The Treason Card (Krugman, NYT, 07/07/06)

[swag]

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/opinion/07krugman.html (sub.req.)

alt excerpt:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/07/paul_krugman_th.html

The nature of the right-wing attack on The New York Times — an attack not on the newspaper's judgment, but on its motives — seems to have startled many people in the news media. After an editorial in The Wall Street Journal declared that The Times has what amount to treasonous intentions — that it "has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it" — The Journal's own political editor pronounced himself "shocked," saying that "I don't know anybody on the news staff of The Wall Street Journal that believes that."

But anyone who was genuinely shocked by The Journal's willingness to play the treason card must not have been paying attention these past five years. ...he Bush administration and the movement it leads have been engaged in an authoritarian project, an effort to remove all the checks and balances that have heretofore constrained the executive branch.

Much of this project involves the assertion of unprecedented executive authority — the right to imprison people indefinitely without charges (and torture them if the administration feels like it), the right to wiretap American citizens without court authorization, the right to declare, when signing laws passed by Congress, that the laws don't really mean what they say.

But an almost equally important aspect of the project has been the attempt to create a political environment in which nobody dares to criticize the administration or reveal inconvenient facts... As far back as 2002, Rush Limbaugh, in words very close to those used by The Wall Street Journal last week, accused Tom Daschle, then the Senate majority leader, of a partisan "attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism."

. . . more

[kenny blankenship]

1. If you suckle Nazis, don't be surprised when they bite your tit

Nobody in the news media has a right to be startled by these developments.

[rubberducky]

2. This makes you want to order up that bomb shelter.

This administration seems like they have all have lost thier minds at precisely the same time. I have never seen this nation so divided, and it cuts me to my soul. What a damn dirty shame. BUT, I WILL FIGHT ON. When "the chimp" cries "terra, terra" , I will know it for the sham it is . When we seek treason charges against jounalists, we have lost so much of what is so wonderful about this country.

[mhatrw]

3. Kick

[teryang]

4. Totalitarianism eventually consumes the early supporters...

...who hoped to gain (materially) from their early dedication to the movement. Typically, even to the moment of execution, they still declare their faith in the leader. However, this level of commitment to dictatorship isn't being achieved.

The dictatorial movement of the neo-cons has three problems today. First, they don't have any demogogue with the charisma to inspire faith until death. Bush is too ignorant and his oratorical skills are inadequate. Simplicity and manichean outlook are necessary but something more that a cheerleader is needed. Bush efforts on the bully pulpit are inevitably disappointing and anti- climatic. Second, they also haven't achieved total control of the media. Third, their plenary ability to inflict torture and death on opponents is compromised.

The ability to inspire terror by the imposition of torture and death was exemplified by the thinly disguised black operations of 911, (the cover stories and the commission aren't meant to be believed); the anthrax attacks, (the media and the legislative branches were the primary targets with a secondary purpose of terrorizing the public); the illegal roundup and incarceration of Islamic persons after 911; the undisguised torture and murder of prisoners and killing of civilians in the war in Afghanistan; the massive war crime by the unprovoked attack and invasion of Iraq; the illegal wiretapping and surveillance of Americans without warrant; the torture (war crimes) at Abu Ghraid; and the war crime of the destruction of Fallujah.

Of course the list goes on to date. The ongoing secret offensive operations in Ramadi suggest that media control has not been achieved and that the neo-con party's terror offensive against the American people and their Constitution is not airtight and is losing momentum. Why should the slaughter there be kept secret? Clearly, the totalitarian movement has lost ground.

What is needed from their point of view is the open torture and killing of Americans to bully the influential back into submission. The bogus Miami plot and the tunnel plots don't go far enough. People need to be killed. Party sanctioned thugs need to break into homes or conduct another drag net on the streets, arbitrarily arrest people, and commit murder and other atrocities, to return to the terror level they achieved after 911.



<Those of us who tried to call attention to this authoritarian project years ago have long marveled over the reluctance of many of our colleagues to acknowledge what was going on.>