It’s Treason: Dems Stay Silent on Bush White House Crimes

By Richard W. Behan, AlterNet. Posted November 16, 2007.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

The mainstream Democrats -- represented, say, by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, and Christopher Dodd -- have not levied war against the United States. Their treason lies instead in committing the second offense: They adhere to enemies of the country, giving them aid and comfort.

The enemies are President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney. Like no other president and vice president in history, these men attacked their country.

It was not our geography George Bush and Richard Cheney invaded. Instead they abandoned and subverted the bedrock institution of our constitutional democracy: the rule of law. By word and deed, Mr. Bush repeatedly and arrogantly sets himself above the law, claiming obedience to be a matter of presidential choice. Mr. Cheney orchestrates, coaches, applauds and iterates.

This cannot stand if the country we know and cherish is to survive. George Bush and Richard Cheney are literally enemies of the state; long before now and by any measure of constitutional justice, they should have been impeached and removed from office.

Abjectly, continuously and stubbornly refusing to hold them accountable, however, the mainstream Democrats adhere to this criminal president and vice president: Nothing they have asked for has been denied, no barriers placed in their way. That is giving them aid and comfort, and that is treason. George Bush and Richard Cheney took the country to war illegally, with a deliberate, carefully designed and executed package of fear-mongering propaganda: lies, distortions and deceptions. No informed citizen entertains the slightest doubt about this.

Lying to the people and the Congress was the most despicable violation of the rule of law by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, but many more followed: torturing prisoners, denying habeas corpus, spying on U.S. citizens, nullifying new laws with "signing statements" and so on and on. The litany of impeachable offenses is long and painful, but the so-called "War on Terror," these men insist, makes all of it acceptable, even necessary. Nearly six years have elapsed since the Bush administration first defeated the rule of law. For most of these years, a Republican Congress saw fit not to intervene, or even to question this behavior, so effective was the administration's propaganda campaign and so firm were the bonds of partisanship. But now the mainstream Democrats control the Congress.

Also during these six years, the truth emerged, and now we can see the "War on Terror" truly for what it is -- an overarching megalie, an untruth of such unimaginable scope and magnitude it recalibrates for an entire nation the perception of reality. (Aryan supremacy was the megalie of Nazi Germany.) No one should be surprised that the threat of terrorism has increased, not diminished, since 9/11: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were not even remotely intended to combat it.

We know the Bush administration, when it took office, was indifferent to terrorism, brushing aside explicit warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden; we know the president was planning instead, at least six months before 9/11, to invade both Afghanistan and Iraq; we know of a National Security Council memorandum dated Feb. 3, 2001, concerning the "capture of new and existing oil and gas fields" in Iraq; we have acquired with a lawsuit the maps of Iraqi oil fields Vice President Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was studying a month later; we have learned how the privatized structure of Iraq's postwar oil industry was designed by the Bush administration a year before the war began; we know the administration was negotiating pipeline rights-of-way with the Taliban, unsuccessfully, until five weeks before 9/11; we know the final threat to them was a "carpet of bombs"; we are aware of President Bush twice refusing offers from the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden, before and after the carpet of bombs was unleashed; we've read of the five "megabases" in Iraq to house 100,000 troops for as long as 50 years; we've learned the U.S. Embassy compound under construction in Baghdad will be ten times larger than any other in the world; and we know Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and British Petroleum/Amoco are poised to claim immense profits from 81 percent of Iraq's undeveloped oil fields.

Are these the activities and outcomes of a "War on Terror?"

We also know President Bush, a month before 9/11 in August of 2001, notified the governments of Pakistan and India he would launch a military mission into Afghanistan "before the end of October."

Between the dates of the president's announcement and his order to attack, the Trade Towers and the Pentagon were struck by the hijacked airliners. Seizing in a heartbeat this spectacular opportunity to disguise and launch the preplanned invasions, the Bush administration concocted the megalie, and the "War on Terror" was born.

The "War on Terror" is a conscious and ingenious masquerade for the geostrategic pursuit and control of Middle Eastern oil and gas resources. The facts place this beyond dispute. Mr. Bush's claim of "taking the fight directly to the terrorists … and the states that harbor them" was yet one more intentional deception, as subsequent events fully demonstrated. In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the terrorists -- Osama bin Laden remains at large -- and in Iraq, when we invaded, there were no terrorists at all. But today both "states" are fitted with puppet governments and dotted with permanent U.S. military bases in close proximity to their hydrocarbon assets.

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