Americans experienced a win and a loss last week in the Bush Administration’s ongoing war against our Constitution; not to mention our very way of life. The win came in the form of a U.S. District Court ruling by Judge Ann Aiken striking down parts of the USA Patriot Act that were grossly in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. The loss came in the form of the passage of the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment by the US Senate.
I’m going to take the optimistic view that both of these events are indicative of a sea change that I believe is taking place in America. This is because the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment was effectively watered down in order to achieve passage. More and more people are now wise to the lies, propaganda, and fear-mongering of the Bush Administration so it is becoming much easier to oppose it and much harder to support it. That’s my trend and I’m sticking to it.
The ruling by Judge Aiken is a clear victory in that it restores Fourth Amendment protections, at least in the case of criminal investigations. When the USA Patriot Act was passed in 2001, immediately after 9/11, the Bush Administration assured us that its provisions would be limited to investigations related to terrorism and not to criminal investigations. In practice, this has proven to be yet another of the Bush Administration’s Big Lies. It remains to be seen if the government will appeal the decision and, if so, what the Ninth Circuit and the US Supreme Court will do with it. For now, its nice to see that at least one part of the judicial branch is protecting us from the depredations of Bush’s War on the Bill of Rights.
On the other hand, the US Senate half of the legislative branch has moved us much farther in the direction of launching a war against Iran. It proves that the neocons may be down, but they are definitely not out in the US Senate. It also proves, once and for all and for everyone to see, that Jon Kyl is a staunch neocon acting in service to the Bush Administration and its War on Oil Producing Muslims. While this will come as no surprise to anyone who has paid more than passing attention to Kyl in the past, it shows that he is flagrantly out of the closet now.
Fortunately, two particularly odious paragraphs were deleted prior to passage that would have made the amendment a virtual call to war. Also, another paragraph was inserted that calls for the pursuit of diplomatic and economic means (aka, sanctions) in dealing with Iran. Unfortunately, a paragraph designating the Qods Force of the Iranian Republican Guard as a terrorist organization was left intact. In response, the Iranian Parliament has passed a resolution of its own declaring the CIA and US Army as terrorist organizations. I wonder which legislative body will be first to declare the sky is blue?
So the purpose of this “Sense of the Senate” amendment is simply to give political cover to the Bush Administration so that it may launch offensive actions against the Iranian military. In practice, this means that Bush can strike against any Iranian military forces claiming that he is striking the “terrorist” Qods force. Just the same as Iraqi civilians killed by US forces are always referred to as insurgents.
Most of the rest of the document is simply a tiresome repeat of unsubstantiated neocon claims of Iranian assistance to insurgents in Iraq. This is exactly the same as the false claims against Iraq in the run up to the March 2003 invasion of that country. The administration’s claim that Iran is developing nuclear weapons rings about as true as the same accusation against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Bush Administration is propagating these lies to justify the attack on Iran that it has been planning since before Dubya was ever “elected” to the Presidency.
To those war supporters who say that we had to invade Iraq based on our beliefs about the threat at the time, I say:
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…”
- Mike
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
