American Gestapo

I regularly admire the articles by Mike Whitney. Here's one entitled "Genesis of an American Gestapo" that demonstrates how we have become a true police state. It is very disturbing. Here are some excerpts:

Tyranny has very few indispensable parts; a compliant media, that will regulate information to meet the goals of the state; a "rubber-stamp" Parliament that will endorse the policies of the supreme leader; a judiciary that will adjust the law to serve the requirements of the ruling body, a strong military to seize the wealth of weaker nations; and a security apparatus, that will eliminate any domestic threats to the system.

On June 29 President Bush took the great-leap forward in transforming the nation's intelligence services by ordering a restructuring of the FBI and putting "a broad swath of the agency" under the direct control of the executive.

Bingo; Bush's personal secret police; an American Gestapo.

The formation of the new agency was presented as part of 74 recommendations made by the 9-11 Commission on Intelligence. Every member of the so-called "independent" panel was hand-picked by the Bush team and their proposals reflect the narrow interests of American elites. Bush loyalists and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) members Lawrence Silberman and Charles Robb, (both of whom were directly involved in the 9-11 whitewash) chaired the committee, and provided the rationale for the dramatic changes to the existing system. Astonishingly, Bush was able to unilaterally create the National Security Service without congressional approval as part of his sweeping powers under the new anti-terror legislation.

The freshly minted National Security Service, which has been dubbed the New SS, will operate under the authority of former ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, whose involvement in overseeing the terrorist activities of death squads in Nicaragua will provide him with the necessary experience for his new task. Negroponte, the new Intelligence czar, will report directly to the President, who in turn will carefully monitor the violations of civil liberties that will naturally evolve from unsupervised investigations.
...
The National Security Service will have unlimited power to conduct the apocryphal war on terror anyway it sees fit. The agency will operate independent of congressional oversight and beyond the bothersome glare of America's permanently embedded media. It will provide the requisite muscle for maintaining America's one-party system; spying, harassing and intimidating those dissident elements who dare to challenge the status quo. We should expect to see an up tick in dirty tricks, coerced-censorship and "disappeared" persons in the wake of the new changes.
...
the release of a 40 page document from the Defense Dept. states the intention of the Pentagon to "expand military activity" within the United States; a practice that has been banned since 1878 under the provisions of the Posse Comitatus Act. American's would be surprised to know that the administration is maneuvering to sidestep the existing law and deploy troops inside the country on the president's orders. Consider, for a moment, the potential for disaster if Bush is allowed to use the military as his own private resource; dispatching protestors, patrolling cities and supervising elections as happens in third world nations. The Pentagon document clearly "asserts the president's authority to deploy combat forces on US territory to intercept and defeat threats." (Washington Post)

Sounds like a military dictatorship to me.

I does to me too.