Bush's Secretive Executive Orders Fuel Suspicion

Columnist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Paul Craig Roberts sees two possible short term political futures.

In one future, the Republican Party is destroyed electorally due to their support of an extremely unpopular president.

This outcome is evident to any observer, Democrat or Republican.

In the other future, a terrorist attack followed by the activation of several executive orders (like this creepy son of a bee right here) making Bush the only political power in America, gets the Republicans off the hook by rendering democracy irrelevant or even dismantled.

I don't think the government was behind 9/11. I don't think the government will attack us or intentionally allow an attack before the 2008 election.

But of the ten white men running for the Republican nomination, nine of them all seem to know something. Of the 49 of them in the Senate only a few even give lipservice to ending the war even when they know it may cost them even their safest seats.

Then we have Rick Santorum's recent comments and Michael Chertoff's gut.

Roberts writes:

Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure" were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that America will soon be hit hard?

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that "between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's (sic) going to have a very different view of this war."

Like every political cliffhanger, we won't know until we know. But if a dictatorship is only a couple of chess moves away, isn't the system badly in need of renewal?

UPDATE: Listen to Thom Hartmann interview Paul Craig Roberts.

TAGS: Paul Craig Roberts, Democracy, Election 2008, Executive Orders