Why Did So Few Americans Give a Damn? (about Bush Admn's Constitutional abuses)

[marmar]

from Truthdig:




Why Did So Few Americans Give a Damn?

Posted on Mar 5, 2009
By William Pfaff


The documents currently being released by the Justice Department that demonstrate the Bush administration’s view of the president’s constitutional power in a “state of war” tell us things we suspected but didn’t want to know.

The first seven of these official memorandums issued last week dealt with claimed presidential powers to unilaterally abrogate international treaties; suspend constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press; and order warrant-less searches, wiretaps and seizures of documents and indefinite imprisonment inside the U.S. without trial or criminal charges. The memorandums claimed that Congress has no overriding authority in these matters.

The authors of all but one of these documents were John Yoo and Jay Bybee (both then of the Justice Department but now, respectively, a member of the University of California at Berkeley Law School faculty and a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals). They were also the authors early in the Bush administration of two special memorandums defining torture much more narrowly than in the United States code of military justice or U.S. civil law.

They redefined torture to permit what ordinarily is illegal in U.S. military and civil law under the so-called Federal Maiming Statute. This law makes it a crime to disfigure faces and body parts with knives or razors, or to cause blindness, or cut out tongues, or perform other grotesque and gruesome tortures that this column will leave to the consciences of professor Yoo, Judge Bybee and the senior members of the Bush administration who wished to be advised on their exemption from such legal limits. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090305_bush_justice_dept_documents_confirm_worst_fears

[grasswire]

1. where were true conservative and constitutionalists?

:::::crickets:::::

[Warpy]

2. Oh, I think they were very uneasy about it all

but having had two elections overturned, once by a corrupt USSC and another by corrupt voting machines, they knew full damned well that no one in government cared what they hell they thought about it.

The whole thing was sickening.

[Blue_Tires]

3. they thought it was a worthwhile tradeoff in the GWOT

besides; regular people who supported this NEVER think this slashing of rights or privacy happens to anyone but cartoonish muslim terrorists

[blm]

4. because corpmedia downplayed the abuse or covered for them...BushInc got 24/7 cover from newsmedia

while those who tried to point to the abuse were ignored. Remember, in 2003-4 Kerry called 3 times for Rumsfeld to lose his job after Abu Ghraib, but, Bush had the protection of media and some powerful Dems who stayed sided with Bush on torture AND Iraq war. Media could always find Dems to cover for Bush then, like Clintons, Lieberman, and Biden, but they couldn't seem to find bigname Dems who would side publicly with Kerry AGAINST Bush on torture and Iraq.

[jwirr]

5. I think the story goes "They Thought They Were Free".

[stillcool]

6. Are we supposed to be shocked

..this time around? When some in the media get around to reporting things ...5 years later...what do they expect?

[FiveGoodMen]

7. Because that's the kind of scum 'Murkins really are

That's the only answer I can come up with.

Sure they were lied to and nudged toward this bad behavior, but they also took to it like ducks to water.

That's just the kind of scum we are.

[notadmblnd]

8. The were scared shitless.

what with the boogeyman terrorists coming to get them all. They were busy hiding tuna under the bed and putting plastic over their windows with duct tape.

[Still Sensible]

9. Cowed by fear

Exactly what was done by the Bushies for the last 7 1/2 years was predictable on September 12, 2001. They were going on a "Keep America Scared" campaign to set up Georgie as a wartime, security president that could win a second term.

Ben Franklin said that "Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security." Trading liberties for security is basically what the Bush Administration did... from ramming through the Patriot Act, to using their color-coded "threat" levels as a bi-monthly political device, to not so subtly controlling the news, to the reorganization of U.S. Security & Intelligence services.

Why was Abraham Lincoln able to suspend habeas corpus? popular fear

Why was Franklin Roosevelt able to inter Japanese Americans? popular fear

Why was George Bush and friends able to do what they have done? same answer