George W. Bush likes to toss around the words "democracy," "liberty" and "freedom" as justifications for almost everything he does -- much as Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did during the Vietnam War.
But Bush has taken the abuse of language to new Orwellian depths by declaring his commitment to these hallowed concepts even as he asserts that he is the one who decides whether American citizens have any of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
In many ways, America's "unalienable" rights have ceased to exist under Bush's theory of his own authority. They have been trumped by Bush's claim of "plenary" -- or unlimited -- powers as Commander in Chief during the War on Terror, a vague conflict likely to last forever.
Like some modern-day monarch, Bush says he is the one who decides if someone is imprisoned without trial, spied on without a court warrant, tortured, even murdered -- all in the name of defending American freedoms against enemies who "hate our freedoms."
Because the Bush administration, almost from the start, has eschewed any comparison of Iraq with Vietnam, officials apparently never read the history of the nation's heretofore worst war and have made the same 10 major mistakes:
Go get 'em.
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