Military Overthrow of Bush and Co.?

Let the reader be warned....I can think of about nineteen different ways to interpret the article to which I link below. The author, Wayne Madsen, is consistently published at Counterpunch. He's a former NSA guy under Reagan. Oh, yeah, and he says that if the elections are tampered with, the military will rise up and assume control of the nation in order to return constitutional law.

Ummm...yikes...uh...scary stuff. Will there be Dementors? This is not yet known.

What is known is that this article is not the first of its kind I've seen, but the first one I've seen so positioned in left media.

Wait, wait....you want to read it first and check my rambling later? Okay....here.

Now, of the nineteen different ways I can interpret this article, there are two basic trains of thought. First, the article can be accepted at face value. Goodhearted, upright military men are noticing that our constitution is more of a decorative accent than an integral part of our national structure these days and, if the elections don't change things, by Patton, they will! Well, if they run this place like they have every place else they've been in the last half century, I am not too happy about this option. After all, the number of democracies that were left behind in the wake of U.S. military interventions in dozens of countries in the last 50 years is, well, zero. I don't exactly know how U.S. military intervention in the U.S. will be much different.

The above, I'm afraid to say, is the most optimistic interpretation I have of Madsen's article. Here's the darker side. Madsen is former intelligence...under Reagan, no less, whose administration spawned many of the nasty creepy-crawlies which he now looks to the military to stamp out. (Just LOOKING at Eliot Abrams makes me shudder.) This article may be a bit of a trial balloon, to see how the left reacts to the idea of a full-scale military coup d'etat, or, more properly a counter coup, as we already had a coup d'etat in 2000.

Wait. It gets worse. One reader wrote to me about my Abu Ghraib (or Abu Grabbamyassa as Bush pronounces it) article and said those nasty pictures weren't released accidentally, it was all part of a plan. I have to admit, that post of mine was a sort of tongue-in-cheek grasping at straws. It could very well be that all of the items I've put in my "wow, at least these guys are so incompetent they are going to self-destruct" column, actually belong in my "secret cabal is moving into the next phase of action by discrediting the Bush's and assuming control through a 'benign' military dictatorship" column.

This scenario is depressing for many reasons beyond the obvious one of, well, becoming an official military dictatorship. For example, it seemed to me a good and right thing to do to publicize the idea that the 2004 elections will most likely be fixed. Reporters such as Greg Palast and activists such as Bev Harris have done a fine job getting this idea into the mainstream press to a certain degree. Now, obvious election tampering might precipitate this military takeover. So what is to keep the military intelligence people from messing with elections to justify their coup?

Madsen says that military action might be triggered by the Bushistas' delaying or cancelling of elections due to some dangerous terrorist threat, such as Jose Padilla being allowed to talk to his lawyer. Well, the military is in even better position to fake terrorist events than the Bushies, as the plans were drawn up decades ago for Operation Northwoods. They could simply blow up a couple of American landmarks, such as a Walmart or a McDonalds, (hmmm that might not be so...no! I am AGAINST a military coup...must remember) forcing Bush to go to code red and then using that as a pretense for swooping in and taking over. Further, if 9-11 was, in fact, allowed to happen or even caused by our government, surely it HAD TO HAVE BEEN with at least some level of military complicity. I mean come on...how hard can it really be for an F-16 to catch a passenger plane? So perhaps this has all been part of the plan all along.

My head hurts.

Wheels within wheels. It is impossible to know exactly who is behind what elements of this crisis. One thing is clear, however. There has been very little real discussion about how opposition movements should react in the event that the '04 elections are cancelled and/or martial law is declared. We have no plan. Evidently, though, the U.S. military does. If we can't build momentum quickly after November '04, we may be forced to sit back and watch as the military takes its own actions. I'll leave you with a quote from the article, clearly appealing to the left, just this once, to accept a military dictatorship as legitimate:

If our military leaders decide to honor their oath to the Constitution, let those of us who would normally find abhorrent a Seven Days in May scenario, welcome their action.