Chris Floyd: 'Insanity defense: Power, paranoia and presidential tyranny'

Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

This is an expanded version of the column appearing in the June 30 edition
of the Moscow Times.

That the United States, once touted as the "world's greatest democracy," is
now ruled by a presidential dictatorship is a fact beyond any serious
dispute. Indeed, except for a bare majority on the Supreme Court -- which
will disappear with the retirement or demise of the aging Justice John Paul
Stevens, who wrote the Court's stinging rejection of Bush's kangaroo
military tribunals -- the nation's political establishment seems to have
accepted this revolutionary system with remarkable docility, even as its
lineaments are further exposed week by week. The Bush Administration no
longer bothers to hide the novel theory of government that undergirds its
coup, but declares it openly, in court, in Congress, everywhere.

The theory holds that the president has the arbitrary right to ignore any
law that he feels is an unconstitutional infringement of his power - and a
law is automatically unconstitutional if the president feels it infringes on
his power. This neatly-squared circle makes Congress irrelevant and removes
the judiciary from the loop altogether. Thus the only effective power left
in the land is the "unitary executive" - the fancy modern name that the
legal minions of President George W. Bush have given to the ancient concept
of "tyranny."

The true nature of this presidential dicatorship has been laid bare in a
harrowing new book from reporter Ron Suskind: The One-Percent Doctrine.
Suskind, who had earlier coaxed the Regime's defining ethos from an arrogant
Bushist - "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own
reality" - has painted the portrait of an administration drunk on lawless
power, a junta operated from the shadows by the grim and literally
heart-dead husk called Dick Cheney and his longtime companion in
skullduggery, Don Rumsfeld.

As Suskind notes, it was Cheney who enunciated the certifiably paranoid
principle that governs the regime's behavior: If there is even a one-percent
chance that some state or group might do serious harm to the United States,
then America must respond as if that threat were a certainty - with full
force, pre-emptively, disregarding any law or institution that might hinder
what Bush likes to call the "path of action." Facts and truth are
unimportant; the only thing that matters is the projection of
unchallengeable power: "It's not about our analysis, or finding a
preponderance of evidence," said Cheney. "It's about our response."

This is plainly madness. Whether the insanity of the "doctrine" is genuine -
i.e., a pathological panic reaction by gutless, pampered fat-cats scared of
the slightest murmur from the dusky tribes out there beyond the iron gates
and razor wire of privilege - or if, more likely, it is simply the chosen
rationalization for a gang of predators tired of the few restraints that
constitutional government has placed on their lust for loot and domination,
the end result is the same: the most powerful country in the history of the
world is being run by moral degenerates in thrall to a lunatic policy.

Suskind's book is full of chilling passages - such as the vicious and
pointless tortures inflicted, at Bush's explicit suggestion, on a mentally
ill al Qaeda flunky whom the Regime had, with knowing deceit, declared a top
terrorist operative. When Abu Zubaydah was seized in Pakistan in March 2002,
the White House trumpted it as a "major victory" in the War on Terror. Bush
declared that Zubaydah was one of al Qaeda's "top operatives," a mastermind
"plotting death and destruction to the United States." Bushist minions - and
the ever-credulous press -- identified Zubaydah as "chief of operations" for
the terrorist organization, even "bin Laden's potential heir," as Kurt Nimmo
notes.

All of this was a lie. As interrogators quickly realized, Zubaydah was a
lowly factotum - "al Qaeda's travel agent" - who helped arrange journeys for
the group's members and families, and picked up people at the airport. He
was also certifiably insane, suffering from a serious multiple personality
disorder, displayed in the years of obsessively detailed diaries Zubaydah
kept on his various fractured selves. He was virtually worthless as an
intelligence asset.

But the White House wouldn't accept this; they set out to "create their own
reality." Told that Zubaydah had revealed nothing of value under ordinary
interrogation, Bush first whined to CIA boss George Tenet - "You're not
gonna make me lose face on this, are ya?" - then pointedly asked: "So, do
these harsh techniques work?" He was referring to the "torture memos" drawn
up at his order in 2002 by the White House legal team: Machiavellian
documents which declared that anything less than deliberate murder or
permanent maiming should no longer regarded as torture.

Bush's sinister nod and wink were clearly understood. The wretched Zubaydah
was then subjected to a series of tortures. As Suskind writes, he "was
water-hooded, a technique in which a captive's face is covered with a towel
as water is poured atop, creating the senstation of drowning. He was beaten.
He was repeatedly threatned with and made certain of his impending death.
His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuing
noise and harsh lights." His broken mind snapped completely. He began
spewing out whatever his tormentors wanted to hear: fantastic tales of plots
targeting "shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, public water systems,
nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of
Liberty" - meat for countless "terror alerts" whenever the political
situation called for a nice, juicy scare to goose the rubes.

But perhaps the most revealing moment in Suskind's book is a brief vignette
that captures the quintessence of Bush's callous disregard for the American
people - and the Regime's strange, preternatural calm in the face of
imminent attack. In August 2001, while Bush dawdled on his Texas dude ranch,
the entire national security system was, in Tenet's words, "blinking red" in
expectation of a major terrorist strike; indeed, Tenet later said that the
threat was so imminent that his "hair was on fire."

On Aug. 6, a CIA official brought the infamous "Bin Laden Determined to
Strike in US" memo to Crawford, to read it out personally to the President
and make sure he got the warning. Bush sat in silence as the briefer
delivered his fell message. Duty done, the agent awaited the president's
orders, or the president's guidance, or the president's questions. He got
nothing but a curt, snide dismissal: "All right, you've covered your ass
now."

That was it. Bush had nothing else to say about this stark threat of
impending slaughter. He had no questions, no advice; the
"Commander-in-Chief" had no commands. Just smirking contempt. "You've
covered your ass." You've gone through the motions, you've played your part
in the charade, just like me - now get lost.

Even if you give Bush every benefit of the doubt here, even if you put the
most charitable construction possible on his behavior - although his proven
record of duplicity and malevolence deserves no such charity - even with all
this, the very best you could say of his reaction is that it represents a
blood-curdling degree of depraved indifference and criminal negligence,
worthy of Nero.

Beyond this "best-case" scenario, you tumble into an abyss of ever-darker
implications, a murk that may never be dispelled - "that dark maw where high
politics and low murder feast on the same lies, the same flesh." But what we
already know, what is plain as day, is bad enough: tyranny has come -
aggressive, remorseless, murderous, mad.

Source: Empire Burlesque
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=721&Itemid=...

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson