Oh. My. God.

Would someone come over here and put Block Thought on my brain? Please? I just keep coming up with these ideas that put Bush&Cheney in the driver’s seat and the rest of us tied up, gagged and blindfolded in the trunk of the car.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve studied the Third Reich since I was in my early teens. I don’t know why the fascination, but there you are.

In many, many of the accounts authors have stated something to the effect, ‘Hitler and his henchmen couldn’t have gotten away with what they were doing if the country hadn’t been at war.’

As most of us [except maybe the 23%] know by now, immediately after 9/11 White House top advisors were ordered to find a connection between the attack and Iraq. When they didn’t, one was manufactured. The American people were given, in succession, at least 3 separate reasons for going to war in Iraq. When one was shown to be fallacious another was trotted out for inspection. The final justification wasn’t, as the others had been, anything to do with Hussein’s having designs on this or any other country. The contention that he was a Bad Man wasn’t disputable— and that was the pretext under which we were dragged, many of us kicking and screaming, into war. But—if that were truly a reason for going to war, this country would have been embroiled in constant combat for its entire history. The world is filled with Bad Men in high places. We don’t generally trouble ourselves with taking them down. Why this one?

Then, the ‘strategic planning’ began. With rose-colored glasses firmly in place, the administration told us that the troops would be home by Christmas, that they would be greeted as liberators, that everything would be just fine and not to worry our pretty little heads about the war. They then proceeded to take too few troops, too poorly equipped to be effective, into Iraq. The troops seemed to be under orders to allow the Iraqis to destroy the infrastructure of their own country. The orders may not have been explicit— but accounts began trickling out that a hands-off approach when it came to looting and destruction seemed to be the order of the day.

As anyone outside the administration [and, arguably, within the administration as well] could have predicted, the most powerful armed forces on the planet got bogged down in a war with a much smaller country. The whole operation made this giant much more vulnerable to attack than it had, originally, been.

As each objective was reached [remember ‘Mission Accomplished’?] the goal posts were moved.

Meanwhile, the search for bin Ladin was quietly called off.
^^^
Now, fast forward to today:

A couple of weeks ago, Bush quietly signed the National Security/Homeland Security Order giving himself dictatorial powers if, in the assessment of the president, a threat to national security is perceived.

I believe this administration is capable of perceiving an imminent election as a threat to national security. However, they know that the rest of us don’t see eye-to-eye with them on this matter. So they will hunt around for something we could, conceivably, believe to be a threat and the invisibility cloak will be thrown off to reveal Voldemort beneath.
^^^
Someday in the future, I predict, some author will pen the words, ‘‘Bush, Cheney and their henchmen couldn’t have gotten away with what they were doing if the country hadn’t been at war.’