WTF Is It Now?!?

UNCHECKED POWER
Snipped from Harvey Wasserman's column, here.

With his TV talk of war, George W. Bush has blown smoke over what's really at stake today: the future of democracy. Not in Iraq; here in the United States.

Never in US history have we ever been closer to an unchecked one-man one-party rule than right now. And as the world's sole military super-power, we have made the crisis truly global. The structure of our basic rights is as tenuous under George W. Bush as under many of the third world dictators installed by his father when he was head of the CIA. Any shreds of counter-balance left in the system will disappear if the Republicans keep control of the US House and retake the Senate.

Globally, that extends to a Bush Doctrine touting the "right" to intervene in any country, and remove any ruler it does not like, regardless of national sovereignty or international law.

This anti-Iraq hysteria is about an aggressive, unelected US regime aiming to to complete the coup d'etat it began two years ago.

America's domestic economy is shattered, its stock market in free fall. Unresolved multi-billion-dollar scandals still taint Bush from Harken Energy and Vice President Dick Cheney from Halliburton. Under this regime, joblessness has skyrocketed and the quality of life has plunged.

The Bush remedy has been tax breaks for the rich and relentless assaults on organized labor, gays rights, women's rights, minority rights and the natural environment. His foreign policy has been to trash international treaties on atomic testing, missile defense, global warming, international justice and more.

A real war against this particular Saddam Hussein could cost $100 to $200 billion the current US economy can't afford. It could destabilize global oil supplies and infuriate much of the muslim world, 1.2 billion strong. The real costs could include skyrocketing oil prices, economic collapse, and terrorism escalated beyond our wildest nightmares, with the final demise of liberty and peace.

The Republicans are running out the clock on the November election. They are winning their bet against Democrats too timid to oppose a war that has no clothes, and a declaration of global empire with no legs. After that comes an endless procession of Orwellian enemies, conjured at will, a permanent pretext for martial law.