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the Anthrax Congress passed the "Help America Vote for Bush" Act (aka, the "Help America Vote Act"--HAVA), by which they appropriated $3.9 billion to spread electronic voting machines all over the U.S.A., run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that the public is forbidden to review--with virtually no audit/recount controls--a made-to-order election fraud system now largely (80%) controlled by one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold.
We saw the result in 2004. The lie about WMDs was well-known by then. So was the treason of outing CIA agents. And the torture of prisoners had just been revealed, complete with godawful photos. Back in late '02/early '03, nearly 60% of the American people opposed the invasion of Iraq (Feb '03, all polls, just before the invasion). The war profiteers knew this and they had to find a way around it. 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting with NO AUDIT was first tried out in Georgia in '02 and kept Max Cleland (paraplegic Vietnam vet, against the Iraq War) out of the U.S. Senate. It was then employed as the chief means of 're-electing' Bush/Cheney in 2004, to keep the war going. The system was not yet complete, so additional means had to be used (purging black voters from the voting rolls in Ohio and Florida, etc.). But sufficient 'TRADE SECRET' systems were in place--with no audit or only a miserably inadequate 1% audit--to throw some close states to Bush/Cheney, in spite of the American peoples' revulsion at their war, their torture of prisoners (64% of Americans opposed to torture "under any circumstances"--NYT poll, May '04), and much else.
The grass roots rallied and matched the Bush/Cheney money machine dollar for dollar. The first stirrings of the American rebellion occurred in that election, with awesome "get out the vote" campaigns and rallies. The exit polls said Kerry won, then, mysteriously, Kerry hadn't won. You had to be against that war to get elected, but the trick is to stay elected, when the people elect you, in a system in which transparency has been removed, and half the states are doing NO AUDIT AT ALL of privately coded election theft machines, and the other half are doing a completely inadequate audit. Nobody can "prove" anything. Those who cried "election fraud" are consigned to "tinfoil" and we "move on" with four more years of a horrendously destructive war, on people who had done nothing at all to us and were no threat to anybody (had been crippled--nay, softened up--by sanctions).
Now, the president is free to just pick his wars. Exxon Mobil, Chevron and BP want control of Libya's oil? Sure thing! Activate the CIA sleepers in Libya, stir up a rebellion that sort of looks like Egypt, and go to it! Bomb the shit out of them. Pick a puppet from the many possibilities and install him. Mission accomplished!
You might reasonably surmise that Kerry would have done the same thing--merely shifted the Forever War to other ground. In fact, that's what he promised--to move the Forever War to Afghanistan (if you listened closely). But that's not why people elected him. (Despite vote counting proof having been made impossible to obtain, I think that the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming that Kerry won that election.) They elected him because they opposed the Iraq War! They didn't want ANOTHER war. They didn't want THREE oil wars! They wanted peace! The war profiteers, who play both sides, had gaged that the war on Afghanistan was more "sellable" (in addition to being a lot murkier) so they went with that, when the need arose to put a Democratic face on the Forever War (Obama). But that is NOT what the American people were voting for--in either case.
Yes, you have to be against these horrible oil wars that are draining the very life out of our country and our democracy, and are wantonly slaughtering people around the globe, to get elected in a real democracy. In a fake democracy, you can wage illegal, unjust war with impunity, or--when certain circumstances arise among the war profiteers necessitating a switch of masks*--you can be good at giving the impression that you oppose war while secretly assuring the war profiteers that you don't mean it--and then, you had better, in fact, do their bidding or they will UN-elect you very fast.
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*(I do think--or guess--that Obama was in fact elected, on the basis of his airy promises of hope and change, but he was also PERMITTED TO BE elected, and that is the problem. Neither Obama nor any other elected official in the country can prove that he or she was actually elected. Transparency has been removed. And the control over whether they are elected or not does not lie with voters. It lies with ES&S/Diebold and their 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. To get elected, therefore, means making deals with the transglobal corporations, banksters and war profiteers who are running things in a way that suits the far rightwing owners of ES&S/Diebold. There was a crisis among these forces in 2005-2006 (during Katrina and its aftermath), in which the Bush White House was split down the middle--Bush/Rove vs Cheney/Libby--over who was going to take the fall for the outing the CIA's entire WMD counter-proliferation project. There was a simultaneous crisis between Rumsfeld/Cheney and the military brass over nuking Iran (the brass opposed it). Daddy Bush intervened--with his "Iraq Study Group"--and the combined power of the "old CIA," the current disaffected CIA, the military brass and perhaps other players--ousted Rumsfeld, in late '06, de-fanged Cheney for the rest of Bush Jr's term, and agreed to let the Democrats win (in '06 and and '08), provided that, a) Impeachment was taken "off the table" (no investigation, no prosecution of Bush Junta principles), b) continued war (for oil and gas resources, and, in the case of Afghanistan, the pipleline) and war profiteering; and c) (a likely third condition) no economic reform (continued corporate looting of the people and "the commons").
These were the conditions by which the candidates were vetted, and Obama agreed to them. (I have the suspicion that John Edwards did not, and that is why his indiscretions were exposed and his career destroyed--this simply doesn't happen to "made men.") Obama may have goals of his own--better goals--and figured getting power was essential to them. But he is in a very compromised and hampered position--by his own choice. And now they've saddled him with a wholly ES&S/Diebold Congress of total scumbags and we may even lose Social Security and Medicare, and there is a powerful contingent among them that wants a fourth oil war, against Venezuela and Ecuador. It's nuts. But that's what ES&S/Diebold's power does--it makes our national political life insane.)
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