The George W. Bush administration seized the White House in 2000 by way of an openly stolen election, then cemented its criminal power into place with the unprecedented 9/11 mass murder, and its two resulting abominations: the fabricated “war on terrorism” (the pretext for endless global war), and the USA Patriot Act (the full-scale destruction of the Constitution, and the militarization of the US homeland). 

The deepening of the war and security state continues unabated and relatively unopposed, in spite of meager posturing of (largely complicit) congressional Democrats. Nothing has been done to stop, reverse or undo the Bush administration’s boundless criminality, its wide open corruption, or the absolute and systematic rape of law itself. Few if any of Bush’s criminals have been brought to justice.

Three new examples leave no doubt: 

• In yet another attack on the separation of powers, the Bush administration is pushing for a “war czar”, giving the White House even more centralized war power, over and above the power it already wields through the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA. Through the concocted war and intelligence “czars”, the White House inner circle—Bush, Cheney, Rove, etc.—wields total dictatorial power, and the power to bypass and silence any hint of opposition from the rest of the government.

• Mike McConnell, the National Intelligence Director (intelligence “czar” himself) is pushing for greatly expanded power to spy on US citizens and potential “terrorists”. McConnell is requesting more warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of US citizens, and more spying without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court approval or other court orders.

McConnell is also demanding that telecommunications companies receive immunity from civil liability for “cooperating” with the Bush administration. Two companies, AT&T and Verizon, now face lawsuits for handing phone records to the NSA. AT&T’s “secret rooms” provided the Bush administration direct access to the lives of US citizens.

See:

“Bush administration caught red-handed spying on US citizens”

The Bush administration wants not only the full legal authority, but the permission, to violate and destroy the lives of anyone it targets.

• It is a fact, detailed in a new investigation by Jeremy Scahill, that Blackwater, the private mercenary firm, manages and runs many aspects of the Bush administration’s criminal wars all over the world, as well as domestic “security” operations (such as police operations in the post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans). Blackwater, one of the many poison-fanged corporate military faces of Bush-Cheney’s neocon political apparatus, headed by hardwired Bush-connected neocon military-intelligence figures, is above the law—not controlled by either the US military or the US Congress. Blackwater, which is thriving, and building new facilities all over the world, including the United States, is the face of the new international and homeland security state—a criminal state.

As written by Mike Ruppert in Crossing the Rubicon, “American fascism is something different now. It’s not just private, elite control over the legal system, nor private evasion of the rule of law. It’s a crisis-induced transition from a society with a deeply compromised legal system to a society where force and surveillance completely supplant the system.”

Consider the system supplanted.