[Newspoetry] Pre-Empting Eruptions of Opposition

[Donald L Emerick]

FOCUS: Enron Chief Ken Lay to Face Two Criminal Trials
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/102104Z.shtml

Extending his pre-emptive war doctrine further, President Bush today walked into a federal prison in Texas today, whipped out a gun and shot Ken Lay fatally in the head.  When stunned guards moved to disarm the President, he mumbled, "Thus ever to traitors".

WhiteHouse SpinDoctors immediately mobilized their urgent and intensive care comrades into platoons of surgical strike teams.  Speaking in multiple-tongues -- a practice long favored by some zealots of mystical right wing-religions (as long as it isn't a 'foreign' tongue (and especially not an Arabic language tongue)) -- one SpinDoctor for NationalSecurity (aka CR) stated unequivocally, "If we had waited until any trial concluded, we would simply have wasted taxpayer dollars.  We would have let the enemy retain the offensive, we would have been forced to fight these villains in our homeland courtroooms in bloody battles that we could have won out in the executive suites, far away from American soil."

Ms. CR further stated, anonymously, that the Bush-Cheney Preemption Doctrine now would be applied more practically, throughout the US, to suppress any and all counter-insurgencies before they could ever become full-scale guerrilla warfares in the political thickets and jungles where the Adminstration's political enemies might lurk.

thus, rumors out of Langley's offices suggested that CIA managers and employees alike were barricading their palaces against the expected ground assault of the Bush drone army.  The CIA has become a Bush-Cheney target not because (a) it knew nothing useful about the situation in Iraq, but because (b) it seems bent on telling the people of the US that it knew nothing worthwhile, nothing accurate, and implying (c) no one ever knows enough about the intentions of another to know whether or not their dangerous potential would ever be acted upon.

Another SpinDoctor, TT, said that any delays in bringing corporate criminals to justice would simply embolden other such criminals in the criminal master class that haunts executive suites.  "The President has taken and will always take swift, decisive action against these elusive enemies hiding in their terrorist cells.  He has achieved an overwhelming victory for the American people, by seing the offensive and taking the war to the enemy."

AG Ashcroft, speaking on the record, said the new Pre-Emptive practices would result in a far more economical and efficient use of scarce taxpayer dollars dovted to HomeLand security.  "Otherwise," he opined, "a single criminal can hold hostage dozens of lawyers, witnesses and member of juries, as they are forced to listen to the whining, sniveling defenses of someone we have already determined to be worthy of prosecution."

"Yes, this gives a highly modern, even post-modern," (he said affectedly), "definition to justice -- but swift and sure justice is always already unilateral, thus ever it must be pre-emptive, as well -- saving and protecting the surely innocent from what wouold be truly murderous acts by the probably guilty."

Republicans in Congress quickly rushed through legislative channels a special retro-active policy declaration.  Paragraph I avers:  "We, the People of the United States, in Congress Assembled, do hereby find the threat of domestic terror to be so great that We do therefore authorize the President of the United States to deploy and to use Pre-Emptive Deadly Force, against all Foes, both foreign and domestic, of this great Republic -- as He has sworn to do, in his Oath of Office."

Paragraph II(a) further states a power of delegation.  "The Authority hereby vested in the President shall descend, upon suitable Delegation, to such Subordinates as the President, or his inferior Officers, may duly designate -- as long as a Chain of Command is maintained."  II(b) adds, "Delegations of said Authority may be subcontracted beyond the Payrolls of Persons directly employed by the United States Government."

Paragraph III provides extensive official immunity, in line with the President's Tort Reform program.  "(a)  No person putatively acting under any such Delegation hereabove described shall be answerable to any Charges, based upon such Conduct, in any Court of the United States.  (b)  Any such person, so charged or indicted, may receive, automatically, a Presidential Pardon, upon declaring, 'Whatever has been done was done for the Good of the State -- I was just lawfully following orders.'"
 (c) Acts under The Authority granted in this Statute shall not be subject to challenge on the alleged grounds that said Authority did not lawfully exist at the time said Conduct occurred."

Legal scholars were divided, and much engrossed, in the questions most significantly raised by the last sub-Paragraph.  Stated one Professor of Criminal Law, "We do not yet know whether the Courts will call the passage of powers conferred under this Statute a legislated Doctrine of Retroactivity, Omnipotent Adoption, Ratification.  Pre-emptively," he said with a grin, "we might call it the well doctored DO.ROAR."

And, as he turned to walk away, he laughingly said, over his shoulder, "I suppose we could say, interpretively, that the Law simply says 'The Kind can never do wrong because the King can do no wrong'  But, that isn't News, is it?"