We Caved in - Again

Whatever happened to "we have nothing to fear but fear itself". Gone the way of fearless leaders.

We still have a few but don't hold your breath waiting for Kucinich, Feingold, or Boxer to prevail. Not while there are people like my senior Senator all too ready to jump ship. I've been disappointed with some of her previous votes; this goes far beyond disappointment.

Here, from Huffington Post, is one explanation.

From the article:

On Friday, by a vote of 60-28, the Senate passed the measure that President Bush had requested to enhance his powers of warrantless wiretapping. It is said that these new powers will not cover phone calls made within the United States; but the effect of the vote is certainly to remove a constitutional check. We now have the president's word that he will act with restraint.

Yep, when pigs fly. Haven't our Senators learned yet that his word is meaningless? FISA, which probably didn't do a lot except rubber stamp but at least was a token, is now being bypassed by an Attorney General who's having problems remembering his own name.

We might have lost this vote anyway. We know which way Lieberman jumps and Cheney would have been the deciding vote. It was the number of defectors that appalled me.

Diva Jood left a comment about the Blackwater Mercenary Army on my earlier post. I'd said (somewhat rhetorically) in a comment on one of her posts that I knew Cheney was pulling the puppet's strings but I wondered who was pulling Cheney's.

She answered me in her most recent post with a description of Blackwater.

I knew about them, knew they were mercenaries, but didn't know the scope of their operations. I did remember they had patrolled New Orleans and they were infamous in Iraq. I didn't know, although I should have suspected, that they were formed by Christian fundamentalists.

So I googled.

And found this

And this

And, writing about New Orleans, this

And, from their own web site, these news clips from FOX and the Washington Times, among others. Anything FOX and the Times praises makes me automatically terrified.

All of which leads me back to my question. Cheney may be pulling the strings here but he's not acting alone and I can't believe he's in charge. Is the tail wagging the dog?
COMMENTS:

Worried American said...

Cheney is Bush's "master puppeteer", pulling his strings, but Cheney is himself a tool of HIS masters, the mega-rich that I usually refer to as Big Business, those greedy corporations aiming to control the world's resources (more so than they do already). Power and wealth are heady addictions.

I have posted often about the power of the Fundies in government; the scope of their power is not widely known but it is very real and very dangerous and steadily growing. It has been a practise of some despotic governments to use rigid, controlling religions as a means to help control the citizens. It helps keep dissent to a minimum and non-conformists in line. (It worked for Spain for 300 years - do we want Fundies controlling us for 300 years, "sacrificing the body to save the soul"?).

At the risk of sounding like some of Gadfly's wingnut conspiracists, I have also posted of the possibility of our fearless leaders using mercenaries to control the public. It is to the advantage of despotic governments to use hired mercenaries; using one's own national military is an iffy situation. Military coups are legion. Hired guns are safer for the despots.

People who forget (or never learn) history are doomed to repeat it. And yes, I know that history is written by the victors. But there are actually some historians who are factual and unbiased. Rather like the differences between the poodle dog mass media and the independent media - you get a whole new outlook on the news. (You can get some real screwballs, too). Foreign publications, even the Brits, report more FACTUAL news about events in the world than we Americans get.People in other lands are much better informed than are Americans.

The sheeple are beginning to awaken but is it too late? Have we allowed our government to seize too much power and control already?

Monday, August 06, 2007 11:43:00 PM