And no one was more of a frightened, craven, small man about Al Qaeda than Dick Cheney. Huddled for possibly years in his underground bunker where the boogeyman wouldn't get him at the same time as New Yorkers who fled that city on foot on that day returned to work BECAUSE THEY HAD TO; because they didn't have the luxury of fear, it's ironic and mysterious that this chickenshit asshole is still being touted by his daughter on national television as being The Guy To Defend America™.
When you look at all the faux-macho posturing of the Bush years from even the small amount of distance we have now, it's difficult to believe how a country could be so taken in my what would have been called hysteria if perpetrated by a woman instead of a dour man with a perpetual snarl who could shoot a friend in the face and then get the friend to apologize.
But now, as many of us suspected at the time, Dick Cheney was perfectly willing to send the military into the streets of America, knocking on suburban doors in search of terrorists:
Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.
Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.
A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.
The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.
In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.
“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.
The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.
The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.
The most benevolent explanation for this is that Cheney was so freaked out by the 9/11 attacks that he overreacted and his eight-year campaign to eliminate Americans' right to be left alone by their government was simply a misguided overreaction to the attacks. Given what we know about Cheney, and given that the guilty pleas of the so-called "Lackawanna Six" and others arrested on terrorism charges were apparently the only way to avoid being given "enemy combatant" status and that the talk of "wedding" and "big meal" by one of what the Bush Administration called a sleeper cell was actually about the wedding of one of them and a big meal, it's hard to imagine that this trial balloon of having tanks roll down the streets of America was just about arresting a few guys in upstate New York.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire