The new Vincent Bugliosi book, “The Prosecution of George W Bush For Murder”, has hit the Internet set and is off and running. The corporate media propagandists have completely ignored it. Having read it I am filled with several considerations, the first being we need to get the b*stard, the second nobody will follow up, and the third and even more distressing is his reaction.
Until now I have heard in response to my third consideration. Kevin Barrett, Libertarian, running for Congress in Wisconsin, summed up my concern, as follows:
Will Bush Play "Get-Out-of-Jail-Free" Card?
I just listened to Vincent Bugliosi talking to Bobby Kennedy about his plan to prosecute Bush for murder. (Listen here.)
It sounds like Bugliosi has an airtight case. If Bush leaves 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next January, there should be a squad car waiting to pick him up.
Even if he somehow dodges the murder rap, sooner or later Bush will face dozens of charges of war crimes, kidnapping, torture, electoral fraud, maybe even high treason against the Constitution of the United States of America. Bush is a good bet to be our first ex-president to spend the rest of his life behind bars.
I say IF Bush leaves office next January because...well, he'd have to be crazy to step down.
Bush only has one card left to play: The get-out-of-jail-free card.
Set off a nuclear or biological weapon on American soil. Blame the usual suspects, "Muslim terrorists," and link them to Pakistan or Iran. Attack Pakistan or Iran, invoke Presidential Directive 51, suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, intern dissidents and Muslims in FEMA camps, seize control of the other branches of government, and suspend the elections "until order has been restored."
A high-risk move? Sure. But cornered rats sometimes make high-risk moves.
There are several reasons why Bush and his consigliere/puppetmaster Cheney might think they could get away with it. First, the economy is tanking, raising the specter of civil disorder. Elites, threatened by the prospect of disorder, reflexively search for an authoritarian, iron-fisted strong-man. And guess what? Obama ain't it. Bush could count on the support of much of America's corporate and military elite if he declared himself dictator during a national emergency.
Even a self-inflicted national emergency? Well, who's going to know the difference? 9/11 had all the telltale signs of being a false-flag inside job, which serious students of the issue now know it was -- yet America's military, corporate and media institutions continue to pretend to believe in the official story.
An untraceable nuclear or biological attack would make evidence-based debate even more superfluous than it already is. Since there would be no evidence to debate, people would have to go with their gut feeling: Was this done by an outside enemy, or by our own leaders? If enough people accepted the "outside enemy" scenario -- which is natural primate behavior when threatened -- we could witness a resumption of the orgy of flag-sucking that followed 9/11, and Our Fearless Leader would once again be the man of the hour. Since the corporate media would be tirelessly parroting the official story, it stands to reason that the roughly two-thirds of Americans who don't seriously dispute the official 9/11 legend would go along with Bush's next mythical enemy attack.
Could this happen despite Bush's abysmal popularity ratings? Yes, because, as Naomi Klein points out in The Shock Doctrine, a massive shock can wipe the slate clean. The shock of a nuclear or biological attack on an American city would make Americans forget how much they hated Bush the day before. They would feel themselves in a whole new world, and everything they valued yesterday -- Constitutional government, peace, Obama, what-have-you -- would instantly seem like shards of an ancient, long-vanished past viewed dimly through the mist. As 9/11 cover-up commissar Philip Zelikow wrote in a 1998 Foreign Affairs article: "Like Pearl Harbor, such an event would divide our past and future into a 'before' and 'after.'"
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