Wah-Wah-Wah about abuse photos and you MISS this thread?

[BeHereNow]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5073399
HELLO DU?
by Executive Order as of October 14th, 2005...
What part of this picture do you NOT get?
http://www.whitehouse.gov
Click on "Executive Orders" and remember this:
EverytHing Hitler did was LEGAL-
by EXECUTIVE ORDER.

BHN

[BeHereNow]

1. Okay, so be it. I'm going to bed to dream about the gulags...

Frankly, I am totally disgusted with the
complete ignorance about this topic at the moment.
Given all that GW has blathered on about
regarding the implementation of using military forces
here in the good old USA, does NO one understand the
implications of the EO?
If not, then so be it.
You deserve all that you ignore.
BHN

[EFerrari]

2. Okay, wait! I've been moving and am reading 'fast as I can.

Thank you, as always, for fronting what matters.

[BeHereNow]

4. What "matters" is exactly what DU ignores.

executive orders MATTER.
And lately, they stink to high heaven where we, as
civilians, are concerned.
Welcome to 1933.
BHN

[EFerrari]

7. Yep. Talking about 2008

and the housing bubble.

No bubbles here.

/edited for obnoxiousness

[havocmom]

5. Been having those gulag dreams since Patriot Act. Anything since is icing.

Not surprised by anything the junta does, unless they screwed up and accidently did something honorable. THAT would be a surprise.

Have accepted long ago that the Republic is dead. Also keep my powder dry.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

28. I've been having "NeoCon Nightmares" since December 2000.

[nofurylike]

3. thank you for the linkage and the links, BeHereNow! eom

[EFerrari]

6. I get it.

Just spent a month putting up supplies for our family and stragglers.

Puny measure. Surreal, all of it. And, there it is.

:kick:

[understandinglife]

8. Thank you for posting this!

Peace.

[BeHereNow]

9. Thanks for all that YOU post!

Your posts are amazing.
I save them all.
BHN

[nofurylike]

10. kick and recommend. eom

[EFerrari]

11. Yes. Recommended. n/t

[hiley]

12. Recommend this

thread, too!

[havocmom]

13. Remember those 'pray for the president' cards the troops were asked

to fill out a could years back? That should've set off some alarms! They were shopping for who would drink Kool Aide to the point of firing on their mothers on Main Street way back then.

And a few weeks ago, story that commanders and brass in Iraq all has 'private contractor' body guards... Gads, I have been SCREAMING for weeks that it meant the generals and COs were being held hostage by the corporate interests profiting from the killing. Show me ANY top CO who has made it to a high rank and I will show you a chap who knows people well enough to be able to pick his own fucking guard detail! Private Contractors? Like, hmmmm, Black Water thugs? Yeah, the brass has been captive a long time.

But, still I cling to the hope that most in the military will not fire upon their mothers and grandmothers. I keep recalling the Soviet troops, called to take down the demonstrations in Moscow not so very long ago. Most chose not to follow orders. Most would not fire on their mothers and grandmothers.

Seems like that shook up a lot of pricks who thought they has limitless power too.

Like I said in a different thread, let us hope many in the military will not follow illegal orders and remember their first duty is to the nation, not a bunch of chicken hawks pretending they serve the CIC, who is, himself, a pretender.

Let us hope most of our troops are decent, thinking people. And, I do hope they are not drugged out of their minds, for I put NOTHING past the thugs who have seized control of the mechanism of government in this nation. Their crimes are so many and so grave that they dare not fall from power. They also will not give it up, so, yeah, yammering about who to run in 2008 is just plain stupid. We have a whole lotta shit to get through before we worry about bumper stickers for a future which is just plain unlikely.

[me b zola]

15. Clinging to the hope of the military remembering their oath

Members of the military will be prosecuted (under the UCMJ) for carrying out illegal orders. It is this military law that convicted the rank & file at Abu Garaib (sp). It is my deepest hope that many of the troops, for no other reason, remember that lesson.

May God, or the FSM, help us all.

[nofurylike]

14. i hope is okay with you that i quoted you, BHN. you'd said it

so clearly.

i apologize for not checking it with you first.

[nofurylike]

16. no worry. deleted it. just wanted to get people's attention to the

thread you've been clarifying.

thank you!

[me b zola]

17. Well, that pretty much settles that.

We are now a military dictatorship.

I don't even know how to respond. What restrictions are there on EOs?

I mean, :wtf:

[Hardrada]

18. Ye gads!

[Hardrada]

19. OMG!

[Dogmudgeon]

20. What exactly set you off?

I've assumed that we've been screwed six ways from Sunday since 12/13/2000. Why would some changes in military legal language be critical? Various Emergency Acts written as Public Laws and USA-PATRIOT give them all the power they need.

All they're doing is making their book of excuses look better for when they need a justification for some tyrannical act or another. This particular one applies to military personnel. "Martial Law" doesn't mean that the populace would have to follow the UCMJ and face courts-martial for civil infractions. The term "Martial Law" is commonly used as a synonym for "Emergency Law" especially if the Military is being used to help keep order.

As for the military personnel themselves, the same Abu Ghraib scandal you mention is instructive, which is why we pay attention to it. Three people took the heat for an entire chan of command, two enlisted women and one non-commissioned officer. Oh, okay, Gen. Janice Karpinsky took some heat, but only because she ruffled some of her Supreme Commander In Chief's feathers. And a lieutenant had to forfeit some pay. But all of this was decided before the Courts-Martial decided on the chapter and verse the punishment would be administered under.

You didn't even link to MCM-2000 (Rev. 2002). You could have at least posted the document as changed by the EO. You did incorporate the changes as stipulated by our Beloved Maximum Leader, didn't you?

I look at everything Bush does as a potential cancer on the body politic of the USA, and I do not take these changes lightly. But none of them are, by themselves, linchpins of the regime. To a dictator, law really is bass-ackwards: they do what they will, then their lawyers cobble together justifications. Instruments like USA-PATRIOT and Executive Orders are not strictly necessary, but they make things easier for the lawyers.

But here's the part of the picture I do not get: why every day, half a dozen people scream that everybody is stupid and sheep-like (except themselves). They seem to forget that education works better than punishment. It's easy to get frustrated in times like these. And that's exactly why we all need to redouble our educational efforts.

--p!

[EFerrari]

21. Ed does work better than punishment but

we have to expect reactivity since the cabal has traumatized us systematically.

So, let's be generous. We will be dealing with a traumatized people for the foreseeable future. They/we will need a leg up.

[Dogmudgeon]

24. Perhaps it's me, too

In the past few weeks, I've been flamed, hooted at, and putatively spanked by a number of people I'd never expect it from, including a very nasty flame right now where the flamer is disparaging my education, justifying it as protecting the delicate mental poise of many DUers, claiming that my explanation of something is wrong, and then offering the exact same explanation.

I wrote a very nasty reply. Then I saved it to a text file. Then I left the thread without having posted it. I may edit the reply and then post it, since I have a personal policy of not allowing people to bully me on-line. (Been there, done that, suffered the consequences. Punching a bully in the nose really is the best way to deal with things. But I digress.)

I also don't expect this kind of "attack-the-sheep" flaming from BeHereNow, and am puzzled by it. His rancor intrigued me enough to hunt down MCM-2002 and look at some of the passages. I still can't make head or tails of why it set him off. It's the same old same-old -- legalistic pettifoggery, which Team Bush loves.

(And, incidentally, in thirty seconds, the Financial Responsibility for Poor People Act goes into effect. Can you feel your moral fibre taking on increased gravitas?)

You're probably right, though. I feel as if the other shoe is about to drop -- or BE dropped, right on the American People. There are times I feel like I'm going nuts, myself. I've been posting less because of it.

--p!

[BeHereNow]

25. Checking in- Sorry for attacking

The implications of what is now possible in the
way of stiffling all military dissent and
sealing evidence as "national security" issues
is why I am going ballistic.
The lack of attention and comprehension by the
media and others as to what the endless string of
EOs and appointments mean as far as the future
has me gasping.

And I am a she, not a he.

Sorry to rant so lately, I am simply overwhelmed
like so many others in our midst.

There are SO many outrageous things happening
simultaneously under the current "administration."
It boggles the mind.
Lately I have very low tolerance for certain
things, forgive and know I will attempt to refrain from ranting.


BHN

[Dogmudgeon]

27. Quite understandable, actually

The past few days have put my own head through a number of walls.

Also, I'm sorry about the pronoun error -- I had gotten the impression from one earlier post or another that you were male, not female. Mea culpa.

The confounding thing about such actions as the changes made to the Manual of Courts-Martial is that they bring in mainly benign changes made for reasons of clarity, not tyranny; the tyranny comes in the back door. But secondarily, much of it is being done by Team Bush to cover their own asses.

USA-PATRIOT was all about it. I don't think a single new law was included in USA-PATRIOT, but the Administration used the entire menage to establish a whole new list of legal decisions and opinions, the "end run" pundits often talk about. The old laws came with limits, so the new copies were argued as if they were something new. And in the process, we lost a lot of liberties. And we only had to destroy a few hundred lives to do it. Such a bargain! (Not.)

It actually is a lost cause thinking Bush will ever be held accountable for his deeds. If he resigns, is impeached and convicted, or otherwise leaves office, Dick Cheney will become President and promptly issue a pardon. And the whole line of presidential seccession is filled with Bush cronies.

The fear I have -- and it's an irrational fear, I admit it -- is that Bush, facing political ruin, will "come up with" a disaster on a scale larger than that of 9-11. At this point, even if Osama went on TV and personally pushed the button to detonate a dozen H-bombs in NYC, it would be doubtful that Bush would get much of a "bounce". A pandemic of something like Bird Flu would allow martial law to be imposed, but no one knows whether Bird Flu will even be a pandemic; most influenza viruses never become that much of a threat, though over time, pandemics are inevitable. And if they're ignoring a possible eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano for political gain, they're in for a surprise; they'd be cutting off their entire heads to spite their faces. Not that the people would matter to them -- no sane rich person would risk destroying their entire fortune and world for political gamesmanship.

And then, if martial law is imposed, it would have to be enforced. National martial law would result in a situation much like we saw in Russia when the Politburo tried an in-house coup in 1991. It would have to be a mighty "soft" version of martial law to succeed at more than just annoying people. (Okay, they could kill some people, maybe a lot of people -- but the country would turn on them and the martial law would end within hours of the first massacre.)

What is probably happening is that the Bush junta is desperately trying to do anything it thinks it can get away with, but like the Politburo plotters, are in over their pointy little heads. The whole "Plamegate" affair is starting to look more and more like a series of botch-ups, inadvertant, mistaken leaks, and several personal agendas being followed -- badly.

Coming into an era of danger and challenge does not help the situation, because our leaders are clearly not up to the task. And the uncertainty is torturous. THEY are supposed to administer those tasks for US, not the other way around. We pay those mofos good money to make sure we have as little to worry about as possible; instead, they give us a war, the deprecation of our Constitution, a mass national Culture War, inaction in the face of energy resource shortfalls and climate instability, and corporate ass-kissery as a very frightening flu season comes on.

That's why I personally don't really fear Fascism. Team Bush has blown it -- "Big Time". But three more years of government-by-stupidity could cause as much disaster as the descent of the mailed fist of totalitarianism.

Finally, I offer my own apology to you, since I now believe I overreacted as well. I've been gratuitously flamed several times in the last week or so, and am also beginning to suspect my own behavior. I probably won't do a lot of posting here for a little while, but I don't intend to cut and run.

After all, no matter how crazy we get, we paranoids live longer. And I'm going for the record!

--p!

[EFerrari]

26. They're dangerous. There is some basis for the dread

lots of us are feeling. And, I believe that trauma has been deployed as a political weapon from transition 2000.

:hi:

[Gregorian]

22. This will vaporize into the echo chamber of history.

Without a media, there is no democracy.

Remember the executive order where Bush claimed all of Iraq's petroleum and petroleum infrastrcture? No one in this country has even heard about it.

This will go completely unnoticed.

If we had a media, your diligence would be carried by them. Your research, your find, would not go into the echo chamber of history.


We here at DU are sickened.

[BrklynLiberal]

23. kick