Tuesday, December 27, 2005

What Bush Was Up To

Think Progress

It's becoming clearer what Bush was doing post-9/11.

Think Progress reminds us that contrary to Bush claims, FISA was easily amended after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act loosened requirements for obtaining surveillance in one of its more controversial provision.

Congress is being used as misdirection in the GWOT. It doesn't matter what Congress does - in fact, for Bush policies to work, it's best if Congress doesn't have any real connect to what's going on at all. It's best for Bush if Congress debates things just as if we had a democracy, as if Congressional acts mattered.

Because the truth is, right now, Congress doesn't matter. Congress is offline as far as power is concerned.

Remember this quote?

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Silly me - I just thought the Bushes meant the media. But no, they meant the Congress as well.

The Bush Administration has been one long exercise in dismantling the American government. They have allowed our enemies to attack us, sunk us into debt, tried time after time to disable successful policies like Social Security, lied us into war, and exacerbated the partisan gridlock of Congress in order to flank its Constitutional authority under the guise of national security.

This crap must end. These people must go.

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