Lessons Bush Learned from Hitler

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush learned how to slaughter civilians. In Iraq, US troops, commanded by Herr Bush slaughter some 10,000 Iraqi civilians per month. Bush will cite that as proof that his war crime is "winding down" but that's an absurd right wing spin.

The US slaughter rate in Iraq had been as high as 30,000 Iraqis per month, 1,000 per day. It was earlier this year that the Lancet study was made public by the British Guardian, which reported the extent to which Bush is "winning" the war against Iraqi civilians.

A monstrous war crime

With more than 650,000 civilians dead in Iraq, our government must take responsibility for its liesRichard Horton
Wednesday March 28, 2007
The Guardian

Our collective failure has been to take our political leaders at their word. This week the BBC reported that the government's own scientists advised ministers that the Johns Hopkins study on Iraq civilian mortality was accurate and reliable, following a freedom of information request by the reporter Owen Bennett-Jones. This paper was published in the Lancet last October. It estimated that 650,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the American and British led invasion in March 2003.

Immediately after publication, the prime minister's official spokesman said that the Lancet's study "was not one we believe to be anywhere near accurate". The foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, said that the Lancet figures were "extrapolated" and a "leap".

Not surprisingly, Bush responded: "I don't consider it a credible report". Recent updates to the report now estimate the number of civilian dead at well over one million. Bush calls that "kickin' ass". I call it mass murder, a capital crime perpetrated by George W. Bush. Meanwhile, Sydney Blumenthal says Bush knew Saddam had no WMD.

Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

Sept. 6, 2007 | On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

As Salon broke that exclusive, we learned elsewhere that Bush was yucking it up with another right wing seed pod --Australia's PM, John Howard.

Today the US President will visit the National Maritime Museum to view the bell. It could be construed as an act of symmetry, given if Howard loses the election, this week would be the last time he and Bush see each other in their respective roles.

This was obviously apparent to Bush, who arrived in Australia in a chipper mood.

"We're kicking ass," he told Mark Vaile on the tarmac after the Deputy Prime Minister inquired politely of the President's stopover in Iraq en route to Sydney.

--By George: now it's all the way with Howard J

Bush deliberately defrauded the troops, the nation, the Congress, the world. He calls it "kickin' ass". I call it a capital crime!

Bush is now criminally culpable, subject to prosecution for capital crimes for the deaths of his every victim on either side. Words cannot describe the venal idiocy of this cretin so at ease with his disconnect with common sense and morality, so comfortable wallowing in the misery his lies have caused and continue to cause. Psychologists use the term "lack of empathy" to describe this pathology, better known among the volk as pure "evil"!

From the Third Reich, Bush learned how to exploit "terrorism" to consolidate his dictatorship. Bush is on the Hitler end of the political spectrum opposing the very principles of our founding. What Bush knows he most surely learned by way of his Grandfather's old trading partner --Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Lesson Number he summed up himself in one sentence.

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death.

--Adolf Hitler

Bush learned how to rule ruthlessly. Hitler never got more than 37 percent of the vote in several elections called over a short period of time ending with an act of terrorism that Hitler would exploit to consolidate his dictatorship. That act was the Reichstag Fire, Hitler's 911.

It's hard to imagine that anyone would dare go back to the well given the press "Reichstag" gets. Nevertheless, the tactic, having proved successful for Nazis, would be tried again. No one ever accused Bush of being imaginative. His gang would simply repeat a tired, old Nazi tactic and expect the people to go along. And, for the most part, the people did precisely that.

On February 27, 1937, Hitler was having dinner with Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels when the phone rang to inform the future Fuhrer: "The Reichstag is on fire!" At the scene, Hitler and Goebbels, found Hermann Goring, later Hitler’s air minister, shouting "at the top of his lungs", blaming communists for an act of terrorism.

How Hitler became a dictator is recounted in many sources but William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is still among the very best.

From Goring's Reichstag President's Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A. leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they quickly scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was a godsend to the Nazis. He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next.

The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The idea for the fire almost certainly originated at the top with Goebbels and Goring. Hans Gisevius, an official in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior at the time, testified at Nuremberg that 'it was Goebbels who first thought of setting the Reichstag on fire' and Rudolph Diels, the Gestapo chief, added in an affidavit that 'Goring knew exactly how the fire was to be started' and had ordered him 'to prepare, prior to the fire, a list of people who were to be arrested immediately after it.' General Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff during the early part of World War II, recalled at Nuremberg how on one occasion Goring had boasted of his deed.

At a luncheon on the birthday of the Fuehrer in 1942 the conversation turned to the topic of the Reichstag building and its artistic value. I heard with my own ears when Goring interrupted the conversation and shouted: "The only one who really knows about the Reichstag is I, because I set it on fire!" With that he slapped his thigh with the flat of his hand.

The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich (Touchstone Edition, 1990, p. 192-)

Hitler ordered a round up of the usual suspects, in other words, his opposition, consisting largely of communists whom the Nazis could, with but a shred of credibility, blame for an act of bloody terrorism.

Nazis knew what goppers know now --that frightened and anxious people will willingly surrender the blessings of liberty. From Hitler's experience, Bush learned how to use a "Patriot Act" to crack down on dissent.

Hitler wasted no time. The very next day, he was in President Hindenburg's office urging the aging statesman to issue a patriot act, a decree entitled, “For the Protection of the People and the State.” Justified as a “defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state,” the decree suspended the constitutional guarantees pertaining to civil liberties:

Patriot Act vs, German Enabling Act:

The Decrees of 1933

(a) The February 28 Decree. One of the most repressive acts of the new Nazi government, this one allowed for the suspension of civil liberties ....The president was persuaded that the state was in danger and, hence, that the emergency measures embodied in the decree were necessary. Even though under Art. 48 of the constitution, the decree would have been withdrawn once the so-called emergency had passed, any hope of this happening was prevented by the establishment of Hitler's dictatorship following the Enabling Act (see below). It was in fact never withdrawn and remained until the end as an instrument of Nazi terror against ordinary citizens who ran foul of the regime.


ARTICLE 1. In virtue of paragraph 2, article 48,* of the German Constitution, the following is decreed as a defensive measure against communist acts of violence , endangering the state:

Sections 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. Thus, restrictions on personal liberty [114], on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press [118], on the right of assembly and the right of association [124], and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic, and telephonic communications [117], and warrants for house-searches [115], orders for confiscation as well as restrictions on property [153], are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.


*Article 48 of the German Constitution of August 11, 1919: If public safety and order in Germany are materially disturbed or endangered, the President may take the necessary measures to restore public safety and order, and, if necessary, to intervene with the help of the armed forces. To this end he may temporarily suspend, in whole or in part, the fundamental rights established in Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124, and 153 ...........

Patriot Act:

Section 218 which amends the "probable cause" requirement before conducting secret searches or surveillance to obtain evidence of a crime;

Sections 215, 218, 358, and 508 which permit law enforcement authorities to have broad access to sensitive mental health, library, business, financial, and educational records despite the existence of previously adopted state and federal laws which were intended to strengthen the protection of these types of records;

Sections 411 and 412 which give the Secretary of State broad powers to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations" and the Attorney General power to subject immigrants to indefinite detention or deportation even if no crime has been committed; and
Sections 507 and 508 which impose a mandate on state and local public universities who must collect information on students that may be of interest to the Attorney General.

Bush learned how to suspend civil liberties after a terrorist attack. It must be noted that Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio is the only candidate for President calling for a repeal of the Patriot Act. That tells me that the Democrats are not up to the challenge of restoring American democracy. The question now is one of some urgency: is it too late to save our nation? Is it too late to stop Bush? Are Americans screwed?

Just as Karl Rove spoke wistfully of a "permanent Republican majority", Hitler planned to establish a "permanent" majority of elected Nazis in the Reichstag. That body would later become Hitler's rubber stamp, passing whatever laws he desired, making all his crimes perfectly legal. Bush's lesson: make legal all the crimes you want and plan to commit; bully Congress into absolving you ex post facto for crimes already committed. Hire Alberto Gonzales to be the "enabler".

Two weeks after the Reichstag fire, Hitler requested the Reichstag to temporarily delegate its powers to him so that he could adequately deal with the crisis. Hitler denounced his opposition, shouting at them "Germany will be free, but not through you!” Hitler won the vote 441 to 84. It gave him a two-thirds majority needed to suspend the constitution. On March 23, 1933, the “Enabling Act”--a patriot act -- made Hitler dictator of Germany. It is not recorded whether he said, as did Bush much later: this would be a whole lot easier if this was a dictatorship ...just as long as I'm the dictator!

Just as Hitler cut a deal with Thyssen, Krupp, I.G. Farben et al, the DUMB-umvirate of Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld carved up the map of the Middle East with big oil and Halliburton. Just as the Middle East is rich in oil, Poland was rich in coal from which synthetic fuels (to drive the Panzers) could be produced.

Bush used Hitler's play book. And, as it was then, it's all about energy. The esteemed historian John Keegan has written that Hitler might have won WWII had he kept Rommel supplied to seize the oil fields of the Middle East, rather than invading Russia. It would have all been over --save for an "insurgency" that most surely would have opposed Rommel.

Bush learned from his grandfather that there is big money -- a killing in fact --in the industrial murder business. Our own Treasury Department is the source for the following information about how US corporations, primarily US Steel, for whom Prescott Bush was banker, helped Hitler arm and wage war on the world while carrying out mass murder throughout Europe. US steel made it possible for Hitler to arm for war, producing the following percentages of war munitions for Hitler and his Nazi war lords: Pig iron 50.8%; Pipe & tubes 45.5%; Universal plate 41.4%; Galvanized sheet 38.5%; Heavy plate 36%; Explosives 35%; Wire 22.1%.

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
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How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

In effect, Prescott Bush was Hitler’s American banker.

Bush also learned how to outsource murder and atrocity in ways that benefit his right wing supporters. Called "private enterprise", it is, in fact, corporatism, Mussolini's word for farming out the work of killing to partners, robber barons, death merchants and hired murderers like Blackwater! Blackwater is a gang of paid thugs whom National Public Radio charges has strong connections with America's radical, religious, fascist right wing.

NPR: The war in Iraq has been partly outsourced to private military contractors which are performing many of the services that used to be done by the military. My guest, Jeremy Scahill, has written a book about one of those companies, Blackwater, which he describes as "the world's most mercenary army and the embodiment of the Bush administration policy of privatizing military functions." The company, which was founded in 1996, made headlines in 2004 when four of its men were ambushed and set on fire by Sunni gunmen in Fallujah. The charred remains of two of the men were hung on a bridge for public display. The families of the four men are suing Blackwater for wrongful death, raising a lot of questions about accountability and oversight when private contractors play a major role in war. Jeremy Scahill is a Polk Award-winning journalist who is a frequent contributor to The Nation and a correspondent for the radio and TV show, "Democracy Now." Jeremy Scahill -- if you wanted to write about a private military contractor, why did you focus on Blackwater?

--Blackwater: USA in Fallujah

Bush is ideologically allied with Hegel, for whom the "state" is "God". That notion opposes every "American" value, including that of truly religious folk who find the equation of "God" with the "state" a blasphemous notion. And so it is, not merely of religion but of reason.

Bushism is anathema to American ideals espoused by real patriots like Thomas Jefferson whom Bush and Dick Cheney would have derided as "pro-French". James Madison who wrote the first draft of our Constitution would have been demonized as "quaint" by idiots like Gen. Hayden and Al Gonzales.

Bush must surely hate our Declaration of Independence. In it, Thomas Jefferson sides generally with "insurgencies" against despots. Bush will, of course, have missed or dismissed obvious analogies to Iraqi civilians upon whom the US has waged not a war --but a crime punishable by death under our own federal statutes!

It was William Pitt, Earl of Chatham in England who denounced the British position in our war of independence. His words ring so very true today, words that Bush must surely hate:

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms -- never! never! never!

--William Pitt the elder, 1st Earl of Chatham, Viscount Pitt of Burton-Pynsent , byname The Great Commoner, 1708-1778

Bush is blinded by raw, ruthless ambition. Like Dick Cheney and the robber barons of privilege, they are blind to obvious analogy. America is not fighting for freedom against terrorism in Iraq. Rather, Bush embodies monolithic corporate totalitarianism and the theft of Iraq's natural resources. Never mind that Iraq was a sovereign nation that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 911, Bush's ex post facto lies about it notwithstanding. The record clearly proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush's quarrel with Saddam had to do with the fact that Saddam favored lower prices for oil while Bush, OPEC, and the Saudis in particular favored higher prices.

Bush is anti-American. Bush is not fighting for Americans in Iraq. He is fighting to further enrich corporate fascist powers who would enslave you! Bush has more in common with Hitler and Stalin than with Madison or Jefferson.

The American republic at the time Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence was the latest development in a liberal trend that had begun with the English Civil War. Certainly, Oliver Cromwell dismissed Parliament in a fit of pique; certainly he arrogated unto himself the powers of an absolute dictator but stopped short of taking the title. He was, he said, a Lord Protector. Charles I was most certainly England's last absolute despot in the Hobbesian, Hegelian sense of the word.

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