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Title: Ave, Caesar Bushius Minimus!
Source:
The New American
URL Source: http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/article_2864.shtml
Published: Dec 17, 2005
Author: William Norman Grigg
Post Date: 2005-12-20 03:12:09 by Uncle Bill
Keywords: Minimus!, Bushius, Caesar
Views: 23
Comments: 1
Ave, Caesar Bushius Minimus! The New American Ave, Caesar Arbustius Minimus! “I could be well moved, if I were as you Thus spake Julius Caesar, in Shakespeare's rendering, arrogantly dismissing a plea to pardon Publius Cimber. The merits of that request mattered not at all; the only issue, where Caesar was concerned, was his primacy and the need to display resolution in all things, to “show it, even in this: That I was constant Cimber should be banished, and constant do remain to keep him so.” The character of Caesar, in his own view, wasn't a servant of Rome; he was Rome. He wasn't subordinate to the law; the law was an emanation of his sovereign will. He was self-enraptured, self-fixated, megalomaniacal. In a word, Caesar was Bushian. “To fight the war on terror,” stated Bushius Minimus in his December 17 radio address, “I am using authority vested in me by Congress, including the Joint Authorization for Use of Military Force, which passed overwhelmingly in the first week after September the 11th. I'm also using constitutional authority vested in me as Commander-in-Chief.” That supposed grant of unlimited power, he insisted, permits him to do pretty much anything he pleases in the name of “protecting” us from terrorism. The same is purportedly true of those who act in his name. This includes instructing the National Security Agency secretly to eavesdrop on the telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. Citizens. Bush repeatedly refers to “activities I authorized,” “activities under this authorization,” “this authorization and the activities conducted under it,” and so on – as if his putative power as “Commander-in-Chief” were the single fixed point in our constitutional firmament. The only scandal in this matter, he insisted, was the fact that “this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations.... Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.” This description applies to outing a CIA operative working under non-official cover as a way of punishing a political critic, n'cest pas? Well, it would, if Bush and his minions were subject to any law beyond “authorization” they receive from the president. Were this actually a constitutional republic, rather than a degenerate democratic empire, the president would not be permitted to “authorize” wholesale violations of the Fourth Amendment; those exposing such crimes against our constitution would be hailed as heroes, and the rogue president guilty of such offenses would be driven from office in disgrace Bushius Minimus remains entrenched in power, although he is peeved at the Senate for refusing to re-authorize the obscenely named “PATRIOT” act. “The senators filibustering must stop their delaying tactics, and the Senate must vote to reauthorize the Patriot [sic] Act,” he groused. “In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment.” That's right: Were our protective shield of arbitrary federal police power to dissolve for so much as a picosecond, the forces of Islamofascism would prevail. Minarets would spontaneously sprout like mushrooms (or is that Iraqi mushroom clouds?) across the landscape; commandeered aircraft would immediately level every conspicuous landmark; career women and MTV trollops would instantly be swaddled in burqas; throat-slitting jihadis would spring up like myrmidons and begin reaping their grisly harvest.... Or maybe not. Most likely not. After all, three years prior to 9-11 and the panicked enactment of the PATRIOT Act by Congress, military intelligence had isolated several of the key cells and terrorist personnel who eventually carried out the Black Tuesday attack. In the weeks prior to that assault, the pre-PATRIOT Bush administration knew enough to prevent it, had they been inclined to, which apparently they were not. The 9-11 attack was eminently preventable, even without the supposedly indispensable powers seized by Bush and his cohorts in the aftermath of the atrocity. Stopping the 9-11 attack would have saved the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people, but it would have done nothing to expand or protect the already bloated powers of the presidency. And of course, that wouldn't do, since it was the destiny of Bushius Minimus to become a stalwart War Prezidunt. It was, like, God's will, and stuff. Does He Even Care? In the past week, Bush blithely admitted that at least 30,000 civilians have been killed in Iraq as the result of a war he belatedly admits was started on the basis of bad intelligence. While some of the victims have been claimed in terrorist attacks, that number must be relatively small. To that figure, of course, must be added the more than 2,100 American troops who have died, as well as uncounted Iraqi troops – all of whom died as the result of what Bush calls a “tough decision.” Is there another incumbent ruler who can lay claim to a similar bodycount? Sure, Bush and his defenders claim that this is simply the price that must be paid to “liberate” Iraq, but here's the raw truth: The Iraqi people never asked to be “liberated” by the same U.S. Government that had underwritten, armed, and propped up Saddam since the early 1980s. The 30,000 or more Iraqi citizens who have died in Bush's war didn't volunteer to die. They were killed as a result of Bush's lethal whimsy. And even if Iraq were someday to be genuinely free (may God hasten that day), Bush's decision would still be morally indefensible, because it was not his right or constitutional calling to set in motion a conflict that took the lives of tens of thousands of people in a country that neither attacked nor threatened ours. It also occurs to me that sometime in the not-too-distant future, the number of U.S. Personnel killed in Iraq will eclipse the 9-11 death toll. But those grim figures added together will be little more than a down payment on the body count we're likely to see if we don't abandon our interventionist foreign policy in favor of one based on the actual defense of our nation and its legitimate interests. Pray for Travis Greene “Marine Cpl. Travis Greene, a 1999 Twin Falls [Idaho] High School Graduate, is recovering at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., after losing both legs above the knee,” reports the AP. “The 24-year-old, in his third tour of duty in Iraq....” Stop right there. Corporal Greene had already served two tours in Iraq. To continue: “...was part of a team of Marines evacuating other Marines who had been injured in an earlier explosion.” The attack, which took place in early December, left three other Marines and one Navy corpsman without one or both legs; two of them were severely burned. Greene holds his high school record in the intermediate hurdles. He qualified for the state competition as a freshman – the first ever to do so at his school. “I was just sick” upon hearing the news of his injury, recalls his mother, Sue Greene. “He is so athletic. I thought, `How is he going to handle this?'” “I'm a war president,” Bush boasted in a February 8, 2004 Meet The Press interview. “I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind.” His equanimity is undisturbed by the death of 30,000 Iraqi civilians. Does anyone think that Bush, who was an avid jogger before his knees gave out, is tormented by the thought that thousands of athletic young men like Travis Greene have been left invalids because of his bad decisions? Writing of another hereditary king who undertook an aggressive war on a flimsy pretext, Shakespeare had a character offer this sobering prophecy: “[I]f the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it....”
By William Norman Grigg
Sat, 17 Dec 2005
But I am constant as the Northern Star,
Of whose true fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks;
They are all fire, and every one doth shine.
But there's one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world: 'tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive.
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds onto his rank,
Unshaked of motion; and that I am he....”
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#1. To: Uncle Bill (#0)
This description applies to outing a CIA operative working under non-official cover as a way of punishing a political critic, n'cest pas? That's right. If this govt was truly concerned about national security they would not allow thousands of unchecked illegals cross the border every day. So obviously whoever they are tracking and monitoring has nothing to do with our safety.
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. ~George OrwellThe only scandal in this matter, he insisted, was the fact that “this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations.... Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.”
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