Is Martial Law Around the Corner?

[kpete]

Condensing power into a single branch is precisely what concerns me about Bush's new National Security Presidential directive http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2063.shtml.

.......................

The Northern Command, Northcom, created by Bush, already has plans to militarize the United States in the event of an attack.

"The new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks," Bradley Graham wrote in The Washington Post on August 8, 2005.

Then there is the revision to the Posse Comitatus Act, which Bush whisked through last October.

In an editorial on February 19 of this year, aptly entitled "Making Martial Law Easier," The New York Times wrote: "Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the President may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack, or to any 'other condition.' Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new Presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate."

Interestingly, some in the Bush Justice Department didn't believe this Congressional change was even necessary. On October 23, 2001, then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty, then-special counsel in the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote a memo to Alberto Gonzales, then-White House Counsel, and William Haynes II, then-general counsel for the Pentagon: "We recently opined that the Posse Comitatus Act, 18 USCs.1385 (1994), which generally prohibits the use of Armed Forces for law enforcement purposes absent constitutional or statutory authority to do so, does not forbid the use of military force for the military purpose of preventing and deterring terrorism within the United States."

Now Congress has given Bush and the Pentagon this power anyway.

more at:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23485

[Nikki Stone1]

1. Isn't Canada also covered by Northcom?

/

[Kagemusha]

2. In a really technical sense, yeah.

That's sort of sidestepping the whole issue of Canada being, you know, a NATO military ally. But whatever.

It still amazes me that people gripe about possible Bush use of emergency powers. It's the powers he uses every day of the week that he abuses. He had lots of power to act during Katrina and what did he do? Basically nothing. If he acted during Katrina and left us alone the rest of the time I'd have a lot less trouble with his administration in general.

[Nikki Stone1]

4. I always wonder if Canada will wake up one day as the 51st state

The problem about Bush is that he will use emergency powers only when he feels it necessary, and a bunch of poor New Orleaneans don't count as necessary. (Rich Floridians in an election year DID count)

[treestar]

3. Bushco has always wanted it, but it looks like they failed.

They wanted to do it "legally" and had their finger of the pulse of the public that does not get what the important issues are, thus they exploited 911 for "protecting you" as a way of handing them power without realizing what we were doing. The Repuke Congress was in on it, apparently not having read up on dictatorships, because if they had, they'd realize that they might not get to share in the power after all and would be the first ones sent to the camps.

But Katrina may have put that idea to rest (that they were capapble of protecting everyone from everything) and the 2006 election shows the electorate is starting to get it.

Now we have to brace ourselves for their trying to take over by force.

[porphyrian]

5. Strap in, they're strapping it on. - n/t

[whistle]

6. by October 1, 2007 after Bush's surge is challenged by congress

...as a complete failure due to another 800 to 1,000 U.S. dead in Iraq. Both Cheney and Bush must be impeached now!

[EVDebs]

7. No silly, it's just down the block !

Can't pass up a good straight line. But seriously folks, the Executive Orders are all signed, the concentration camps are all designated; all that's needed now is a good predetermined 'justifiable' event to set the wheels in motion.

Just ask the GOP's guy in Arkansas what would suffice.

[gulfcoastliberal]

8. I can't fathom why no dem senator stopped heinous things like this.

If a single repuke can prevent hearings on a bill to enhance the FOIA why is it no dem, even anonymously, stopped these moves towards a fascist state.

[roguevalley]

9. there aren't enough soldiers on this planet to subdue the western

and pacific northwestern united states. there are so damned many guns and bad attitudes that there will NEVER be enough force to subdue us.

[warren pease]

10. And, as a resident of the area in which you claim expertise, I must say...

...respectfully, of course, that you're fucking delusional if you think a bunch of aggrieved rednecks with firing pins modified for full-automatic are going to go toe to toe with, say, a modern US Army tank unit with full helicopter support and serious communications advantages, and come out of the experience with much less than a 100 percent casualty rate.

Turns out you do, in fact, get something for all those hundreds of billions of yankee dollars that arrive by the engorged truckload at the pentagon's bloody treasury every single day of the entire fiscal year -- so much money that pallets and shrink-wrap and steel shelving and forklifts are essential.

Ironically, you get to be killed by the technical wonders the military buys at hideously inflated, no-bid prices from the disgustingly rich arms industry, and which are paid for by your very own tax dollars.

But if the regular Army can't or won't do the job, and the tank unit doesn't show up, there's always Blackwater mercs aplenty, well-equipped and frothing at the mouth for a little more high-paid action, their jesus-freak lunatic GOPer CEO buying land and setting up training facilities as we speak in North Carolina, California and now apparently Illinois.

And if Blackwater can't do it, wingnut rednecks and lefty rednecks will just slaughter each other until their numbers decline sufficiently enough that normal people can finally go for a hike again in the forests around, say, the Rogue River, without getting murdered by another amphetamine-fueled marijuana grower mistaking a 10-year-old girl and her puppy for a gang of ruthless, armed pot thieves.

Yup, martial law is right around the corner, but first you must go over the river and through the woods all the way to grandmother's house -- who's got pot growers for neighbors and justifiably fears for her life every waking second.

Honestly, doesn't a discreet move to one of the beautiful Gulf Islands of British Columbia sound like a more sensible and potentially successful plan?


wp

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

11. We've been sounding the alarms since the dismantling of Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitatus.

Very few constitutionally based entities exist, at this point.


MKJ

on edit, replaced environmental with constitutionally.

[warren pease]

12. I think that's maybe the most disgusting pic I've seen in years...

Looks like the more hideous parts of "Borat" -- just a couple of aging queens having a beer and a hug, getting all short of breath and nostalgic for the toga days.

Ugggggghhhh. Truly awful. I'm tempted to block your posts just so I don't have to see that again. :toast:



wp

[BleedingHeartPatriot]

13. LOL, I can't blame you. And, everytime I think McCain's toast and I can change my sig line, the

corporomedia cheer him on, again.

I really believe that McCain is the "you've got to be f***ing kidding me" Republican candidate for 2008, ala Nixon, Reagan and Bush, Jr.

BTW, this is Bill Mahr's most apt description with which I concur.

:toast: MKJ

[warren pease]

14. And I suppose that's because a desperate nation turns to its quadrennial search...

...for the last man of character still standing. Unfortunately, they find McCain instead. And, as is always the case with this odd little man, mass media assures them that this McCain guy may be a raving lunatic, but he's a straight-talking kind of lunatic and you can trust an honest madman, particularly after having been force-fed a completely crooked, corrupt madman for the past seven-years-going-on-eternity.

So we're in the usual Diogenes-like search for the last honest man, but instead of the lantern we're now using a 1000 watt flashlight and blistering the local ecosystems in a Hummer with roof-mounted halogen spots.

Why is it that only the most loathsome people a) have the necessary lack of dignity to subject themselves to american presidential politics, and b) can actually be elected. I mean, there's not a lot of dignity out there after a couple decades of reality TV and a few thousand random waterboarding sessions paid for by our tax money, but the electability part is the real problem.

No matter how off-the-charts their level of narcissism and unjustifiable self esteem is, you can't very well vote for someone utterly lacking in personal charm or character. Or somebody with bad hair. Or somebody who gets $400 haircuts. Or somebody who actually believes the American creation myth.

Disasters and losers, all. Fortunately, there's always good old reliable John McCain standing over in the corner, looking slightly mania and uncomfortable as hell, but humbly throwing his hat back into the ring -- which will promptly throw it right back like a boomerang, as it always has before.

Ah, well... it pays to have a few lunatics around for those jobs that sane Americans just won't take.


wp

[roguevalley]

20. first of all, I'm not 'fucking delusional', respectful or not. We don't

have enough people to keep us all down. My state alone stretches from California to Florida. My SCHOOL DISTRICT is the SIZE OF OREGON. It does a big disservice to the millions of people that
love this country and would FIGHT AGAINST THE TYRANNY that the fucking nutwad in the white house
might attempt.

The constitution says overthrow a tyrannical government. Blackwater and the rest couldn't hold
a candle against the multitudes that would oppose this. AND, you are making a HUGE ASSUMPTION that
our army and navy and marines and whatever would pick up arms AGAINST THEIR MOTHERS AND FATHERS
AND BROTHERS AND SISTERS AND WHOMEVER because the fucking nutwad in the white house says so.

FUCK them all. They will never be able to stop the tidal wave. I wonder how anyone could support
someone who would ALLOW THE THIRD ATROCITY ON HIS WATCH to happen? Fucking delusional, nothing.
Red neck? Bullshit. American. Period.

[warren pease]

21. So the same bunch of narcotized sheep who are...

...lulled to sleep each night by the white noise of late night TeeVee, who have failed to show a single sign of resistance -- not to mention a taste for armed rebellion -- against the most demonstrably corrupt regime in US history, a pure kleptocracy that habitually cons or steals the few remaining resources of the lower 95 percent to further reward the upper 5 percent just for being rich...

Who are so thoroughly co-opted or exhausted by all that American wonderfulness they have to slog through every day that they actually believe the monster piles of steaming horse shit delivered to them 24/7 by the Paris Hilton / Anna Nicole / Jon Benet network...

That they actually feel informed by the media snooze machine, even though its primary job since about March 2000 has been covering and shilling for a semi-literate, greedy little despot who doesn't deserve a job at Burger King, but whose rich daddy and his international crime syndicate stole him the greatest prize in western politics -- not once, but twice, and nobody said shit about it, except a few hundred thousand mightily pissed off lefties who nobody listens to anyway... particularly the democratic party, to whom we're all supposed to be slavishly loyal, even though about 98 percent of them would rather contract scabies than entertain a progressive thought.

And these sheep aren't just narcotized; many of them are clinically insane, culturally dysfunctional and hostile to hard science -- preferring to believe in a ridiculous fairy tale about some bearded old sociopath who slays entire tribes if one of them gets out of line or doesn't show the proper respect.

Sounds like Bush Crime Family standard business practices, but it's only the old testament, a document so repulsive and vicious that only 30 percent of Americans believe every single word of it. Adding to mass religious insanity, another 55 percent profess some type of religious affiliation -- and the combined 85 percent religiosity is a number only seen these days in primitive, almost stone-age tribes living undiscovered in a Philippine rain forest until some grad student anthropologist from UCLA comes along and blows the whole thing for them.

And debt is a great social control mechanism, too, and christ knows there's enough of that around these days -- enough to keep people working 60 hour weeks to service the debt, with another two hours a day or worse spent in a tin coffin commuting to and from some horrible, soul-wasting job and back to some horrible, soul-wasting "planned community." And if that's not bad enough, now they have to agonize about keeping even this miserable little life from being off-shored or out-sourced or whatever piece of hyphenated biz babble is in vogue at the moment.

I could go on, but I think you probably get the point, which is, given all these factors and hundreds more, multiplied by 300 million idiosyncratic personal sob stories, biases and generalized lack of interest in anything beyond their property lines, and I suggest you've got a population so ripe for fascism that it just about invites it to a night of church bingo and holds bake sales in hopes that it can get some traction in this former democracy. Anything, as long as they don't have to think for themselves anymore, so they don't have to decide independently which group of unpopular brown people to hate this month...

And right on cue, along comes BushCo with the right message, the right attitude, the right flash point, the right national security infrastructure, the right level of congressional complicity, the right iron fist in the right velvet glove. Everything's right in this country, especially the population.

But suddenly, against all odds and in defiance of the evidence of our own eyes for the past six plus years, this bunch of overworked ninnies who can't even get out of their own way is going to take up arms against the mightiest fighting machine ever assembled in the history of the world -- and succeed in bringing it to its knees. That's a great fantasy, worthy of a high-budget Bruce Willis movie, and I'll probably end up being one of these pollyanna idiots when and if the shit finally hits the fan.

But I have no illusions about my chances for a long life if I go that route. And that's OK; there are things more important than longevity. Herding fascists back into their usual spots in sewers and waste treatment plants is high on that list. So we'll see... I just don't want some suburban fuck stick pretending to watch my back when all he's really interested in is getting back to his 42" plasma TeeVeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...


wp

[warren pease]

23. Third atrocity?

You write: "I wonder how anyone could support someone who would ALLOW THE THIRD ATROCITY ON HIS WATCH to happen?"


What do you see as the first two? 9/11 and Iraq? There are so many outrages every single day these shit heels slag at us, pre-spun and digested for us by right wing think tank slime ball "analysts" to preempt debate about this particular atrocity by claiming how it's a huge victory for the American people, blah, blah, blah...

And the following morning, it gets the NYT and WaPo stamps of official "impartial" approval. They describe the outrage in the same terms used the previous evening so nobody gets confused by a discussion based on actual information. And the news write-ups, editorials and columns all include points made by the very same slime ball analysts who polluted the airwaves the night before, which is just another way BushCo keeps its stories straight.

Anyway, just curious what you'd consider to be the first two, and what type of atrocity would qualify as a proper sequel?


wp

[roguevalley]

24. well, since its jump on RV day today, here's what I consider the

third atrocity: consider the fucker who leads the arkansas Gop who said we need another attack on american soil to show everyone how right bush is. the first is wtc and the second is katrina. all the rest are a death by a thousand cuts. those who can't get the complexities of gonzales and the habeas corpus understand guns pointed at them on american soil.

god, i wish i was as smart as a lot of other people. maybe i am an old fool but i don't believe that we're anesthetized by teeeeeeveeeeee. if that were true, then 70% of this country wouldn't be broiling hot.

[warren pease]

28. Not jumping at all...

it just interests me a great deal when I run into somebody whose world view is so similar to mine re the global stench of BushCo, but is considerably more optimistic about the American people and their ability to do something besides what most have done since Bush v Gore. Which is basically the 21st century version of duck and cover. I'm not remotely concerned with any of the sources of fear they've pre-packaged for me, but I AM seriously concerned with BushCo's almost unique ability to completely fuck up everything they touch, and make that fuck-up hurt not them, but the rest of us.

Anyway, I hadn't considered Katrina in the same class as the cluster fuck in Iraq, but you could sure make that case.


wp

[roguevalley]

34. I see, warren pease. I just am incurably hopeful. what else does

a poor person have? I am thinking of the mindset that runs into burning buildings and dives in to help a drowning person. it still exists. its just beat down for the moment.

[warren pease]

35. Now THAT'S a damn good answer

Thank you.


wp

[Blue_In_AK]

17. You got that right, Rogue....

I can imagine that Alaskans would definitely be up in arms.

[Contrary1]

15. That George...he sure is a character, ain't he?

:eyes:

"a) Ensuring the continued functioning of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government;

(b) Providing leadership visible to the Nation and the world and maintaining the trust and confidence of the American people;"

[warren pease]

19. Turns out I'm more coherent in the past tense...

This is a post from a similar thread on this topic about a week ago...



Although it's possible that I'm just a delusional tool of the liberal media and its unwavering bias against our noble and grossly misunderstood president, I can still only think of two reasons to issue such directives:


1) As a necessary response to the societal dislocation and chaos resulting from an emergency severe enough and/or widespread enough to justify a massive, coordinated effort to restore normality through the most efficient use of any and all available federal resources. As an element of such a federal response, martial law is just another useful tool to help the feds restore order as quickly as possible. Martial law would only be invoked if absolutely necessary, on a limited geographic basis, with every concern and respect for individual and societal rights and liberties, and for not a second longer than necessary to achieve a full return to the rule of Constitutional government.


or...


2) The 22nd Amendment says BushCo has to leave the White House in January, 2009 and, having fought for at least half a century to put the executive branch in the hands of pure malevolent fascists and world-class thieves whose only agenda is massive enrichment of themselves and their corporate cronies through things like insane levels of war spending and privatization of absolutely everything not already controlled by our multinational lords and masters, the right wing has absolutely no intention of screwing up a good thing by complying with the law.


Realistically, which of these sounds more like standard BushCo behavior? And there's your answer.


wp

[file83]

16. Gee, I wonder if we're going to suffer another "catastrophic event" any time soon.

This is what the government WILL do:

1) They put military in the streets to protect us.
2) "Good folk" complain & demand the military to leave.
3) Military sends out special ops to perform a false flag terror attack locally.
4) "Good folk" welcome military as their protectors.
5) America is finished.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat for all communities that complain.

[OneBlueSky]

18. BushCo did not issue this decree for the benefit of the next president . . .

who, if the elections aren't rigged (BIG "IF"), will undoubted result in a Democratic victory . . . no, the edict was issued for Bush himself to use -- and he certainly has every intention of doing so . . .

the question about martial law is less one of whether than of when . . .

[zonmoy]

33. if

I don't think there is going to be any if about the rigging of the elections. hasn't been for at least the last ten years.

[blues90]

22. It could very well be -

Some people feel that there are not enough police or guard to pull this off and this may be true but when you consider a few areas under this force will be something put on all the news for the sole purpose of spreading the fear and this is really all that is needed .

Mnay people will just not take the chance out of fear and will go along with the program just as we did with the lies about 9/11 and the foolish idea of attacking Iraq .

[Tyler Durden]

25. I think they will TRY it, but unless they're going to FEED and TAKE CARE of everyone....

Then they'll have a problem on their hands very quickly, in my not so humble opinion.

Can the citizenry stand up to TANKS? Nope. Are there a lot of TANKS available at the moment? Wellll...Nope.

This is the DANGEROUS part of any "Martial Law" delusions that the Pig Bush and his "government" might be entertaining:

THEY DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH ARMOR INCOUNTRY TO PUT DOWN INSURRECTION. Whether or not the people will RISE is another question altogether, and I don't have a clue about that answer, unless they we all start getting hungry or our kids are in jeopardy. Then all bets are off.

[MonkeyFunk]

26. I'm not going to panic yet...

I've been reading here for years that Martial law (usually referred to as "marshall law") is "just around the corner".

I don't have the energy to run around screaming every time DU thinks the Republic is about to fall.

[Rex]

27. The military won't go along with George if he tries to upsurp the

'power structure' in America. Some might go along with him, but the Pentagon is in the business of making it's shadow supporters rich. What George wants will not make them a dime.

[The Stranger]

29. Are the Democrats doing anything about this?

They fund the illegal Iraq war and refuse to prevent an illegal Iran war -- who are these people?

Ralph Nader was right.

[Rex]

30. The whole thing went to shit in 2000.

[KansDem]

31. It used to be "prosperity" was "just around the corner"...now it's "martial law"...

We've come a long way, baby!!!

[dogday]

32. One terra event away from Martial Law ------ nt