“Abuse of Power” Taken to an Extreme is Called Tyranny

[Time for change]

When Senator Patrick Leahy said of the U.S. attorney firing scandal that “It is an abuse of power committed in secret to steer certain outcomes…” he touched on a larger issue that is perhaps of unprecedented importance to our nation and its people. And I wonder if he, the rest of our Congress and the American people realize just how important that issue is.

Think about it. The purpose of U.S. attorneys is to promote and ensure justice in our country with respect to serious federal crimes. In order to accomplish that they must be independent – that is, not subject to political manipulation. But the Bush administration has totally perverted that purpose, in order to use the U.S. attorneys for its own political ends. And more ominous still, they used a provision in the Patriot Act – a piece of legislation that was presumably enacted for the purpose of national security – to accomplish that perversion of justice.

Furthermore, it would appear that the eight fired U.S. attorneys are just the tip of the iceberg with respect to this perversion of justice. How many federal employees have the courage to say NO to pressure from the Office of the President? I don’t know the exact answer to that, but I think that it would be safe to assume that most would not have that kind of courage, especially when dealing with a highly vindictive Presidential administration. Therefore, it would be safe to assume that for every U.S. attorney who was fired there were perhaps several more who gave in to pressure from the Bush administration to serve the Bush/Cheney political agenda rather than to serve the American people whom they were hired to serve.

What do you call it when the most powerful federal employee of all – the President of the United States – uses the power of his office to subvert justice and serve his own political ends to enhance his own power? Senator Leahy called it an “abuse of power”. But when taken to an extreme I think a more appropriate and descriptive word for it would be “tyranny”. But then, that word is (unfortunately in my opinion) not currently considered to be politically correct when uttered by an elected official.

Has the Bush administration taken their abuse of power to an extreme? To answer that question the American people would do well to look at numerous other instances where the Bush administration has used the fear generated by their proclaimed “War on Terror” to justify unprecedented levels of Executive Branch power. In considering these instances the American people should carefully consider the reasons given for the Bush administration’s use of unprecedented power. And the main question that they should ask is: Has the Bush administration used its unprecedented power for legitimate purposes related to its “War on Terror”; OR, has it used those unprecedented powers to serve its own political ends – that is, in the cause of tyranny?

So let’s consider how the bush administration has utilized its unprecedented or virtually unprecedented power with respect to three crucially important issues: 1) its decision to go to war against Iraq; 2) its decision to ignore international law and the U.S. Constitution with respect to the humane treatment of prisoners; and 3) its decision to use wiretaps to spy on tens of thousands of American citizens without obtaining a warrant as required by U.S. law and the U.S. Constitution.

There are two things that all these abuses of power have in common: First, just like the U.S. attorney firing scandal, they have been rationalized on the basis of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror”. And secondly, these are the abuses of power that are most frequently mentioned by advocates of impeaching this administration.


Decision to go to war in Iraq

The rationale that the Bush administration used to justify the Iraq war was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ties to al Qaeda that posed a vital threat to our country. Foremost among the WMD threats was Iraq’s alleged nuclear capability, based on their alleged attempt to purchase yellow cake (natural uranium) from Africa and their possession of aluminum tubes alleged for use in the construction of a nuclear weapon. Though these claims were frequently repeated by the Bush administration to Congress and to the American people, it is quite evident that George Bush and Dick Cheney knew all of these claims to be false.

Regarding the yellow cake claims: In March 2002, Joe Wilson, the man who was sent to Niger by Dick Cheney’s office to verify the yellow cake claim, reported that there was no evidence for that claim; our own government’s National Intelligence Estimate stated that “claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are highly dubious”; and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told our government on March 3, 2003, that the Niger uranium documents were forgeries.

Regarding the aluminum tube claims: On September 7, 2002 Bush claimed that a new IAEA report stated Iraq was 6 months away from developing a nuclear weapon – though no such report existed; later that same month the Institute for Science and International Security released a report calling the aluminum tube intelligence ambiguous and warning that “U.S. nuclear experts who dissent from the Administration’s position are expected to remain silent…”; and on January 24, 2003, the Washington Post reported that the IAEA stated “It may be technically possible that the tubes could be used to enrich uranium, but you’d have to believe that Iraq…”

And to top it all off, on March 7, 2003, just a few days before Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, the IAEA reported “We have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.”

George Bush and Dick Cheney had to have known all of this. Yet they uttered not a word of it to Congress or the American people as they tried to sell their war, as George Bush repeated both claims, and more, in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union speech.

So the America people must ask themselves: Did we go to war against Iraq to protect the national security interests of the American people – or did we go to war to serve the political ends of the Bush/Cheney administration?


Decision to ignore international law and the U.S. Constitution with respect to the humane treatment of prisoners

The Bush administration has repeatedly claimed that its “War on Terror” precludes it from complying with international laws for the humane treatment of prisoners, to which the United States is a signatory. Consequently, the great majority of our detainees in Bush’s “War on Terror” have been held indefinitely without charges, have had no access to an attorney, have not been tried or (if they have been tried) have been denied the opportunity to confront witnesses against them, and many or most of them have been repeatedly tortured.

That these gross violations of international law, U.S. law, the U.S. Constitution, and common decency are widespread is abundantly documented by such groups as Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, and Human Rights Watch, among others. That they are sanctioned by George Bush and Dick Cheney is abundantly clear from their repeated public defenses of these actions, such as described in a February 2002 Bush administration memo stating that U.S. personnel are exempt from bans against torture.

Not only are these actions illegal and immoral, but they produce no value to our country, while destroying our international reputation. Out of the thousands of prisoners that we have held throughout the world for so-called terrorism related reasons, only 8% are members of al Qaeda, and only 10 (No, not 10%, just 10) had been charged with a crime after several years imprisonment.

So again, the American people must ask themselves: Does the Bush administration commit these atrocities in a misguided effort to enhance the security of the American people – or does it do so to serve the political ends of the Bush/Cheney administration?


Decision to use wiretaps to spy on tens of thousands of American citizens without obtaining a warrant

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures by the U.S. government. In order to give that constitutional right some teeth, Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), which requires that if the government wishes to spy on U.S. citizens it must obtain a warrant to do so.

Yet the Bush administration has repeatedly violated the FISA Act by using wiretaps to spy on thousands of Americans annually, without even attempting to obtain a warrant. This is not a matter of conjecture – he has publicly admitted it numerous times.

But again, George Bush claims that his reason for doing this is to protect Americans from terrorists. Yet, he has never explained to the American people why he must violate our Constitution to do so. Why can’t he obtain a warrant if he needs to spy on American citizens? George Bush claims that his administration must act quickly to catch terrorists, so it doesn’t have the time to obtain a warrant. Yet that excuse makes no sense, since the warrants according to the law may be obtained retroactively Furthermore, knowledgeable sources note that of the thousands of warrantless wiretaps conducted annually by the Bush administration, fewer than ten have “aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls.”

So again, we have abundant evidence that the excessive power claimed by the Bush administration is not in the slightest bit justified by the exigencies of its “War on Terror”. And we have a very plausible reason for its refusal to attempt to obtain warrants for its spying activities: No reasonable and honest judge would grant a warrant that appeared to be motivated solely by political ends. Therefore, the only plausible conclusion is that the purpose of much of its spying activities is so unrelated to a legitimate function of government that even the conservative FISA judges wouldn’t approve them.

So again, Americans must ask: Is the purpose of the Bush administration’s warrantless spying program to enhance the security of the American people – or is it to serve the Bush administration’s political ends.


Other abuses of power

There have been numerous other abuses of power by the Bush administration:

It repeatedly refuses to comply with Congressional requests for information, as most recently demonstrated by its avowed intentions not to allow Carl Rove to testify in the U.S. attorney firing scandal. By claiming “executive privilege” in such cases, the Bush administration again and again claims its need to protect the national security. Yet they never produce any plausible evidence to support that claim.

George Bush has used over 800 “signing statements” to avoid having to enforce laws that he doesn’t want to enforce. House Judiciary Chairman, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), said regarding his recent Congressional investigation into this issue that “The administration has engaged in these practices under a veil of secrecy… This is a constitutional issue that no self-respecting federal legislature should tolerate.”

And then there is the matter of how the Bush administration treats whistle blowers who try to bring to the attention of the American public matters that the Bush administration finds embarrassing or inconvenient. The Whistle Blower Protection Act has some very important purposes, and one of the most important of those purposes is to prevent government abuses of power, by making it easy for government employees to inform the public of government abuses. The Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated its contempt for this law – most notably in the case of the Valerie Plame scandal, where both Dick Cheney and Karl Rove conspired to “out” an undercover CIA agent in retribution for her husband’s contradicting the Bush administration in its lying about its justification for invading Iraq.


Connecting the dots

When Senator Leahy accused the Bush administration of “abuse of power” he was of course correct. But “abuse of power” sounds so benign compared to what the Bush administration has been doing for six years: An illegal war of aggression, justified by lies, which is killing our young men and bankrupting our nation; a world wide torture program involving the abuse and torture of hundreds, and perhaps thousands of our prisoners; warrantless spying on tens of thousands of American citizens; refusal to enforce the laws of our nation; the punishing of its political enemies, even when it means the outing of a CIA agent.

“Abuse of power” is not a strong enough phrase to describe all of this. The pattern is one of a government that repeatedly uses its power to destroy its political enemies and advance its own political ends, regardless of the cost to our nation or its citizens. Thus, when our leaders categorize the Bush administration’s actions as merely an “abuse of power”, a picture is painted that fails to convey the magnitude of the danger that confronts us. And to the extent that Americans – including our Congress – don’t see the magnitude of the danger, they are incapable of visualizing a solution that is appropriate to that danger.

Many Americans are able to see this, despite the news media blackout on the subject – and that explains why over half of Americans are in favor of proceeding with the impeachment of George Bush. Yet our leaders in Congress appear to be way behind the American people in this regard. Perhaps they are in denial. Perhaps they are afraid of the political consequences of moving to impeach our President and Vice President.

Democracies last only as long as their people have the will to make them last. History shows us that most civilizations eventually fail, and that republics frequently turn into dictatorships. It is doubtful that the United States is immune to that fate, and it is currently showing many signs that dictatorship may be just around the corner. It is yet possible that we may reverse course and maintain our democracy and our Constitution. If so, it will take a willingness to confront the seriousness of our situation, and a lot of commitment and courage from of a lot of people – most especially those who serve us in Congress.