"A European perspective of the American nightmare"
What is happening to America?p America was somehow different, alongside the corporate greed, brash materialism and barely functioning social safety net, a unique society prospered. America was a land of limitless opportunity, a magnet to those escaping oppression, offering prince and pauper alike the possibility to dream big. This America still exists, but it is being eroded by an administration that believes it can rule outside the rule of law. They are fast replacing the American dream with an American nightmare, an Orwellian world where memos defending torture are penned in the department of justice and judges are made redundant in the public interest. The irony of President Bush's proud statement this week on the Iraqi elections was inescapable. "The Iraqi people now enjoy constitutionally protected freedoms and their leaders now derive their powers from the consent of the governed," he said at the start of a press conference in which he defended eroding those freedoms at home while asserting his power to act without judicial check. Waiting to authorise wiretaps on suspected enemies of the state takes too long, long enough for them to act, went the argument. This is bogus. The laws in place make attaining a warrant for a wiretap extremely easy. What's more, once a warrant is obtained, it is effective without review for up to 120 days. The warrant law is not some tiresome piece of procedural bureaucracy, but the only safeguard against the executive branch of government targeting anyone they don't particularly like for any reason of their choosing. It was put in place after the Watergate scandal demonstrated how easily the White House could persecute its perceived political opponents by drawing up secret enemies lists.
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