Bill Van Auken
WSWS

"Some 50,000 combat troops remain deployed in Iraq. While they have been rebranded as “transitional” forces, supposedly dedicated to “training” and “advising” Iraqi security forces, their mission remains unchanged." Washington has no intention of ending its military presence in Iraq."

"Behind the duplicitous rhetoric one thing is underscored by the speech: the decisions in Iraq and Afghanistan have been dictated by the military brass and obediently implemented by the Obama White House. This is a government that has no independent policy, much less convictions. It implements policies that are worked out elsewhere—on Wall Street and within the Pentagon—and is dedicated to the defense of the financial aristocracy at the expense of the American people."

President Barack Obama’s nationally televised speech from the White House Oval Office Tuesday night was an exercise in cowardice and deceit. It was deceitful to the people of the United States and the entire world in its characterization of the criminal war against Iraq. And it was cowardly in its groveling before the American military.

The address could inspire only disgust and contempt among those who viewed it. Obama, who owed his presidency in large measure to the mass antiwar sentiment of the American people, used the speech to glorify the war that he had mistakenly been seen to oppose.

The most chilling passage came at the end of the 19-minute speech, when Obama declared, “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state,” adding, “And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true.”

It is for this statement, rather than all the double-talk about troop withdrawals, that Obama’s miserable speech deserves to be remembered. It was rhetoric befitting a military-ruled banana republic or a fascist state. The military—not the Constitution, not the will of the people or the country’s ostensibly democratic institutions—constitutes the “steel” in the “ship of state.” Presumably, the democratic rights of the people are so much ballast to be cast overboard as needed.

Stephen Lendman

This article reviews the historical roots and America's current Continuity of Government authority, initially planned and developed by Ronald Reagan. More on that below.

On March 1, 2002, Washington Post writers Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt headlined, "Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret," saying:

"President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time longstanding plans to ensure survival of federal rule after a catastrophic attack on the nation's capital."

Shortly after 9/11, a classified "Continuity of Operations Plan" (aka "continuity of government") was implemented. Legal documents were then drafted, creating a shadow government in case of a catastrophe, George Bush saying:

"We take the continuity of government issue seriously because our nation was under attack. Until this country has routed out terrorists wherever they hid, we're not safe."

In other words, the plan, like the "war on terror," is open-ended, in violation of the Constitution's Separation of Powers, the document George Bush called "just a goddamn piece of paper," and governed accordingly throughout his tenure, a practice Obama continues. More on that below.

On April 4, 2007, the Bush administration issued a combined White House/Department of Homeland Security (DHS) National Security/Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/HSPD 20, extending for one year the 9/11 emergency for the sixth time, and establishing Continuity of Government (COG) procedures under Catastrophic Emergency conditions, defined as:

"any incident (such as a terrorist attack), regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

COG is then defined as:

"a coordinated effort within the Federal Government's executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency."

Mark Glenn
The Ugly Truth

Yes, it certainly paints a frightening picture for sure. The inhabitants of the most powerful countries in the world–militarily and economically speaking–transformed into sub-humanoids, bled completely dry of all the characteristics distinguishing them as members of a higher, more intelligent species and who now roam the earth in search of healthy, uninfected people so they can eat them…

No, I am not talking about the storyline from the movie I Am Legend starring Will Smith (a screen shot of which is featured above) where mankind has been decimated by a genetically-engineered virus that has mutated what’s left of human beings into irrational, incoherent, savages devoid of reason and morals…

Rather, what we’re referring to here is that OTHER man-made virus epidemically sweeping through the West and America like wildfire that has mutated entire swaths of otherwise normal humans into irrational, incoherent, savages who are devoid of reason and morals.

As frightening as this sounds, (and believe me, it should scare the b-Jesus out of everyone) the fact is this is not some Hollywood fantasy like the blockbuster movie Independence Day, where the world stands at the brink of complete annihilation and is saved LITERALLY AT THE LAST FREAKING SECOND by a nice, nerdy Jewish boy with a Messiah complex named David.

No, in this case, the Krippen Virus–as it was called in I Am Legend– threatening destruction of all life on earth is today known as Islamophobia, and along with its attending “war to end all wars”, stands the very good likelihood of turning an otherwise Garden of Eden into Paradise lost.