Missing A KEY POINT in *'s speech: POWER GRAB FOR POTUS AND MILITARY

[Nothing Without Hope]

Bush made it clear in his speech that the Administration is STILL going to try to use the Katrina disaster to grab more power. It would be another big step in their ongoing push toward suspension of the Constitution and Pentagon-directed military police and gutted civilian and states' rights. This has been a major goal of theirs for years - it can be documented step by step, for example the Patriot Act. (Of course this demand for ultimate Fed power centralization is also part of the strategy to blame the local and state authorities for the mass negligent homicide - it is saying in effect, "Just give us feds all the power and then you will all be safe!!!")

We cannot let this happen and must be very alert to prevent it.

In Bush's speech, along with the prospect of the vast reconstruction funds to be gobbled up by GOP crony deals; the plan to permanently disperse, displace and impoverish the people from New Orleans and the other devastated areas of the South; the prospect of federal money for religious schools to "educate" the displaced children; and many more neocon dreams, don't miss THIS:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9360206
(snip)

"...It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment’s notice.

"Four years after the frightening experience of September 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and for the solution. So I have ordered every Cabinet secretary to participate in a comprehensive review of the government response to the hurricane. This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. We are going to review every action and make necessary changes, so that we are better prepared for any challenge of nature, or act of evil men, that could threaten our people."

(snip)

You know the kind of people he has for Cabinet secretaries, so you know whatever "recommendations" they come up with will be for the purpose of furthering neocon goals. His assertion that the federal government and the military need more power to act effectively during a crisis is a lie. EXISTING laws already give him that power, but he is trying to push the limits. For example, read the relevant sections of the DHS National Response Plan, an EXISTING document:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
thread title: The Buck Stops Here: NATIONAL RESPONSE PLAN
The lines of authority are very clear; Bush does NOT need more power or more excuses to call for martial law and was TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAILURES IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA. Count on it, the detailed language in any change would include extension of the military policing to "civil disturbances" or just about any other damn thing.

And we're supposed to be encouraged that the disastrous federal non-response to the catastrophe will result in even TIGHTER exclusion of state and civilian efforts?!?! FEMA/DHS should have even GREATER power to block aid and disrupt search/rescue efforts and essential communication?!? Look at horrors FEMA/DHS are ALREADY responsible for in the Katrina disaster and their efforts to prevent anyone else from helping the victims that they have abandoned to die. The answer is supposed to be to INCREASE the power of these people?!?!

Oh yes. Using Katrina to grab more power for the POTUS is a theme. For example:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Thread title: Bush says he may need more power in disasters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
Thread title: NPR Reports: GW to Blanco"I'll send in the troops if you answer to the WH"

Make no mistake, there are years of step-by-step plans and moves leading up to this crisis and the intended political manipulation of it. I've been researching this and it isn't tinfoilhattery at all. The WH/Pentagon knew the disaster would come in some form, natural or man-made, sooner or later. In fact, in early 2001 there was the official report that the three top, most likely catastrophes to hit the US would be an earthquake in San Francisco, a terrorist attack in New York, or a hurricane in New Orleans. Bush knew, and he cut funding to maintain levees and improve hurricane preparedness:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
thread title: FACTS: Bush was told about NO , he funded a study to confirm & then CUT $$
(New Orleans hurricane and New York terrorist attack! Hey, two out of three!!! Though I do believe the New York attacks on 9/11 happened because of planning by Pentagon/WH insiders.)

For more of the back story on the step by step move to dictatorship and martial law, see this post and the follow the links back.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

Let's not let the neocons use this great disaster as the "one more hit" that General Tommy Franks was referring to in his Cigar Aficionado interview that would could result in the suspension of the Constitution for our "protection."
http://www.cigaraficionado.com/Cigar/CA_Profiles/People...

I recommend this excellent article, a column written in response to Tommy Franks' surprisingly frank prediction.

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/12/07/Columns/From_Tommy_Fr...

From Tommy Franks, a doomsday scenario

By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, Times Perspective Columnist
Published December 7, 2003

The doomsday scenario was laid out by Gen. Tommy Franks, the recently retired head of CentCom, in of all places the December edition of Cigar Aficionado magazine.

"What is the worst thing that can happen in our country?" Franks asked rhetorically. "Two steps. The first step would be a nexus between weapons of mass destruction . . . and terrorism." The second step would be "the western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."

Franks suggested that a "massive casualty-producing event" might cause "our population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country."

(snip)

It was the Nine Years' War in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World that facilitated the seizure of power by the world reformers who then took control of nearly all human and social development. In 1984, George Orwell described Oceania as in a constant state of war with a changeable enemy who "always represented absolute evil." These inventors of the great dystopias understood the way governments use war and its associative fear and instability to consolidate power. Despotism thrives on insecurity. Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs puts safety right behind food, water and sleep. Humans naturally crave stability and are willing to sacrifice values such as liberty in its pursuit.

(snip)

Foolish tinfoilhattery, you say? John Dean, one of our country's most respected legal authorites, disagrees with you. In 2002 he considered the probable consequences of the "one more hit," which he thought of as another domestic terrorist attack - though the hurricane can work even better for this purpose, especially with what certainly looks like deliberate worsening of the aftermath. Mr. Dean thought it quite possible that a great disaster like another terrorist attack could be successfully manipulated by the Administration into a functional suspension of the Constitution that he called "constitutional dictatorship."
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/columns/fl.dean.pow...

With the Bush Administration, always watch for the hand behind the back - the one holding the secret stiletto. They are STILL going to try to use this ongoing national tragedy to grab more civil and state power and consolidate under Pentagon-directed military police. If they give it a name at all, I promise you they won't call it what it is: martial law and military dictatorship. No, I'm betting on something Orwellian like "Operation Safe America." You can bet that it will NOT involve OUR National Guard back at home defending their states under their governors' authority.

We MUST MUST MUST stay alert and STOP the power grab that the Bush Administration will try to make based on their own murderously negligent and incompetent response to the hurricane.

Not only would this dismantle many more of the essential Constitutional protections from dictatorship and further increase Bush's unbalanced power, it would make us all LESS safe from natural and man-made disasters, not more. We MUST make both of these points clear to the American public. This is a turning point, one way or the other.