Michael Moore in 'Stupid White Men' alleged that Bush stole the last election by ensuring that Florida fell to him by engaging in dubious tactics in that state. One of the allegations he made was the governor, his brother Jeb Bush, abused the felon list.

The felon list prevents people who are convicted felons from voting, however in 2000, many so called felons were erroneously excluded from their right to vote, most of them were black and would probably have voted liberal. It s entirely possible that these wrongly excluded people might have swung the election in Bushes direction.

But time passes, mistakes can be made and corrected in time for the forthcoming election. But no, it seems as though history is repeating itself. Once again Florida drew up a secret felon list, and insisted that it be kept secret, luckily however a judge forced the list's release. And once again there were many wrongly excluded people, and once again they were African-Americans.

Many years ago, especially in the deep South, black voters were intimidated from voting by racist thugs, but black people organised themselves, and formed 'drives' so that they would attend the polls en-masse rather than individually to circumvent the intimidation. This tradition remains to this day in some states and is true of Florida.

Yet in Florida, State police investigators have recently interviewed elderly African-Americans in an alleged fraud investigation, but the state refuses to provide any details of the nature of the fraud. The timing and the profile of the targets of the State police smack of intimidation. Nobody wants to be investigated by the state police, they may well feel that not turning up to vote might be their best option - they do not trust the police.

This may sound somewhat fanciful, but let's turn to a different but related story that came out a few days ago.

For some weeks now FBI officers have been interrogating known political activists or protestors, along with their friends and their families. They have been demanding to know what it is that the activists are planning to do. They threaten the suspects that witholding information of planned disruptive activity is a criminal offence. The implication is clear. If any of their suspects, of which they have opened a file, is involved in a subsequent crime, their friends and families might also be arrested for not cooperating with the police. But this is fine, the FBI have the blessing of the Justice departments Office of Legal Counsel, the same office that recently approved the use of torture against terror suspects.

The FBI claim that the interviews are not compulsory, that the targets can simly shut the door in their faces, but the damage against an important intitiative, legitimate protest, may have already been done. By making political activists and protestors feel like criminals for their thoughts and views, for state police to knock on their doors and demand with barely veiled threats against their friends and families - these are the actions of totalitarian regimes.

And this is not some potential fiction, three young men from Missouri, planning to protest both the Democratic and Republican conventions, claim they were followed for days by federal investigators. This might be the product of over fertile imaginations, but not when they were subpoened to appeal before a grand jury. They decided against their protests.

There are still some people that understand the dangerous totalitarian nature of this present administration however, and they are all that stand between Bush and his henchmen turning the US into a semi-police state and who knows what thereafter.

Bush claimed that in the name of fighting the war against terrorism, the president had the right to lock up any US citizen deemed to be an enemy combatant and keep them incarerated at the states pleasure. Thankfully the Supreme Court in a strong maority between eight justices ruled that this was undemocratic and rejected the claim.

Justice Scalia, whose guidance enabled Bush to seize the disputed presidency in 2000, criticised Bush,

'The very core of our liberty, has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the executive.'

But just as there are those that are willing to challenge the Bush administrations claim for carte blanche, to do as it will against its own citizens, there are dangerous failures in the checks and balances system that has kept the US as a beacon for freedom, if occasionally flawed, throughtout the world. In 2002, perhaps reeling from the shock of 9/11 the prior year, the senate, almost without protest, gave Bush carte blanche to

'use the armed forces of the US as he determines to be necessary.'

We have seen the consequences of this folly in the killing fields of Iraq. As somone commented a few years ago,

'The US should not commit its forces to military action overseas unless the cause is vital to our national interest. If the decision is made its forces to combat abroad, it must be done with clear intent and support to win. There must be a clearly defined and realistic objectives...Our troops should be committed to combat abroad only as a last resort and when no other choice is available.'

That someone was Ronald Reagan, hardly a wet liberal.

Bush's sole excuse for invading Iraq today, is that he was a bad man, hardly a reason for a pre-emptive war that has and will continue to claim thousands of lives, both coalition and Iraqi, for years to come without making an iota of difference to the so called war against terrorism. Saddam was a bad guy when the US cheerfully supplied him with weapons to wage war against Iran and there are many more bad men out there.

How did it come to this, how did the US walk so readily into this ignorant, ill-considered schoolboy fantasy adventure, where its young men and women are being slaughtered on far flung foreign fields, its civil liberties being curtailed on a daily basis, its people cowed and afraid with endless 'security alerts'?

As one government offical once said,

'All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country,'

His name was Herman Goring

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