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This article appears in the October 10, 2008 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Bush Calls Out the Army
To Enforce the Bailout

by Jeffrey Steinberg

[PDF version of this article]

During his Oct. 1 international webcast, American statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche delivered a blunt warning that there is a clear indication that "a desperate Bush Administration, and what it's tied to internationally," is prepared to turn the U.S. military against the American people.

They might try to use military force, to force through the kind of legislation, the bailout, which is being attempted now,.

There is a "French Revolutionary" mood building among the American people against the destruction of their nation through Bush Administration policy, and the bailout of Wall Street speculators in particular, LaRouche said. The people hate this bill.

"And there's an instinct in this administration, to use military force against the people of the United States to suppress the opposition to this bill.

LaRouche pointedly warned:

This is reality, right now! Not something 'coming down': That is already the reality,

If this bill were to be pushed through, with or without the aid of military force against the American people by American troops—which are now being stationed for this kind of operation—the United States will disappear, in very short order. And civilization would crash, globally.

The Die Is Cast

On Oct. 3, the House of Representatives reversed an earlier vote and passed the Paulson bailout bill, following a similar Oct. 1 capitulation by the U.S. Senate. Just hours later, President Bush signed the bill into law, setting the stage for precisely the kind of showdown that LaRouche identified in his webcast.

As LaRouche warned, the bailout bill, if passed, will not stabilize the banking system. It will lead to immediate hyperinflation, a dramatic collapse of the U.S. dollar, and a level of global economic disintegration, unprecedented since the 14th-Century collapse of the Lombard banking system, which wiped out one-third of the population of Europe in a matter of two generations.

In later remarks during the webcast, LaRouche was even more blunt about the Bush Administration's deployment of troops inside the United States, and the likely reaction:

If American troops, ordered by the President, turn on the American people to suppress the opposition to this bill, the United States will cease to exist! This is worse than treason! Any such action, from any part of government, is worse than treason! And anyone who accepts such an order, is a traitor to the United States.

A Sept. 30 report in Army Times underscored LaRouche's warning. The paper reported that the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team is being given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom inside the United States, beginning Oct. 1.

Army Times elaborated:

The 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they're training for the same mission—with a twist—at home.

Beginning Oct. 1, for 12 months, the 1st BTC will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.... This new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities. After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

Army Times confirmed that the combat brigade, which will total about 4,600 troops,

may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE [chemical, biological, radiological/nuclear, and explosive incidents] attack.

In addition,

The 1st BTC's soldiers will learn how to use 'the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,' 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

Army Times also reported,

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF.

LaRouche had already denounced former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's creation of NorthCom back in 2002, declaring that it was a "preparation to create a Caesarian military dictatorship" over North America.

'Crossing the Rubicon'

LaRouche's image was precise. In 49 BC, Julius Caesar ordered the Roman Legions to cross the Rubicon, a river that defined the borders of Italy proper, violating an ancient law forbidding Roman troops to enter Italian territory. The event plunged the Roman Republic into a bloody civil war.

During his Oct. 1 webcast, LaRouche also drew the parallel between the Bush-Cheney actions—putting U.S. Army units into action against the American people—and the French Revolution. Despite the best efforts of pro-American republicans, led by the Marquis de Lafayette, to establish a Constitutional monarchy, King Louis XVI, in response to the infamous "Queen's Necklace Affair," invited Austrian troops to occupy the streets of France to defend the Crown. This action fed directly into the British Foreign Office plans to destroy France in a river of Jacobin blood. The French population, already enraged at the horrid economic conditions imposed on them, revolted against the foreign troops deployed against them. The rage was orchestrated by a legion of British East India Company-paid agents, under the control of Lord Shelburne and Jeremy Bentham. Soon, the violence spread out of control and led, ultimately, to the fascist dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte and a generation of European-wide war.

A deployment of U.S. combat troops onto the streets of the United States, at this moment of total economic and monetary disintegration, could, LaRouche warned, trigger precisely such rage by millions of Americans.

Other Police State Actions

In addition to the unprecedented deployment of an Army combat brigade inside the United States—a flagrant violation of the posse comitatus law—other actions have been quietly taken by the Bush Administration that fit the same pattern. The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct. 1 that the $634 billion spending bill that recently passed Congress, to fund the Federal government through March 2009, contained a provision for the creation of the National Applications Office (NAO), an agency that will provide Federal, state, and local officials with access to domestic military spy satellite data "to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs." The law was passed with the NAO provision, despite a 60-page Government Accountability Office report, warning that the office could violate existing laws protecting privacy and civil liberties.

And on Oct. 4, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department has issued a set of new FBI guidelines which

allows investigators to recruit informants, employ physical surveillance and conduct interviews in which agents disguise their identities in an effort to assess national security threats. FBI agents could pursue each of those steps without any single fact indicating a person has ties to a terrorist organization.

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