"Mission Accomplished"

Buried in the avalanche of dire news on the financial meltdown is a scathing report from government investigators from both the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility who now confirm that political pressure led to the firing of United States Attorneys.

Just as the Bush Administration's refusal to oversee Wall Street has led the markets into chaos, it's politicization of the Justice Department has produced a cancer threatening the very heart of our wounded democracy. It is impossible to firmly assess the extent of the tumor without a proper biopsy, but we know that it grew from the intent to suppress Democratic voters in the 2004 elections. As the Boston Globe reported: the Bush appointee in the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman, clearly disregarded voting rights law in order to elect Republicans.

Joseph Rich, who was chief of the voting rights section of the Civil Rights Division under Schlozman, stated that: "Schlozman didn't know anything about voting law. . . . All he knew is he wanted to be sure that the Republicans were going to win."

When U.S. attorneys refused to bring bogus charges against Democratic candidates Karl Rove's political appointees in the Justice Department simply replaced them illegally. At the same time, the Guardian's investigative reporter, Greg Palast had begun to uncover that: "In the 2004 presidential election, Republican operatives blocked a quarter-million new voters nationwide from voting on grounds they brought the wrong IDs to the polls."

But the rot in the Bush Justice Department was not confined to corruption of our vote. Not only was it discovered on the eve of the elections that Halliburton had received no bid contracts from the Pentagon worth billions of dollars, the same company formerly run by Vice President Richard Cheney, had obtained a secret $7 billion deal for its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), to restore Iraq’s oil fields from before Bush ordered the invasion.

It has since come to light that several of Halliburton's female employees had been sexually harassed and in at least one case, gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq. Yet despite dozens of similar charges having been lodged by women working for US defense contractors in the Middle East, the Justice Department has so far declined to pursue their cases. As a result, claims that US security contractors are abusing their employees continue to emerge. One lawyer in Houston, says that at last count his firm had fifteen clients who had suffered incidents of sexual assault, sexual harassment and retaliation.

But as destructive as the corrosion of our judicial system has been for victimized citizens, the unprecedented power that the Bush Administration has managed to obtain in order to insulate itself from criminal prosecution becomes even more alarming when one realizes that the power grab was facilitated by both the federal courts and the U.S. Congress.

Destroying the "Balance of Powers"

The Bush White House basically declared war on our laws supporting open government. In an article entitled: "Is Cheney 'Beyond the Reach of the Law'?" former Nixon White House counsel John Dean finds it extraordinary that the vice-president would attempt to claim that he is immune from Congressional oversight and that members of the Supreme Court would seek to validate such a radical "expanse of executive powers.”

For the last 8 years we have not been a country governed by Law but a land ruled by men who proved ruthless in pursuing their lust for wealth and power. It is not hard to appreciate the irony of our present predicament. In 2003, George Bush declared that he was invading Iraq to remove an "evil dictator" who defies the "rule of law" and in achieving that end Bush now presumes to possess the prerogatives of Saddam Hussein and Josef Stalin.

[Legal scholar, Jonathan Turley on the signing of the Military Commissions Act had warned that, "Congress just gave the president despotic powers…I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking - overtaking - almost absolute power."]

Of course, just as we watch the craven cowards stampede us into a second Depression, Bush and Bin Laden succeeded by stoking our fears.

"Thanks to the overreaction by the Bush/Cheney administration along with the neocons and free market fundamentalists of the Republican Party, Bin Laden has succeeded in harming America far beyond his wildest dreams, much as the overreaction by the leaders of the Politburo to Reagan's arms build-up undermined an already faltering Soviet system"-- Miles Mogulescu.

No doubt, as they watch the financial markets crumble after an eight year binge of lawlessness, corruption and greed, those who supported Messrs Bush and Bin Laden are boasting "Mission Accomplished."