like 9/11 or the London transit bombings of two years ago, he says. If nothing happens, it will be harder still to say this [Canadian meddling in Afghanistan] is necessary." In other words, it may be time for a new false flag synthetic terror operation to gin up hysteria in North America to permit the present bankrupt elites to retain power and further grind down any spirit of popular resistance to such irrational rule. Chertoff's fear-mongering was backed up by ousted Republican senator and notorious scoundrel Rick Santorum, who told a radio interviewer that "between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public is going to have a very different view of this war." Chertoff's reckless and inflammatory ventriloquism was the harbinger of the new US National Intelligence Estimate issued on July 17.

THE BOOZ ALLEN NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE: "AL QAEDA" THREAT TO USA LOOMS

This pitiful NIE ranks with the lying NIEs issued before the attack on Iraq in 2003 as a tissue of lies and prevarications. The main thesis is that al Qaeda branches around the world are striving to infiltrate more operatives into the US for terror attacks on the US "homeland:" "Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al Qaeda senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here," opines the declassified summary of the underlying secret screed. "As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment." (cnn.com, July 17) The new faked NIE has been produced under the supervision of Admiral Michael McConnell, the current US intelligence czar, whose credentials include ten years at Booz Allen Hamilton, the premier private military firm. Some analysts have asked what was going on at Booz Allen on September 11, 2001, and in the days leading up to that event, and what McConnell personally might have been working on. Back on January 7, 2007, Raw Story had portrayed the newly-nominated McConnell as a Cheney asset, and quoted CIA old boy Vince Cannistraro calling the McConnell nomination "a disaster." In the same article, CIA vet Larry Johnson predicted that McConnell, a weak manager, would cave in to Bush-Cheney on key issues. The fabrications of the new NIE have been assisted by Cheney's office, by convicted Iran-contra felon Elliot Abrams (now a dominant personality inside the Bush White House), by Abrams' military aide Gen. Kevin Bergner, and by other neocon assets.

Intelligence community veteran Philip Giraldi of the CIA has dismissed the new NIE with its talk of "high impact plots" against the US as "a tour de force of misinformation disguised as fact." Giraldi also noted: "It is possibly no coincidence that there has been a significant increase in the anti-Iran rhetoric emanating from both the Bush administration and Congress over the past few weeks, mostly seeking to establish a casus belli by contending that Iran is masterminding lethal attacks against US troops in Iran and NATO forces in Afghanistan." (antiwar.com, July 17)

CHENEY'S PERSIAN ADVENTURE

A nuclear attack on Iran remains the central obsession of the George Shultz-Rupert Murdoch-Cheney faction. On July 10, the Pentagon announced that it would be sending another aircraft carrier battle group, this time that of the USS Enterprise, to the waters off Iran. This means that whenever that carrier joins the two already there, three US attack carriers will be within striking range of Iranian targets. The Pentagon followed up shortly thereafter with another statement, assuring the world that soon only one carrier would patrol off Iran. But that was only a dubious promise, and in the meantime the three carriers would shortly be ready to attack.

On July 10, the Washington Post and Reuters stoked international hysteria with reports that mysterious and sinister tunnels were being built by the Iranian authorities near one of the suspected nuclear facilities of Natanz. These reports were accompanied by aerial photographs and satellite imaging that has been gussied up with labels to make them look as much as possible like the famous U-2 photographs of Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba back in October 1962. The claim was that the supposed tunnel "could be used to hide and protect key nuclear components." The implication was that the Iranian atomic bomb could not be far off, a notion for which there is no proof.

In the late winter, Pelosi, House Majority Leader Stenny Hoyer and Reid had bowed to the demands of AIPAC, the subversive pro-Israeli lobbying organization whose employees have been implicated in espionage, and removed from the defense bill a provision warning Bush that he was required to consult Congress before attacking Iran. A similar provision pushed for a while by Senator Webb of Virginia has also disappeared from view. As for the Republican presidential candidates, on June 7 they ­ with the solitary exception of maverick Ron Paul ­ outbid one another in enthusiasm for a nuclear attack on Iran. These ultra-Hitlerian outbursts occurred in response to manipulation by Wolf Blitzer, an obvious asset of the war party. For the good of the American people, the warmonger GOP candidates, along with Blitzer, should have been hauled away at once in a net by burly orderlies in white coats.

CHENEY'S BREAKAWAY ALLY CHARADE

A key component of Cheney's argument is that Israel may soon strike unilaterally against Iran with a sneak attack deploying nuclear weapons, breaking the post-1945 taboo on atomic bombs. This would represent the old "breakaway ally" scenario, by which Israel presents the US with such an attack as a fait accompli, and then expects Washington to enter the war on the side of the Israeli aggressors. Cheney's talking point is that the US must be ready to strike because the Israelis are going to act on their own anyway. The lying nature of Cheney's line is shown by Bush's remark to Chirac at the St. Petersburg G-8 summit in July 2006, when Bush was adamant that the Israeli aggression against Lebanon then ongoing was not an Israeli-conceived war, but rather a US war which had been assigned to Israel as a proxy and surrogate for the US. According to Will Thomas, a dress rehearsal for the breakaway ally charade occurred on January 7, 2007 when Israeli warplanes flew over Iraq and manifested the intention to "go downtown" ­ meaning an apparent nuclear strike into Iran. At some point the Israelis were allegedly told by the US to go back, and they desisted from the attempt. This reported incident came shortly before the US raided the Iranian consulate in Irbil in northern Iraq, illegally arresting Iranian diplomats. Around the same time, reports that an Iranian missile had hit a US ship caused a stir on Wall Street, while Iran reported shooting down another US drone over its territory. (infowars.com, willthomas.net)

The Israeli war party is represented first of all by Avigdor Lieberman, the Minister of Strategic Threats who is himself a strategic threat. On Friday July 13, a day of ill omen, Lieberman boasted before a group of NATO and European Union officials that Israel had received a green light from the U.S. and Europe for an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the U.S. will support us," said Lieberman. According to Israel Today magazine, Lieberman argued that ongoing hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan are "going to prevent the leaders of countries in Europe and America from deciding on the use of force to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities," so they are telling Israel to "prevent the threat herself."

Another Israeli incendiary is Brigadier General Yossi Kuperwasser, the former head of the Research Division of Israeli Military Intelligence. On July 10, Kuperwasser told the Jerusalem Post that economic sanctions alone will not stop Iran, and that the window of opportunity to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear installations was running out. Kuperwasser claimed that Iran is "very close" to the technological threshold for enriching uranium at an industrial level. The Iranians will then be able to manufacture a nuclear device within two to three years, according to Kuperwasser. "The program's vulnerability to a military operation is diminishing as time passes," Kuperwasser said, "and they are very close to the point that they will be able to enrich uranium at an industrial level."

EL BARADEI WARNS AGAINST NEOCON "NEW CRAZIES"

This kind of thinking in the US, UK, and Israel was what Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had in mind when he issued his famnous June 2, 2007 warning about a coming attack on Iran: "I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis innocent civilians are dying ...I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.' " And who are the "new crazies"? "Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force." It is not possible to "bomb knowledge."

A grave doubt casts its shadow over any scenario of US nuclear attack on Iran: as William Thomas reported last February, the fuses of cheap Chinese silicon chips now being used by the US military in ships, tanks, planes, and other applications may be too weak to resist the high levels of electromagnetic pulse (emp) which would be unleashed by a nuclear bombardment of the Iranian nuclear sites. The outsourced chips, coherent with the Rumsfeld "war on the cheap" strategy, could cripple a large proportion of the US Central Command's military hardware, with disruptive effects that would reach back to the command's Florida headquarters and possibly to the Pentagon. (rense.com, February 21, 2007, and willthomas.net) If these report are correct, US nuclear bombers might crash, the the carriers that launched them might suddenly find themselves dead in the water, quite indepen dent of what the Iranians might do.

CHENEY'S LEBANON-SYRIA GAMBIT

In addition to the hypothesis of an attack on Iran, there is also the immediate threat to Iran's ally, Syria. According to a UPI dispatch dated July 9 under the byline of Claude Salhani, numerous signs currently point towards hostilities between Israel and the Damascus government, with a renewed Israeli attack on Lebanon a likely element in this strategy. According to former State Department official Dennis Ross, "there is a risk of war" between Syria and Israel in the summer. Ross told YnetNews, Yedioth Ahronoth's Internet edition: "no one has made any decisions, but the Syrians are positioning themselves for war." The neocon exoteric New York Sun claimed to cite a supposed Syrian official saying that added that, by allegedly pulling Syrian nationals out of Lebanon by mid-July, "Damascus is preparing for Israeli retaliation following Syrian guerilla attacks and for a larger war with the Jewish state in August or September." "If Israel doesn't vacate the strategic Golan Heights before September, Syrian guerillas will immediately launch 'resistance operations' against the Golan's Jewish communities," the alleged Syrian added. These remarks reflect scenarios being developed by the Israelis.

But the Masada party of national suicide is not the only game in town for Israelis. On July 11, an anonymous leaker from inside Israeli Military Intelligence warned his associates to remember their ignominious defeat at the hands of Hezbollah in last summer's war. According to this source, "war with Syria would be ten times worse than with Hezbollah."

THE ATTACK ON PAKISTAN: MIDSUMMER OF NEOCON MADNESS

Cheney also has the option of attacking into Pakistan. Cheney had visited Pakistan at the end of February with an obvious ultimatum to General Musharraf to get ready to mount a land war against Iran this summer. Equally and immediately obvious was the fact that Musharraf, who considers himself the heir to the great Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, had told the Vice President to go Cheney himself. With Pakistan refusing to attack its neighbor, Cheney suddenly discovered that Osama bin Laden was being protected by Musharraf! The US-UK destabilization of Pakistan began in grand style, with the New York Times helpfully publishing lists of generals whom Washington would be delighted to see take power in a putsch in Islamabad. Pawns of the destabilization included the Chief Justice of Pakistan, reputed to be a British agent, and riots by lawyers in business suits. Then came the slaughter at the Red Mosque, staged by the usual CIA/MI-6 fundamentalists. Pakistan, under tremendous pressure from the US, has announced a military crackdown on so-called Taliban forces in the northern tribal areas of Waziristan, an enterprise sure to stir up a hornet's nest of resistance even if none had been there before. The neocons demanded that the US invade Pakistan, under the pretext of looking for Osama bin Laden. On July 12, neocon fascist madman William Kristol told Fox News: "I think the president's going to have to take military action there over the next few weeks or months.... Bush has to disrupt that sanctuary. I think, frankly, we won't even tell Musharraf. We'll do what we have to do in Western Pakistan and Musharraf can say, 'Hey, they didn't tell me.'" Ironically, bin Laden's second in command, reputed MI-6 speaking tube Ayman al Zawahiri, at around the same time issued a fatwa declaring jihad against Musharraf's Pakistani regime. If Musharraf was haboring Osama, why would al Qaeda declare war against Musharraf? The answer is what it has always been: "al Qaeda" is a troupe of agents provocateurs founded by the CIA and the British, and remains so until this day. As for the neocon plan to attack Pakistan, it is the very midsummer of madness: if Iran has three time the population of Iraq, Pakistan with 164 million is more than five times more numerous than Iraq. If the neocon plans succeed, the US would soon be at war with almost 300 million people ­ far too many for the hollow US force of 10 divisions, whatever technology they might possess.

WARNINGS: RON PAUL, PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, CINDY SHEEHAN, PAT BUCHANAN

Among other authoritative voices across the political spectrum warning of an imminent Bush-Cheney attack on Iran:

Republican Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul commented to Alex Jones: "I think we're in great danger of it. We're in danger in many ways, the attack on our civil liberties here at home, the foreign policy that's in shambles and our obligations overseas and commitment which endangers our troops and our national defense."

Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under the Reagan Administration, wrote in his latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran. Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of 'executive orders' that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, 'terrorist' events in the near future." (Paul Craig Roberts, "Impeach Now or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy," Counterpunch, July 16, 2007) In a July 19 interview with Thomm Hartmann of Air America, Roberts cited Bush's July 17 executive order, which allows the US regime to seize the property of anyone found to be interfering with the reconstruction of Iraq. This radio warning was reported by the RIA-Novosti news agency of Moscow in numerous languages. The Moscow summary, dated July 20, begins: "A former Reagan official has issued a public warning that the Bush administration is preparing to orchestrate a staged terrorist attack in the United States, transform the country into a dictatorship, and launch a war with Iran within a year."

Pat Buchanan is convinced that the danger of a new war provocation by Bush-Cheney will come in August, when the Democratic Congress will conveniently be out of Washington and on vacation. Buchanan asks important questions:

Is the United States provoking war with Iran, to begin while the Congress is conveniently on its August recess? One recalls that it was in August 1964, after the Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, that the Tonkin Gulf incident occurred.

Has Bush secretly authorized covert attacks inside Iran? Are U.S. and Israeli agents in Kurdistan behind the attacks across the border to provoke Iran? On July 11, Iranian troops clashed with Kurd rebels inside Iran, and the Iranians fired artillery back into Iraq.

Is this yet another abdication by Congress of its moral and constitutional duty to decide when and whether America goes to war?

Why is Congress going on vacation? Why are a Democratic-controlled House and Senate not asking these questions in public hearings? Why is Congress letting Bush and Vice President Cheney decide whether we launch a third war in the Middle East? Or is Congress in on it?" ("Tonkin Gulf II and the Guns of August?," World Net Daily, July 17, 2007)

Based on the John Olver remarks, the Democrats are in on it. As for Buchanan, he should say these things on MSNBC.

Also warning of new war provocations was Cindy Sheehan, who was traveling towards Washington DC to declare her challenge to failed House Speaker Pelosi. She commented that there was a "distinct possibility" that America will be hit with another staged terror attack that will allow Bush to enact the martial law provisions he recently imposed by executive order. These measures allow Bush to declare a domestic state of emergency in response to virtually any minor incident anywhere in the world. (Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet, July 12, 2007, "Sheehan: Distinct Chance Of Staged Attack, Martial Law; Peace Mom warns of false flag terror as she prepares to take on sell-out Pelosi.")

BUSH ANTICS STUN REPUBLICANS FROM THE HILL

This past week, the tenant of the White House showed new signs of mental instability by barging in to a routine meeting between White House communication director Ed Gillespie, spokesman Tony Snow, and a group of Republican congressional leaders. Bush was there to insist that everybody stay the course of Iraq.

"It was stunning," said one GOP aide who attended the meeting. "We couldn't believe he came in." "We kept looking at each other, amazed he came in," said another Republican colleague. According to one press account, "Bush was described as folksy, adamant and mildly profane as he interrupted the meeting. His message: the policy on Iraq isn't changing. He is not backing down and no one on Capitol Hill should be confused into thinking he is letting up."

A new threat to US policy comes from the formidable Turkish military establishment, which is sick and tired of constant cross-border attacks by PKK Kurdish terrorists operating from the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq. The US, UK, and Israelis are using the PKK for terror operations into Kurdish territories of Iran. These PKK terrorist are paid and armed directly by the US military, bringing any notion of a US "war on terror" to a new nadir of absurdity. For some time, the Turks have been lobbing shells and raiding into Kurdish Iraq. 140,000 Turkish troops are massed along the border in question, and if Turkish patience runs out, the Kurds will be crushed.

US IRAQ SUPPLY LINES IN GRAVE DANGER

Washington still cultivates delusions of grandeur: the moment of truth for Iraq will be in mid-September, or perhaps in November or December. But, as one British writer once put it, what if the bear blows first? What if US forces in Iraq experience catastrophic military defeat at some point in the future? What if it takes the form of pocketing or encirclement, the "Dunkirk if you're lucky, Stalingrad if you're not so lucky" outcome?

It is not clear whether or when Iraqi resistance forces will move decisively to attack the Achilles heel of the US occupation forces, the 400-mile truck convoys between Kuwait City and Baghdad, but the longer the US forces continue their present futile efforts, the more likely this tragic outcome will become. These are trucks driven by Pakistanis, Turks, Bangladeshis, and Filipinos, and protected by private military contractors ­ by poorly armed mercenaries. A recent report by Jim Michaels in USA Today indicates that the strategy most dangerous to the US forces is indeed gaining ground among the resistance: Michaels writes that "attacks on supply convoys protected by private security companies in Iraq have more than tripled as the U.S. government depends more on armed civilian guards to secure reconstruction and other missions. There were 869 such attacks from the beginning of June 2006 to the end of May this year. For the preceding 12 months, there were 281 attacks." Of all the news coming out of Iraq, this is perhaps the most ominous. Any military debacle by the US forces in Iraq would be immediately blamed on Iran, and would infallibly be seized upon by Cheney as a pretext for massive retaliation against Iran.

DOLLAR HYPERINFLATION A FACTOR

An important contributing factor in the Cheneyac war hysteria is the beginning of dollar hyperinflation. Two Bear Sterns hedge funds have blown up, wiping out $9 billion of capital in a few days, and Helicopter Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve says that the subprime mortgage bubble meltdown will lead to $100 billion in losses by US banks, and this is clearly a lowball figure. Two analysts quoted by the Toronto Globe and Mail on July 19 suggest that the entire US banking establishment may now be looking at a 15% to 20% devaluation because of mortgage-related losses. Only frenetic pumping in of new dollar liquidity by Helicopter Ben and his men is staving off big bankruptcies, but this sloshing liquidity spells hyperinflation . The Dow has passed 14,000, but the dollar has also reached an all-time low of almost $1.40 to a euro, with a 26-year low against the British pound. With oil well above $75 and gold above $680 per ounce, while raw materials and food prices skyrocket, the US may soon resemble Germany of 1923, when people took their money to the grocery store in a wheelbarrow, and brought home their purchases in their pocket. Small wonder that the worldwide dumping of the bankrupt US dollar continues apace, with Iran now asking Japan to pay for oil transactions in yen, cutting Wall Street out of another lucrative commodity flow.

US SITUATION TRAGIC

These points bring into sharp relief the dire predicament of our tragically drifting country in the summer of 2007, a summer which Cheney's backers and controllers are determined to transform into the Summer of Fear. Skeptics may object that they have heard all this before ­ in the spring and the autumn of 2004, in the late summer of 2005, and in March-April of 2007 ­ and that so far the general war with Iran had not occurred. This is true, but it is no argument against the urgency of the warnings that the present writer and others have issued from time to time over the last three years. It only shows that the world has been lurching and careening along the edge of a much wider war in the Middle East since about May of 2004 at the latest. For much of this time we have lived in the shadow of the Cheney doctrine, which calls for a nuclear attack on Iran in the wake of a new super 9/11 terrorist provocation (coming from the bowels of the US intelligence community) ­ as revealed by Philip Giraldi in The American Conservative in August of 2005. Each time some combination of internal US institutional resistance and inertia, objections by NATO allies, and foreign threats or pressure have somehow avoid the worst. So far we have muddled through. But Cheney's backers and controllers ­ the ones designated as the Cheneyacs in this analysis ­ have unfailingly pulled themselves together after each rebuff, and have marshaled their forces for a new drive over the brink of the abyss. As long as Bush and Cheney are in power, as long as the 9/11 rogue networks in the US intelligence community continue their work unpurged and undisturbed, we will face one war emergency after another, until the likely moment when humanity's luck runs out. Under any political system committed to its own survival, each of the Cheneyac war drives over the past three years should have lead to the impeachment, removal from office, and indictment of the dour and snarling old reprobate himself, and a general mop-up of his followers. It is the fact that the corrupt and cowardly parliamentary cretins of the Democratic Party have failed to impeach and oust Bush-Cheney over the last six months since they took power which represents the most immediate cause of the fix we are now in. Congressman Kucinich has introduced the needed articles against Cheney, but the Pelosi-Reid opportunists have been hostile to this needed measure. It is time for honest activists to join with the Philadelphia Platform to get on with the business at hand before martial law is imposed by these neocon fascist madmen, since by then it may be too late.

BRZEZINSKI: "A TERRORIST ACT IN THE US BLAMED ON IRAN"

The Democratic Party Congressional leadership has known all about Cheney's plans for six months or more, as can be shown from the public record. On February 1, 2007, Zbigniew Brzezinski warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of ongoing machinations designed to procure war with Iran and beyond: "A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran; culminating in a 'defensive' US action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan." Over the past half year, events have followed Brzezinski's scenario closely. Blaming Iran for the missed benchmarks in Iraq is now the daily stock in trade of the Bush administration and the US Central Command, who whine continuously about Iranian interference in Iraq. There have been several military provocations in Iraq which the US has tried to pin on Iran, most notably March 23, 2007 incident involving 15 British Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel who were taken into custody by the Iranians. This incident was a part of Cheney's winter-spring war drive, which peaked with two US B-1 bombers deliberately violating Iranian airspace over the city of Abadan in oil-rich Khuzestan province on March 31. This crisis was defused by a mobilization of persons of good will around the world, with Russian President Putin and the RIA-Novosti news agency playing a critical role. In particular, a pointed March 28 warning from Putin to Bush about attacking Iran created enough uncertainty in Washington about how Moscow might respond to nuclear aggression against Iran so that cooler heads than Cheney's prevailed.

FIGHT BACK WITH THE PHILADELPHIA PLATFORM

That leaves us with Brzezinski's third scenario point: a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran. What Brzezinski is talking about here is high treason, insurrection , genocide, high crimes against humanity under US law and the Nuremberg Code. Why has he not been called upon to tell all he knows about this sinister plot, so obviously operating through the Cheney-Addington office, and through Eliot Abrams at the White House? Because the Democrats who heard that warning ­ Senators Biden, Dodd, and Obama on the committee, plus Hillary Clinton ­ have done nothing to raise a hue and cry, hold hearings, issue subpoenas, demand documents, or begin impeachment hearings against those involved. The Democratic Party must therefore be seen as fully complicit under the Nuremberg Code in any future crimes by Cheney regarding a wider war in the Middle East. The Democratic Party has failed, and the viable peace movement must now organize independently on a multi-issue basis including 9/11 truth, as called for in the July 4, 2007 Philadelphia Platform, which can be seen at actindependent.org.


Does anyone know anything about this website, <rense.com>?

And here's a similar article, also from <rense.com>:

Immediate Impeachment ­
The Only Way Out & Back!
By Ted Lang 7-24-7

The reality of Vice President Dick Cheney's unprecedented, awesome and totally illegal power and authority over the people of America, the United States Congress, the Supreme Court, and all bureaus and agencies of American government, serves not only to invalidate totally the Constitution and the very founding of the United States, but proves correct as well the fears the Founders voiced when recognizing the threat of political parties. Identifying what is right or wrong with this country and its government no longer matters. Evaluating what is lawful and what is not are now devoid of both a system of recognition and a remedy. Attacking what is constitutional and what is not is now irrelevant; "it's just a goddamned piece of paper." Healing and corrective measures available to repair severely damaged and crippled government functions are overridden by concerns of resultant political fallout and posturing

For whatever reason the Washington Post chose in allowing its staff writers, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, to launch their four-part series exposing Dick Cheney as America's first functioning dictator, it opened the door to Bruce Fein's call for Cheney's impeachment in his editorial posted in Slate. Fein and the Post have legitimized and given substance to Congressman Dennis Kucinich's House Resolution calling for just that action.

And in his July 9th article published in The New Yorker commenting on the Post's effort and appropriately entitled "The Darksider," Hendrik Hertzberg's opinion of Cheney's Svengali-like domination of our clueless frat boy president is marvelously articulated: "The story of the scowling, scheming, domineering, silently sinister Vice-President and the spoiled, petted prince who becomes his plaything is irresistible-set in a pristine White House, played against an ominous, unseen background of violence and catastrophe, like distant thunder, and packed with drama, palace intrigue, and black comedy."

After the Post's series and Bruce Fein's call for Cheney's impeachment, augmented by and made all the more sobering given Fein's legal credentials and constitutional knowledge, Cheney struck back immediately and obviously ordered boy Bush to commute I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence, which will undoubtedly pave the way for a full pardon. Bush admitted that "an individual in his administration" did indeed deliberately expose undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, thereby facilitating retaliation against her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, for his New York Times editorial letter exposing the fraudulent "intelligence" citing Iraq's alleged Niger yellowcake activities. It is now painfully obvious that Cheney placed that line in Bush's State of the Union Message recalling the Vice President's unrelenting pressure on the CIA to provide precisely that very justification for the Iraqi invasion and war.

The arrogant and irreverent behavior of the Vice President towards all Americans and American government institutions was aptly described by Fein in his piece for Slate, wherein he also describes Cheney as having a "sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law." Cheney's sinister, secretive, conniving and retributive mindset makes it now more readily apparent than ever that it was none other than he who played the principle role in exposing Plame, a Title 18 felony. Libby was successfully prosecuted and convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, while the real legal issue was that of the treason committed against the government of the United States as covered in 18 USC 794. Review of this section of the United States Code will reveal that the treason committed by Cheney's office is greatly magnified when perpetrated during wartime.

Like Fein, Hertzberg summarizes the laundry list of Cheney offenses, but does so more succinctly while emphatically referencing the Post's series: "But many of the details and incidents that Gellman and Becker document are as new as they are appalling. More important, the pattern that emerges from the accumulated weight of the reporting is, as the lawyers say, dispositive. Given the ontological authority that the Post shares only with the New York Times, it is now, so to speak, official: for the past six years, Dick Cheney, the occupant of what John Adams called 'the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived,' has been the most influential public official in the country, not necessarily excluding President Bush, and his influence has been entirely malign. He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable 'war on terror.'"

Hertzberg deftly sums up into a critical mass the Cheney offenses: "More than anyone else, including his mentor and departed co-conspirator, Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney has been the intellectual author and bureaucratic facilitator of the crimes and misdemeanors that have inflicted unprecedented disgrace on our country's moral and political standing: the casual trashing of habeas corpus and the Geneva Conventions; the claim of authority to seize suspects, including American citizens, and imprison them indefinitely and incommunicado, with no right to due process of law; the outright encouragement of 'cruel,' 'inhuman,' and 'degrading' treatment of prisoners; the use of undoubted torture, including waterboarding (Cheney: 'a no-brainer for me'), which for a century the United States had prosecuted as a war crime; and, of course, the bloody, nightmarish Iraq war itself, launched under false pretenses, conducted with stupefying incompetence, and escalated long after public support for it had evaporated, at the cost of scores of thousands of lives, nearly half a trillion dollars, and the crippling of America's armed forces, which no longer overawe and will take years to rebuild."

There is absolutely no other way of dealing with this American domestic and massive international crime wave than by the immediate and total impeachment of both Vice President Richard Cheney and President George Bush. For nothing that is political can escape the massive totalitarian ruination that Cheney-Bush has brought forth. As Hertzberg states, our military is being destroyed and will take years to rebuild. Our economy is being destroyed, and may deteriorate to where it cannot be re-established as the vibrant force it once was. It doesn't take an economics rocket scientist to figure out that a nation that cannot provide its citizens with even basic consumer products is a nation that cannot successfully wage endless wars to enslave the citizens of other nations. America may still have the capability to make military materiel and weapons of mass destruction, but remember the logistics debacle that doomed Hitler's 1941 invasion of Russia. Simple boots and winter jackets weren't producible or deliverable to the shivering and starving Wehrmacht fighting the Russian winter and the Red Army.

And as to the sustaining natural resources America will require as a world-dominating global power, the natural resources we are attempting to steal in the Mid East will only be used to blow up things, and not to create food, clothing and housing for a nation whose economy is rapidly deteriorating in pursuit of power. We as a nation are slipping into third world status by investing all our wealth in things that go boom, blow up people and what they have built, while failing to appreciate the basic needs we as a people require to enjoy the Creator's beneficence in having given us life. What is one to do with a billion dollar jet fighter, or an M1A1 tank, or a $50,000 artillery shell, when all that is really needed is to feed, clothe and shelter one's family?

Cheney-Bush are destroying the two-party political system, the Constitution, our wealth, our ability to feed, clothe and house ourselves, our money system, our system of government and its laws, and virtually everything that is and was American. Only an extremely dedicated idiot and brain-damaged moron would utter: "Impeachment is off the table!" The fact is, it's the ONLY thing left on the table! We will soon be out of all other options that have any semblance of beneficial value for our very survival! As has been <http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2214.shtml>pointed out by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Cheney-Bush needs another 9/11 and a war with Iran to distract US temporarily from our own demise!

In his article for Online Journal of July 20th and carried also on Prisonplanet.com entitled, "My wake-up call: Watch for another 9/11-WMD experience," Roberts writes: "In the July 18 Los Angeles Times ('Bush the Albatross'), Ronald Brownstein reminds us that Bush's behavior is disastrous for his political party. Unpopular presidents 'have consistently undercut their party in the next election.' Brownstein reports that '88 percent of voters who disapproved of the retiring president's job performance voted against his party's nominee in past elections. . . . On average, 80 percent of voters who disapproved of a president's performance have voted against his party's candidates even in House races since 1986.'"

Roberts goes on: "Brownstein notes that with Bush's dismal approval rating, this implies a total wipeout of the Republicans in 2008. A number of pundits have concluded that the reason the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies is that they expect Bush's unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory next year." And this is precisely what I have alluded to concerning partisan politics substituting for doing what is right and what is so vitally needed immediately. So why must impeachment be initiated by Congress immediately?

Roberts explains: "There is a problem with this reasoning. It assumes that Cheney, Rove, and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts or are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his warmonger-police state fling." Roberts goes on: "Isn't it more likely that Cheney and Rove have in mind events that will, once again, rally the people behind President Bush and the Republican Party, that is fighting the 'war on terror' that the Democrats 'want to lose'? Such events could take a number of forms. As even diehard Republican Patrick J. Buchanan observed on July 17, with three US aircraft carrier battle groups in congested waters off Iran, another Tonkin Gulf incident could easily be engineered to set us at war with Iran. If Bush's intentions were merely to bomb a nuclear reactor, he would not need three carrier strike forces. Lately, the administration has switched to blaming Iran for the war in Iraq. The US Senate has already lined up behind the latest lie with a 97-0 vote to condemn Iran."

What more damage could the Cheney-Bush crime machine do? The Senate is already totally behind the American dictatorship as concerns Iran; the same lies and deliberately cooked and fraudulent intelligence is now being propagandized and delivered to the American people by the mass media-government complex. Of course Roberts is right, and the so-called oversight that the Senate is demanding as their right and seemingly in the process of being satisfied by subpoenas to the Cheney dictatorship has been further delayed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy's gracious grant of additional time so Cheney can set up the attack on US and/or Iran. The subpoenaed documents will be a total waste of time and be overtaken by the events of a new 9/11 and war with Iran.

It is clear that Democrats are only concerned with the next election. They aren't the least bit disturbed that our Bill of Rights and habeas corpus, the latter a right English-speaking people have enjoyed since King John signed the Magna Carta in 1215, has been suspended by Cheney. They aren't concerned that Cheney has legalized and continues to expand authorized torture that had been abolished by the Geneva Conventions. They aren't at all concerned that the whole world now sees Cheney and America in precisely the same light as they formerly saw Hitler and Nazi Germany. All they are focusing on is the meaningless and hollow victory of the 2008 presidential election which will decide on a new captain for our sinking Titanic ship of state.

Confirming Roberts' assessment of a soon-to-be-executed 9/11-WMD experience is Mike Whitney's July 18th <http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18036.htm>piece written for Information Clearing House and also carried on Prisonplanet.com. Opining on New World Order globetrotter Henry Kissinger's visit to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia, Whitney makes certain we all understand how the government-mass media complex has taken extra steps to ensure that Kissinger's "diplomatic" mission to Moscow was kept a total secret, thereby confirming that Dictator Cheney's was behind this secret mission of "diplomacy."

Whitney in his "Kissinger's Secret Meeting With Putin" writes, "Kissinger was accompanied on his junket by a delegation of high-powered political and corporate big-wigs including former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, former Special Representative for Arms Control, Nonproliferation and Disarmament Ambassador Thomas Graham Jr., former Senator Sam Nunn and Chevron Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David O'Reilly. Wow. Now, there's an impressive line up. The group was (presumably) sent to carry out official government business as discreetly as possible. The media obviously complied with White House requests and kept their mouths shut."

It is a known fact that Russian President Putin vehemently opposes Cheney-Bush's international maneuvering to isolate and then incorporate all nations into the bankers' New World Order. Putin is a dedicated nationalist. He would never commit the kind of treason that Cheney is guilty of in debasing and destroying his own country for the "greater good" of an international communist New World Order. And Putin has notified Dictator Cheney that he is not exactly pleased with Cheney-Bush incursions via NATO in the Kosovo-Caspian Basin area that threaten Russia's oil and natural gas pipeline interests.

Whitney writes: "The array of talent in Kissinger's delegation suggests that the US and Russia are engaged in sensitive, high-level talks on issues ranging from nonproliferation and Missile Defense, to energy exploration and development, to the Iranian 'enrichment' program and partitioning of Serbia (Kosovo), to the falling dollar and the massive US current account deficit. The US and Russia are at loggerheads on many of these issues and relations between the two countries has steadily deteriorated." These are yet more benefits of the one-man government of Dick Cheney.

Whitney goes on: "No one really knows what took place at the meetings, but judging by Kissinger's parting remarks, things did not go smoothly. He said to one reporter, 'We appreciate the time that President Putin gave us and the frank manner in which he explained his point of view.' In diplomatic phraseology, 'frank' usually means that there were many areas of strong disagreement. Presumably, the main 'bone of contention' is Putin's insistence on a 'multi-polar' world in which the sovereign rights of other nations are safeguarded under international law. Putin is ferociously nationalistic and he will not compromise Russia's independence to be integrated into Kissinger and Co.'s wacky new world order."

When I was in grammar school, we had to participate in numerous simulated attack/self-defense drills anticipating possible nuclear attacks by the former "Evil Empire," the Soviet Union. Now, a Russian President is doing more to ensure our national sovereignty than the President of the United States, the Vice president of the United States, and the do-nothing election-blind, spineless, gutless Congress. It seems the only one with a gut is the Department of Homeland Security Scheming Skull, Michael Chertoff, the former number two guy in our Department of Justice who quietly released the five high-fiving Mossad agents who helped place the explosives in the World Trade Towers. His "gut feel" is that another terrorist attack is imminent. I finally agree with something a member of the Cheney-Bush crime machine has said.

These are the reasons immediate impeachment proceedings are necessary. The Democrats, if they were to act immediately, could not only save their party, but the two-party system, their country and world peace all in this one necessary double impeachment effort. There is no need for any delay. The Cheney-Bush dictatorship has offered zillions of opportunities to call their bluff, and continues to do so in dodging subpoenas, ignoring official letters requesting information and clarification, and other door-opening crimes and effronteries. Time is rapidly running out for this golden opportunity for Democrats to save themselves and US. In the most recent poll, 45 percent of Americans want Bush impeached, but a whopping 54 percent want Cheney impeached. That is unprecedented!

The government-mass media complex knows of this poll, and yet hasn't even acknowledged its importance or uniqueness. This is the first time in the history of this former republic that such a massive hatred for a vice president has ever been expressed by Americans! How can a vice president generate so much hatred amongst the general populace? And even more importantly for consideration, how is it that hatred for the vice president exceeds that of the president? Isn't it clear that the American people know who's running the show? Isn't it clear that Cheney-Bush must act soon and bring about yet another 9/11-WMD experience to save themselves? Isn't it clear that unless Democrats act immediately, everything in American politics will be forever lost?

Impeachment may indeed soon be permanently off the table, but for the most horrific of reasons, reasons which will defy all manner of correction or remedy.


© THEODORE E. LANG 7/23/07 All rights reserved

Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.

I damned sure do not want to be able to say I told you so to everyone who has labeled me a conspiracy theorist.

Now ... will you all listen.

OR

Are you ready to worship King Bush or King Cheney .... or should I say Herr Bush or Herr Cheney.






Read the documents of the United States right here.

Click on the one you want to view.


The Constitution of The United States of America

The Bill of Rights with the first ten amendments

The Other Amendments

The Articles of Confederation

The Declaration of Independence

The Story of the Actual First US President; John Hanson

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Oldline_Repu...works_0719.html


Old-line Republican warns 'something's in the works' to trigger a police state Muriel Kane
Published: Thursday July 19, 2007

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Thom Hartmann began his program on Thursday by reading from a new Executive Order which allows the government to seize the assets of anyone who interferes with its Iraq policies.

He then introduced old-line conservative Paul Craig Roberts -- a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan who has recently become known for his strong opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq War -- by quoting the "strong words" which open Roberts' latest column: "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

"I don't actually think they're very strong," said Roberts of his words. "I get a lot of flak that they're understated and the situation is worse than I say. ... When Bush exercises this authority [under the new Executive Order] ... there's no check to it. It doesn't have to be ratified by Congress. The people who bear the brunt of these dictatorial police state actions have no recourse to the judiciary. So it really is a form of total, absolute, one-man rule. ... The American people don't really understand the danger that they face."

Roberts said that because of Bush's unpopularity, the Republicans face a total wipeout in 2008, and this may be why "the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush's follies or the war, because they expect his unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory in next year's election."

However, Roberts emphasized, "the problem with this reasoning is that it assumes that Cheney and Rove and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts, or it assumes that they are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his fling." Roberts believes instead that Cheney and Rove intend to use a renewal of the War on Terror to rally the American people around the Republican Party. "Something's in the works," he said, adding that the Executive Orders need to create a police state are already in place.

"The administration figures themselves and prominent Republican propagandists ... are preparing us for another 9/11 event or series of events," Roberts continued. "Chertoff has predicted them. ... The National Intelligence Estimate is saying that al Qaeda has regrouped. ... You have to count on the fact that if al Qaeda's not going to do it, it's going to be orchestrated. ... The Republicans are praying for another 9/11."

Hartmann asked what we as the people can do if impeachment isn't about to happen. "If enough people were suspicious and alert, it would be harder for the administration to get away with it," Roberts replied. However, he added, "I don't think these wake-up calls are likely to be effective," pointing out the dominance of the mainstream media.

"Americans think their danger is terrorists," said Roberts. "They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. ... The terrorists are not anything like the threat that we face to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans just aren't able to perceive that."

Roberts pointed out that it's old-line Republicans like himself, former Reagan associate deputy attorney general Bruce Fein, and Pat Buchanan who are the diehards in warning of the danger. "It's so obvious to people like us who have long been associated in the corridors of power," he said. "There's no belief in the people or anything like that. They have agendas. The people are in the way. The Constitution is in the way. ... Americans need to comprehend and look at how ruthless Cheney is. ... A person like that would do anything."

Roberts final suggestion was that, in the absence of a massive popular outcry, "the only constraints on what's going to happen will come from the federal bureaucracy and perhaps the military. They may have had enough. They may not go along with it."

The full audio of Thom Hartmann's interview with Paul Craig Roberts can be found here.

Outstanding whybaby!!!!!!!!!!!! :good:


wally, why are you crossposting the same thing to every thread? :bad:

To make sure that everyone has access to and realizes they can read the US constitution while it is still not just a GD piece of paper.

Also, it probably infuriates the neos

:D

I have altered it to a tag for each post.

I really do feel that this is an important piece of education. I have seen that many people have never actually read it, or any of the important US documents. This is something we should all do so we know what we are fighting to preserve.

Added - - - - I also think we need to read the constitution before Bush totally shreds it. I can see a time when it will be illegal to even look upon it by order of the King of America. Sad, huh.





Read the documents of the United States right here.

Click on the one you want to view.


The Constitution of The United States of America

The Bill of Rights with the first ten amendments

The Other Amendments

The Articles of Confederation

The Declaration of Independence

The Story of the Actual First US President; John Hanson

Found this interesting article by typing the words, 'I hate Dick Cheney.' What an evil piece of shit. :angry:

http://www.slate.com/id/2169292/nav/tap1/

Impeach Cheney
The vice president has run utterly amok and must be stopped.

By Bruce Fein

Posted Wednesday, June 27, 2007, at 5:06 PM ET

Under Dick Cheney, the office of the vice president has been transformed from a tiny acorn into an unprecedented giant oak. In grasping and exercising presidential powers, Cheney has dulled political accountability and concocted theories for evading the law and Constitution that would have embarrassed King George III. The most recent invention we know of is the vice president's insistence that an executive order governing the handling of classified information in the executive branch does not reach his office because he also serves as president of the Senate. In other words, the vice president is a unique legislative-executive creature standing above and beyond the Constitution. The House judiciary committee should commence an impeachment inquiry. As Alexander Hamilton advised in the Federalist Papers, an impeachable offense is a political crime against the nation. Cheney's multiple crimes against the Constitution clearly qualify.

Take the vice president's preposterous theory that his office is outside the executive branch because it also exercises a legislative function. The same can be said of the president, who also exercises a legislative function in signing or vetoing bills passed by Congress. Under Cheney's bizarre reasoning, President Bush is not part of his own administration: The executive branch becomes acephalous. Today Cheney Chief of Staff David Addington refused to renounce that reasoning, instead laughably trying to diminish the importance of the legal question at issue.

The nation's first vice president, John Adams, bemoaned: "My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived; and as I can do neither good nor evil, I must be borne away by others and meet common fate." Vice President John Nance Garner, serving under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, lamented: "The vice presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss." In modern times, vice presidents have generally been confined to attending state funerals or to distributing blankets after earthquakes.

Then President George W. Bush outsourced the lion's share of his presidency to Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Cheney has made the most of it. Since 9/11, he has proclaimed that all checks and balances and individual liberties are subservient to the president's commander in chief powers in confronting international terrorism. Let's review the record of his abuses and excesses:

The vice president asserted presidential power to create military commissions, which combine the functions of judge, jury, and prosecutor in the trial of war crimes. The Supreme Court rebuked Cheney in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Mr. Cheney claimed authority to detain American citizens as enemy combatants indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay on the president's say-so alone, a frightening power indistinguishable from King Louis XVI's execrated lettres de cachet that occasioned the storming of the Bastille. The Supreme Court repudiated Cheney in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

The vice president initiated kidnappings, secret detentions, and torture in Eastern European prisons of suspected international terrorists. This lawlessness has been answered in Germany and Italy with criminal charges against CIA operatives or agents. The legal precedent set by Cheney would justify a decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to kidnap American tourists in Paris and to dispatch them to dungeons in Belarus if they were suspected of Chechen sympathies.

The vice president has maintained that the entire world is a battlefield. Accordingly, he contends that military power may be unleashed to kill or capture any American citizen on American soil if suspected of association or affiliation with al-Qaida. Thus, Mr. Cheney could have ordered the military to kill Jose Padilla with rockets, artillery, or otherwise when he landed at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, because of Padilla's then-suspected ties to international terrorism.

Mr. Cheney has championed a presidential power to torture in contravention of federal statutes and treaties.

He has advocated and authored signing statements that declare the president's intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that he proclaims are unconstitutional, for example, a requirement to obtain a judicial warrant before opening mail or a prohibition on employing military force to fight narco-terrorists in Colombia. The signing statements are tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes that the Supreme Court invalidated in the 1998 case Clinton v. New York.

The vice president engineered the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic surveillance program targeting American citizens on American soil in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. He concocted the alarming theory that the president may flout any law that inhibits the collection of foreign intelligence, including prohibitions on breaking and entering homes, torture, or assassinations. As a reflection of his power in this arena, today the Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Cheney's office, as well as the White House, for documents that relate to the warrantless eavesdropping.

The vice president has orchestrated the invocation of executive privilege to conceal from Congress secret spying programs to gather foreign intelligence, and their legal justifications. He has summoned the privilege to refuse to disclose his consulting of business executives in conjunction with his Energy Task Force, and to frustrate the testimonies of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers regarding the firings of U.S. attorneys.

Cheney scorns freedom of speech and of the press. He urges application of the Espionage Act to prosecute journalists who expose national security abuses, for example, secret prisons in Eastern Europe or the NSA's warrantless surveillance program. He retaliated against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, through Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, for questioning the administration's evidence of weapons of mass destruction as justification for invading Iraq. Mr. Cheney is defending himself from a pending suit brought by Wilson and Plame on the grounds that he is entitled to the absolute immunity of the president established in 1982 by Nixon v. Fitzgerald. (Although this defense contradicts Cheney's claim that he is not part of the executive branch.)

The Constitution does not expressly forbid the president from abandoning his chief powers to the vice president. But President Bush's tacit delegation to Cheney and Cheney's eager acceptance tortures the Constitution's provision for an acting president. The presidency and vice presidency are discrete constitutional offices. The 12th Amendment provides for their separate elections. The sole constitutionally enumerated function of the vice president is to serve as president of the Senate without a vote except to break ties.

In contrast, Article II enumerates the powers and responsibilities of the president, including the obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. A special presidential oath is prescribed. Section 3 of the 25th Amendment provides a method for the president to yield his office to the vice president, when "he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." There is no other constitutional provision for transferring presidential powers to the vice president.

Yet without making a written transmittal to Congress, President Bush has ceded vast domains of his powers to Vice President Cheney by mutual understanding that circumvents the 25th Amendment. This constitutional provision assures that the public and Congress know who is exercising the powers of the presidency and who should be held responsible for successes or failures. The Bush-Cheney dispensation blurs political accountability by continually hiding the real decision-maker under presidential skirts. The Washington Post has thoroughly documented the vice president's dominance in a four-part series running this week. It is quite a read.

In the end, President Bush regularly is unable to explain or defend the policies of his own administration, and that is because the heavy intellectual labor has been performed in the office of the vice president. Cheney is impeachable for his overweening power and his sneering contempt of the Constitution and the rule of law.

Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer at Bruce Fein & Associates and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda. He is author of the forthcoming book Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle Over the Constitution and Democracy.

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2169292/


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