AN AMERICAN COUP D'ETAT

INTRODUCTION

In the April 2006 edition of Harper's Magazine, the editors of Harper's pulled together a panel of distinguished experts to discuss the possibility of an American coup d'etat - one carried out by the American military in the interest of the American "military-industrial complex" and those who support the further expansion of the American New World Order System.

Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper's and the panel's moderator, introduced the subject by suggesting:

"Eternal vigilance being the price of liberty, Americans - who spent decades wargaming a Soviet invasion and have taken more recently to daydreaming about 'ticking bomb' scenarios - should cast at least an occasional thought toward the only truly existential threat that American democracy might face today. WE NOW LIVE IN A UNIPOLAR WORLD [i.e., A WORLD UTTERLY DOMINATED BY THE ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND MILITARY MIGHT OF THE UNITED STATES] … IN WHICH CONQUEST OF THE UNITED STATES BY AN OUTSIDE POWER IS … INCONCEIVABLE. EVEN THE BEST-EQUIPPED TERRORISTS, FOR THEIR PART, COULD DISPATCH AT MOST A CITY OR TWO … To subdue America entirely, the only route remaining would be to seize the machinery of state itself, to steer it toward malign ends - to carry out, that is, a [military] COUP D'ETAT."

An American military coup d'etat has, of course, never really been tried by those who inhabit the lofty but shadowy and indistinct world of the ultra-rich, and who desperately fear the "pedestrian egalitarianism" of the masses which they see as a leveling agency which - if left unchecked - would strip them of their riches and consign them to the coarse plain of the "common man."

They have, of course, never flinched from murder and assassination [even regicide (e.g., President Kennedy)] to accomplish their aims and steer the "ship of state" in a direction amenable to their ends (e.g., the MK-Ultra "hits" of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the minor "hits" of "lesser lights" such as Gary Webb and Judi Bari who desperately tried to "speak truth to power"); but an actual coup d'etat? - No, they've never tried that before; they've NEVER DARED to try that before.

THE ULTRA-RICH AND THE "COMMON MAN"

To the ultra-rich, the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution were anything but champions of equality; they were, rather, the fervent defenders of inequality. Indeed, Richard J. Herrnstein, who held the Edgar Pierce Chair in Psychology at Harvard University before his death in 1992, and Charles Murray, who is a Bradley Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) wrote:

"The Founders wrote frankly about the inequality of men. For Thomas Jefferson, it was obvious that ... (people) were especially unequal in virtue and intelligence. He was thankful for a 'natural aristocracy' that could counterbalance the deficiencies of the others, an 'aristocracy of virtue and talent, which Nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society' ..."

They continued:

"The other founders, including Madison, Hamilton, and Washington - ruminated in the same vein (as Jefferson) about the inequality of men and the political implications of that inequality ... The perversions ... (implicit) in the egalitarian ideal that began with the French Revolution and have been so plentiful in the twentieth century are not accidents of history ... Egalitarian tyrannies, whether of the Jacobite or the Leninist variety, are worse than inhumane. They are inhuman."

AND WHAT WOULD THE TEST BE THAT WOULD SEPARATE MEN OF "TALENT," "VIRTUE" AND "INTELLIGENCE" FROM THE REST OF MANKIND? MONEY, OF COURSE!  It is the "Horatio Alger Myth" taken to its demonic extreme: Those who possess great wealth prove themselves by their success in a Darwinian, economic struggle of "survival of the fittest" qualified to rule. Those who do not possess great wealth, prove themselves "unfit" to rule - and, as a result, they do not deserve the right to have a say in the governance of the country. And one must remember here that in the ultra-rich's estimation, financial success is not to be measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, but in the millions and millions of dollars - even in the billions of dollars.

THE "UP-TO-NOW" IMPOSSIBILITY OF
A COUP D'ETAT BY THE ULTRA-RICH

The problem that has existed for the ultra-rich, however, is that very few people in the United States have been willing to cede control of their lives over to the ultra-rich in the absolutist manner the ultra-rich demand. And to complicate things further, the American military has been too representative of the population of the nation as a whole to be counted on by the ultra-rich in a coup attempt. Moreover - according to Edward Luttwak, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a second member of the Harper's panel - even if the ultra-rich could get the upper echelons of the military to go along with their coup attempt -

"You [i.e., the perpetrators of the coup] would sit in the office of the Secretary of Defense, and the first place where you wouldn't be obeyed would be inside your office. If they did follow orders inside your office, then people in the rest of the Pentagon wouldn't. If everybody in the Pentagon followed orders, people out in the military bases wouldn't. If they did as well, Americans citizens would still not accept your legitimacy."

Luttwak continues:

"It just wouldn't work … You could go down the list and take over this headquarters, that headquarters, the White House, the Defense Department, the television, the radio, and so on. You could arrest all the leaders, detain or kill off their families. And you would have accomplished nothing."

Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of international relations at Boston University and a third member of the panel, agrees with Luttwak:

"That's right. What are you going to seize that, after seizing it, gives you control of the country?"

Luttwak goes on:

"You could shut down the media [in an effort to further your cause], but even if you did shut down the media, you still wouldn't be able to rule. Because, remember, in order to actually rule, YOU HAVE TO HAVE ACCEPTANCE. Think of Saddam Hussein: he was not a very, you know, popular leader, but he did have to be obeyed at the very minimum by his security forces, his Republican Guards. SO THERE IS A MINIMUM GROUP THAT ONE NEEDS IN ORDER TO CONTROL ANY COUNTRY. In this country … [you have never had such a group]."

THE TIMES "THEY ARE CHANGING"

However, according to all the members of the Harper's panel, things have been changing in the country - and so much so that it is at last at least conceivable to seriously consider the possibility of a military coup d'etat: the two things that have prevented a coup in the country up to this point - (1) the lack of a military that would obey the ultra-rich in such an attempt, and (2) the shortage of a minimum group in the population as a whole that would accept the results of a military coup - no longer constitute the hindrances they once did. The fact is, there is growing evidence that the military - under certain circumstances - would take part in such a coup, and there is even more evidence that suggests there now exists a substantial part of the population that would accept the authoritarian results of a successful coup. Indeed, so much have things changed in this direction that Bacevich wonders:

"… whether, in fact, we're not already experiencing what is in essence a creeping coup d'etat."

This does not mean, however, that a MAJORITY per se (or even a plurality of differing and competing factions) in the country would ever support such a coup - after all, a coup would not be necessary if that were the case. Coups become necessary precisely and only because such majorities (or even pluralities) do not exist. A coup d'etat implies that the use of military and police power are necessary to impose the will of those who support the coup on the rest of the population. But even here - as Luttwak suggests - there still remains the necessity of a -

"… a minimum group [in the population] that one needs in order to control any country."

THE CULTURE WARS: CREATING THE "MINIMUM GROUP"

That minimum group now exists in the country as a whole - and it has largely been created out of the "CULTURE WAR" that has gripped the nation over the past twenty to thirty years: THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT THAT NOW ESSENTIALLY FORMS THE BACKBONE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.

The Religious Right today commands an astounding ONE-THIRD of the entire American population, and while there is little evidence that it possesses the ability to expand its popular base of "TRUE-BELIEVERS" (as opposed to occasional supporters and "fair-weather friends") much beyond this figure, that is still an astounding number of people that the ultra-rich have managed to gather about them.  And make no mistake about it, this "CULTURE WAR" is real war, and it has irrevocably divided the country into two warring camps where there appears to be no "middle ground."

Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that in this war, there can be only "winners" and "losers" - and that's exactly the way the ultra-rich want this struggle to appear as: a WAR.  Why? - because in a war, the use of military and police power can be justified as an essential part of the struggle. IN THIS KIND OF WAR, IT DOESN'T TAKE LONG FOR WORDS TO TRANSFORM THEMSELVES INTO BULLETS THAT KILL.

NO MIDDLE GROUND

Take, for example, what Alan Wolfe, a liberal and a professor of sociology and political science at Boston University, has to say about the issues around which the nation's "CULTURE WAR" is being fought; he writes that -

"... abortion [and homosexuality] are matters of ‘high’ politics, involving fundamental questions about the definition of public and private, liberty and authority, and the meaning and purpose of life ... At this principled elevation, abortion [and homosexuality] present a tragic conflict, like the Civil War [and the question of slavery]. EACH SIDE TO THE DEBATE UNDERSTANDS ITSELF, AND IS UNDERSTOOD BY ITS ANTAGONISTS, AS STANDING FOR A WORLDVIEW THAT CANNOT BE COMPROMISED."

According to Wolfe, under these circumstances, our national discussions on questions of morality, religion and culture have become a "language game that has the form of meaningful communication, but is in fact merely another form of AGGRESSION" against those with whom we disagree.  Wolfe explains:

"The problem begins with intellectuals, who routinely violate fundamental democratic principles in the way they balance the competing interests at stake. Both a liberal such as Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School and a conservative such as R.C. Sproul, an evangelical theologian, are incapable of recognizing the legitimacy of their opponent’s position ... Tribe is explicitly anti-democratic. To him, the whole purpose of a constitution and a Supreme Court is to act as a check on popular positions. Sproul, by contrast, sees government as having no other purpose than to embody God’s will - not exactly a formula for pluralism or religious liberty." 

James Davison Hunter, one of the few American writers who is trying to understand the Culture Wars rather than fight them, agrees with Wolfe; he believes that NEW FAULT LINES ARE EMERGING IN U.S. SOCIETY WHICH INEVITABLY WILL SET CITIZEN AGAINST CITIZEN.

Now the question arises, if this is a war where there can be NO compromise, where there is NO middle ground, and where WORDS MUST AT SOME POINT TRANSFORM THEMSELVES INTO BULLETS THAT KILL, WHERE DOES THE MILITARY STAND INSOFAR AS THIS "CULTURE WAR" IS CONCERNED?

THE U.S. MILITARY AS AN ARM
OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

According to Bill Wasik, the military clearly stands on the side of the Republican Party, the political institution that the ultra-rich have used to cement their connection to the Religious Right in this country. Wasik writes:

"I want to address the question of partisanship in [today's] military. Insofar as there is a 'CULTURE WAR' in America, EVERYONE SEEMS TO AGREE THAT THE ARMED FORCES FIGHT ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE."

Now, again, this is important in a struggle where neither side in the "CULTURE WAR" possesses the ability to win at the ballot box. As things now stand, each side in the "CULTURE WAR" can array against its opponent no more than one-third of the American population, leaving a wishy-washy, vacillating, fence-straddling one-third of the population permanently "at play" in the middle - lending its support first to the Left (e.g., the Bill Clinton interregnum of the 1990s) and then to the Right (e.g., the George Bush interregnum of the early 2000s). This is INTOLERABLE to both sides of the conflict - AND THAT'S WHERE THE MILITARY COMES IN. That's precisely what makes the words of Wasik so important:

"THE ARMED FORCES FIGHT ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE."

AN "OPEN REVOLT" BY THE MILITARY AGAINST
THE POLITICAL POLICIES OF THE LIBERAL LEFT

And it's not that difficult to demonstrate the bias of the military for the Republican Party and against the cultural policies of the Liberal Left: Take the question of gays in the military. Bacevich writes:

"Let us … consider the classic case of gays in the military. Bill Clinton ran for the presidency saying he would issue an executive order that did for gays what Harry Truman did for African Americans. He wins the election. When he tries to do precisely what he said he would do, it triggers a firestorm of opposition in the military. This was not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff merely saying, in private, 'Mr. President, I would like to give you my professional opinion'."

Richard Kohn, a fourth member of the Harper's panel and the chairman of the curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina, agrees with Bacevich; he writes:

"It was the most OPEN REVOLT the American military has ever engaged in."

Luttwak quips: "Ever?" Kohn replies, OPEN REVLOT! Yes! - OPEN REVOLT."

Bacevich continues; he says that junior officers in the military actually warned the Joint Chiefs that -

"If they failed to stop this policy from being implemented, they were likely to lose the loyalty of the junior officers. I mean, holy smokes."

What the military was doing here was teaming up with Republicans to defy a liberal president from carrying out his policies. That's getting close to a coup d'etat. And the coordination between the Republicans and the military was a wonder to behold - and liberals on Clinton's side were simply unable to respond to the challenge. Indeed, as switchboards on Capitol Hill and the White House lit up in a red hot response to the Clinton Administration’s pressure on the military to admit avowed homosexuals, White House press secretary George Stephanopoulos reacted angrily at a news briefing on the 28th of January (1993): he charged that the reaction against gays in the military was being orchestrated by the American military and the Republican Party, and that this alliance was UNCONSTITUTIONAL and ILLEGAL.

And it wasn't just Stephanopoulos who made this claim; most of the nation’s newspaper editors were equally shocked by the blatant nature of this illegal alliance. For instance, on the evening of January 29th, 1993, a large number of newspaper editors from throughout the country (Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Milwaukee, San Diego, etc.) appeared on the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour to denounce what was occurring - BUT ALL TO NO AVAIL, giving an ominous ring to the words of Wasik when he quipped,

"EVERYONE SEEMS TO AGREE THAT THE ARMED FORCES FIGHT ON THE REPUBLICAN SIDE."

Kohn says:

"It has become part of the informal culture of the military to be Republican."

THE AMERICAN MILITARY HAS BECOME CONSERVATIVE
IN A MORE EXPLICITLY IDEOLOGICAL SENSE

Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap Jr., a staff judge advocate at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia and another member of the Harper's panel, and Bacevich trace the origins of this alliance back to the creation of the "all-volunteer army." They write:

"The military is an inherently conservative organization, and this is true of all militaries around the world … But since 1980 our military has become conservative in a more explicitly ideological sense. And that allegiance has been returned in spades by the conservative side in the culture war, which sees soldiers as virtuous representatives of how the country ought to be."

Bacevich continues:

"Where do you think the recruiting command is focused on now? It's focused on evangelicals … The recruiters go for the rich turf, which is the evangelical segment of society …"

In doing so, Bacevich claims that the military has created a military that mirrors the belief systems of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, and one that is the antithesis of the values of liberal Americans. As a result, Kohn warns:

"For the first time in our history, we now have an officer corps that identifies overwhelmingly with one political party: the Republican Party."

CONTEMPLATING THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

What would it take to set in motion a coup d'etat? What set of circumstances could arise that would "necessitate" (as it were) a coup attempt by the Right to seize control of the country? - to, as Daniel 7:25 says,

"CHANGE TIMES AND LAWS ..."

In other words, what would it take that would propel the Right to seize control of the country and transform it from a democracy into a dictatorship? Not much! Indeed, Bacevich thinks the process is already underway; that in fact the country is already experiencing a "CREEPING COUP  D'ETAT," and that this coup is predicated on the on-going transformations that have occurred in the country as a result of 9/11. He writes:

"The question that arises is whether, in fact, we're not already experiencing what is in essence a creeping coup d'etat … [perpetrated] by militarized civilians, who conceive of the world as such a dangerous place that military power has to predominate, that constitutional constraints on the military need to be loosened. The ideology of national security has become ever more woven into our politics. It has been especially apparent since 9/11, but more broadly it's been going on since the beginning of the Cold War."

Still, to complete the transformation of the country from a democracy to what would amount to be a dictatorship where the Left is shut down completely, and the Right gains FULL ascendancy in the country, an actual military coup d'etat is necessary. Brig. Gen. Dunlap posits the possibility of just such a coup as originating in a crisis between Congress, on the one hand, and the Executive Branch, on the other hand - a crisis where the military would have to choose between following the lead of Congress or the President. Bacevich agrees, and elaborates on what Dunlap says:

"Let's say a president, exercising his proper and legitimate presidential authority, initiates a military action. Then Congress wakes up and says, 'Wait a minute, this president is berserk; he's starting a war, and we're against it'. But in the meantime, the military force has already been put in a very compromised situation. If things were moving very fast, the military might well take an unconstitutional action."

THE LEFT: UNCOVERING THE SECRETS
OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

But come on now, isn't that EXACTLY what the Left in Congress is saying today insofar as Bush's war in Iraq is concerned? Of course it is! The Left is claiming that President Bush has taken the country into an unwinnable war in Iraq based on lies and deceit, a war that has led to the deaths (as of September 8, 2006) of 2,656 service members and the maiming of many thousands more. And it's not only Democrats that are saying this, but growing numbers of so-called "moderate" Republicans in the House and the Senate. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri has gone "stone cold." In addition, much of Afghanistan has fallen back under the control of the Taliban, and NATO's top commander there has appealed "urgently" for more troops.

All this to say nothing about the increasing bloodshed in Iraq where there appears to be no end to the violence. Indeed, the United Nations issued a report saying that the number of civilians slain in Iraq reached an unprecedented level in July and August of 2006, which saw 6,599 violent deaths. Of that total, 5,106 were in Baghdad alone. Other sources claim the real figure of those killed in Iraq could be as much as three to four times that amount.

QUESTIONING THE INTEGRITY OF THE PRESIDENT

All this has led to a growing firestorm on the Left insofar as the policies of the Bush Administration are concerned - especially as those policies have led to a truncating of civil liberties in the United States. In fact, so far has this discontent grown, that many on the Left are actually beginning to question the one single event that took the country into the so-called "War on Terror" itself: the events of 9/11. For example, in a book entitled Rethinking 9/11: The Hidden History of 9-11-200I (and reported on in the Sacramento News and Review of August 31, 2006), Paul Zarembka, an economics professor at the State University of New York (SUNY), addresses what a growing number of professors in some of this country's most prestigious colleges and universities think is a deep government cover-up of what really happened at 9/11.

These people are people who cannot be so easily dismissed as "kooks" and "nuts." For instance, Brian Sacks, a professor of English at Philadelphia's Drexel University has done a lot of work to expose the 9/11 Commission's failure to gather crucial evidence insofar as the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon are concerned. Sacks attributes the failure of the commission to perform this crucial task to a disturbing and very glaring lack of independence from the Bush I and Bush II White Houses. So far did this lack of independence extend that Dr. Zelikow, the commission's executive director, "was actually part of the Bush II transition team." Sacks notes that "Zelikow was instrumental in creating an information vacuum regarding key evidence at the center of the 9/11 Commission." For example, the commission did not even issue subpoenas for presidential daily briefings on Al Qaeda before 9/11.

Take another reason that many in the Left have begun to question the events of 9/11: In his well-researched essay that is making the rounds throughout the country, Jay Kolar an Arizona-based researcher, analyzes a video of the alleged 9/11 hijackers from the security screening area in Dulles International Airport. There is no camera number, and no date on the ongoing digital clock. The FBI submitted the video to the commission as evidence against the suspected hijackers; A COURT OF LAW WOULD HAVE REJECTED IT, and the FBI certainly would have challenged such a video in any prosecution of a criminal defendant it was a party to in case the defense had tried to introduce it into evidence.

And there's more: according to Zarembka, there really is evidence that suggests that insiders with knowledge of 9/11 likely did bet on the prices of airline stocks to fall. The big volume of such stock-market activity for a carrier involved in two of the hijacked flights had "only an one percent probability of occurring randomly." The evidence that Zarembka and others used to reach this conclusion was subjected to a peer-review process by other academicians.

And there is even more: David Ray Griffin of Claremont College considers the shocking collapses of the World Trade Center twin towers and Building 7 (not hit by a hijacked plane) to have been an impossibility. The official story of 9/11 holds that fire caused all three high-rise steel-frame structures to collapse. But wait! "Fire has never caused large steel-framed buildings to collapse - never, whether before 9/11, or after 9/11, or anywhere in the world on 9/11 except in New York City - never," writes Griffin. He argues, compellingly, that controlled demolitions caused the three buildings to topple at free-fall speed. Griffin cites more than 500 RECORDED OBSERVATIONS from the New York Fire Department's 9/11 oral histories, recently released in which responsible onlookers such as firefighters, paramedics and police officers spoke of multiple "booms," "pops," and multi-color flashes shooting out from inside the WTC towers just prior to the collapse of both the North and South towers as well as Building 7.

Finally, there's the information that Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed of the Institute for Policy Research and Development in London has unearthed - and Newsweek Magazine has reported on - that the CIA was tightly connected to five of the suspected 9/11 hijackers; and that these connections could be clearly traced as far back as the early 1990s.

USING 9/11 TO DESTABILIZE
SOCIETIES, INCLUDING THE U.S.

This has led many in Europe and throughout the world - none of whom can be connected to the proverbial "nut circuit" - to conclude that shadowy forces in the U.S. government, operating clandestinely, have been using Al Qaeda to destabilize societies - including ours - with terror strikes. They conclude that this bloody violence is part of a corporate-government strategy to take over energy-rich regions of the world.

David MacGregor of the University of Western Ontario agrees; he posits that the crime of 9/11 is an example of state-directed terror against its own populace; the kind of terror that the American government used in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in which King was supposedly murdered by a "lone gunman," but which was really a part of an intricate government-sponsored murder plot designed to stop a growing nonviolent movement of people across class, gender and skin-color lines that challenged the elitist economic agenda of the ultra-rich.

Diana Ralph of Canada's Carleton University agrees with MacGregor; she says that "divide and conquer" is a technique that the ultra-rich have historically used to keep their opponents "off balance" and unable to mount an effective challenge to their unjust policies. She says that there is no question that racism (which results out of a policy of "divide and conquer") has spiked in democratic societies since 9/11.

The resultant "Islamophobia," or hatred of Muslims, that 9/11 has generated is EXACTLY what the elites want: it justifies among the populace the endless war for power and wealth the "War on Terror" has generated, as well as the government's shredding of the U.S. constitution. 

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS IN "BIG TROUBLE"

And all this is just a small example of the growing unease in the country at large insofar as the lies and deceit of the Bush Administration and - ipso facto - the ultra-rich are concerned. The "Bushites" and their allies on the Right are in a panic. Should the Right lose control of Congress - or even just the House of Representatives - in the upcoming Congressional elections of 2006, the Left would be in a position to launch CONGRESSIONAL PROBES (with subpoena powers) into the "goings-on" of the last five or six years - CONGRESSIONAL PROBES that could make the Watergate investigation look like child's play.

And don't think that the Democrats are not up to it; they are! - just as they were thirty years ago when they toppled the Nixon White House, stopped the Right-Wing juggernaut that was developing in the country at that time against the cultural excesses of the 1960s cold in its tracks, and set back the economic agenda of the ultra-rich for a generation.

The lies are there for the discovering, that's for sure! - and so much so that Cal Thomas, a shameless mouthpiece for the Bush Administration and the American evangelical community in the United States - writes worriedly:

"Make your selection: President Bush needlessly took us into an unwinnable war in Iraq based on false intelligence, which he later hyped as trustworthy, leading to the deaths (as of September 8) of 2,656 service members and the maiming of many thousands more; or, President Clinton was so preoccupied with his groin, politics and legacy that it prevented him from adequately responding to the growing terrorist challenge on his watch, leading to the slaughter of nearly 3,000 Americans five years ago.

"There is enough red meat in the release of the initial report by the U.S. Senate Committee on Intelligence to support the conclusion about Bush for those who never trusted him and believe that he was illegitimately elected in 2000. And there is enough red meat in the two-part ABC miniseries to support the second conclusion that Clinton and his team fiddled while al-Qaida plotted to burn down America."

What Thomas is trying to do here is draw a kind of equivalence between the lies and deceit of the Bush Administration - lies and deceit that "manufactured" 9/11 and sent Americans off to fight a bloody war for the sake of Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, etc. - and Clinton's lies concerning his womanizing. The problem between the sins of President Bush and the sins of President Clinton, however, is that the sins of Bush are at a national and even worldwide level, while the sins of Clinton - in the end - affected only his relationship with his wife and those who immediately surrounded him. The difference here is one of scope and reach - the kind of variance that differentiates a bullet from an atom bomb. Thomas continues:

"After Pearl Harbor, some questioned whether President Roosevelt deliberately ignored warnings about the Japanese threat so he could use the attack to isolate the isolationists and declare war not only on Japan, but grant Winston Churchill's wish for the United States to join Britain in the war against Adolf Hitler.

"In his book, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, Robert Stinnett, a research fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, writes that on Nov. 25, 1941, Japan's Adm. Yamamoto sent a radio message to the group of Japanese warships that would attack Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7. Naval records released a few years ago, prove that from Nov. 17 to Nov. 25, the U.S. Navy intercepted 83 messages that Yamamoto sent to his carriers. Part of the Nov. 25 message read: 'The task force, keeping its movements secret and maintaining close guard against submarines and aircraft, shall advance into Hawaiian waters, and upon the very  opening of hostilities shall attack the main force of the United States fleet in Hawaii and deal it a mortal blow' …

"Since World War II, there have been suspicions whether the Roosevelt administration knew the attack was coming. But here's the interesting part in light of the carpet bomb politics of today.

"Stinnett writes, 'When Thomas Dewey was running for president against Roosevelt in 1944 he found out about America's ability to intercept Japan's radio messages, and thought this knowledge would enable him to defeat the popular FDR. In the fall of that year, Dewey planned a series of speeches charging FDR with foreknowledge of the attack.

"'Ultimately, Gen. George Marshall, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded Dewey not to make the speeches. Japan's naval leaders did not realize America had cracked their codes, and Dewey's speeches could have sacrificed America's code-breaking advantage. So, Dewey said nothing, and in November FDR was elected president for the fourth time'."

"When one considers contemporary politics, how many politicians come to mind who would place the welfare of their country ahead of themselves? It matters less which 'side' is right in this Clinton vs. Bush debate than it does whether Iraq can become a fully stabilized beachhead for democracy in the region and terrorism can be dealt a mortal blow.

"We can't afford to play the blame game now that we are in these wars. There is no alternative to winning them."

BUILDING THE KINGDOM OF
GOD ON LIES AND DECEIT

What Tomas is pleading for here is for the American people to forget what Bush and his cronies have been up to over the last five years; to forget about the possibility that 9/11 was a "manufactured" crisis like Pearl Harbor; to forget that Bush shamelessly lied to get the country into war in the Middle East; to forget about the lives this war has cost us - just as Dewey "forgot" about the lies about Pearl Harbor.

Thomas is clearly frightened, however, that - should the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives - Bush's lies will surface and all the gains that Christian evangelicals have made "to take back the country for Christ and the church" will be dealt a death blow. Now think about what Thomas is suggesting here - THAT THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST CAN BE BUILT ON LIES AND DECEIT, and those who want to expose Bush's lies should just shut up and go away - FOR THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY.  But in doing so, Thomas reveals whose kingdom he is really serving. Jesus said of such people:

"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. WHEN HE SPEAKETH A LIE, HE SPEAKETH OF HIS OWN: FOR HE IS A LIAR, AND THE FATHER OF IT." (John 8:44)

FEAR OF EXPOSURE

In the past, the nauseous and malignant forces that surround the ultra-rich and who support the president's grab for the oil of the Middle East would have simply put a bullet in the head of those who were causing them trouble - just as they did to Jack Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But the leadership of the anti-Bush followers of today is too diffused and scattered for that to have any effect. There is no one leader that these grim forces can "kill off," and by doing so, end the movement against Bush's efforts in the Middle East and Central Asia. Where would the killing end? - the movement against Bush is by now too broad-based and dispersed for such a solution.

Moreover, what really concerns these forces - at least at this time - is EXPOSURE. They cannot bear to dwell in the light of day -

"For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, LEST HIS DEEDS SHOULD BE REPROVED." (John 3:20)

But, again, should the Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives, that's what Bush and the elites who surround him will get: EXPOSURE! - and they will get it in spades; the kind of EXPOSURE that led to the collapse of the Nixon administration in the early 1970s.

The problem for Bush and his coterie of "evil-doers" is that the kind of "doodoo" that the Bush administration is into in the Middle East makes what Nixon was into in Vietnam look positively palatable in comparison. Moreover, the consequences of a U.S. defeat for the American New World Order System in the Middle East are far, far greater than they were in Vietnam. Should America lose out in the Middle East - should it lose control of Middle Eastern oil - it could spell the end of the American Empire and - ipso facto - the wealth of the ultra-rich who now control the destiny of the United States. Lose Vietnam, and one could live to fight another day; lose the Middle East and the game is over - at least for the ultra-rich.

EXPOSURE means Congressional gridlock, a Congress that would be emboldened to challenge every move the Bush Administration would attempt in the Middle East and in furtherance of its New World Order goals. It could also lead to the re-emergence of street protests - against which the Bush Administration has so assiduously used its police power over the last few years - and eventually even rioting in the streets, and there is NOTHING that the elites fear more than that.

TAKING AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTION

This brings us back again to the words of Brig. Gen. Charles J. Dunlap:

"Let's say a president, exercising his proper and legitimate presidential authority, initiates a military action [which it has done in Iraq and which IT IS SURELY PLANNING TO DO TO IRAN]. Then Congress wakes up and says, 'Wait a minute, this president is berserk; he's starting a war, and we're against it'. But in the meantime, the military force has already been put in a very compromised situation. If things were moving very fast, the military might well take an UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTION."

An unconstitutional against Congress? Yes! - but this time, the president would be supported by the kind of hardcore constituency that Nixon could have only dreamed of in 1973, and a military which has in the intervening years become the "strong arm" of the Republican Party, as President Clinton found out to his shock and dismay.

And there is more: the very real fact of the matter is, THE ARMY TODAY WOULD NEVER STAND FOR A REPEAT OF ITS DEFEAT IN VIETNAM. IT WOULD NEVER STAND BY AND PERMIT AN ANTI-WAR CONGRESS - EVEN A DUELY ELECTED ANTI-WAR CONGRESS - TO PUT IT TO SHAME THE WAY IT DID AFTER THE VIETNAM FIASCO - AND CONGRESSIONAL ANTI-WAR ADVOCATES ARE MAKING A BIG MISTAKE IN THINKING THAT IT WOULD.  Moreover, the army knows that it could count on the support of the evangelical Christian community if it moved to prevent such an eventuality - a hardcore of 35 percent of the American population, which is a larger share of the population than Hitler enjoyed when he seized dictatorial power in Germany.

HOW WOULD THE COUP ATTEMPT "PLAY OUT?"

How would such a coup attempt play out? Well, again, one must continue to bear in mind that we are already in the early stages of just such a coup; that in truth we are even now more than half way through the process. That's what Andrew Bacevich meant when he said:

"… we're … already experiencing what is in essence a creeping coup d'etat."

The fact is, with the imposition of the draconian "anti-terrorist" legislation of recent years, and the "militarization" of the nation's police forces, "street democracy" as practiced by the Left in the late 1960s and early 1970s is probably a "thing of the past." Anis Shivani, a Leftist who has already left the country in fear of the anti-democratic forces that are now at play in the United States, wrote some three years ago,

"The most sweeping set of changes in American history has occurred in two short years, all our cherished freedoms annihilated beyond recognition ... SOME TIME AGO, STREET REVOLUTION MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE STOPPED THE PROCESS UNDERWAY AT HEADLONG SPEED. BUT NOW IT'S TOO LATE EVEN FOR THAT."

TOO LATE

Too late? - is that what Shivani says? Yes! - TOO LATE! And, again, Shivani made these comments more than three years ago. Things have only gotten worse since then

All the government needs now to finalize the results of the coup that is already in progress is another "manufactured" 9/11 event - which should be no problem for the shadowy and menacing forces that in the past have not blinked at committing murder and assassination - even regicide - to achieve their ends.

Sometime soon - most likely after the Congressional election of this year, and irrespective of the results of the election - another 9/11 event will occur, and MARTIAL LAW will be declared. The historical forces impelling the nation in this direction are as plain as the nose on one's face. AND THE COUP ATTEMPT HERE - SHOULD IT COME - WOULD SURELY ANSWER THAT PARTICULAR PORTION OF SCRIPTURE DESCRIBED BY THE PROPHET DANIEL, "AND HE WILL THINK TO CHANGE TIMES AND LAWS ..." (Daniel 7:25); MOREOVER, IT WILL SURELY INDICATE THAT WE ARE A VERY LONG WAY DOWN THE ROAD INTO THE "END OF DAYS."

BURYING ONE'S HEAD IN THE SAND

Nonetheless, people refuse to come to grips with what's occurring. Shivani writes:

"Dissenters [as well as Christians - editor] have failed to come to terms with … [what's occurring]. Radicals, leftists, progressives, liberals have all chosen, for the most part, different forms of denial and escapism. BUT NOW THE TIME IS AT HAND TO DECIDE ONCE AND FOR ALL HOW OUR INDIVIDUAL LIVES MUST CHANGE in response to the BEAST that has arisen in this country."

And, again, Shivani wrote these words more than three years ago. Some people, of course, will take comfort from the thought that nothing (at least outwardly) has happened since. These are those "scoffers" about whom Peter said "PRESUME" on the mercy of God -

 "… saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:

"Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

"But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.

"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (2 Peter 3:4-10)

I WOULD LAY UPON YOU NO GREATER
BURDEN THAN THIS NECESSITY

Brothers and sisters, Is it really that hard for you to see what's happening here? - and don't say that you do see what's occurring if you are not SERIOUSLY contemplating getting out of the country as soon as possible in answer to God's call in Revelation 18:4:

"And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." (Revelation 18:4)

Listen to me here, dear saints of God - especially those of you who continue to dilly-dally in the United States: YOU MUST GET OUT, AND YOU MUST DO SO AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. If you fail on this point, you will fail everywhere! I repeat to you the words of Paul when he surveyed the difficult situation of the Gentile brethren vis a vis the Jewish believers when he sought to make peace between the two groups:

"For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things …" (Acts 15:28)

Paul, of course, was speaking about "meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication" (Acts 15:29A), and he went on to say, "from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well." (Acts 15:29B) But this advise is EXACTLY what I would give to all the brethren living in the United States in relation to their duty to obey God in these perilous times: I would "… lay upon you no greater burden than this necessary thing:" GET OUT OF THE COUNTRY AND GET OUT AS SOON AS YOU CAN!

Again, I say, if you fail here, you will fail everywhere! If you fail to obey God on this point, you prove by your actions, if not your words, that you do not really take the Prophetic Scriptures seriously, and that you have not really come to grips with what is happening in the United States - all your "sincere" protests to the contrary notwithstanding.

YOU CAN ONLY ESCAPE INTO YOUR
PRIVATE LIVES FOR SO LONG

Shivani, who is not a Christian, realizes what is happening in the United States, and is deeply aware of what people should do - proving once again that "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light (Luke 16:8); he continues:

"None of us can wait anymore to see what will happen next, nor can any of us remain fence-straddlers ... There should be no more reason to be surprised at events scheduled to happen, if there ever was any justification for being caught unawares.

"The disbelief [as to the danger people are in] … in this country is understandable, but it is time to move beyond it. WE CAN ONLY ESCAPE INTO OUR PRIVATE SELVES FOR SO LONG; this regime (meaning the Bush regime) is so brutal that sooner or later there will be a knock on everyone's door ... Not one out of the 300 million people in this country will be left alone. Nobody will escape this vise, this continent-wide dragnet. IF YOU'VE EVER THOUGHT OR SPOKEN OR WRITTEN OR DONE ANYTHING THAT ... (BUSH AND HIS CRONIES) MIGHT NOT FIND ACCEPTABLE, BE VERY AFRAID. Make plans now to protect yourself. All the love and good feelings in the world won't be any good if you're chosen to be the target of ... [Bush and his cohorts].

"The government has been conducting an unprecedented campaign of psychological warfare against Americans. ONE UNDERSTANDABLE RESPONSE TO THIS BARRAGE OF TERROR IS TO BECOME NUMB, HIDE WITHIN OUR SHELLS. But this is a luxury that will not be afforded to us for long. Make plans yourself; pre-empt their plans for you, before it happens to you and it's too late."

"In the next stage of the crackdown, borders will be shut down, people will not be allowed to leave, and emergency orders will let them coerce us into feeling completely naked and exposed ... And this is just the beginning. WE ARE ONLY ON THE CUSP OF A TOTAL TRANSFORMATION THAT HAS BARELY BEGUN TO BE IMPLEMENTED YET."

CHANGING TIMES AND LAWS

THE CONSTITUTION IS ABOUT READY TO BE JUNKED; the up-coming coup will take care of that; in its place a new religio-political MONSTER will arise which will intertwine church and state and unite ALL those Christians in the United States who remain in the country in DISOBEDIENCE to God's Word. George Monbiot of the British newspaper, The Guardian, describes the nature of this emerging MONSTER:

"The United States is no longer just a nation. IT IS NOW A RELIGION. Its soldiers have entered Iraq to liberate its people not only from their dictator, their oil and their sovereignty, but also from darkness. As George Bush told his troops on the day he announced victory: 'Wherever you go, you carry a message of hope - a message that is ancient and ever new. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, 'To the captives, come out, and to those in darkness, be free'.

"SO AMERICAN SOLDIERS ARE NO LONGER MERELY TERRESTRIAL COMBATANTS; THEY HAVE BECOME MISSIONARIES. THEY ARE NO LONGER SIMPLY KILLING ENEMIES; THEY ARE CASTING OUT DEMONS ... LIKE ALL THOSE WHO SEND MISSIONARIES ABROAD, THE HIGH PRIESTS OF AMERICA CANNOT CONCEIVE THAT THE INFIDELS MIGHT RESIST THROUGH THEIR OWN FREE WILL; IF THEY RESIST, IF THEY REFUSE TO CONVERT, IT IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL ... IT IS NOT JUST THAT THE AMERICANS ARE GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE; AMERICA ITSELF IS NOW PERCEIVED AS A DIVINE PROJECT ..."

"SO THOSE WHO QUESTION GEORGE BUSH ... ARE NO LONGER MERELY CRITICS; THEY ARE BLASPHEMERS ... (AND) THOSE FOREIGN STATES WHICH SEEK TO CHANGE THIS POLICY ARE WASTING THEIR TIME; YOU CAN NEGOTIATE WITH POLITICIANS; YOU CANNOT NEGOTIATE WITH PRIESTS. THE U.S. HAS A DIVINE MISSION, AS BUSH SUGGESTED IN JANUARY: 'TO DEFEND ... THE HOPES OF MANKIND', AND WOE BETIDE THOSE WHO HOPE FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE."

Again, Christians who naively think that they will be able to resist this process - especially after "THE TIMES AND SEASONS HAVE BEEN CHANGED" (i.e., after the Constitution has been junked by the impending coup d'etat) - are making a big mistake. The Bible clearly indicates that they will not be able to do so; that this process -

"WILL WEAR OUT THE SAINTS OF THE MOST HIGH." (Daniel 7:25)

It will wear them down; it will tire them out - until at last they succumb to its poison and are sucked in and made a partaker in the system. And what an incredible and astonishing system it is. It's "ready-made" for the conquest of the world. Think about it! - a religion that justifies the rich in their wealth and excuses them in the miserable way they work the poor for wages calculated to just barely keep body and soul together. I SOMBERLY warn you that Christians who participate in such a religion or who - for one reason or another - turn a "blind eye" to what's happening will someday pay a heavy price. It's not without reason that the Bible warns:

"Ye who turn judgment to wormwood, and leave off righteousness in the earth,

"WHO TREAD UPON THE POOR, and take from him burdens of wheat (i.e., his just wages) ...

"I know your manifold transgressions, and your mighty sins ... YOU TURN ASIDE THE POOR IN THE GATE FROM THEIR RIGHT (again, their wages). (Amos 5:7, 11-12)

"... I WILL COME TO YOU IN JUDGMENT, and I will be a swift witness AGAINST YOU WHO OPPRESS THE HIRELING (i.e., the laborer) IN HIS WAGES." (Mal. 3:5)

And isn't that exactly what the American New World Order System is all about? The Bible says that GOD WILL COME AGAINST THOSE WHO PARTICIPATE IN THIS SYSTEM IN JUDGMENT - even if their participation in it has only been indirect and passive. Christians who are inclined to make light of all this - who treat cavalierly God's INTENSE, BURNING ANGER at this form of Christianity - the kind that seeks to "make merchandise" of the poor and destitute of this world - would do well to take careful note of the proximity of Amos 5:7 and 11-12 to the warning in Scripture in Amos 5:21-23 - specifically, that GOD WILL GIVE THEM UP! -

And do NOT think - even for a moment - that you can help people whom God has given up on. This is a condition of the heart. You cannot reason with people who have chosen to DISOBEY God insofar as Revelation 18:4 is concerned. Their DISOBEDIENCE here is NOT the result of a momentary indiscretion. If you think to stay in order to change the minds of people God has given up on, YOU WILL BE THE PERSON THAT IS ULTIMATELY CHANGED, NOT THEM. And ANYONE who tells you differently is LYING to you. Their lies may be honey-soaked and sweet to the taste, but they will turn to bitterness someday in your belly.

God bless you all,

S.R. Shearer
Antipas Ministries

P.S. Brothers and sisters, I IMPLORE you to learn about these things for yourselves by GETTING INVOLVED IN THE TRAINING. You may do so by emailing Jack Shearer at admin@antipasministries.com and registering for the training.