By Paul Craig Roberts
10/24/07 "ICH" -- -- US citizens had best rethink the "war on terror" while they still have the liberty to do so. For all of President Bush’s blah-blah talk about bringing democracy to the world, the Bush administration has proved that it is no friend of liberty at home.
The Bush administration has violated constitutional principles, US law, and the Geneva Conventions as no previous administration has done. Here is a short list of the Bush administration’s crimes:
- Spying without court warrants on Americans in violation of both the US Constitution and the FISA statute.
- The denial of habeas corpus, attorney-client privilege, due process, and Geneva Conventions protections to those, American or foreign, designated without evidence as terrorists or enemy combatants.
- The justification and use of torture to coerce confessions and the kidnapping of foreign nationals who are sent to be tortured in foreign prisons.
- The initiation of military aggression against states based on intentional deception by the Bush administration of the US public and the United Nations, and the intentional fabrication of "evidence" to justify unprovoked aggression against sovereign states, which is a war crime under the Nuremberg standard established by the US.
- Violation of the oath of office to defend the US Constitution by practically every member of the Bush administration and Congress.
- Bush has assaulted the separation of powers and the rule of law with "signing statements" and "executive orders" that President Nixon’s White House Counsel John Dean says are commands that treat the co-equal branches of government and the electorate as subservient to executive authority. In April 2006, Boston Globe reporter Charlie Savage listed 750 laws "challenged" by the Bush administration. Not even the demonized president of Iran claims to be above the law.
- Genocide against the people of Iraq where one million Iraqis have died as a result of Bush’s invasion and several million Iraqis are displaced persons.
- Massive civilian casualties in Afghanistan, which is a form of genocide in which military force is routinely applied to unarmed noncombatants.
- Massive corruption in which no-bid contracts are issued to Republican corporations in exchange for kickbacks to political campaigns.
- The theft of two national elections as documented in books by Mark Crispin Miller and Greg Palast.
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