Drifting Towards A Fascist Dictatorship

First we were told that a pre-emptive strike was justified because of the extraordinary danger posed by Saddam's WMDs. The evidence of WMDs turned out to be a lie, yet the "Bush Doctrine" policy of pre-emptive attack remains in place, as a means of "avoiding another 9/11".

When photos of abused prisoners surfaced from Abu Ghraib, the practice was condemned as torture. But some began arguing that torture was justifiable, if it could help "save the USA from another 9/11".

Then we saw a US marine murder an unarmed Iraqi prisoner in cold blood. It wasn't murder, we were told, because (a) the marine was having a bad day, and (b) the marine is in Iraq to help "save the USA from another 9/11".

Now US government lawyers argue that evidence gained through torture is admissible in court because it could help "save the USA from another 9/11".

The same lawyers deny that torture is occuring in Guantanamo Bay and other US facilities. Yet if it were, they argue, that would be OK. After all, it could help "save the USA from another 9/11".

As Mother Jones puts it:

We’re not torturing people. (And even if we were ... they’re bad people.)

As Bush's neo-conservative advisors rightly anticipated when they wrote the Project For A New American Century, a cataclysmic event like 9/11 was "required" in order to justify all their subsequent goals on the path to an economically and militarily overwhelming US global empire, perpetually beyond challenge from all imagineable enemies.

But why the need to accept evidence gained through torture, if torture is not occurring? Even 9/11 cannot justify this moral hypocrisy.