[A-List] US Imperialism: 2000 Coup d'Etat

["Anyutka" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/09/12/120.html

The Moscow Times

Friday, Sep. 12, 2003. Page XII

Global Eye -- Last Rights

By Chris Floyd



Once again, the dispiriting spectacle of the American media in full campaign
cry is upon us, as coverage of the 2004 presidential race begins in earnest.
But this time around, the usual inanities, inaccuracies and insipidities
have a more melancholy flavor, an almost elegiac feel. It's like watching
priests of a dead cult, vacantly enacting their rituals in a ruined temple
whose gods have been broken, desecrated and cast down.

The difference from past campaigns lies in the media mandarins' sad belief
that there will actually be a genuine, open, presidential election in
November 2004. This childlike faith stems, of course, from their equally
fallacious conviction that the United States did not suffer a coup d'etat in
December 2000 at the hands of an extremist faction of elites.

Although the installation of second-place finisher George W. Bush was
engineered in a wholly unprecedented and unconstitutional manner -- from the
illegal purging of more than 90,000 eligible, predominantly black voters
from the Florida rolls by Jeb Bush to the violent mobs of Republican
congressional staffers paid by George Bush to break up the vote recounts in
Miami to the threats of military insurrection muttered by Bush Family
factotum General Norman Schwarzkopf to the use of Republican-paid ex-CIA
operatives to "correct" 15,000 Florida absentee ballots to the Supreme Court
ruling that unlawfully halted the Florida recount by citing a totally
fictitious deadline for final tallies, down to the congressional session
that officially "ratified" the election result, held in an half-empty
chamber lacking the legally required quorum -- America's media leaders
insist there was no coup because power was transferred "without tanks in the
streets."

But of course, a classic coup is "not necessarily assisted by either the
intervention of the masses or, to any significant degree, by military-type
force." It's an inside job, carried out by factions within the elite. Who
says? The man who literally wrote the book on the subject: right-wing
guru -- and Pentagon advisor -- Edward Luttwak.

In 1968, Luttwak penned "Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook," which could be
the text of the 2000 Bush campaign, as John Dee reports in Lumpen magazine.
Drawing on the extensive experience of the CIA in such pranks, Luttwak says
that "a coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of
the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its
control of the remainder." True coupsters "want to seize power within the
present system" [his italics], then use the existing lines of authority and
habits of obedience inherent in legitimate government to advance their own
illegitimate aims.

Propaganda and false patriotism are key coup ingredients. Luttwak says a
coup's "information campaign" must "reassure the general public by
dispelling fears that the coup is inspired by extremist elements, and to
persuade particular groups that the coup is not a threat to them. The first
aim will be achieved by manipulating national symbols and by asserting our
belief in the prevailing pieties." United we stand!

Meanwhile, Luttwak explains, opponents of the coup must be painted as
isolated cranks, "a few misguided or dangerous individuals," unable to "move
on" and accept the wonderful new reality. Reports of opposition must be
"withheld" whenever possible; failing that, they must be marginalized and
belittled, because "news of any resistance against us would act as a
powerful stimulant to further resistance by breaking down this feeling of
isolation."

We know that Bush never reads any book that doesn't have pictures of goats
in it, but it's clear that Dick Cheney has had a well-thumbed copy of
Luttwak's handbook in his back pocket for years. The 2000 coup was carried
out along Luttwakian lines by a small group of ideologues and elitists --
the latter drawn largely from the energy and defense industries -- seeking
to advance their illegitimate aim of global domination by military force and
control of the world's energy resources.

These objectives were no secret. Since 1992, Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and a
gaggle of other dominionists now in power aired their plans publicly via a
web of corporate-funded pressure groups. These documents -- including their
chilling call in September 2000 for a "new Pearl Harbor" to shock Americans
into supporting rapacious dominion schemes -- provided a blueprint that the
coup-makers have followed with remarkable fidelity. The truth was there for
anyone to see. But it was ignored by the dim-witted, well-wadded corporate
media -- whose owners, drooling over Bush promises of mega-mergers and
deregulation, were easily persuaded that the takeover "was not a threat to
them."

It's dangerously naive to believe that such a gang, coming to power in such
a fashion, will allow a legitimate electoral contest to take place next
year. They have too much to lose. They haven't expended so much effort --
and so many thousands of innocent lives -- to build this vast engine of
repression and profit only to turn it over to Howard Dean or John Kerry,
just because the stupid American people say so.

So yes, there will be an "election" -- with conventions, debates, ads,
voting, the whole schmeer. But as Josef Stalin once said: "It's not the
votes that count, it's who counts the votes." And in 2004, most votes will
be "counted" by paperless, unverifiable, eminently hackable computer
systems, privately owned and secretly programmed by Bush supporters from the
Religious Right and the military-intelligence complex.

Again, this is no "conspiracy theory"; it's all out in the open -- for
anyone who cares to look. Next week, we'll do just that. Stay tuned.


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