Anonymous Official Briefs Press on Cheney

[Doug]

Mystery Official Briefs the Press on Vice President Dick Cheney's Plane
02-27-2007 9:28 PM
By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) -- The rules were simple. The official who briefed reporters on Vice President Dick Cheney's plane could be identified only as a senior administration official. But there were plenty of clues who was talking as Cheney wrapped up a trip with surprise stops in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"The reason the president wanted me to come, obviously, is because of the continuing threat that exists in this part of the world on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border," the high-ranking person who spoke on condition of anonymity said Tuesday.

The White House distributed a text of the senior administration official's comments on Air Force Two as Cheney flew from Afghanistan to Oman before beginning his flight back to Washington. The transcript did not spell out why the official on Cheney's plane would not be quoted by name.

Read the rest here.

DOUG
Yes, the most secretive and anti-press administration ever, even beating Nixon.

[LaWood]

The most UNreported motive for our MidEast "war" :

"Today the resources of the Middle East are just as essential to the empire builders in Washington D.C., but coupled with the threat of the loss of the value of the dollar via Tehran’s new policy of switching the currency in oil sales, makes military action almost a necessity."
http://www.countercurrents.org/iran-tru ... 07.htm[url]


That was a main motive for Cheney's trip in addition to deflecting attention away from the Libby Lying trial but darn it, the judge dismissed the jury for the weekend.

[Hogeye]

... the most secretive and anti-press administration ever, even beating Nixon.

No; Lincoln was much worse. He had Francis Key Howard (grandson of Francis Scott "Star-spangled banner" Key) arrested for criticizing his invasion of the South without congressional approval, and his suppression of civil liberties in Maryland. Howard was held without charge or trial for nearly two years. He later wrote a book about it entitled "The American Bastille." And he was just one of many. Lincoln had thousands of anti-war protestors, editors, and journalists arrested and imprisoned for suspicion of "disloyalty." Suspension of habeas corpus is a bitch. A New Orleans man was executed for merely taking down a US flag. Northern citizens were imprisoned for things like "being a noisy secessionist," selling confederate trinkets, or "hurrahing for Jeff Davis." Lincoln shut down dozens of newspapers, and on Feb. 2, 1862 started censoring all telegraph communication in the US. In May 1861 the Journal of Commerce published a list of more than a hundred Northern newspapers that had editorialized against going to war. Lincoln immediately ordered the Postmaster General to deny these papers mail delivery. A mob of Federal soldiers demolished the offices of the Democratic Standard in Washington DC after it editorialized about military blunders during the First Battle of Manasses. I could go on...

The Bush junto was nothing compared to the Lincoln junto.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Bush doesn't have to have an anti-press administration - the corporate-owned press put him in power and support all his doings (since that's why they put him into power).

[Doug]

No; Lincoln was much worse.

DOUG
That ^%*$% Lincoln! No wonder he's so reviled among Americans...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Americans have a thing about assassinated and almost assassinated leaders. Lincoln probably would have been popular with the northern states, but not the icon he is now, if he'd lived out his 2nd term. For one thing, he'd have been trying to sanely reunite the states, as Andrew Johnson tried to do, against a Republican congress hellbent on vengence. He probably wouldn't have been impeached, but the gilt would definitely have gotten tarnished a bit.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Joe Conason pointed out on a radio show today that you can't even find out who Cheney has working in his office/department. They won't tell you. He said this is unprecedented.

He just wrote a new book:

***


link

Burb:

"Conason follows Sinclair Lewis' 1935 book It Can't Happen Here with a firm assertion that fascism can indeed take root and blossom in the U.S. if Americans aren't more vigilant about freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Although we are not facing full-blown fascism, Conason sees a "gradual and insidious turn toward authoritarian rule" for the first time since the Nixon administration. He explores how and why Lewis' grim and amusing tale resonates today as Americans watch an increasingly secretive Bush administration usurp the power of the legislature and disregard provisions of the Constitution by stoking fear of terrorism. Conason, author of Big Lies (2003) and The Raw Deal (2005), points to periods throughout history when nations have been tempted by tyrants to turn over the reins of government, and the factors in U.S. history and culture that make us vulnerable to similar impulses now, in the midst of manufactured fears. However readers might feel about Conason's political viewpoints, his caution is worth considering."

Vanessa Bush

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Actually, we ARE facing full-blown fascism as far as the laws on the books are concerned. The combination of the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the martial law rider in the Defense budget - while not constitutional - make this country by law one in which life, liberty, and property (forget the pursuit of happiness, only W's cronies are permitted that already) are privaleges, held only at the permission of the "unitary executive". That's a dictatorship, folks. Just because the unitary executive hasn't exercised those authorities on the general public doesn't mean he doesn't currently have them - and will continue to have them unless/until the laws giving them to him are revoked (by congress) or overturned (by the supreme court). For all the jokes about W's intelligence, the man is quite smart enough to use those powers the way Hitler did - big propaganda stories about use against "enemies of the state" and total media blackout on use against anyone else.

[Dardedar]

Actually, we ARE facing full-blown fascism as far as the laws on the books are concerned.

DAR
Check this out:

***
Normalizing Crazy

Excerpt:

She's [Coulter] been receiving riotous ovations at conservative meetings for years. Rush Limbaugh has been blowing his bile for even longer and he too is a highly respected member of the GOP establishment. The annual CPAC gathering has been selling items like "Happiness is Hillary's face on a milk carton" and "Muslim = Terrorist" bumper stickers like they were going out of style since they started.

This hideous face of the Republican Party has been obvious to those of us who have been paying attention for a long, long time. It is the single most important reason why our politics have devolved into a filthy grudge match.

When Limbaugh said, "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus - living fossils - so we will never forget what these people stood for," we didn't doubt him anymore.

When Ann Coulter said "we need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too, otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors," to rapturous applause at the 2002 CPAC, we knew she wasn't just kidding.

It continues today. Dinesh D'Souza just published a book saying that liberals are the cause of terrorism. Ramesh Ponneru calls us "The Party of Death." And when Michele Malkin then creates a career out of calling the left "unhinged" the Washington Post treats her like she's discovered the Holy Grail.

I certainly agree that such appalling comments are not to be accepted. Indeed, I recall how my stomach turned when when I read what Coulter had to say at CPAC last year:

On Democrats: "Someday they will find a way to abort all future Boy Scouts." College professors: "sissified, pussified." Harvard: "the Soviet Union." John Kerry: the other "dominant woman in Democratic politics." Her post-9/11 motto: "Rag head talks tough, rag head faces consequences." For good measure, she threw in a joke about having Muslims burn down the Supreme Court -- with the liberal justices inside.

Then came questions. A young woman asked Coulter to describe the most difficult ethical decision she ever made. "There was one time I had a shot at Bill Clinton," Coulter said.

Neo-con tee-shirt:

[Hogeye]

US fascism goes back (at least) to the War Boards of WWI. The corporatism of the New Deal was really a rerun of those boards, often run by the same people.

For those interested in the history of fascism in the US, I highly recommend Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs.