By

Bob Aldridge

Review by Wilson (Woody) Powell

Bob Aldridge is a World War II veteran and former engineer. He has spent thirty-five years researching government secret and not-so-secret policies and actions undermining Constitutional and Bill of Rights guarantees. He was awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for warning of the Pentagon’s efforts to seek a nuclear first strike capability in the 1970’s. He is an advisor/consultant/sponsor to CCCO, the Nuclear Peace Foundation, British-Institute for Law and Peace. He lives in Santa Clara with Janet, his wife and partner for sixty years.

Mr. Aldridge has produced a meticulous, detailed account of how our Constitution has come to be relegated to the category of “a nice idea, but not really practical” anymore.

He may not say that, but that is what I inferred after reading “America In Peril”, which traces the assaults on civil liberties, international treaties governing the treatment of prisoners of war, the masking of dictatorial power by patriotic appeal, and the imposition of a thick veil of secrecy over the workings of government, by the Bush administration since 9/11.

This is an incredibly scholarly work, citing case after case from the public record, counting in relentless detail the depredations upon civil rights by Bush and his neocon appointees. Warning. It is dense with factual examples, citations of historical precedent and an exacting chronology of the arcane machinations of the Bush administration as it wriggles to escape the twin hooks of constitutional authority and humanitarian ethics.

He begins with the stated intentions of the neocons leading up to the rigged election of 2000, starting with then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s Defense Planning Guidance document, co-authored by his Under Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and Deputy Under Secretary, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Richard Perle and Zalmay Khalizad, a Muslim, Afghanistan-born member of Project For A New American Century, special advisor to the State Department on Afghanistan promoting the mujahadeen insurrection against the Soviet Union, and recently, ambassador to Iraq.

Bob Aldridge then examines the election cycle that brought George W. Bush and his cronies to power, with particular attention to the events that unfolded in Florida, disenfranchising a large segment of the voting population that would, undoubtedly, have put Al Gore over the top in a narrowly won election. From there he looks at election irregularities that have persisted to this day, again drawing on the public record, noting the extreme and unprecedented disparities between exit polls and published results.

The events following 9/11 are characterized by a steadily advancing opaqueness in government, suggesting conspiracies and feeding them by withholding information, conducting secret investigations and releasing results without corroborative evidence.

The dwindling authority of the Congress becomes apparent as the battle between the Bush administration and various committees trying to exercise oversight, per their mandated responsibilities, intensified. Sad to say, while some victories, late and too little, could be claimed by the Congress, the constant shifting of the terms of debate, the application of pre-emptive presidential prerogative and just plain stonewalling, has carried the day for Bush. At least until now.

Looking to the future, Aldridge recaps all the executive orders and coerced legislation that has resulted in the consolidation of executive power. It’s center piece is, of course, the Department of Homeland Security, combining 22 previously existing security, emergency management, and data gathering agencies under one umbrella. He notes the militarization of emergency response agencies and the subordination of state’s National Guards to increasing federal control.

Now that we field a totally volunteer army, trained to a fine point at great expense, the government has opened the door to the rapid development of private contractors to take over many of the functions the military used to perform for itself; even to handling basic security for VIPs in war zones, and, at home, acting as para-cops to secure property threatened by hungry, displaced people during the Katrina disaster. A private army at the beck and call of …. who?

Bob Aldridge sees an ominous trend aggrandizing to the nation’s top executive, powers that once were held locally, by cities, counties and states, trampling all concern for civil liberties under the rubric of national security. What does this mean for dissidents? Could we be capable, once again, of sequestering vast numbers of our citizens in camps?

He also sees a way out. In a surprising switch from a rapid-fire, fact-driven exposition of corrupting power he suddenly drops to his knees, figuratively, and shares his personal vision of how mankind might, just might, transcend its current social conditioning to bring about the changes needed to assure its survival.

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