Well, the 109th Congress certainly didn’t spend its last five days in idle debate. In their last week, our elected representatives passed legislation that will go down in history comparing us to Nazi Germany and defining us as the rise of the Fourth Reich. All while the American people sat by watching their gladiators in the restored Superdome, NBC’s Deal or No Deal, and other amusing diversions.

With or without signing statements, George W. Bush has been given permission to change us from a “nation of laws” to the dictates of one supreme and omnipotent leader; build a 700 mile fence across our 1200 mile border with Mexico; continue wiretap spying on telephone calls and email; and an unconstitutional attempt to absolve our leaders from war crimes and violations of international treaties like the Geneva Convention. What more could a dictator want except possibly some gas chambers?

On top of all that, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 nullifies Habeas Corpus, the right to challenge detention, a law that has been around since the Magna Carta of 1215. Bush and his henchmen can now arrest anyone they want and lock them up without due process.

No longer is it a question of whether the United States has, for the last five years, been practicing torture. With the exception of a few things like waterboarding, torture now goes even further because the man who “takes seriously” everything said by his enemies can now act immediately and without question on anything an “enemy combatant” confesses under duress and in hopes of avoiding further pain and discomfort. Drilling teeth to the nerve can be classified as a legitimate dental procedure and ramming bamboo shoots under fingernails is just a manicure.

We will never know what goes on in secret prisons in countries ranging from our allies to Syria, Turkey, Egypt, and elsewhere because access is denied to the Red Cross, defense lawyers, and the rights of Habeas Corpus are denied anyone Bush defines as an enemy combatant – American citizens as well. Clandestine is the watchword of the Gestapo while black boots and armbands should become the uniform of every member of Congress.

Most heinous of all is the clause, buried deep within the bill, which tries to exonerate federal officials from prosecution for crimes already committed:

“…no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of an alien detained by the United States who – (A) is currently in United States custody; and (B) has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.

Effective Date: The amendments made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act, and shall apply to all cases, without exception, pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act which relate to any aspect of the detention, transfer, trial, or conditions of an alien detained by the United States since September 11, 2001.”

In other words, this bill attempts to retroactively absolve the United States and its agents from war crimes.

Article 1; Section 9; Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states:

“No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed."

How straightforward can you get? Retroactively forgiving themselves is forbidden by the Constitution our congressional men and women have all sworn to protect and uphold.

Argentina and Chile tried something similar and all it did was temporarily bog down prosecutions in legal red tape.

Ceding the power and responsibility of Congress as the only body capable of declaring war was another violation of the Constitution. So are many things other than the detention and treatment of prisoners. The United Nations specifically outlaws the use of depleted uranium under any conditions and we’ve used DU in the first Gulf War as well as the recent invasion and occupation of Iraq. It’s even poisoning our own troops and has been definitely determined to be the cause of the previously mysterious Gulf War Syndrome.

On top of that, the Geneva Conventions prohibit the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas as well as phosphorous. We’ve not only used both of these in Iraq, but we’ve supplied Israel with millions of cluster bombs and had them begging for more during the recent Lebanese conflict.

Today, our elected representatives return to their respective constituencies to campaign for re-election to the 110th Congress. We are going to be inundated with advertising, speeches, and fundraisers promising to protect and improve the American way of life when, in reality, we should be voting to get rid of them all, but that option isn’t available to voters.

The excuses for invading Iraq have gone from getting rid of weapons of mass destruction that could be turned against us in a matter of fifteen minutes onwards to regime change, to saving the Iraqi people, and finally to the shining example of bringing democracy to the biblical center of the oil rich Middle East. But the only thing we have to show for it is a method of voting inherently better than our own.

Instead of voting on the El Diablo/Diebold touch screen computers prevalent in more than half of the voting precincts of America and proven unreliable and hackable, the Iraqi people choose from a multitude of candidates and vote on paper ballots counting results by hand while the most technologically advanced tool at hand is an abacus.

Even this small bit of democratic honesty happens by mistake because we haven’t been able to restore reliable and secure electricity in three years of occupation, and that because U.S. contractors like Halliburton ran off with the money and the Iraqi police force we are training in order to maintain order hasn’t yet been able to do what Saddam did and is sympathetic to the ever increasing insurgency, our new word for a rebellious underground movement of freedom fighters.

Meanwhile, and due mostly to a lack of empathy and Christian sensibilities based on fear, a sizable chunk of the American people who may be wary of the “war” and its expense cannot see that the rest of the world might resent our more than 725 military bases spread across the “free world” and our military aggressiveness has ticked off other nations just as Americans themselves would be upset by Chinese bases in our own backyards and in control of our many nuclear silos.

So they go to the polls to vote for more of the same at the hands of the builders and supporters of an Empire that’s done more for big business than for the Middle Class that made this country unique. We are also asked to accept the media and candidate idea that immediate overnight results and exit polls are part of an honest voting system and true democracy. Trust Diebold rather than your grandparents working in every precinct and perfectly capable of counting paper ballots without electric calculators.

No longer do we have the basis or the right to claim the moral high ground or that we are the "greatest democracy" in the "free" world. Our actions prove otherwise, as did Hitler's.

Related Articles:

How Did We Sink So Low in Just 6 Years?
Habeas Corpus, R.I.P.
Banish Bush to Gitmo (June, 2004)