Subject:
[ZOGs_WAR] (unknown)
Date:
Wed, 29 May 2002 19:39:14 ‑0000
From:
"tigerslilly7" <[email protected]>
Reply‑To:
To:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/STA205A.html
Centre for Research on Globalisation
U.S. Plans for Martial Law, Tele‑Governance, Suspension of Elections
by John Stanton and Wayne Madsen
Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 14
May 2002
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CRG's Global Outlook, premiere issue on "Stop the War" provides
detailed documentation on the war and September 11 Order/subscribe.
Consult Table of Contents
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Since September 11, 2001, the Bush Regime, the US Congress and senior
personnel in the U.S. military have been busy planning their escape
routes from Washington, D.C. and surrounding communities in the event
that the continental United States is attacked by another 19 global
insurgents possessing little more than wit, dedication, an
unrepentant animosity towards America, and an ample dose of
radioactive material packed inside an explosive‑laden metallic
suitcase. Corporate executives have ensured that they too will find a
place in the bunker along side their effete government colleagues
through organizations such as National Security Telecommunications
Advisory Committee (NSTAC). That group is composed of "up to 30
industry chief executives representing the major communications and
network service providers and information technology, finance, and
aerospace companies ¼ the NSTAC provides industry‑based advice and
expertise to the President on issues and problems related to
implementing national security and emergency preparedness ¼" Defense
contracting giants play a prominent role on the NSTAC and include
Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Oracle (the company that volunteered to
develop a post‑911 national identification database), Boeing,
Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and CSC. The chairman of the NSTAC also
conveniently serves as an ex‑officio member of Homeland Security czar
Tom Ridge's President's Homeland Security Advisory Council.
The U.S. government and its military and corporate officials are fond
of making the pitch to the American public that the U.S. Constitution
mandates that their survival, above all others, is absolutely
necessary to ensure that the government that emanates from that
document survives a debilitating attack. It is astonishing that the
American public believes such absurdities. But one has to admire the
boldly craven and callous "doomsday" planning of the Bush regime and
its military centurions and corporate nabobs, who take pleasure in
gutting the environment, the workforce, the economy, and the world in
general. These are the same people who played hide‑and‑seek with the
American public in September 2001.
We the People?
On September 11, 2001, one of the commercial aircraft commandeered by
suspected Saudi and Yemeni insurgents made its final approach to its
destination, the Pentagon ‑‑ located roughly three miles across the
Potomac River from the U.S. Capitol and White House in Washington, DC
‑‑ by following Columbia Pike, in Arlington, Virginia, to its target.
The Pentagon is located adjacent to the glitzy Pentagon City Mall in
Arlington, Virginia, not Washington, DC, as much of the media
conveniently fudged the geographic difference. Although not
Manhattan, Arlington is a densely packed and diverse community of
close to 200,000 people. It hosts five high schools and two notable
colleges: Marymount University and George Mason Law School. When the
aircraft slammed into the Pentagon, residents of Arlington ‑
including many in office buildings, stores, and schools in the "South
Side" ‑‑ felt the thud of the explosion as the aircraft incinerated a
block of the Pentagon and killed 123 employees and contractors on the
ground and 64 on the Boeing 757.
Arlington fire fighters, police and EMT units were on the scene at
the Pentagon ‑‑ as were their counterparts at the World Trade Centers
in New York City‑‑ within seconds of the aircraft's explosion. In
Arlington's case, the rapidity of response was due to alert
firefighters and police officers who noticed the aircraft off‑path as
it flew dangerously low over the heavily populated Columbia Pike
corridor in Arlington that leads directly to the Pentagon. They
alerted their colleagues in the Arlington Fire and Police Departments
that something was terribly wrong. Someone at the controls of the
aircraft knew to pick up the visual of the "Pike" as it is called by
Arlingtonians, the same way other pilots pick up the Potomac River on
visual to land at Reagan National Airport.
Local residents scrambled to get their youngsters out of schools
where the hallways were filled with the crying and unsettled.
Teachers, counselors, and coaches did all they could to calm
student's nerves. Local firefighters and police were busy trying to
give relief to the Pentagon structure and its mangled people. Local
hospitals were alerted to receive Pentagon injured. The same scene
was played out in New York City.
As mayhem broke loose in Arlington, Virginia, adjacent Washington,
and New York City, the response of those who are tasked with national
governance provides important clues as to who will live and die
during the next disaster. Prior to 911, the only insight into
continuity‑of‑government planning was provided by Stanley Kubrick's
Doctor Strangelove, which through its characters, portrayed dimwitted
"leaders" ‑ most un‑elected ‑‑ sheltering themselves ahead of their
populations.
911 Hide and Seek
Dick Cheney was hustled into a bunker and ultimately ended up in a
cave running the Shadow Government. U.S. Supreme Court‑anointed
George Bush II and staff was whisked from an elementary school class
‑ minus the children, teachers and school staff ‑‑‑ to undisclosed
locations scattered across the land. Military installations barricade
their gates. As F‑16s patrolled the skies, government officials
lauded the protection they were providing despite the fact that the
fighters were there to shoot down commercial passenger planes.
Leaders of both parties in Congress, and, in fact, all of Congress,
were escorted from Washington, DC as if Gort from the Hollywood
classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still" had gone on a rampage.
The Bush Regime's senior appointees and bureaucrats sprinted off to
hardened bunkers or were taken by helicopter, like their military
counterparts, to place like Site R in Pennsylvania to "monitor" the
situation. Many of the local corporate senior managers and local
newsreaders instructed the "public" to remain calm and not panic. A
commonplace refrain from this lot was to "keep busy, be productive".
The lone Superpower, with its arsenals and vaunted intelligence
agencies convulsed from the handiwork of 19 insurgents, became
enfeebled. In effect, the nation came under the rule of a tele‑
government. Undoubtedly, government and military planners ‑‑ and
their think tanks ‑ have discussed attack scenarios that include the
institution of a Federal government tele‑governing operation. Members
of the U.S. Congress, Supreme Court justices, and the President and
his cabinet could easily debate, vote, set policy, render legal
decisions via encrypted communications lines, from the comfort of
their protective bunkers, home shelters, and command posts on land,
sea, and air. In the eventuality of nationwide martial law, these
individuals, based on their cowardly performance on 911, would no
doubt prefer the safe confines of Hitleresque bunkers. Such was the
case on September 11, when, from the safety of a studio in a bunker
and a phone line from a basement, the nation's "leadership" sought to
govern in an ersatz manner.
The American public fell for this act from a "government" whose
inserted president and appointees are the wealthiest Americans ever
to oversee a US populace. And as the wealthiest and most corrupt
person ever to occupy the White House uttered his inanities, "average
people" were taking care of their post‑attack communities in
Arlington and New York City. As they suffered, the so‑called civilian
and military "leaders" ducked and covered in a classic CYA move.
These are America's leaders who ‑‑ through sheer arrogance and
stunning stupidity ‑‑ ignored reports from tireless FBI field agents
that involved suspicious flight school activities and similar reports
from gutsy Drug Enforcement Administration agents about the
activities of Israeli "art student" spies who happened to be living
in the same Florida and Texas neighborhoods as the future hijackers.
The same "leaders" would stand by and watch the state of California
get raped by Enron ‑‑ the Bush family's fund raising Ponzi scheme
contrivance.
Where was the Senator or Representative, or Cabinet official (save
for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld) who said, "I'm staying with
the people" and showed up in the bucket line? Where was the General
or Admiral who said I'm staying with my people and worked with the
body bags? Where was the Corporate Executive who, instead, was busy
turning "patriotism" into profiteering to gain market share and
recoup profits? Where will they be during the next attack?
As the U.S. military‑industrial complex sells more and more advanced
weaponry to Israel, Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Colombia,
Pakistan, India, and Nepal and as more and more ethnic and religious
minority groups, poor villagers, nomads, urban laborers, and
sustenance farmers are massacred by national armies in the pay of
ruling oligarchs and multinational corporations, will America's
leaders care? No, it's good for business. After U.S. snubbing of the
International Criminal Court (to protect war criminals like Henry
Kissinger), Conventions on child soldiers and land mines, long‑held
international nuclear test‑ban treaties, international protocols
involving HIV/AIDS and global warming, will America's leaders care?
No. When the Turkmens, Uzbeks, Afghans, Pakistanis, Azeris, Kurds,
Turks, and Georgians tire of the special treatment that US Special
Forces receive for guarding gas and oil pipelines ‑‑ and the young
troops are killed‑‑ will America's leaders notice? No.
Hand it to the CYA crowd, they now know that they can successfully
sell the American public a rotten barrel of apples (or oil) and they
will buy it gladly. Armed with that knowledge, the next attack may
trigger enactment of national martial law.
Martial Law: Coming to a Neighborhood Near You?
The U.S. government has used martial law on numerous occasions, most
often to quell domestic disturbances in specific locations around the
country. According to the United States Constitution Online, during
the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson imposed martial law in an area of New
Orleans. When a judge demanded Jackson produce, through the writ of
habeas corpus, a man arrested for sedition, Jackson ordered the
arrest of the judge. in 1892 at Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, rebellious mine
workers blew up a mill and shot at strike breaking workers. Mine
owners requested that the state's governor impose martial law and, to
no surprise, he did. In 1914, federal troops were ordered by Woodrow
Wilson to end the Coal Field Wars in Colorado. In 1934, dockworkers
in San Francisco initiated a strike and the governor declared the
dockyards subject to martial law empowering the National Guard to
make arrests and try detainees. The Supreme Court opined twice on
matters involving martial law in Ex Parte Milligan and Duncan v.
Kahanamoku. In 1866, Milligan's Supreme Court writers proclaimed that
Abraham Lincoln's imposition of martial law had been unconstitutional:
"Martial law¼destroys every guarantee of the Constitution and
effectually renders the military independent of an superior to the
civil power ‑ the attempt to do which by the King of Great Britain
was deemed by our fathers such an offense that they assigned it to
the world as one of the causes which impelled them to declare their
independence. Civil liberty and this kind of martial law cannot
endure together; the antagonism is irreconcilable, and, in the
conflict, one or the other must perish."
In 1946, the Supreme Court ruled that the military arrest of two
civilians in Hawaii during World War II and their subsequent trial by
military tribunals was unconstitutional.
In 2002, with the U.S. Supreme Court nothing more than a useful
machination of the Bush regime, it seems likely that if Americans
become subjected to a Bush declaration of martial law, any challenge
to it would fail miserably. With that thought in mind, its useful to
note that the Bush crowd has had plenty of experience with martial
law and states‑of‑emergency. In 1992, Bush the Elder issued Executive
Order 12804 in response to the Los Angeles riots. Hence, the US Army
7th Infantry Division and detachments of US Marines were deployed to
mop up Los Angeles. That order was only issued after the city's poor
had destroyed their neighborhoods. As an aside, that event would
expose the CIA's penchant for selling drugs to inner city youth to
raise funds for U.S. government covert operations in Central and
South America. Bush the Elder was the overseer of much of this
activity when he lorded over the Iran‑contra scandal while Vice
President under Ronald Reagan. One of Bush's underlings at the time,
Oliver North, came up with a secret plan, along with the fascist‑
oriented Federal Emergency Management Agency (the key‑masters for the
doors to the bunkers), to declare martial law in the event of a
"national crisis," including "violent and widespread internal dissent
or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad." Florida's
provincial ruler Jeb Bush signed Executive Order 01‑262 on September
11, 2001 declaring a State of Emergency in Florida. That was prior to
similar declarations in New York and Virginia where the action was.
"Jebbie" (that's what Bill Clinton calls him) also has the power to
suspend elections for 30 days in a county under a State of Emergency.
The Bush family has managed to involve the United States in two wars;
two invasions in Latin America, one that resulted in the fiery deaths
of thousands of poor Panamanian barrio residents and another that
resulted in the Bay of Pigs fiasco; aiding and abetting through murky
financial investments America's Teutonic enemy in the last world war;
corrupting the U.S. presidential election process; and making the
wealthiest Americans and U.S. corporations richer while at the same
cutting federal health, education, and welfare budgets and offloading
those tasks to the overburdened states.
As the economy sputters with real unemployment close to 8 percent and
as income disparity reaches astronomical proportions, it seems that
the Bush regime will begin another war. Will that war be against
Iraq, as Bush's neo‑conservative hawks want? Or will the Seven Days
in May crowd spin the Axis of Evil roulette wheel? Will the arrow
point to Cuba? North Korea? Venezuela? The Bush family's record of
death and destruction prompted one elderly couple in Baltimore,
Maryland (the husband being a highly decorated WW II U.S. Army
veteran) to say, " The Bush family should be barred from ever holding
political office. Look what they've done to this nation!"
And They Are Not Done Yet
An invasion of Iraq or any of the "Axis of Evil" or "Beyond Axis of
Evil" nations is likely to result in a response that means American
citizens will die here in the U.S. One incident, one aircraft
hijacked, a "dirty nuke" set off in a small town, may well prompt the
Bush regime, let's say during the election campaign of 2003‑2004, to
suspend national elections for a year while his government ensures
stability. The precedent for such thinking is now enshrined in GOP
politics. Another egotistical politician, Rudolph Giuliani, suggested
that he should stay on as Mayor of New York a while longer past his
term to make sure "New Yorkers would get through this thing". Would
it be any surprise to hear Bush II say the same thing late in 2003
after insurgents would have destroyed part of a city or a chemical
weapons cloud spreads over half of a small state?
Many closed‑door meetings have been held on these subjects and the
notices for these meetings have been closely monitored by the
definitive www.cryptome.org. In the event of martial law, the Posse
Comitatus Act of 1878, which has already been largely gutted by the
USA Patriot Act and other Bush II actions, would cease to exist.
Posse Comitatus has, for over 100 years, served as an important
criminal law safeguard proscribing the use of the Army (later, the
Air Force and Navy) to "execute the laws," except where expressly
authorized by the Constitution or by Congress. With the abrogation of
Posse Comitatus and the imposition of martial law, the military
would, as it did during post‑Civil War Reconstruction in the South,
be able to arrest and detain civilians for any flimsy reason.
Civilian detainees consigned to federal prisons would be under the
control of the Bureau of Prisons while those detained by the military
would be subject to the regulations imposed by military commanders.
The writ of habeas corpus would be suspended and the family members
and legal representatives for detainees would not have a right to see
them. This situation has already occurred with those detained in the
wake of September 11 without a formal imposition of martial law.
Military tribunals could, as they did in Hawaii during the war, try
and convict U.S. civilians. If prisons could not hold all the
detainees, the government already has plans to create or reactivate
large prison camps in the South and West. Some of these were already
used to detain Cuban, Vietnamese, and Haitian "boat people."
In the event of martial law, Draconian censorship laws would be
implemented. Even now, the Patriot Act grants authority to obtain an
order from the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court
requiring any person or business to produce any books, records,
documents, or items." That law would undoubtedly be extended to
encompass the Internet as well. It should be of little wonder why the
Pentagon has brought Iran‑contra felon Admiral John Poindexter back
from retirement to head the Office of Information Awareness. Coupled
with the Office of Information Exploitation, Poindexter's office is
seeking ways to identify, block, and determine the sources of
seditious material posted on the Internet. Blocked web sites,
confiscated computers and servers, and the arrest of non‑conforming
web site managers would become the rule of the day.
Not that it would need much in the way of pressure, but the broadcast
media would similarly be required to air only that which has been
approved by government censors. For example, U.S. Air Force
scientists are soon to meet with CNN to figure out how to gather and
disseminate information. During the war against Yugoslavia, CNN and
National Public Radio hosted as interns U.S. Army psychological
warfare operatives who worked on news stories concerning the war.
Similar closed‑door meetings for "Continuity of Government" have
taken place since September 11, 2001. Odd, it seems, that no "regular
U.S. citizen" and few first responders have had any input into this
process. Chalk that up to the fact that the entire process is
classified and a matter of "national security" ‑ the rubric that is
used to justify the constant whittling away of the Constitution and
its Bill of Rights. If the general public knew that "Continuity"
actually means that the abilities of the Internal Revenue Service to
continue to collect taxes, the Customs Service to continue to collect
duties, and the Environmental Protection Agency to continue to
collect fines actually outweigh the health and safety of American
citizens, they would be outraged. Hence the secrecy surrounding the
continuity plans.
James Madison had in right in 1794 when he wisely warned about "the
old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for
accumulating force in the government." The United States was founded
by political sages like Madison, Jefferson, and Franklin. It will
ultimately see its demise as a democracy through the likes of Bush
II, his father, and the Trent Lotts and Dick Armeys that pervade the
American body politic. ‑‑
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John Stanton is a Virginia‑based writer on national security affairs
and Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC‑based investigative journalist
who writes and comments frequently on civil liberties and human
rights issues. Copyright John Stanton and Wayne Madsen © 2002. For
fair use only
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The URL of this article is:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/STA205A.html
CRG's Global Outlook, premiere issue on "Stop the War" provides
detailed documentation on the war and the September 11
Order/subscribe. Consult Table of Contents
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