Finally Released After All These Years: The Secret Bush Memos
Submitted by J Boogie [TLL] on Tuesday, 3 March 2009Comments
Recently, the now infamous memos issued by the administration of Former President George W. Bush were released by President Obama to the public. These memos were issued in the days following the horrific attacks on our country on September 11, 2001. The policies marked the start of the erosion of many of our constitutional rights and freedoms that we as a nation enjoy. The Neo-Con’s in power believed these policies to be necessary to preserve the integrity of our nation, and to protect it from imminent attacks. America was scared into thinking that the deterioration of our rights was the correct choice in a time of uncertainty, chaos and fear. Playing up these American fears, the Bush administration labeled your rights with a big fat asterisk (or is it, a tiny, hidden, barely visible asterisk that is printed in invisible ink so you don’t even know the asterisk exists). And that asterisk essentially stated that if the Bush administration perceived you to be a threat in any way, you did not have those rights anymore.The Obama administration ought to be praised for releasing the secret memos that the Bush administration issued just days after 9/11. Well, after years of requests that fell on deaf ears, FOIA disputes and numerous legal challenges, President Obama has released a handful of those memos to the public. And they sure are an interesting read for anyone with even a smidgen of interest in our Constitutional rights. The memos can be found here at the Department of Justice website.
But here is a quick rundown of some of the more disturbing aspects of what Bush was implementing. The memos seem to give the U.S. Military a great deal (read: nearly unlimited) of power in going after suspected terrorists on U.S. soil. By extension, this power is granted to the President as Commander-in-Chief of the military. And by “power”, I mean that the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures, basically doesn’t apply anymore. Well, the memos say that “in certain situations” the Fourth Amendment wouldn’t apply. But we know what that really means. It wont apply when it inconveniences them, so we might as well be truthful here. The memos were a clear degradation of basic constitutional protections, and pretty clear evidence that the Bush/Cheney administration operated above the Constitution of the United States. You know, that document that guarantees its citizens of the several states certain protections such as freedom of press, speech, religion, etc. Well guess who didn’t want to play that game? Also, the memos seem to also erode our First Amendment rights as well, with comments to the memos indicating that speech and press were to take a backseat to the witch hunt. Warrantless interceptions of communications (many of this is common knowledge, but it is nice to see the actual memos propounding these policies that we’ve almost come to consider as the norm) were authorized. It is actually genuinely frightening to see how non-chalantly Bush and Cheney could toss aside your constitutional rights. To override the Constitution of the United States is to take a stick and beat the very foundation of this great nation. And millions cheered. Bush and Cheney basically spat on the parchment it was printed on. And half of our nation rejoiced. There is something fundamentally wrong (and “un-nation-like) with our nation to have supported such measures. At least with the two term limit, and a fresh administration ready to rattle the GOP “normalcy”, we have reason to believe that our nation will show some spine and not stand for these type of cloak and dagger policies to ever again be put into place.
-TLL
