IF THEY CAN GET YOU ASKING THE WRONG QUESTIONS --- THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE ANSWERS

Welcome to the One-Party Police State

War? What War?

By DAVE LINDORFF

The main legacy of Johnson's "war" on poverty, really, was not on poverty, but on political language. It led directly to the subsequent Nixon/Carter/Reagan/Clinton "war" on drugs.

That deceptively titled policy initiative had nothing to do with a war, but everything to do with expanding police power and police tactics within the U.S., and with filling prisons with people who didn't belong there.

In that regard, the "war" on drugs was a model for Bush's subsequent "war" on terror. Claiming that hordes of dark-skinned "Islamofascist" terrorists are out to destroy America, Bush and his cronies, following the 9-11 attacks, declared "war" on the terrorists.

This is what Bush's phony "War on Terror" is about in reality: not a war, but an excuse for a police state. He has even claimed that this fake "war" makes him "commander in chief" and since this faux war is global, taking place everywhere including within the U.S., he claims that gives him the power of a generalissimo both internationally and here at home--the power to declare anyone he wants, including you and me, an "enemy combatant" without rights of any kind, the power to ignore the courts, the power to ignore laws passed by Congress, and even the power to ignore the Constitution itself.

Let's get real: There is no "war" on terror, just a war on the American people and on our Constitution.