Franks Fears U.S. Military Government

 

A distinguished general offers a chilling warning that the biggest victim of another terrorist attack could be the Constitution.

 

By Fred Lingel

 

Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq, has warned that another massive terrorist attack on the West or the United States could lead to the scrapping of the Constitution and a military government.

“The worst thing that could happen” is a terrorist attack using biological, chemical or nuclear weapons that inflicts heavy casualties on the United States or other Western nations, Franks told the men’s lifestyle magazine, Cigar Aficionado, in its Dec. 2003 issue.

“The Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most and that is the freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment we call democracy,” Franks said.

“In a practical sense,” Franks said, the people will demand that the Constitution be abandoned in favor of a military government for protection.

Another terrorist attack “causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty-producing event,” Franks said.

This “begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution,” Franks said. “Two steps—very, very important.”

Franks, who holds three Purple Hearts and three Bronze Stars, is the first high-ranking military officer to speculate that another terrorist attack could make the Constitution a casualty.

Critics of the Patriot Act, passed quickly and unread by most lawmakers in response to the 9-11 attacks, argue that new powers granted federal agencies do violence to the Constitution. The critics represent the political spectrum from left to right.