“The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.”
— George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, 1938
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire
“The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.”
“The art of leadership…consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary and taking care that nothing will split up that attention.”
Adolf Hitler (both from Mein Kampf)
All are issues that turn on presidential powers. And as he has through most of his presidency, he built his case on the threat of terrorism. “The fact that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance,” Mr. Bush said in his radio remarks, echoing comments he made Thursday at a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. “We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks,” he added. (NYTimes 3/9/08 on Bush veto of no American torture bill.)
Comment by admin — March 9, 2008 @ 3:42 am