Stupid News

America's biggest threat comes from within

August 19, 2007

26 Comments

Paul Craig Roberts is a Republican who served as undersecretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page, so he's no kook or Commie. He warns, "Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the United States could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran."

Roberts warns us that Bush has put into place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of executive orders that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency.

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into Iraq and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging terrorist attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda? Bush already ignores public opinion and laws he doesn't like. His secret spying network is in place.

He has politicized all levels of government, appointing cronies who are loyal to him rather than competent officials. Has he been setting the groundwork for dictatorship?

Adolf Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German election, used the Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and push through the Enabling Act, which made him dictator. Determined tyrants never require majority support in order to overthrow democratic constitutions. They declare "national emergencies." A series of staged or permitted terrorist attacks would accomplish that.

On a recent radio show, Roberts said, "Americans think their danger is terrorists. They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution.... The terrorists are not anything like the threat we face from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism."

Is Roberts - Republican, Reagan appointee, conservative newspaper editor - far out when he warns, "The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown"? One certainly hopes so.

- William Stosine,
Iowa City.