Cao's Blog

Cao's Blog-Two Month Anniversary

2004-10-17T22:50:00.000-05:00

What an unbelievable trip this has been and I can't believe today marks two months that Cao's blog has been online. Again, I'd like to thank all my friends across the country who've helped to make the content here interesting, and my guest commentators. A special thanks goes out to Amil Imani, who is helping to bring the middle eastern perspective here, from the right direction.

New CIA Chief

2004-10-16T11:32:00.000-05:00

"I couldn't get a job with the CIA today," commented Congressman Porter Goss (R-Fla) in a videotaped interview with the leftist film producter Michael Moore last March. "I am not qualified. I don't have the language skills, I don't have the cultral background probably. And I certainly don't have the technical skills."

More recently, President Bush nominated Congressman Goss-who did serve 10 years in the CIA's clandestine service prior to being elected to Congress--to head the Agency. This choice was made despite the fact that Rep. Goss voted to cut the Agency's human intelligence budget by 20 percent in 1993. This makes for an interesting counterpoint to the Bush administration's assault on Senator John Kerry for casting nearly identical votes to reduce the CIA budget.

The Senate confirmed Rep. Goss as the new CIA director on September 23. Is there an unwritten rule that this post, one of the most powerful offices on the planet, must be held by a member of the Council on Foreign Relations? Apparently so. Porter Goss is the 16th Director of the CIA since 1950. With the exception of Adm. William F. Raborn, Jr. (April 1965-June 1966) all have been members of the CFR, America's unelected one-world Establishment. Those CFR-CIA directors--in the order which they served--are:

Walter Bodell Smith
Allen W. Dulles
John A. McCone
Richard M. Helms
James R. Turner
William J. Casey
William H. Webster
Robert M. Gates
R. James Woolsey
John M. Deutch
George J. Tenet
Porter J. Goss

It's All For Show

2004-10-16T10:06:00.000-05:00

"when a nation has definitely committed itself to a foreign war," insisted legal scholar John Henry Wigmore during WWI, "all principles of normal internal order may be suspended."

In an August 7, 1918 speech, War Industries board Chairman Bernard Baruch was astonishingly frank in expressing the same view. "Every man's life is at the call of the nation and so much be every man's property," insisted Baruch. "We are living today in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state."

Similar totalitarian cadences worked their way into the July 19, 1940 speech of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's acceptance speech for the Democratic party's nomination to seek an unprecendented third term. "Today all private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger," declared Roosevelt. "In the face of that public danger all those who can be of service to the Republic have no choice but to offer themselves for services in those capacities for which they may be fitted."

These pointed endorsements of the total state represent a complete repudiation of our nation's republican premises. The recently concluded Republican National Convention in NYC offered overwhelming proof that the GOp has embraced the vision of building the total state through perpetual war.

In his keynote address to the Republican National Convention on September 1, Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georiga quoted FDR's pronouncement that all private plans and interests are "repealed" during wartime, and enrolled President Bush as a man to whom we could entrust our lives, property and children.

Referring to his grandchildren, Senator Miller posed the rhetorical question, "I ask which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and yes, the backbone to best protect my family?"...."There is but one man to whom I'm willing to entrust their future that man's name is George Bush."

"I admire this man," gushed Miller, "I have knocked on the door of this man's soul and found someone home, a God fearing man with a good heart and spine of tempered steel. The man I trust to protect my most precious possession: my family."

Miller's tribute to the president offers a stark contrast with Thomas Jefferson's wise counsel: "In questions of power....let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." And Miller, by his own admission, is a less than reliable judge of a politician's character.

Twelve years ago, as the keynote public speaker at the Democratic National Convention, Miller delivered a similarly evangelistic speech describing Bill Clinton as the messianic embodiment of political goodness. But this irony was lost on Miller's audience, who eagerly surrendered to raptures of indignation over the impudence of any candidate who would think of supplanting our Dear Leader.

Indeed, the most remarkable aspect of Miller's address was a section implying that there was something seditious about having a contested election in "wartime". Referring to 1940 Republican candidate Wendell Willkie, Miller declared that "there is no better example of something repealing their "private plans" than this good man...[H]e made it clear that he would rather lose the election than make national security a partisan campaign issue."

"Where are such statesmen today?" conditioned Miller, his face contorted into a mask of theatrical indignation. "Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most? Now, while young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our Commander in Chief."

Implicit but unmistakable in Miller's address were the following assumptions:

Since our nation is at war, our lives, liberty and property belong to the state.
George W. Bush is not simply an elected official with specific, limited powers, but a holy personage in whom we can entrust all we hold dear (something not found in the Constitution's presidential job description)
Seeking to replace President Bush through the constitutionally appointed means is at best divisive and at worst treasonous.

Taken together, those assumptions amount to fuhrerprinzip--the "leadership principle" common to all variants of totalitarianism, but most openly embraced by the German National Socialist (Nazi) party.

As it has often been said, people go mad in groups, and come to their senses one at a time. The nastiest trick of collectivist politics of every variety is to manipulate people into remaining part of the mob, rather than engaging in critical thought as individuals. And nothing accomplishes this design better than a state of perpetual war.

Another nasty trick frequently employed by collectivists is to control all "respectable" political alternatives in order to ensure that any electoral outcome will abet the growth of the total state.

"The argument that the two parties should represent opposite ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea," commented Georgetown history professor Carroll Quigley, who was both a capable analysis of, and cheerleader for, the drive to create the total state. "Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the radicals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."

Senator Miller's address illustrated the extent to which contemporary partisan politics follow quigley's prescription.

In addition to exalting President Bush as the distillate of political virtue, Miller's address also hymned the supposed virtues of two liberal Democratic presidents--FDR and Harry Truman--and that of a losing Republican candidate, Wendell Willkie. These figures, along with George W. Bush, were commended for embracing an interventionist foreign policy "to fight for freedom over tyranny." "Freedom," in this view, is a product of our central government, with our military acting as a glorified delivery service.

"Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the American soldier," observed Miller. "And, our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad, they perserve it for us here at home." Of course, Miller didn't explain how our freedoms are being "preserved" if at the same time we re required to permit Washington to "repeal" our private plans when necessary.

The choice of Willkie as symbolic of bipartisan patriotism is incredibly significant, since there is abundant evidence that Willkie--a lifelong Democrat who allegedly changed his affiliations just months before being nominated by the Republicans in 1940--conspired with both FDR and a froeign intelligence service to "fix" the election.

In Desperate Deception, a 1998 study of pre-WWII efforts by British Intelligence to maneuver the US into the war, historian Dr. Thomas Mahl records:

In June, 1940, the Republicans in convention in Philadelphia nominated Willkie. He was a man who had never held public office--a man who had been a bona fide registered Democrat as late as September 1939 and whose switch to the Republican Party is difficult, perhaps impossible, to document. His nomination exempted his Democratic opponent, President Franklin Roosevelt, from the normal pressures of an election campaign.

Willkie's nomination defined widespread and well-organized anti-interventionist sentiment at the Philadelphia convention, leading some--including noted agnotstic HI Mencken-to speculate that iwas the product of something akin to divine intervention. But soon after the convention, Communist leader Earl Browder (whose party was tactically allied with Hitler's regime at the time) and anti-intevention conservative Nelson Sparks claimed "that the nomination of Wendell Willkie had been concocted by British Ambassador Lord Lothian, in connivance with Frank Roosevelt, Thomas W. Lamont of JP Morgan and columnist Walter Lippmann.

It's worth noting that, decades earlier, Roosevelt, Lamont and Lippmann had all been involved in the intrigue that led to US entry into the first World War.

More importantly, notes Dr. Mahl:

There are now a number of facts available that support the accusations of Browder and Sprks. First, the people who created the Willkie candidacy were working closely with Frankllin Roosevelt. Second, those who created the Willkie candidacy were working closely with British intelligence and its fronts. Third, Willkie was working closely with British intelligence and its fronts, especially Fight for Freedom, on whose executive board he sat. Fourth, Willkie's close work with his ostensible opponent, Frnaklin Roosevelt, particularly their joint effort to eliminate members of Willkie's newly adopted Republican Party from office, is a collaboration rare, perhaps even unique, in American political history. Last, the secrecy and compartmentalization of the scheme to promote Willkie are a fundamental attribute of intelligence tradecraft; none of the individual toilers working for Willkie's nomination ever knew enough to be able to see the big picture of the operation.

Among the British intelligence assets who promoted Willkie's candidacy were attorney Grenville Clark, a prominent member of the British front Fight for Freedom who went on to prominence as an exponent of UN-enforced "global law"; journalist Walter Lippman, the Fabian Socialist, founding editor of The New Republic, charter member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and key figure in the secretive post WWI "Inquiry" group that drafted the League of Nations covenant, and journalist Dorothy Thompson, who was active in several British Intelligence fronts. Willkie himself secretly collaborated with British Ambassador Lord Lothian.

Willkie backed FDR's "Destoyer Deal" with Britain in 1940, which amounted to delivering part of our naval fleet to that government. The deal was patently illegal. He also supported the first peacetime conscription law in our nation's history, a measure tha made sense only as preparation for US involvement in the war. Both of those betrayals followed Willkie's nomination in a national convention carefully stage-managed by FDR's allies. That convention was rife with dirty tricks-such as using a defective microphone to prevent former President Herbert Hoover from delivering an anti-intervention speech.

In a despairing letter to his son, California Republican Senator Hiram Johnson lamented that Willkie "had raised hell with us here by adopting the Roosevelt foreign policy, and being for conscription, etc. He really broke the back of the opposition to the conscription law." That betrayal was described in strikingly different terms by interventionists, particularly those formally aligned wih the British fifth column.

"If the Republicans had launched an all out attack on the president for doing this [giving away part of the fleet to Britain] their candidate would have attracted hundreds of thousands of America First isolationist voters who otherwise might not go to the polls," reflected Francis Pickens Miller, who was involved in the British fronts Century Group and Fight for Freedom. "Our chairman, Lewis Douglas, was one of Willkie's most ardent supporters and trusted advisors."

Lippmann described Willkie's seizure of the Republican nomination as "providential": "Under any other leadership than his, the Republican party would in 1940 have turned its back on Great Britain." Which is another way of saying that any genuine Republican candidate of that era would have sought to defend American interests, rather than those of some foreign power.

Shortly after his "loss" to FDR, Willkie was appointed by Roosevelt as a presidential emissary. This was done at the suggestion of William Stephenson, the notorious British Spy known as "intrepid" who helped coordinate British Intelligence efforts in the US (particularly those directed at harassing and defaming the America First movement). With ironic wit, Stephenson's letter to FDR referred to Willkie as "your opponent in the recent bitter elections..."

Willkie's true relationship with FDR was no secret in the White House Correspondents Association. At the group's March 1941 dinner a mock newsreel was shown entitled All We Know Is What They Let Us Write In The Papers, or It Ain't Necessarily So. One scene in that film entitled "Bundling for Britain" depicted Roosevelt and Willkie as bed-mates. In 1944, Willkie was approached by key Roosevelt advisers to run as Vice President on the Democratic ticket. Willkie, in failing health, declined the offer and expired form a heart attack that October.

The choice of Democratic Senator Zell Miller to nominate President Bush for re-election illustrates that the two "mainstream" parties are entirely fungible. Miller's choice of Wendell Willkie to embody "bipartisanship" is even more telling. But most revealing of all was the spectacle of supposedly conservative Republican delegates engaged in an orchestrated orgy of enthusiasm on behalf of the welfare-warfare state.

"The [GOP Convention] began with a series of speeches trumpeting vast increases in federal spending: on education, healthcare, AIDS, medical research and on and on," approvingly wrote liberal Republican columnist Andrew Sullivan. "No, these were not Democrats. They were Bush Republicans, extolling the capacity of government to help people to cure the sick, educate the young, save Africans from HIV, subsidize religious charities, prevent or cure breast cancer, and any other number of worthy causes. The speakers were designed to target certain demographic and interest groups, just as the Democrats used to. The notion that these things are best left to the private sector, or that spending needs to be slashed in the wake of rising debts, or that the race of a speaker is irrelevant: all these are now Republican heterodoxy."

As commentator Eric Margolis pointed out, the Republican Party's embrace of sanctified totalitarianism took place in a city tranformed into a mini-garrison state. With the streets patrolled by a security force larger than Canada's army, and residents and visitors subjected to roadblocks, checkpoints, and the like, New York resembled "Damascus during a military coup", wrote Margolis.

Both the rhetoric issuing from the lectern at Madison Square Garden, and the police state measures maintaining order outside, demonstrated beyond dispute that -at the leadership level-freedom has no friend in either the Republican or Democrat branch of the Ruling Party.

Airport Security Weaknesses Still Exist Today

2004-10-15T07:54:00.000-05:00

Bogdan Dzakovic is one of America's elite warriors in the fight against terrorism. Incredibly, he is being punished for telling the truth about our nation's continuing dangerous vulnerability and for exposing federal agencies and bureaucrats that are putting the public at risk. If federal officials had listened to his repeated warnings prior to the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001, that terrible tragedy might have been averted and thousands of lives very well could have been saved.

The larger tragedy, says Dzakovic, is that the same official mindset that invited the 9/11 calamity continues to persist--despite the expenditure of billions of dollars on homeland security, and despite official calims that security procedures have dramatically improved. In his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Special Agent Dzakovic warned that if current patterns of official behavior continue, 'we are doomed to suffer more and more 9/11 tragedies. It is only a matter of time."

These dangerous behavior patterns, he said, constitute "three strikes against public safety". They include: "Lack of personal accountability for all levels of government service; repression of government professionals exercising the freedom to warn of security breakdowns caused by mismanagement; and abuses of secrecy as an excuse to cover up the government's own misconduct." According to Dzakovic, they are endemic at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the branch of the Department of Homeland Security that now has authority over airports, ocean ports and other transport facilities and modes of transportation.

At the time of the 9/11 attacks, Dzakovic was a 14-year veteran of the Security Division of the Federal Aviation Administration. He started off his FAA career as a field agent and Federal Air Marshal, then serviced as a Team Leader in the Air Marshal program. Since 1995, he had served as a Team Leader of the FAA's Red Team, which conducted undercover tests on airport security through simulated terrorist attacks.

"We were extraordinarily successful in destroying U.S. Flag commercial aircraft and killing large numbers of innocent people in these simulated attacks," he told the 9/11 Commission on May 22, 2003."This occurred with such regularity and ease," he continued, "as to present a frightening picture of the sorry state of aviation security on a worldwide basis, including our domestic airports."

It was Special Agent Dzakovic's job to think like a terrorist and to expose security weaknesses so that they could be corrected. He was very good at his job. The problem was, (and is even after 9/11), that despite all the hi-octane talk from officialdom about stepping up aviation security, very little effort was made to fix the outrageous failures that were an open invitation to terrorists and a virtual guarantee of future catastrophe.

"Although we breached security with ridiculous ease up to 90% of the time," Dzakovic told the commission, "the FAA suppressed these warnings. Instead, we were ordered not to write up our findings (in some cases) and not to retest airports where we found particularly egregious vulnerabilities to see if the problems had been fixed. Finally, the agency started providing advance notification of when we would be conducting our "undercover" tests and what we would be checking."

Pay Attention! All of this was BEFORE the 9/11 attacks. Dzakovic had become so certain of impending disaster from a terrorist attack and so frustrated with the continued official denial and cover-up at FAA that he decided to try other channels. In May, 2001, -months before the fateful attacks -he personally delivered a copy of a videotape exposing incredible security lapses at Boston's Logan International Airport to the office of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.

The videotape was a copy of an investigative report aired on May 6, 2001 to Boston's WFXT Channel 25, a Fox-tv affiliate. With the help of Brian Sullivan, a recently retired FAA Risk Management Specialist, and Steve Elson, a retired FAA Red Team leader, WFXT reporter Deborah Sherman conducted tests of security at Logan International. Using a hidden camera, the Fox team recorded 65 serious security failures and violations, providing dramatical visual validation of the rports by Dzakovic, Sullivan and other whistleblowers, of the dangerous laxity, negligence and incompetence of those responsible for security at Logan.

Sherman's video camera showed repeated penetration of security by Fox "passengers" with metal knives that should have been easily detected. The video also showed that common lead-lined film bags --which prevent the airport x-ray machines from seeing the contents of the bag as well as anything lying beneath the bag-were routinely passed through without inspection. Former FAA Special Agent Steve Elson pointed out to Fox vieweres that these bags could just as easily contain knives, guns or explosives as film. All in all, the Logan screeners had worse than a 90% failure rate. Adding to the drama, simply watching airline employees go in and out of secure doors, Deborah Sherman was able to learn the secret combinations to all the doors of a particular ariline on that concourse and demonstrated how she was able to use those button codes to gain access to sensitive areas.

On May 7, 2001, the day after WFXT aired its report on Logan, Brian Sullivan sent a letter to Senator Kerry's Washington, D.C. office urgently requesting that he investigate the failures exposed by the television station. The letter warned that Logan was ripe for a "coordinated attack" involving multiple flights. "It is time for the truth to be known," Agent Sullivan wrote, "before an incident occurs."

"With the concept of jihad, do you think it would be difficult for a determined terrorist to get on a plane and destroy himself and all other passengers?" Sullivan asked Kerry. "Think what the result would be of a coordinated attack which took down several domestic flights on the same day. The problem is that with our current screening, this is more than possible." In fact, he warned that, "considering current threats, it is almost likely."

"We don't have to wait for a tragedy to occur to act," Agen Sullivan's letter reads. "There are simple, cost-effective means to improve the system now." He warned that it was useless to depend on the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (DOT OIG) since it had repeatedly proven itself complicit in the agency's ongoing coverups. "The DOT OIG has become and ineffective overseer of the FAA," he charged. "Scathing reports have been developed on airport/airline security and FAA facility security. Still, the culture continues to perpetuate itself and managers have been promoted up the chain, despite the fact that they've supported this facade of security and abused line agents who dare to speak the truth."

What was Senator Kerry's response to those revelations of gaping security holes in his backyard? Bogdan Dzakovic says that he did not hear back from Kerry or anyone else on his staff. Agent Sullivan did receive a six-sentence letter from the senator--three months later--acknowledging receipt of the video. In the letter, dated July 24, 2001, Sen. Kerry said he had passed the video on to the Transportation Department's Inspector General, the same DOT OIG that Sullivan had cited in his letter as being a key part of the problem! In other words, Senator Kerry was passing the buck. Yet, in his campaign commercials, Kerry has claimed to have "sounded the alarm on terrorism years before 9/11."

President Bush's loyalists have been quick to cite Kerry's letter and his failure to investigate the Logan deficiencies as proof of his irresponsibility in national security matters. However, what the bush partisans fail to mention is that Sullivan and Dzakovic also have repeatedly hit brick walls with officials in the Bush administration.

A month after the 9/11 attacks, Dzakovic filed a Whistleblower Disclosure with the federal Office of Special Council (OSC). The OSC directed Norman Mineta, President Bush's secretary of transportation, to report back on Dzakovic's charges. What did Secretary Mineta do? The same thing that Sen. Kerry had done months before; turn the investigation over to the same OIG that whistleblowers had been complaining was part of the cover-up!

If US officials weren't paying attention to America's security (or lack thereof), our enemies certainly were. Mohammad Atta, the operational ringleader for the 9/11 hijackers, spent considerable time in the months before the attack casing Logan International Airport. Al-Qaeda hideouts raided after 9/11 yielded copies of US government reports on our deplorable airport security that had been translated into Arabic. The terrorists were studying our vulnerabilities, while our officials were pointedly ignoring these same weaknesses. Logan had been cited repeatedly and fined for failing to pass security tests.

On September 11, two flights hijacked at Logan brought down the Twin Towers in New York.

The FAA has been absorbed into the TSA, and much of the FAA management that was responsible for the horrific plight of US aviation security has been promoted. In his testimony before the 9/11 Commission, Bogdan Dzakovic stated that despite the fact that the federal government has lavished billions of dollars on the TSA, he is in agreement with other aviation security whistleblowers who insist that our airports "are not safer now than before 9/11". The main difference [between then and now]," he said, "is that life is now more miserable for passengers."

Dzakovic reminded the commission that "not one person has been disciplined for mismanaging an agency [the FAA] that operated in a manner that was [according to the OSC] 'a substantial and specific danger to public safety,' contributing directly to the nearly 3,000 deaths on 9/11 as well as turning this country upside down.

Instead of being held accountable, he said, 'many of these same managers have been promoted within TSA and are key players in how TSA executes its missions. Those managers that didn't transfer to TSA are still with FAA, and are managing the FAA internal investigation/security mission and its hazardous materials mission in precisely the same way as it mismanaged its previous aviation security mission."

And what about the FAA personnel who had done their jobs properly and had tried (in vain) to institute reforms that might have prevented 9/11? They received demotions instead of promotions. As Agent Dzakovic told the 9/11 Commission: "During most of 2002, my primary job was punching holes in paper and putting orientation binders together) and other menial work) for hundreds of newly hired TSA employees." As far as his supervisors were concerned, he said, he could report to work and read novels, play video games or twiddle his thumbs. Instead, he used the time to study terrorism and security issues. "My current job," he says, "is even further removed from keeping bombs, weapons and terrorists off planes." Now the TSA has Bogdan Dzakovic, one of our nation's top counterterrorism and aviation security experts, playing flunky to new trainees fresh off the street.

The TSA is also attempting to silence Dzakovic and fellow whistleblowers through what Dzakovic charges are illegal secrecy policies. He told the Commission:

In fact, the final report into my charges is illegally being kept secret, off the public record. The law only permits publicly withholding classified information from reports into whistleblower charges. There was no classified information in the [Inspector General] report, but FAA refused to let the Special Counsel have it without a promise to maintain secrecy because the report has "sensitive but unclassified" information. This is a new concept, which allows information to have the secrecy of being classified without any of the corresponding procedural checks and balances. This free ride is ussed for information whose contents don't justify being marked as classified. It is ironic that a report confirming public safety threats from abuses of secrecy is being kept secret.

The Bush administration has crafted even more troubling secrecy rules. Dzakovic told the 9/11 Commission that 'secrecy enforced by repression is being institutionalized through another new concept of unclassified secrecy called "Critical Infrastrucutre Information (CII) which can be virtually anything provided by industry to the Department to assist in the "War on Terrorism". He explained the perils of this secrecy in his May 22 testimony. "If an employee blows the whistle with this unclassified CII evidence, it is a criminal act subject to immediate termination from the government, and up to a year in jail. This new CII form of secrecy was present as part of the Homeland Security Act. If it had been law when I blew the whistle, I could have been fired and be sitting in jail, instead of being vindicated and testifying today."

But the 9/11 Commission was not interested in the genuine concerns brought up by experts such as Bogdan Dzakovic. He is mentioned as a witness in the commission's report (in the appendix, on page 441), but none of his important testimony is included. Neither did the commission show any interest in holding anyone accountable, something that virtually all security and law enforcement experts insist is absolutely essential if the lapses that led to 9/11 are to be fixed. Instead, the commission has fixated on building a larger, more centrally-controlled police/intelligence bureaucracy, under the control of a federal intelligence czar.

On September 13, Bogdan Dzakovic joined several other federal whistleblowers at a press conference in Washington, D.C. to dispute the commission's findings and recommendations. He recounted much of the testimony that he had given the commission but that had disappeared down the panel's memory hole. The press conference, organized by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (mentioned earlier), included whistleblowers from US Customs, FBI, FAA, CIA and TSA --all of whom told similar horror stories of abysmal security and institutional corruption, cover-up and retatliation against agents who take seriously their oaths to uphold the law and defend our citizens.

More C-BS: Average GOP Mom Really Anti-Draft Activist

2004-10-14T04:50:00.000-05:00

CBS's latest duplicity again uncovered by bloggers: CBS's "average" Republican, Bush-supporting mom is really an activist leader of a group called "People Against the Draft." Its Web page is packed with left-wing creedos and links to far-left groups.

Richard Schlesinger pegged a piece, on CBS Evening News, on supposed fears that the draft will be imposed, to Beverly Cocco, identified on screen as a "Pennsylvania voter," whom Schlesinger showed working as a school crossing guard in the Philadelphia area. Schlesinger asserted: "She's a Republican, but she's also a single-issue voter. Would you vote for a Democrat?" Cocco replied: "Absolutely. I would vote for Howdy Doody if I thought it would keep my boys home and safe." Schlesinger concluded with a warning: "She's a Bush supporter today, but if she doesn't like what she hears between now and November, Beverly could easily cross over."

The next night, the NBC Nightly News took up the same subject as Tom Brokaw maintained that "the Internet is aflame with stories that the draft is coming back." But instead of exploiting the fear as did CBS to fire a warning shot a Bush, NBC's Jim Milkaszewski discredited the fears.

CBS's Schlesinger had hyped how "the machinery for a draft is already in place, and the acting director of Selective Service believes he could start drafting people quickly." But Miklaszewski dismissed all the Internet claims that Selective Service is gearing up for a draft: "Pentagon officials call it 'bunk'" as he pointed out that the "two bills to reinstate the draft pending in the House and Senate" have "almost no political support. And both are sponsored by Democrats." Miklaszewski added: "If more soldiers are needed, the military says they'll increase incentives to volunteers like enlistment bonuses up to $20,000."

More on Cocco, followed by a ful transcript of the Miklaszewski piece:

A quick Google search for "Beverly Cocco" turned up her name, on the "People Against the Draft" Web site, as the contact person in the Philadelphia area. Check this page, http://www.nodraft.info/contact.html, and you'll see: "Philadelphia Lancaster/Bucks County affiliate: Parents Against the Draft. Contact Beverly Cocco, babby61754@comcast.net"

The home page for People Against the Draft: www.nodraft.info

The Web site features a PDF of a flyer you can download, a flyer which presents their evidence a draft is imminent. Up top, a quote from Britain's left-wing Guardian newspaper, followed by: "How do we know a new draft is in the works? Nationwide, long-dormant draft boards -- local committees that decide who must fight and who is exempted -- have been quietly reactivated and restaffed (Lindorff, 'Oiling Up the Draft Machine,' Salon.com, Nov. 3, 2003)."

The page also showcases this quote from "McGovern," maybe George: "While conceding that the Iraq war has been a military and political disaster, the US power elite -- from George Bush, to the New York Times editorial board, to Presidential candidate John Kerry -- agree that we must "stay the course" in Iraq. In plain language, that means crushing resistance to the occupation. To subdue a population that wants us to leave and is willing to fight for independence, will require many more troops – as many as 500,000, say some Pentagon estimates (McGovern, 'Calling for Backup,' TomPaine.com, May 7, 2004)."

For the flyer www.nodraft.info

The links page is full of far-left and/or anti-American groups: www.nodraft.info

CBS hinted at none of that activist political activity by Cocco, though, as Schlesinger stated that "Beverly is petrified about a military draft, and she's not alone. Mass e-mails are circulating among worried parents," on screen CBS briefly showed quick shots of a couple of Web pages, including a shot of a screen with "People Against the Draft" across the top. But Schlesinger made no connection to Cocco. Bloggers uncovered the connection, however, as FNC's Brit Hume noted in his "Grapevine" segment that same night.

Those Freepers really know what's cookin'.... they had a thread about it which featured a reprint of the MRC's CyberAlert article about the CBS story, so here's that FreeRepublic discussion thread which also reprinted a letter Cocco wrote to a local newspaper: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1230443/posts

Underhanded promotion of an anti-draft activist under the guise of sharing the views of an "average" republican. But what can we expect from C-BS? We just have to watch each others' backs.

Keyes/Obama Debate -MP3 Audio

2004-10-13T21:10:00.000-05:00

MP3 audio of the first debate available!Illinois Radio Network broadcast
Tuesday's first debate between Alan Keyes and Barack Obama is available in MP3 audio.The debate--which was sponsored by the Illinois Radio Network--showcased Dr. Keyes' considerable foreign policy and diplomatic experience.Keyes served as an Assistant Secretary of State, UN ambassador, and staff member of the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan.In addition to foreign affairs, topics included fair trade, jobs, agriculture, infrastructure, health care, and live-birth abortions.
You can listen to the entire debate by clicking here (12 MB).

Truth Squad Exposes Obama's Record

2004-10-13T20:53:00.000-05:00

Cao's note: It's about time....

Monday, October 11, 2004
By The Leader-Chicago Bureau

CHICAGO - Moveon.org and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have made the term "527" well-known in the political lexicon of the 2004 election season.

Now, one 527, or independent expenditure organization, in Illinois is seeking to make waves in the Senate race in the same fashion that other such groups have impacted the Presidential contest.

The group, Empower Illinois, has launched a new website, http://www.truthaboutobama.org/.

Beginning Tuesday, Empower Illinois is also a running a series of television and radio ads in downstate media markets that aim to highlight what they see as an underreported issue in the race to replace retiring U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald--namely, Democratic Senate nominee Barack Obama's record as a State Senator.

The group's director, Jeff Davis, said the ads, which can be viewed on the group's website, are aimed to educate voters about Sen. Obama's voting record so they may compare that to his rhetoric on the campaign trail. "There is a disconnect between the positions Barack Obama has taken as a State Senator and his moderate-sounding rhetoric during this Senate campaign," said Davis. "As people listen to the debates and begin to make their decisions in this important race, we want to make sure they have all the facts."

According to their website, Empower Illinois is "a diverse coalition of concerned citizens in the political process...dedicated to educating Illinoisan’s regarding public policy positions of candidates for federal, state and local office and mobilizing conservative voters. These activities will help provide the information that Illinoisan’s need to see through the misleading public policies and campaign themes of politicians."

527s are tax-exempt organizations provided for in the IRS code. They are allowed to engage in uncoordinated, non-partisan political activities aimed at educating voters about a particular issue or candidate for office.

© 2004 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

Libs Say Reeves Is Dead Because of Bush

2004-10-13T19:20:00.000-05:00

Yeah right. He died from complications from a bedsore, you idiots.

They are, of course, referring to stem cell research...the Frankestein-type where they get the cells from embryos...they're saying that Bush's stand against using the tissue from embryos stood in the way of a 'cure'. and that's why Reeves is dead.

Do you remember the day when people were wondering about the possible ramifications of playing 'God' and the issue of test tube babies?

It isn't Bush that's standing in the way of using embryonic cells for research...it's the Moral Majority. Kerry tried to make it sound reasonable, saying that there are thousands of embryos that are frozen, in limbo, that will eventually be destroyed. But there is a darker side to this issue that he's not referencing...and who are we to be playing with life like this? God's creation?

A Garrison State

2004-10-13T09:51:00.000-05:00

"Homeland Security will be the biggest government employer in the next decade or so," predicts Steven David, chair of a graduate certificate program in homeland security at Johns Hopkins University. Noted the August 25 of USA Today: "Hundreds of community colleges, four-year universities and postgraduate programs have begun offering degrees and certificates in emergency preparedness, counterterrorism and security."

To some extent, this proliferation in security-related courses reflects the fact that "many companies have added homeland security sectors, and those educated in the field are in demand," continues the paper. But the most improtant factor, of course, if creation of a centralized "homeland security" monolith.

The Department of Homeland Security (not be confused with the Department of Defense, which supposedly had something to do with securing our homeland) directly sponsors numerous programs at elite schools nationwide. Among them is an 18-month highly selective program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. "We're taking the best and the brightest and giving them additional education so they can go back to their cities and assume the highest positions, " comments associated provost Paul Stockton.

Rather than studying computer technology, applied sciences and engineering, the "best and brightest" our nation produces, will be learning how to build and administer a garrison state.

Will Increasing Active Duty Forces Reduce Dependence on the Reserves and Guard?

2004-10-12T18:52:00.000-05:00

Cao's note: I couldn't resist sharing this, compliments of Blackfive-

In response to Kerry's Backdoor Draft nonsense (Did you take an oath or what?), I decided to look at what the new appropriations bill will do for our military. Remember that John Kerry wants to increase the Active Duty Army by 40,000.

First, take a look at what our current strength levels. From the 2005 Defense Authorization Act, as of August 31, 2004, America's military personnel includes (approximately):

1.. . 375,000 Active Duty Sailors
2.. . 82,000 U.S. Navy Reserve
3.. . 176,000 Marines
4.. . 40,000 Marine Corps Reservists
5.. . 379,000 Air Force Personnel
6.. . 75,000 Air Force Reservist
7.. . 107,000 Air National Guard
8.. . 497,500 Army Soldiers
9.. . 207,000 Army Reservists
10.. . 342,000 Army National Guard

The House Armed Services Committee approved the 2005 Defense Authorization Act (Adobe Acrobat pdf file). The bill will increase benefits across the board (imminent danger pay, separation from family pay, 3.5% increase in basic pay), but it's not as much as I wanted to see. It will soon be in front of the House and Senate for votes. Essentially, the troop increases are as follows (paraphrased from the House Authorization Act):

Increase in Active Army Troop LevelsTo address the Army's manpower shortages and to promote efforts to increase the numbers of modularized brigades, the conference recommended an increase of 20,000 in fiscal year 2005, and a total increase of 30,000 active personnel over five years. In sum, the committee would increase active Army end strengths from the present authorization of 482,400 (currently at 497,500) to 502,400 in 2005, and authorize further increases to 512,400 by 2009. Does any of you see a problem here?

Increase in Activy Marine Corps Troop LevelsThe committee also believes that an increase in manpower is essential to the Marine Corps' ability to provide and sustain the force levels required of it by our national security strategy. Accordingly, the conference recommended an increase of 3,000 active Marine Corps personnel in fiscal year 2005, and authorized a total increase of 9,000 over five years. In sum, the conference would authorize a Marine Corps increase from the present level of 175,000 to 178,000 in 2005 and to 184,000 by 2009.
Now, looking at the percentages of Active Army to Reserves and Guard, increasing the Active Component will result in the following changes in 2005:

502,400 Active Soldiers
208,700 Army Reservists
342,000 Army National Guard

Overall an increase to 502,400 is only 4% up from the authorization of 482,400, HOWEVER, our current level is 497,500 so the actual increase is only 4,900 troops or a measely ONE PERCENT INCREASE.

Gee, thanks a ton, Congress. You really solved THAT problem...

Therefore, if you are looking to see if the troop increases are going to ease the responsibilities of the Reserves and Guard, you are greatly mistaken.

The only thing that will improve the lot of our Reserves and Guard is to win the peace quickly. I believe that we can do this by spending billions after the election in November to rebuild the infrastructure, create jobs, and win hearts and minds in Iraq. Only then will we be able to reduce dependence on our Citizen-Soldiers and improve the quality of life for our Active Duty components.

2004-10-12T18:03:00.000-05:00

Killer pic--I started another blog and I'm trying to figure out how I can get this into the new template. I think it's a kick ass picture of a kick ass girl...who is ready to doing some ass kicking...and that's exactly how I feel right now....the blog can be found at http://caoilfhionn.tblog.com --there's quite a community there, and if I can get that template to look better, I'll be posting there in addition to over here.

BTW, of course I know what that picture's from....do YOU?

Obama's Record

2004-10-12T13:11:00.000-05:00

Obama has been pretty slick on avoiding the press and always having some lame spokesman from his campaign answer questions and speak for him.

The most compelling evidence to date that I have about Barack Obama and how terrible he would be as an elected representative (and I don't care what capacity that's in--IMHO he doesn't deserve to be a garbage man--I think he would find a way to mess THAT up but he'd sure look good while he was doing it) are the following quick points.

The guy is so damned corrupt that he sponsored a bill that would require a confession in a capital murder case.
That guy voted against a measure that would have allowed law enforcement to come down on gangs.
He was THE ONLY SENATOR IN THE ENTIRE STATE ASSEMBLY to vote against a passed measure that denied SEXUAL PREDATORS early release!!!! The man was willing to let sexual predators loose on his constituents!
HRC's (House Republican Caucus) leadership PAC gave him $10,000.

Need I go on?

Soldiers Don't Want Kerry

2004-10-12T07:53:00.000-05:00

Secretary of State Colin Powell said that unduly harsh political attacks from likely Democratic nominee John Kerry are undermining the morale of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Asked whether charges by Kerry and his supporters that Bush "lied" about and "hyped" pre-war intelligence are hurting the war effort, Powell told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," "It doesn't help."

While U.S. soldiers will continue to serve with honor no matter what, Powell said, "they want to know that the American people are supporting them."

He then warned, "Let's not misuse an issue for the purpose of political advantage in a way that will undercut the efforts of our brave young men and women out there or affect their morale."

The top Bush official also took issue with former Vice President Al Gore, who has accused President Bush of "betraying" America in going to war against Iraq, telling Sean Hannity that Gore's comments were "very disturbing."

"I mean, Vice President Gore was in an administration that believed there were weapons of mass destruction, to the extent that they bombed the facilities that they thought those weapons of mass destruction were in back in 1998.

"That was President Clinton and Vice President Gore," Powell emphasized.

"So to now scream that there is something wrong with the Bush administration because we finished the job, as opposed to just have a four-day bombing campaign, and we've eliminated the problem forever, I think is incorrect."

This mom cares about her son in Iraq, as 160 thousand other families care about their family members in the military. I am ashamed of John Kerry for what he's doing to our boys in Iraq. He should shut up!

The Bible Speaks to Ethical Issues In This Election

2004-10-11T17:31:00.000-05:00

The Bible speaks to several ethical issues in this election

Many Americans seek guidance from the Bible for important issues of life, while we recognize that many others do not. With thankfulness for the freedom of all Americans to believe whatever they think best regarding matters of religion and ethics, we offer this statement of our personal understanding of the teachings of the Bible for the thoughtful consideration of all who are interested in how the Bible might speak to ethical issues in the current election.

1. Supreme Court justices: People don't often think of the appointment of Supreme Court Justices as an ethical issue, but it clearly is now because several decisions of the Supreme Court have imposed on our nation new policies on major ethical and religious questions.

A small majority of our current Supreme Court, and lower courts that follow their example, have gone beyond their Constitutionally-defined task of interpreting laws passed by Congress and state legislatures, and have in effect created new "laws" that have never been passed by any elected body. By this process they have imposed on us decrees that allow abortionists to murder unborn babies (contrary to Exodus 20:13 and Romans 13:9, "you shall not murder"), that protect pornographers who poison the minds of children and adults (contrary to Exodus 20:17, "You shall not covet ... your neighbor's wife; see also Matt. 5:28), that redefine marriage to include homosexual couples (thus giving governmental encouragement to actions that Romans 1:26-28 says are morally wrong), and that banish prayer, God's name and God’s laws from public places (thus prohibiting free exercise of religion, and violating Romans 13:3 which says that government should be “not a terror to good conduct, but to bad"). In taking to itself the right to decree such policies, the Supreme Court has seriously distorted the system of "checks and balances" intended by the Constitution between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government.

It is unlikely that any elected body such as a city council, state legislature, or the U.S. Congress, would have decreed policies like those mentioned above, for such groups are accountable to the will of the people. Not so the Supreme Court, which is appointed for life. And democratically-elected members of Congress and state legislatures are helpless to change those Court-mandated policies unless the makeup of the Supreme Court is changed. We believe the ethical choice is for a President and for U. S. Senators committed to appointing judges who will follow the original intent of the Constitution and just interpret law and not make it, rather than for candidates who have often voted to block such judges in votes in the Senate.

2. Defense against terrorists: A fundamental responsibility of government is to “punish those who do evil” (1 Pet. 2:14) and thus to protect its citizens. We now face a unique challenge, because terrorists who will sacrifice their own lives in killing others cannot be deterred by the usual threat of punishing a criminal after he commits a crime. While Jesus instructed individuals not to seek personal revenge but to turn the other cheek (Matt. 5:39), the Bible teaches that governments are responsible to “bear the sword” (Rom. 13:4) and thus to use force to oppose violent evil. We believe the ethical choice is for a candidate who will pursue terrorists and, when necessary, use force to stop them before they strike us, not for a candidate who only promises to respond if we are attacked again.

3. Abortion: The Bible views the unborn child as a human person who should be protected, since David said to God, "You knitted me together in my mother's womb" (Psalm 139:13; see also Psalm 51:5; 139:13; Luke 1:44), and strong penalties were imposed for endangering or harming the life of an unborn child (Exod. 21:22-23). We believe the ethical choice is for candidates who believe government should give protection to the lives of unborn children, not ones who believe government should allow people to choose to murder their unborn children if they wish.

4. Homosexual marriage: The Bible views marriage as between one man and one woman, for "a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Gen. 2:24; Eph. 5:31). Because our courts have shown a troubling tendency to overturn the laws that have already been passed concerning marriage, we believe the ethical choice is for candidates who support a Constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

5. Embryonic stem cell research: Creating more human embryos for their stem cells is making the beginnings of little babies for the purpose of harvesting their parts, contrary to the command, "You shall not murder" (Exod. 20:13). There is a good alternative: using adult stem cells for medical research, because this does not destroy the life of the adult whose cells are used. We believe the ethical choice is for a candidate who has decided he will not allow government funds to be spent to create more human embryos just to take their stem cells.

6. Natural resources: God put human beings on the earth to "subdue it" and to "have dominion" over the animals (Gen. 1:28). We value the beauty of the natural world which God created, and we believe that we are called to be responsible stewards who protect God's creation while we use it wisely and also seek to safeguard its usefulness for future generations. The Bible does not view "untouched nature" as the ideal state of the earth, but expects human beings to develop and use the earth’s resources wisely for mankind’s needs (Gen. 1:28; 2:15; 9:3; 1 Tim. 4:4). In fact, we believe that public policy based on the idealism of 'untouched nature" hinders wise development of the earth’s resources and thus contributes to famine, starvation, disease, and death among the poor. We believe the ethical choice is for candidates who will allow resources to be developed and used wisely, not for candidates indebted to environmental theories that oppose nearly all economic development in our nation and around the world.

7. Should Christians speak out and try to influence our nation on these issues? God's people in the Bible often spoke about ethical issues to government rulers. Daniel told the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar to practice "righteousness" and to show "mercy to the oppressed" (Dan. 4:27); several Old Testament prophets speak to foreign nations about their sins (Isaiah 13-23; Ezekiel 25-32, Amos 1-2, Obadiah (to Edom), Jonah (to Nineveh), Nahum (to Nineveh), Habakkuk 2, Zephaniah 2); and Paul spoke to the Roman governor Felix "about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment" (Acts 24:25).

As Christian leaders we agree that the primary message of the New Testament is the good news about salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. But the primary message is not the whole message, and another significant part of the New Testament teaches us how people should live. With respect to issues like these we have mentioned, the Bible also teaches us about what kinds of laws governments should have.

The laws of a nation have a significant influence on the nation's moral climate, for good or for ill. This is because laws can either restrain evil or encourage it, and because laws also have a teaching function as they inform people about what a government thinks to be right and wrong conduct.

Therefore we urge pastors and Bible study leaders to teach on these crucial ethical issues facing our nation. We urge all Christians that they have a moral obligation to learn about the candidates' positions, to be informed, and to vote. We urge all Christians to pray that truthful speech and right conduct on both sides would prevail in this election. We also encourage Christians to consider doing even more for the good of our nation, such as giving time or money, or talking to friends and neighbors, or even serving in office themselves. Such influence for good on the direction of our country is one important way of fulfilling Jesus’ command, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:19).

[The signatures below represent only the personal views of those signing and not the views of their churches or institutions, which are added for identification purposes only. Permission is hereby given to reproduce and circulate this statement]

Pastors and Christian Leaders
Dr. Daniel L. Akin, President, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
Dr. Randy Alcorn, Director, Eternal Perspective Ministries, Gresham, OR
Kerby Anderson, National Director, Probe Ministries and host, Point of View radio, Dallas, TX
Dr. Neil T. Anderson, Founder and President Emeritus, Freedom in Christ Ministries
Jack and Kay Arthur, CEO and Founders, Precepts Ministries International
Dr. Barry Asmus, Senior Economist, National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas, TX
Ted Baehr, Chairman, Christian Film & Television Commission, Camarillo, CA
Dr. Mark Bailey, President, Dallas Theological Seminary Gary Bauer, President, American Values
Joel Belz, Founder and Publisher, World MagazineTal Brooke, President/Chairman, Spiritual Counterfeits Project Inc.
Dr. E. Ray Clendenen, Executive editor, Bibles and Reference Books, Broadman & Holman Publishers
Rev. Eugene Clingman, Executive Administrator, International Church Council Project, Hathaway Pines, CA
Dr. Darryl DelHousaye, President, Phoenix Seminary and Senior Pastor, Scottsdale Bible Church, Scottsdale, AZ
Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Author, Host of Revive our Hearts radioDr. Lane T. Dennis, President and Publisher, Good News Publishers/ Crossway Books and Bibles, Wheaton, IL
Dr. James Dobson, Chairman, Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, CODr. Bert Downs, President, Western Seminary, Portland, OR
Dr. Tom Elliff, Pastor, First Southern Baptist Church, Del City, Oklahoma, and past president, Southern Baptist Convention
Dr. Steve Farrar, Founder and Chairman, Men’s Leadership Ministries, Frisco, TX
Dr. Ronnie Floyd, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church – Springdale, AR and The Church at Pinnacle Hills – Rogers, AR
Dr. Jack Hayford, Chancellor, The King’s College and Seminary, Van Nuys, CA
Dr. Jim Henry, Senior Pastor, First Baptist Church, Orlando, FL, and past president, Southern Baptist Convention
Dr. R. Kent Hughes, Senior Pastor, College Church in Wheaton, Wheaton, IL
Susan Hunt, AuthorThe Hon. Don Hodel, President, Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, CO
Charles W. Jarvis, Chairman, USA Next-United Seniors Association
Dr. David Jeremiah, Founder, Turning Point Radio and Television Ministries and Senior Pastor, Shadow Mountain Community Church, El Cajon, CA
Dr. D. James Kennedy, Chancellor, Knox Theological Seminary, Fort Lauderdale, FL
Dr. Gary Kinnaman, Senior Minister, Word of Grace Church, Mesa, Arizona
Dr. R. T. Kendall, Bible teacher, AuthorBob Lepine, Co-Host, FamilyLife TodayDr. Robert Lewis, Pastor at Large, Fellowship Bible Church, Little Rock, AR
Dr. Crawford W. Loritts, Jr., Author, Speaker, Radio Host, Atlanta, GA
H.B. London Jr., Vice President, Church, Clergy & Medical Outreach; Focus on the Family
Dr. James MacDonald, Senior Pastor, Harvest Bible Chapel, Rolling Meadows, IL
Len Munsil, President, Center for Arizona PolicyDr. Marvin Olasky, Editor-in-chief, World Magazine
Dr. Paige Patterson, President, Southwestern BaptistTheological Seminary, Ft. Worth, TX, and past president, Southern Baptist ConventionRon Prentice, Executive Director, California Family Council
Dr. Dennis Rainey, President, FamilyLife, Little Rock, AR
Alan E. Sears, President, Alliance Defense Fund, Scottsdale, AZ
Dr. Joseph M. Stowell III, President, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, IL
Dr. Joseph Wasmond, President, Freedom in Christ Ministries, Knoxville, TN
Dr. Stu Weber, Senior Pastor, Good Shepherd Community Church, Gresham, OR
Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman, American Family Association

Professors at Christian colleges and theological seminaries
Dr. Gregg R. Allison, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY
Dr. James A. Borland, Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA
Dr. Gerry Breshears, Western Seminary, Portland, OR
Dr. L. Russ Bush, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
Dr. Fred Chay, Phoenix Seminary, Scottsdale, AZ
Dr. Richard C. Chewning, Baylor University (Emeritus), and John Brown University, Siloam Springs, AR
Dr. Jack Cottrell, Cincinnati Bible Seminary, Cincinnati, OH
Dr. Kendell Easley, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, Germantown, TN
Dr. Wayne Grudem, Phoenix Seminary, Scottsdale, AZ
Dr. Howard G. Hendricks, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, TX
Dr. George W. Knight, III, Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Taylors, SC
Dr. J. Carl Laney, Western Seminary, Portland, OR
Dr. David E. Lanier, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
Dr. Steve Lemke, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, LA
Dr. Daniel R. Heimbach, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
Dr. Mark Daniel Liederbach, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
Dr. Tom J. Nettles, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, KY
Dr. Dorothy Kelley Patterson, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, TX
Dr. Alvin L. Reid, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC
Dr. Leland Ryken, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL
Dr. Wayne G. Strickland, Multnomah Bible College and Seminary, Portland, OR
Dr. Steven R Tracy, Phoenix Seminary, Scottsdale, AZ
Dr. Bruce Ware, The Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, KY
Dr. Paul Wegner, Phoenix Seminary, Scottsdale, AZ
Dr. Robert W. Yarbrough, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, IL

This is a partial list of signers. Click here for a full, updated list, or to get a current electronic copy.

Iraqi Americans Describe Life In Iraq

2004-10-11T16:21:00.000-05:00

By U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Brent A. Hunt / Fort Hood, Texas

FORT HOOD, Texas — In an initiative started by the Department of Defense, a group of Iraqi-Americans are touring military installations to provide military members and their families a first-hand account of how life in Iraq is changing.

During six one-hour sessions, Tamara Quinn and Pakeza Alexander provided a full house crowd at the Phantom Warrior Center with an uplifting account of how life has changed in Iraq since the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime.

“I never thought in my lifetime that Saddam's regime would be gone,” Alexander said. “Some things I have seen in Iraq you wouldn't believe even if you saw it in a movie.”

“During the old regime, we had no rights,” Alexander continued. “Someone could have lived in a house for 26 years and then someone from the Baath regime could come to your door and tell you to leave and there was nothing you could do about it. They could also tell you to leave your wife and children.”

Alexander was born in Irbil, Iraq, where she lived for 10 years until her family was forced into hiding under house arrest for nine months during Saddam Hussein's reign of terror against the Kurds in 1975. She and her family fled on foot for 21 days over the mountains in northern Iraq into Iran, where she lived as a refugee until coming to the United States in 1977.

A mother of five, Alexander became a citizen of the United States in June of 1985, and worked for the Nashville Metro Government for 18 years. She returned to Iraq in June 2003 to serve as the assistant director of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council to strengthen the reconstruction and democratization of a post-Saddam Iraq.

“The United States military not only liberated our country they are showing us that we can govern ourselves,” Alexander said. “You'll never know how much you've changed the Iraqi children lives.”

“Whenever an American dies, the children cry because the Americans came all the way over to Iraq for our freedom,” continued Alexander. “The country was destroyed for 35 years and look what you've done in the last 35 months. More than 95 percent of the Iraqi people support what you've done for us. We are free in America and they are free in Iraq.”

Also speaking at the engagement was Quinn. Quinn immigrated to the United States in 1973 at the age of 19 to avoid the Baath regime. She recently retired from the Tennessee Valley Authority where she was a fuel buyer. Quinn worked with the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad as a member of the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council.

"The United States military not only liberated our country they are showing us that we can govern ourselves. You'll never know how much you've changed the Iraqi children lives." Pakeza Alexander

Upon her return to the United States, she helped tutor the troops in the Cleveland, Tenn., area in Arabic in anticipation of their deployment. She is currently an aide to the women support group for these troops.

“When the war was over in 2003, I thought to myself I can go back and help,” said Quinn. “I can help with the Coalition Provisional Authority.”

“The first challenge with the new Iraqi government was the language barrier,” Quinn continued. “It would take several days just to get a meeting together.”

“Today, the Iraqi people know there is still a lot of hard times coming,” she said. “The Iraqi people don't look at the insurgents or terrorists as trying to help Iraq. No one in their right mind would think that someone, like in the last attack, who would kill 37 children are helping anyone.”
“What a lot of people don't know is that in 2002, Saddam released a lot of prisoners but none of them were the political prisoners,” Quinn said. “A lot of these thugs formed groups who kidnap people and steal money. There used to be no one who could oppose these groups but today we are forming groups who will fight and stop them.

“I know Iraq has a steep hill to climb, but it will be worth it,” she said. “When Iraq becomes peaceful, I believe that it will have a positive effect on the rest of the world.”

This Soldier's Mom Is Pro Bush

2004-10-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

Last week I sent my son back to Iraq. During these turbulent times and the farce of the post presidential debate debacle where the media talks about Kerry's "performance" in glowing terms, I have a few things to say.

This soldier's mom agrees with the President on his stand on terrorism. This is not a war that is only fought on one battlefront. This is not something that will go away, and we will not improve the situation by turning tail and running before the job is done.

Kerry is talking about the war in Iraq the exact same way as he talked about Vietnam when he skipped out on his brothers in the military. He is against the "establishment", who right now is George W. Bush. The problem is--this isn't the 60's and Iraq isn't Vietnam. And he's not 24 years old anymore. Too many people recognize the media is full of it. There are websites devoted to tracking media bias, and the most blatant example of it is the recent Dan Rather incident where he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

What we took on with Saddam Hussein was a totalitarian regime--a terrible regime where people were tortured and killed in horrible ways. Saddam's own rise to power is a terrible story, and how he raised his sons to maime and torture people is beyond imagination.

The Iraqi people are glad that Saddam is gone. There are examples now of these sick Islamist wackos beheading Iraqi Nationals who are helping to rebuild the country and the infrastructure. People must see that they're only hurting themselves. I have heard horrendous stories about the living conditions over there. Cows are walking down sewage ditches eating raw sewage, as there is little or no vegetation. They say that pigs are filthy, but they should look around as the garbage blows in the dry wind along with the sand. Some areas of the country have never seen clean water, and electricity was a thing of the past since the Gulf War.

Crucifixions and beheadings are commonplace. They think of an "eye for an eye" with no remorse. I've seen videos of chopping off hands and fingers, and cutting off heads, executions at close range and slitting throats-during Saddam's reign. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be dipped into acid and dragged through raw sewage in order for terrible infection to set in, or to be placed feet first into a chipping machine.

If Kerry was in office, Saddam's atrocities would be going on still.

I am glad for George W. Bush, and so are the boys in Iraq, and so are the people of Iraq. My son feels that voting for Kerry is surely suicide for the guys in Iraq and I have to agree with him.

We fight for freedom, for God given rights both at home and abroad. The pictures recently circulated of a young soldier petting a kitten, another holding a child...this is the goodness of America. We have so many people fighting with us, that are hoping we don't turn tail and run. If Kerry gets into office, that's what's going to happen. And the Americans who died--both in the military and out--would have died for nothing.

We should stay the course.

Here is an interesting explanation of why we're in Iraq.

The other day, my nine year old son wanted to know why we were at war. My husband looked at our son and then looked at me. My husband and I were in the Army during the Gulf War and we would be honored to serve and defend our Country again today. I knew that my husband would give him a good explanation.

My husband thought for a few minutes and then told my son to go stand in our front living room window. He told him: "Son, stand there and tell me what you see?"

"I see trees and cars and our neighbor's houses." he replied.

"OK, now I want you to pretend that our house and our yard is the United States of America and you are President Bush."

Our son giggled and said "OK."

"Now son, I want you to look out the window and pretend that every house and yard on this block is a different country" my husband said.

"OK Dad, I'm pretending."

"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and see that man come out of his house with his wife and he has her by the hair and is hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. He hits her in the face, he throws her on the ground, then he starts to kick her to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop him, they are crying, they are watching this but do nothing because they are kids and afraid of their father. You see all of this son.... what do you do?"

"Dad?"

"What do you do son?"

"I call the police, Dad."

"OK. Pretend that the police are the United Nations and they take your call, listen to what you know and saw but they refuse to help. What do you do then son?"

"Dad, but the police are supposed to help!" My son starts to whine.

"They don't want to son, because they say that it is not their place or your place to get involved and that you should stay out of it," my husband says.

"But Dad...he killed her!!" my son exclaims.

"I know he did...but the police tell you to stay out of it. Now I want you to look out that window and pretend you see our neighbor who you're pretending is Saddam turn around and do the same thing to his children."

"Daddy...he kills them?"

"Yes son, he does. What do you do?"

"Well, if the police don't want to help, I will go and ask my next door neighbor to help me stop him." our son says.

"Son, our next door neighbor sees what is happening and refuses to get involved as well He refuses to open the door and help you stop him," my husband says.

"But Dad, I NEED help!!! I can't stop him by myself!!"

"WHAT DO YOU DO SON?" Our son starts to cry.

"OK, no one wants to help you, the man across the street saw you ask for help and saw that no one would help you stop him. He stands taller and puffs out his chest. Guess what he does next son?"

"What Daddy?"

"He walks across the street to the old ladies house and breaks down her door and drags her out, steals all her stuff and sets her house on fire and then...he kills her. He turns around and sees you standing in he window and laughs at you. WHAT DO YOU DO?"

"Daddy..."

"WHAT DO YOU DO?"

Our son is crying and he looks down and he whispers, "I close the blinds, Daddy."

My husband looks at our son with tears in his eyes and asks him... "Why?"

"Because Daddy.....the police are supposed to help..people who needs it....and they won't help....You always say that neighbors are supposed to HELP neighbors, but they won't help either...they won't help me stop him...I'm afraid....I can't do it by myself ...Daddy....I can't look out my window and just watch him do all these terrible things and...and.....do nothing...so....I'm just going to close the blinds...so I can't see what he's doing........and I'm going to pretend that it is not happening."

I start to cry.

My husband looks at our nine year old son standing in the window, looking pitiful and ashamed at his answers to my husbands questions and he tells him...."Son"

"Yes, Daddy."

"Open the blinds because that man.... he's at your front door..."WHAT DO YOU DO?"

My son looks at his father, anger and defiance in his eyes. He balls up his tiny fists and looks his father square in the eyes, without hesitation he says: "I DEFEND MY FAMILY DAD!! I'M NOT GONNA LET HIM HURT MOMMY OR MY SISTER, DAD!!! I'M GONNA FIGHT HIM, DAD, I'M GONNA FIGHT HIM!!!!!"

I see a tear roll down my husband's cheek and he grabs my son to his chest and hugs him tight, and cries..."It's too late to fight him, he's too strong and he's already at YOUR front door son.....you should have stopped him BEFORE he killed his wife You have to do what's right, even if you have to do it alone, before.....it's too late." my husband whispers.

THAT scenario I just gave you is WHY we are at war with Iraq. When good men stand by and let evil happen is the greatest EVIL of all. Our President is doing what is right. We, as a free nation, must understand that this war is a war of humanity. WE must remove evil men from power so that we can continue to live in a free world where we are not afraid to look out our window. So that my nine year old son won't grow up in a world where he feels that if he just "closes" that blinds the atrocities in the world won't affect him. "YOU MUST NEVER BE AFRAID TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT! EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALONE!"

BE PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!
BE PROUD OF OUR TROOPS!!
BE PROUD OF OUR PRESIDENT
SUPPORT THEM!!!
SUPPORT AMERICA!!
SO THAT IN THE FUTURE OUR CHILDREN WILL NEVER HAVE TO CLOSE THEIR BLINDS...."

"One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes...and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility."
-Eleanor Roosevelt

Kerry's Proposed Medicare Fiasco

2004-10-10T09:06:00.000-05:00

Recently after watching the debates and going over what others wrote about Round 2 of the Bush/Kerry townhall style meeting, I got to thinking about what I'd just seen.

He kept saying that he has a plan. He has no plan....he has a lot of money, but he has no plan. He has more money than the rest of the Senators in Congress--he's the richest Senator in the Senate. Yet he claims to be "for the people". He doesn't hang with the people, he doesn't know the people, and as I saw last night when Teresa rushed into his arms, he wasn't warmly received by the people like Bush was. Kerry is a rich snob who has a camera crew following him around to make sure they get a shot of his $1,000 haircut. I was watching him last night, wondering if his haircut was really better than Bush's. Did that really look like a $1,000 haircut to you? Couldn't they do something about the color? Man did Kerry look gray last night!

At any rate, I meant to talk about his ridiculous proposed "free" medical insurance for the nation. When he was talking, whenever he talked, I stood up. He irritates me. I was taught that "nothing is free". Nothing comes for free; there's always a price. If you're going to get a 'bonus gift' somewhere along the way you pay for it; even if the cost is hidden in the product you are being suckered in to buy.

On the QFiles, and Steven Quayle's website, there is a very interesting point that's being made. Scientists have been picked off (murdered or met with unusual "accidents), all over the world, one by one.

And now we're seeing a shortage of vaccines that could protect public health.

I'm just seeing this peculiar pattern emerging and it's disturbing.

If Kerry gets into office and manages to throw health care onto the government bureaucracy, it will ultimately mean it will take longer to see doctors than now in the HMO system, and there will be fewer and fewer options in terms of medications. I won't go into the specifics--read Michelle Malkin's blog--

Kerry's Radical Medicare Drug Proposal

Bottom line to me is--we are the world's R&D program as far as new and cutting edge medications and technology.

With NAFTA, the proposed FTAA and nationalized health care, our health care system will deteriorate fast and end up worse off than Canada's...we will essentially become another 3rd world country, only there will be no other bastion of Freedom, free enterprise or capitalism left in the world to head up new innovations in ANY area, including health care and medications.

Kerry for President????-Ali Sina

2004-10-10T04:06:00.000-05:00

I watched the first round of the presidential debate between President Bush and Senator Kerry with a lot of interest. I am not an American but I believe the outcome of this election will affect not just America but the entire world. If you don’t accuse me of being hyperbolic I dare to say that this is the most important election in the history of mankind.

On this election may depend the future of the world and whether there would be another world war or perhaps it could be avoid. This was one debate I could not miss.

I have to acknowledge that Sen. Kerry was better prepared and was more eloquent than President Bush. But do eloquence and being articulate really equate to wisdom and statesmanship? Please do not misunderstand me, I am not drawing any comparison but merely trying to make my point. Hitler was an impressive orator but of course he was a very wrong person to lead his country.

So with this in mind I put aside the eloquence factor and tried to understand the message that each one of these candidates was delivering, peer into their character and appraise their capability as the commander in chief of the most powerful country in the history of mankind.

Sen. Kerry said many things that sounded logical. He said North Korea now has nuclear bombs and Iran is in pursuit of them and no one is doing anything about it. I agree with that.

He said that not enough is being done to buy the uranium-enriched stockpile that the Soviets had developed and this could fall in the hands of wrong bidders. I agree with that too.

He said American ports are not secure. This is true. But in reality terrorists do not need to send their destructive terror through the ports. There are so many ways they could hit America and the rest of the civilized world that only their diabolic imagination sets the limit. We really can’t protect ourselves everywhere. If you try to secure the airports by checking the passengers, they could blow themselves up in the crowded lines while waiting to be checked. They could attack schools, subways, busses, hospitals, restaurants, water-reservoirs, shopping malls…, the list is end less. Can we really secure all these places? So the point is moot. Yes it would be nice to secure the ports but does that make America any safer? What if atomic bombs are delivered to various ports and detonated simultaneously while waiting inspection? What Sen. Kerry is proposing will only make Americans spend more money for a false sense of security.Sen. Kerry also berated his rival and said that the war in Iraq was a wrong war at a wrong time. Then in that debate he said something different. He said that he agreed with the war but he would have fought it differently. In other words it wasn’t the wrong war at a wrong time but a war that was fought in a wrong way. The Senator however did not go into specifics to explain in what ways he would have fought this war differently. I wanted to know, and a google search brought me the answer: The following is part of an interview that Sen. Kerry gave in 1998:

"Saddam Hussein is pursuing a program to build weapons of mass destruction and I support regime change, with ground troops if necessary. I am way ahead of the commander in chief, and I’m probably way ahead of my colleagues and certainly of much of the country.” (1)

It is clear that Sen. Kerry realized the danger that Saddam was posing and he wanted to remove him by sending ground troops to Iraq way before 9/11.

Isn’t this exactly what the President did? So in what ways Sen. Kerry would have fought this war differently?

In 2002 he reiterated his concern about the Iraqi dictator and warned, “he may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States”. (1)

But what we heard in this debate was completely a different story. The Senator said "Let me be as blunt and direct with the American people as I can be; the invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy -- al Qaeda."

Are we to understand that in previous occasions when the Senator made the above statements he was not blunt and direct with the Americans?

It seems that Sen. Kerry's bone of contention with the President is that he acted alone without involving other countries in the process. In other words the Senator wants to be a team player and make sure that everyone is happy. How noble! But again we remember him saying that if push comes to shove he would act alone even if the UN Security Council fails to act.

2003 - "If Saddam Hussein is unwilling to bend to the international community's already existing order, then he will have invited enforcement, even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act."(1)

Wasn't this exactly what the President did? So I can't understand why the Senator is attacking the president for doing exactly what he [Sen. Kerry] said should be done.

In this debate, Sen. Kerry also said a lot of things that are clichés, like “reaching out to Muslims.”

What does reaching out to Muslims mean? Is that a new term for appeasement? How does he plan to do that? Build more Mosques in America? Give more special rights to Muslims? Make more compromises? Or perhaps offer them Israel as the sacrificial lamb?

He said that he wants to enlist the support of all other countries in the fight against terrorism. What if other countries do not want to come aboard? Would he sit on his hands and wait until the terrorists become stronger? The Europeans have totally different priorities. All they care for is to sign lucrative trade agreements with the rogue states. Terrorism and the stability of the world is the last thing in their minds. This is to them an American problem.

Yesterday (Oct. 6, 2004) the French carmaker Renault unveiled plans to build its new budget car, the Dacia Logan, in Iran. (2) On the same day Rafsanjani, the ex-President of Islamic Republic and the leading candidate in upcoming presidency elections of the Mullahdom, announced that “Iran's missiles can now hit Europe” (3) and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said “Iran will not cede to international demands that it suspend all activities related to the enrichment of uranium and the country is prepared for both confrontation or negotiations”. In fact on October 5th, Iran ’s hardliner dominated parliament began pushing for resumption of uranium enrichment. (4) And in the middle of all this a German trader is suspected of selling nuclear secrets to Iran. (5)

Whether the Europeans are asleep or pretend to be asleep is unclear. But the fact is that America cannot fall asleep in this crucial time when history is in the making and the destiny of Mankind is at stake.

It seems that Senator Kerry is trying to adopt a more European approach vis-à-vis Islamic Terrorism. And like the Europeans, he seems also to want to win the favor of the rogue countries that support and even promote terrorism by appeasing them.

In a bid to “bribe” the Mullahs and perhaps to improve the relations between the two countries Sen. Kerry suggested supplying the Islamic state with nuclear fuel for power reactors if Tehran agrees to give up its own fuel-making capability. The offer was of course rejected (6) But this makes it clear that Sen. Kerry desires to "reach out" and tie the broken knots with the Islamic Republic, which means more power to Islamic Terrorism worldwide.

Sen. Kerry is a good man. He wants to please everybody. But we had another good man who tried to please everybody during 1930s in England. His name was Chamberlain and his policies of appeasement allowed Hitler to gain strength. Shouldn't we learn our lessons from history?

Today Islam represents more danger to the world than Nazism presented 70 years ago. I don't think "reaching out to Muslims" is a right policy. I think we should stand tough against Islam and its terrorism. Muslims interpret "reaching out" as the sign of weakness and this encourages them to continue with their quest to conquer the world.

The truth is that Iran's missile program poses a serious threat to not just Europe but the entire Middle East and US interests, which is compounded significantly by Iran’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. (7)

Senator Kerry plans to fight terrorism defensively. The problem is that no amount of defensive measures can eliminate the risk of being hit again. President Bush favors preemptive war, or in other words he wants to fight this war in the backyard of those who started it, instead of fighting it in the cities of the United States. Whether he will succeed or not remains to be seen. But the fact is that no war has ever been won by fighting defensively. So, although there is no guarantee that the President’s plan will succeed, the failure of Sen. Kerry’s plan in fighting terrorism defensively is foregone.

As one friend put it, "you cannot just sit with a swatter waiting to hit the mosquitoes that come into your house. You have to drain the swamp where the mosquitoes breed".The real battle against Islamic Terror is the ideological battle and this is not even being fought yet. To destroy Islamic Terrorism we must destroy the ideology behind it. Neither one of the candidates addressed this crucial point. Although the President mentioned once “the ideology” of the terrorists, he fell short of saying what he intends to do about it.There is a saying, "Tell me who is your friend and I will tell you who you are". One interesting way to learn which side each of the two candidates stand is to look at their friends and see who supports them.

Yesterday, the Arab-American Political Action Committee in Dearborn announced their endorsement for the Sen. John Kerry-Sen. John Edwards ticket in the 2004 presidential election.

"We believe Senator Kerry will make America stronger, safer and more respected throughout the world," said AAPAC president Abed Hammoud in a written statement. (8)
Really?!!

Since when, the Arabs became so interested in the strength and safety of America? Last I remember, they were dancing in the streets after watching 3000 Americans die in 9/11.

But that is not all. Among Sen. Kerry's top fundraisers are three Iranian-Americans who have been pushing for dramatic changes in U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Most prominent among them is Hassan Nemazee, 54, an investment banker based in New York.

Nominated to become U.S. ambassador to Argentina by President Bill Clinton in 1999, Nemazee eventually withdrew his nomination after a former partner raised allegations of business improprieties.Nemazee was a major Clinton donor, giving $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 1996 election cycle and attending at least one of the famous White House fund-raising coffees.

In 2001, at the invitation of Mobil Oil Chairman Lucio Noto, whom he counts as a "personal friend," Nemazee joined the board of the American-Iranian Council (AIC), a U.S. lobbying group that consistently has supported lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran and accommodating the Tehran regime. Nemazee told Timmerman of Insight magazine he "now regrets" having joined the AIC board and resigned his position after 12 months when he was vilified by Iranian exile groups. (9)

Another Iranian fundraiser in Sen. Kerry’s campaign is Susan Akbarpour who was a journalist in Iran, where she was close to Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, the man who said in a nuclear confrontation Israel will be totally destroyed while Muslims will only suffer casualties. She made programs attacking the Iranian dissidents abroad and their anti regime activities.

In an Interview with Kenneth Timmerman Akbarpour boasted: "I am an actor in U.S. politics. I am a fund-raiser for all candidates who listen to us and our concerns." (9)

My congratulations to Americans for having an actress of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the same country that called America the "Great Satan" and took their embassy workers as hostage for 444 days, that masterminded the bombing of Israeli consulate in Argentine and in 1983 killed 241 U.S. Marines in a terrorist attack near Beirut airport, now starring in their political theater! This must be nominated for the most hilarious show award.

Akbarpour is not even a U.S. citizen. She came to America in 1997 as a tourist and remained as an illegal immigrant until last year when she married to another Islamist Iranian-American and now she is a green card holder and an "actor in U.S. politics".

One thing we can be sure of is that the Islamists are no friends of America. They certainly have no desire to see America become strong or safe. They are the enemies of America. It seems that the enemies of America have chosen their candidate. Now we have to wait and see who the American voters will choose as their next president.

Why No News On the Kurds Killed?

2004-10-10T01:53:00.000-05:00

Recent reports indicate that 3 kurds were killed (oh, what surprise, they were beheaded) by the Islamist terrorists in Iraq earlier this week, and that 18 more from the Iraqi National Guard were captured. The Kurds' slaying was claimed by the Ansar al-Sunna Army, the group that said it killed 12 kidnapped Nepalese workers last month.

The video shows three young men, two of them holding identity cards. Seconds later, each has his throat slit. A man is seen cutting off each hostage's head, which is then placed on the victim's back.

The bodies of the "apostate military men, affiliated with the traitor Kurdistan Democratic party" were left on the road, the statement said, "for them to be an example to others, and for us to avenge our women, children and elderly who die daily from American raids."

According to the terrorists, the young Kurdish men were soldiers, but according to my sources, these unfortunate young men were just students.

A statement posted with the video said the three were abducted as they transported military vehicles to a base in Taji, 25 kilometres north of Baghdad.

The people who have the nerve to fight the terrorists are the kurds, who are standing with us in this fight.

American news media stands with Al-Jazeera (the "Voice of al-Qaeda) and has turned away from this; it's a virtual media blackout.

Saddam Hussein killed over time, in a genocidal frenzy, 90 % Kurdish villages in Iraq, and over twenty small towns and cities--completely wiped them off the map. The countryside was riddled with 15 million landmines, intended to make agriculture and husbandry impossible. A million and a half Kurdish peasants had been interned in camps. Since 1974 over 400,000 died in Baghdad’s war against the Kurds. Almost half had disappeared without trace. About 10 % of the total Kurdish population of Iraq perished.

The terrorists believe nobody's life has any value, even their own. They are sick. What the Qu'ran teaches is sickness. The horrible "Anfal campaign"'s name refers to a verse of the Qu'ran, Surah Al-Anfal , authorising the plunder and slaughter of infidels.

This is from an interview (which, BTW never hit the American media) with Saywan Barzani, who represents the Kurdish government in Europe....

Terror "aims to plunge us all in world of darkness"; governments of the west must not give in to fear. Barzani asks that those who do not want to send soldiers to Iraq help in other ways: by training Iraqi soldiers, by helping "in the field of intelligence and in putting pressure on those countries of the area that support terrorists". Pointing his finger at Sunni Baathist factions that want to destabilize Iraq, Barzani stresses the need for elections, on which the Iraqi government's full legitimacy depends. Dictatorships and authoritarian countries in the region are in fact aiming at destroying such legitimacy. In expressing his hopes that Simona Torretta and Simona Pari are freed, Balzani expresses the hope that Europe is spared the "barbarity of kidnappings and decapitations".

Here is the interview he granted to AsiaNews.

Who are the Kurds who were decapitated?

According to the terrorists, the young Kurdish men were soldiers, but according to our information, they were students who had recently gone to Baghdad to sign up for university. They were young men between the ages of 18 and 20. And they were executed as spies of the Americans. They had done nothing. Their only "fault" was to be Kurdish and to have been from the Zakho region. In that region, the Kurdistan Democratic Party enjoys majority support, but these young men were just students.

What explains such violence against the Kurds?

There's more: some days ago, in the city of Kanaqin, whose inhabitants are mainly Kurdish, a group of policemen were on their way to Jordan for a training program. A vehicle pulled alongside their bus and asked where they were from. When Kanaqin was mentioned, those in the car began firing on the bus and 12 policemen were killed.

There are various reasons for violence against the Kurds: first of all, it is the only stable area in Iraq and there are those who want to destabilize it, like the rest of the country; furthermore, the Kurds are considered allies of the West and for this reason they are targetted for elimination.

But in all truth, this slaughter, this anti-Kurdish chauvinism reveals who is behind this violence: the old nationalistic Baathists, Arabs, who in the past, under Saddam Hussein, killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds, at least 200,000 people. The more Western governments look at the situation in Iraq, the more they think of turning away... I wonder if there is a single country in the civilized world that can accept the barbarity that exists in Iraq...All this violence keeps the economy from taking off and hits the enterprises of other countries: their citizens are kidnapped too. But instead of being afraid, the West should put pressure on those countries who support terrorism, those countries that send kamikazes, that open their borders so that Iraq is invaded by these kamikazes. Intelligence services must be coordinated among Iraq, Europe, the United States to be able to eradicate this problem of global proportions. Terrorism risks plunging us all in a world of darkness. I hope that the barbarity of kidnappings and decapitations does not reach Europe. On my part, I hope that the two kidnapped women, Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, can return home safe and sound. And that all hostages are freed...

Is not a stronger military presence needed in Iraq?

Certainly, and those who wish not to send troops could at least help to train ours, or could give support through political action. Countries like Germany can help in the field of intelligence and by putting pressure on those countries in the region that support terrorists. After all, these terrorists have their bases, their internet sites, sources of financing, media help in Europe. There is much to be done and everyone can do their part even without sending troops in a direct way.

Will it be possible to hold elections in January 2005?

We all hope so. But greater security is needed and the return of deportees must be guaranteed. The Baathist policy was to deport the Kurdish population and replace it was Arab (Sunni) immigrants. As long as the Arab colonies remain in Kurdistan, it was be difficult to organize elections: Kurds must be allowed to return to their land. For the census to be accurate, a minimum level of security is needed in the Arab areas as well. Without security, evacuees will not be able to return to Fallujia or Baquba. Following elections, no one will be able to say -- as the Arab press and Al Jazeera is doing -- that the Iraqi government has no legitimacy and is not representative. Actually, it is already the most representative government in the Arab world because it includes members from every ethnic, religious and political group. Yet, the dictatorships and the authoritarian governments of the region continue to say that the Iraqi government is not legitimate. When there was Saddam, with tanks defending the centre of power and only one community represented, that was a legitimate government. Now that everyone is represented, they say "it's not legitimate". Elections are essential so that the government can work in complete legitimacy and security.

NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

Challenging the 9/11 Report

2004-10-09T07:34:00.000-05:00

For more than two years, Sibel Edmonds (doesn't she look like Madonna?), a former FBI translator of Turkish and Turkic languages, has been warning the country of major security problems that remain unaddressed at the FBI HQ in Washington. Mrs. Edmonds has been responsible for making public a number of alarming revelations of FBI malfeasance and cover-up in matters concerning our most sensitive areas of national security and counter-terrorism.

Edmonds broke the story of the case of Melek Can Dickerson, the Turkish translator who was hired by the FBI after 9/11, despite her and her husband's records of associations with individuals and organizations that were targets of FBI investigations. Melek Can Dickerson was given a top-secret clearance and given access to numerous documents concerning terrorism investigations. Dickerson blocked investigations into suspect organizations she was involved with and, with her supervisor's approval, took hundreds of pages of top-secret documents outside the FBI to unknown recipients.

In 2002, Malek Can Dickerson and several FBI targets of investigations fled the United States. No criminal investigation has been opened into the Dickerson case, and Dickerson's supervisor, who faciliated her criminal conduct, has been promoted to supervising Arabic language units of the FBI's counterterrorism and counterintelligence investigations.

Sibel Edmonds testified before the 911 Commission, but the Commission's report does not include her explosive information, and only mentions her name in a single footnote. In an August 2, 2004 open letter to the 911 Commission, Mrs. Edmonds recounted the Dickerson case as well as several other important incidents illustrating the depth and breadth of the crisis at the FBI. Her letter stated:

"Your report omits these significant incidents, and your recommendations do not address this serious security breach and likely espionage issue. This issue needs to be investigated and prosecuted. The translation of our intelligence is being entrusted to individuals with loyalties to our enemies. Important "chit-chats" and "chatters" are being intentionally blocked from translation. Why does your report exclude this information and these serious issues despite the guidance and briefings you received? How can budget increases address and resolve this misconduct by midlevel bureaucratic management? How can the addition of an "intelligence czar" solve this problem?"

Earlier this year, Edmonds was subpoenaed by attorneys for a group of 911 families in their lawsuit against the federal government. They were seeking to have her testify concerning information she reportedly saw at FBI HQ proving senior officials knew of Al-Qaeda plans to attack the US with aircraft months before the strike. However, in April, the Bush administration obtained a court gag order preventing her from testifying.

On Monday, September 13, Sibel Edmonds held a whistleblowers press conference in Washington, D.C. bringing together various agents, analysts and other experts from various government agencies involved in national security.

She was joined at the press conference by four other former federal civil servants: Diane Kleiman, former Special Agent, U.S. Customs, John M. Cole, former Veteran Intelligence Operations Specialist, FBI, Bogdan Dzakovic, former Special Agent & Red Team Leader, FAA, and Melvin A. Goodman, former Senior Analyst/Division Manager, CIA.

In her opening comments, Sibel Edmonds called upon Congress to "refrain from narrow political considerations and to apply brakes to the race to implement the 911 Commission recommendations." This "unique opportunity to introduce salturary reform," she noted, "must not be squandered by poltically driven haste."

Edmonds further stated:

Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission's report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the Commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somewhere escaped attention. Serious problems and shortcomings within government agencies likewise were reported to the Commission but were not included in the report. The report simply does not get at the key problems within the intelligence, aviation security, and law enforcement communities. The ommissin of such serious and applicable issues and information by itself renders the report flawed, and casts doubt on the validity of many of its recommendations.

More detail to follow.

Challenging 9/11 Report-Corruption and Negligence

2004-10-09T07:30:00.000-05:00

Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America, the FBI went on a hiring binge for language translators. Special Agent John M. Cole, who was working in the FBI's Washington, D.C. HQ was assigned to do risk assessments on applicants for the translator positions.

Something in the first applicant file he picked up set of alarm bells. "One of the first things I noticed is that her father was a retired military general from a foreign power."

"He also lived six months of the year in the US and the other six months in this foreign country. I ran his name through the FBI computer and found that he had been stationed as a military attache in the US during the '70's. One of the things I knew from my years in counterrorintelligence was that every military attache from that country had proven to be an intelligence agent for that government. This was a red flag."

Special Agent Cole says he did exactly what he was supposed to do. He took the applicant file to his supervisor, recommended against hiring the applicant and suggested a further risk assessment by the counterterrorism unit. The supervisor was glad that Cole had caught the potential security problem and agreed with his evaluation. Shortly after, says Cole, he asked the supervisor if the risk assessment had been done on the applicant. He was dumbfounded at the response he received. He recounts, "I was told, "not that it matters now, she's already been hired and has just started in work in the Washington D.C. field office.'" What's more, she had been given Top Secret clearance!

"I was shocked," he says, "I couldn't believe that this obvious security risk was being rushed through withtout proper risk assessments and put in such a sensitive position." John Cole is no rookie, he is an 18-year FBI veteran with much of that time spent in counterintelligence, as well as undercover operations and counterterrorism.

But he was in for more shocks, because it got much worse. According to Cole, there were as many as 12 additional applicants, hired as language specialists, whose files he had personally inspected, that showed red flags for various reasons. These also were not properly vetted, he says. "Now remember; this was during the time period right after the Robert Hannsen case broke." He points out: "and the Bureau is insisting that it's doing everything possible to tighten security in the wake of this scandal. We saw the incredible damage that one Hannsen could cause, and yet, here we were setting outselves up for several Hannsen-type disasters in the future." Robert Hannsen, an FBI special agent with a long career in counterintelligence, was arrested in February 2001 for spying for Russia and the former Soviet Union. The total damage he caused to US security may never be known, but his case is regarded as the worst known case of foreign penetration of the FBI.

Cole says he became more and more alarmed at what he saw and repeatedly filed reports through channels warning that the Bureau was facing very serious potential security breaches. Instead of tightening security on questionable applicants, he says, "the Security Programs people started coming down on me" for continuing to bring these matters up.

He had been covering Afghanistan, Pakistan and India for the Bureau, which had become an especially important region in the terror war. Suddenly, he was transferred to the Sub-Saharan Africa desk, which was tantamount to being exiled to Siberia. Yet, even here, he discovered he could put his experience to good use. Perusing a file of a former FBI language specialist for this region, he discovered that the individual had been providing FBI information to a foreign intelligence service. This was both a crime and an enormous security breach. "I asked why a full investigation had not been initiated against this individual and why he had not been arrested, since he was still in the U.S." Cole recounts, "Again, instead of doing the obvious right thing of opening this case, they took the Sub-Sahara desk away from me."

It was obvious, says Cole, that he was suffering retaliation for "rocking the boat", which, in this case, meant simply doing his job. "For 18 years, I had gotten nothing but exceptional ratings," he notes, but now, all of a sudden, he was getting negative writeups. This is precisely what FBI Director Robert Mueller pledged would not happen in the new post-9/11 FBI.

"I will not tolerate reprisals or intimidation by any bureau employee against those who make protected disclosures, nor will I tolerate attempts to prevent the employees from making such disclosures." Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 6, 2002. "I want people in the field to tell me what is happening," he continued. "And I encourage, welcome the criticism, the insight, the suggestions, whether it be from the organization or from without the organization."

However, the Bureau's practices seem to contradict Directer Mueller's rhetoric. The cases of Special Agents John Roberts, Jane Turner, Robert Wright and Barry Carmody provide recent examples of FBI retaliation against whistleblowers. So do the cases of fBI language specialists Sibel Edmonds and Behrooz Sarshar. Edmonds, a Turkic and Arabic translator (who I mentioned earlier) insists that federal officials had specific information about the impending 9/11 attacks. Please forgive the repetition--in her August 2004 open letter to the 9/11, Edmonds charged:

More than four months prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, in April, 2001, a long-term FBI informant/asset who had been providing the bureau with information since 1990, provided two FBI agents and a translator with specific information regarding a terrorist attack...Through his contacts in Afghanistan, he received information that 1) Osama bin Laden was planning a major terrorist attack in the US targetting four or five major cities 2) the attack was going to involve airplanes 3) some of the individuals in charge of carrying out this attack were already in place in the US 4) the attack was going to be carried out soon, in a few months.

Although Mrs. Edmonds' charges have been public for more than two years, the Justice Department and FBI have asserted the rarely invoked State Secret Privilege to block the release of the Inspector General's investigation into her allegations.

"Director Mueller tells Congress that he is waiting for our Inspector General's report on the [John] Roberts case," John cole notes. "Well, the IG report confirms that the FBI has been retaliating against Roberts for exposing serious FBI misconduct. Mueller knows that but has done nothing. And he has been blocking all documents related to Sibel Edmonds' case."

Then there is Mueller's testimony before the 9/11 Commission. "It was amazing," says Cole. "Mueller made it appear that everything is rosy at the Bureau and that all its problems have been fixed or are being fixed. He stated that the FBI's top priorities are: 1) counterterrorism 2) counterintelligence and 3) training. However, what I was witenessing personally at HQ completely contradicted that. Counterintelligence and counterterrorism had become a total sham. The claim that training is now a top priority is also false. Training has actually decreased 75% since 9/11. Much of the training that is being done is worthless stuff put together by retired Bureau officials who have gotten fat contracts without competitive bidding."

What about Mueller's claim that he wanted to hear from agents? Empty public relations, says Cole. After repeatedly failing to get a response to his security concerns on the language translators, Cole went directly to Mueller. He says he hand-carried four letters to Mueller's office--two in 2002 and two in 2003--and delivered them to Mueller's secretary. "I never got a response from him--Zero. Nothing."

Well not exactly nothing. John Cole did finally get a response from his superiors, but that response was not the one he had hoped for. In January, 2004, he was notified that he was being suspended. In March he resigned from the FBI. Like all FBI special agents, John Cole solemnly swore "to support, uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic." It's an oath he takes seriously. "When you take an oath to defend your country and do the right thing, you had better mean it." he said. "And people should be held accountable when-whether through negligence or malfeasance-they violate that oath. Otherwise, what's the point of having it."

The FBI has changed since he first became a special agent, says Cole, who now works as a security analyst fot the US Air Force. "It used to be a great place to work," he says. "You really felt that you were part of a team that was doing important, rewarding work. Now it has become so corrupt and there is no accountability, the most conscientious, professional employees are often penalized, while some of the worst are promoted. The Bureau is in worse shape than ever and morale is very low. This is very dangerous for America's security."

This conviction that our country was being left wide open to terrorist attack led John Cole to join Sibel Edmonds, former US Customs Agent Diane Kleiman, FAA/TSA Special Agent Bogdad Deskovic and other federal law enforcement and intelligence agents at the September 13, 2004 Whistleblowers' press conference in Washington, D.C. These officers on the front lines of the terror war warn that, far from fixing the failures that led to 9/11, many of the 9/11 Report recommendations would do more harm than good.

"Director Mueller and the commission both talk a lot about accountability," says Cole, "but both have refused to hold anyone accountable. They simply want to reshuffle the bureaucracy, spend more money, hire more people, increase their authority--and leave the same people in charge. That's a prescription for more--and even bigger-disasters."

Corruption

Whistleblowers

Edmonds Interview

Russia, Putin and Free Speech

2004-10-09T07:25:00.000-05:00

When 'former' KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, came into power in 1999, "Russia had what approximated to an independent media," notes media critic Stephen Glover in the September 11 issue of The Spectator of London. "Now all television channels and nearly all newspapers are controlled directly or indirectly by the Kremlin....The country's last independent television channel was shut down last year on the pretext of financial insolvency."

Putin's regime reverts to Rezhnev-era censorship measures when necessary. When Izvestia asked pointed questions about the government's actions in the recent terrorist horror at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Putin reacted "by securing the dismissal of the editor of Izvestia, Raf Shakirov." Additionally, 'two Russian journalists with independent views on Chchnya were not even allowed to go to Beslan." One was arrested and jailed for five days, the other mysteriously took ill during a flight to the region after being served tea.

Another important weapon wielded by Putin against the media is the russian version of the McCain-Feingold "campaign finance reform law". Signed in 2002 by President Bush (who had promised to veto any measure of that sort that constricts freedom of speech), the law places severe restrictions on political speech--via advertisements and other public messages--that mention political candidates within an election period. This has the effect of strengthening the power of th Establishment's media cartel to shape public views of issues and candidates during the period when most Americans are most interested in them. It also works to the benefit of incumbent politicians, rather than challengers.

Russia's version of McCain-Feingold, as described by Glover, is even more draconian. "A law passed last summer threatens newspapers with closure if, during an election period, they express any opinion about a politican's policies, his campaign or his personality. Intimated by these and other new laws, many newspaper journalists practice self-censorship." Having strangled Russia's independent media in the crib, Putin is using the state-controlled media to culvitate a personality cult: "Television cameras follow Putin slavishly around Russia, portraying him in a heroic light."

John Kerry and The Fair Tax

2004-10-09T06:44:00.000-05:00

by Drew Johnson

"It's an interesting idea," George W. Bush said last month of a federal sales tax proposal to replace the income tax system that annually confounds American taxpayers. Aides downplayed that "interesting idea" within 24 hours of Bush's initially favorable comment.

The reason? A misinformed tirade against the rumored sales tax proposal by John Kerry.

A federal sales tax would entirely replace the federal income tax, thus ending the Internal Revenue Service, audits, paycheck withholdings, and the drudgery of filing tax returns. Under a sales tax, workers receive all of the money they earn. Since funds are untaxed until spent, a sales tax does not discourage savings.

Kerry's accusations, along with pleas from special interest groups intent on preserving their place of privilege in the world of tax write-offs, left a large paper trail of attacks on the idea of a federal sales tax over the last few weeks. The majority of these attacks cannot withstand the scrutiny of common sense, much less economic theory:

Fiction No. 1: A national sales tax would produce the "largest tax increase on the middle class in American history."

The facts: Economic models indicate that current government spending levels would require a federal sales tax ranging from 17-23% (depending largely on whether Social Security taxes are collected through the sales tax or continue as a paycheck withholding). These figures vary little from the 21.4% overall effective federal tax rate for 2005. All federal sales tax proposals under consideration include a universal rebate, similar to the safeguard offered by the existing standard deduction. Most proposals set the rebate at, or above, the current poverty level. For a family of four, this means that no federal sales taxes will apply on the first $18,850 spent. Additionally, the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would lower federal spending by over $10.67-billion per year. This translates into an average yearly savings of $104 for each American taxpayer.

Fiction No. 2: Small businesses will be hurt most by a national sales tax.

The facts: Since a sales tax means businesses would no longer file income tax returns, estimates project the total cost of business compliance with a national sales tax at less than $5 billion per year. This is a distinct advantage, since projected tax compliance burdens on private firms run at least $100 billion annually under the current system. (Some analysts place the total at two or three times that amount.)

This means that small business owners could reduce prices to become more competitive while expanding their own margins. Small businesses would be the first to benefit from customers with extra money in their pockets thanks to decreased tax burdens.

Fiction No. 3: Collecting a sales tax will place a stifling burden on retail sales businesses.

The facts: Administering a national sales tax would be no different from administering a state sales tax, a feat already performed by retail stores in 45 states and the District of Columbia. Mercifully, a federal sales tax ends the onerous task of preparing and filing taxes--a chore that robs Americans of at least 6.7 billion hours each year.

Fiction No. 4: Sales taxes on services are easy to elude and difficult to administer.

The facts: In addition to an income tax of up to 35%, self-employed service providers face a 15.3% payroll tax. Thus, due to its lower burden, a sales tax drastically reduces the incentive for such an individual to evade taxes. More importantly, even individuals participating in underground and black-market economic activities--people who formerly skirted their tax obligations--will bear their share of the tax burden by purchasing goods and services.

Fiction No. 5: A national sales tax will substantially increase the price of goods and services.

The facts: Currently, the prices of all goods and services offered by legitimate taxpaying businesses in the United States reflect the costs of the businesses' tax liabilities, as well as the costs of tax compliance. Under a sales tax system, the tax rate will be lower at each step of production, and the compliance cost is virtually eliminated. This means the final price for consumers, even including the federal sales tax, will increase little, if at all, from current prices.

Over Labor Day weekend, comments from the Bush Administration that the White House is looking into a flat rate income tax came as a hopeful sign. However, until Bush and his aides embrace--rather than merely contemplate--a specific plan, there is no assurance that a meaningful debate over tax reform will take place this election.

Given the possible benefits of a federal sales tax, or even a flat tax, President Bush should stand in firm support of the idea. Considering a sales tax demonstrates that the administration recognizes the current income tax system is broken and desperately needs a comprehensive fix. The President should reconsider his quick dismissal of this "interesting idea."

Learn more and join the grassroots movement at http://www.fairtax.org

Jihadis are celebrating

2004-10-08T18:02:00.000-05:00

100 people dead in Israel, dozens and dozens are wounded. Initially they said this was a gas explosion. This is definitely a terrorist act and no gas explosion!!!

Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group) claims responsibility for the explosion at the Taba hotel, carried out in revenge for the Palestinian and Arab martyrs dying in Palestine and Iraq," said an anonymous tipster "Jamaa will carry out a series of martyr operations (suicide attacks) during the month of Ramadan to avenge these martyrs," he said. The holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins in mid-October.

This is an orchestrated failure of intelligence. They're very good at what they do well. KGB, DGI, all the agencies of the world have contact with each other.

Iran's nukes-Israel's on the case-We have sat glibly in this country, not recognizing that the day when these events start to happen, it will be everywhere.

November will be the point of no return for taking out the Iranian nuclear program. That phrase "the point of no return" means trouble.

We couldn't justify a pre-emptive strike on CIA information after the 9/11 reports of problems with intelligence...I don't believe there was any problem with intelligence, this is an orchestrated failure-ON PURPOSE.

Tonight, Laura Mansfield is very busy on the Jihadi forums, translating their of the bombing...

http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/

As the death toll continues to rise in the attacks on the resorts in Sinai, the reaction on the Arabic language forums has been swift and predicably very much anti-Israeli.

From the Hesbah Forum,

NightJourney 62 writes: Allah is the greatest Allah is the greatest. Three explosions and the death of 23 Zionist pigs.

The Egyptian police speak of another explosion in the area of Nuweiba between Taba and Sharm Al-Sheikh, and Cairo says that 23 Israelis were killed in the first explosion at the Hilton Hotel in Taba.

(quoting a news source)

A strong explosion in a hotel in Taba occupied by Israelis.

A strong explosion shook a hotel where Israeli tourists stay in the city of Taba, located on the Egyptian side of the borders with Israel. The initial reports report that there are large numbers of victims due to the explosion, but the cause is not know even though initial reports were that it came from a gas leak.

In a followup post, NightJourney 62 writes: Allah is the greatest, all praise be to Allah.
The number of dead and injured rose in the explosion and according to sources in the hospital at Taba. Al Jazeera reports that 29 Zionists are dead and more than 100 injured.

It is clear; may Allah grant us victory, and that it be delivered so that the eyes of Allah’s enemies shed tears and taste what they have fed to our sons in Palestine. It is worth noting that Night Journey 62 claims to be female.

Meanwhile, on the Ansar forum, the response is uniform. One poster after another is posting messages praising Allah, saying “Allah Akbar”.

On the Islah forum, one poster claims that the explosion in Taba was intense enough to be felt (or heard) in Saudi Arabia. A poster known as Non-Arab Full Moon says Oh Allah make this day a curse for the sons of Zion and their followers.

Creator of News claims that the explosion at the Hilton were the result of twin suicide bombers.
Samira el Azzdi posts Oh Allah, we want more of these blessed operations.

Rather Scandalous Documents

2004-10-08T17:48:00.000-05:00

Some insight into the Rather scandalous documents on "60 Minutes":

++"In Dan Rather's defense, it must be confessed, he is simply a newsreader. Now that Walter Cronkite is retired, Rather is TV's real-life Ted Baxter without Baxter's quiet dignity. No one would ever suggest that he has any role in the content of his broadcast." --Ann Coulter

++ "CBS's Andy Rooney once called Dan Rather 'transparently liberal' and advised him to 'be more careful.' It appears Rather should have listened." --Larry Elder

++ "The CBS story is a hoax and a fraud, and a cheap and sloppy one at that. It boggles the mind that Dan Rather and CBS continue to defend it. ... The ultimate excuse came from Rather himself, insisting his critics have to prove him wrong: 'Until someone shows me definitive proof that they are not, I don't see any reason to carry on a conversation with the professional rumor mill.' Mr. Rather, you have it completely backward. The responsibility is yours to get it right in the first place." --Brent Bozell

++ "End-of-life issues are always difficult for any family, and the once-great news division of a once-great network is critically ill and possibly beyond resuscitation." --Cal Thomas

++ "Dan Rather, Professional Journalist, and CBS News, Professional News Network, want us to keep believing that they are the ordained purveyors of truth. ... They are the information gatekeepers with unparalleled judgment, dedicated to the high principles of The Craft of Journalism, unwavering in their crusade for the public interest. As the saying goes in the blogosphere: Bwah-hah-hah." --Michelle Malkin

++ "How long before they start including a laugh track in the 'CBS Evening News'? Each night anchor Dan Rather appears to offer an increasingly hilarious defense of his reliance on fraudulent documents for last week's abortive hit piece against President Bush." --James Taranto

++ "A CBS spokeswoman told the [Washington] Post: 'In the end, the gist is that it's inconclusive. People are coming down on both sides, which is to be expected when you're dealing with copies of documents.' Translation: We can't prove the source is true, but you can't prove it's not. Well, since this is the new standard, I would like to announce my next column topic right now: Dan Rather has eaten fifteen German Shepherds in the last year alone and he considers himself the Warrior King of the planet Blarnack. I have just printed out documents that back up my story. It is for CBS to prove me wrong." --Jonah Goldberg

Kerry Lies About Medicare

2004-10-08T04:55:00.000-05:00

Have you seen the John Kerry commercial in which George Bush pledges to help Seniors on Medicare and "the very next day imposes a 17% premium increase - the biggest in history"?

That ad is a stroke of genius on Kerry's part and will surely gain him many votes among the uninformed.

As it turns out, the 17% increase was not imposed by President Bush but was mandated by the "balanced budget agreement" signed by President Clinton, and was scheduled to come into effect now, i.e., during the Bush administration.

President Bush had no authority to reverse what had been voted into law by Congress, including Senator Kerry, during the Clinton administration.

LtCol Willy Buhl, The Thundering Third, Writing From Iraq

2004-10-07T19:21:00.000-05:00

Dear Families and Friends of the Thundering Third,

Greetings again from Camp Abu Ghurayb. This is my fifth letter to you as we prepare to begin the month of October, and the fourth month of our deployment to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom II. I am pleased to report that our great Battalion has continued to perform its duties in Iraq with a high degree of combat efficiency in accordance with the legacy of valor and professionalism we inherited from our Veteran forebears of WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Operation Desert Storm, and Somalia.

"Your" Battalion is maintaining the initiative, aggressively patrolling 24-hours a day across our assigned area of operations. We continue to experience success in all assigned missions and have experienced a number of firsts on the small unit tactical level since I last reported to you. Of note, we have recently caught three different IED emplacing teams, killing one terrorist when he attempted to forcibly recover a pistol taken from him by India Company Marines. This was the last move he ever made, as a well trained Marine used one round to eliminate the threat to his buddy's safety. Another man, who was also caught on scene, wisely decided to desist and was detained safely, according to our standard operating procedures. The India Marines, in the midst of a mounted combat patrol, astutely recognized suspicious roadside activity at night and caught these men in the act of burying the IEDs. India's men also interrupted the late night work of a team of six IED planters who were observed placing artillery rounds in the ground along the roadside in an area commonly targeted by IEDs. The Marines engaged immediately, killing two men. The others abandoned their shovels and ran into complex terrain beyond the road.

Exploiting the site, the Marines found two buried artillery shells with wires and remote detonating systems.A similar success occurred a couple of weeks ago when a Headquarters Company ambush patrol caught two men in the early morning hours with suspicious bags in their hands walking along the roadside. The concealed patrol uncovered and yelled in Arabic, telling the suspects to halt. They carefully approached and subsequent search revealed rolls of wire and activation devices used to detonate IEDs. We detained these men and learned through later questioning where the explosives were located that they were going to wire for detonation. Indeed, the information provided by these men led us to several buried 155mm artillery shells, which were safely destroyed by our motivated combat engineers. There have been many other tactical successes like the ones I just described, in missions ranging from but not limited to ambushes, counter IED and indirect fire patrols, locating terrorist arms and ordnance caches, renovating schools in time for the new school term, and training Iraqi Security Forces...whether in contact with the enemy or with friendly people seeking a better life, your Marines and Sailors are doing great things out here every day.

As you may have heard from your loved ones out here, daily temperatures have thankfully begun to drop. Although we continue to experience days with temperatures above 100F, it has been noticeably cooler, particularly at night and in the early mornings. After working hard all day on the move and then settling into an ambush site at night with a damp skivvy top, it can actually get a bit chilly for our Devil Dogs. No one is complaining...as we put the often brutally hot weather of the past few months behind us, I don't think that any member of the Thundering Third will ever forget his "balmy" summer of 2004 in Iraq.

The time for rotation of forces who began their deployment in February is upon us. Accordingly, the Thundering Third recently said farewell to the finest Regimental Commander most Marines and Sailors will ever have the privilege of serving under, Colonel John Toolan, USMC. In an emotional farewell, the Battalion presented our outgoing CO with a couple of hand crafted plaques made by his Marines. Colonel Toolan, or "Inchon Six" as he is affectionately referred to in 3/1, often referred to our Battalion as "the sharpest knife in his drawer". Appropriately, we presented him a plaque with a captured SKS bayonet affixed and an Arabic quote that stated, "the knife can still cut, even when sheathed". Col Toolan Sir, we will not forget your inspiring leadership, tactical proficiency, words of wisdom and patience, great humor, caring spirit, and deep love for your Marines and Sailors. We all wish Colonel Toolan, his Lady Helen, and the rest of the Toolan Clan continued success in their next assignment, where Colonel Toolan will continue to teach, coach, and mentor LtCols and Majors from around the world as Director of Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia. Colonel Toolan passed the Regimental Colors to Colonel Larry Nicholson, who was hurt on his first day of command and had to relinquish command to Colonel Mike Shupp, who was originally slated to command our regiment but had to delay due to a family illness. Our thoughts and prayers are with Colonel Nicholson and his family for a speedy return to full duty and the command opportunity he so richly deserves. We are proud to welcome Colonel Shupp, the new "Inchon Six", his Lady, Sherrye, and their family aboard our Regimental Family.

A number of our attachments have also recently said farewell to their Brothers in the Thundering Third. Our Combat Engineer Platoon, led by 1stLt Korey Mullins, and GySgt Shawn Hannah have successfully completed a seven month tour in Iraq. Their support of 3/1 and 1/5 has been superb. SgtMajor Sax and I had the privilege of walking patrol with these incredible Marines and Sailors and you will not find any finer in our great Marine Corps. We also said farewell to a superb Truck Platoon, led by 1stLt Mike Ligouri and GySgt Richard Hathaway, from our cannon cocker brethren in the 11th Marines. We will also miss these great Marines and Sailors - men who did everything asked of them and more for Country and Corps, logging thousands of safe road miles throughout Kuwait and Iraq over their deployment.

We also wished a fond farewell to our Civil Affairs (CA) Team, led by Major Larry Kaifesh and GySgt Mark Kline. Our CA Team has proven to be the Battalion's number one fire support asset as we continue our work to rebuild Iraq, and bring water, power, sanitation and other essentials to the people living in our area of operations. Many of these people have never had any of the aforementioned services before in their lives. The people of the City of Nasser Wa Salaam (NWS) have been particularly appreciative. These people are predominantly Shia in their Muslim preference. They were ignored by the Saddam regime and brought in from southern Iraq to work in local steel and cement factories as laborers. The Thundering Third, through the hard work of our Civil Affairs team and the Marines and Sailors of Lima Company have made great changes in NWS. The great work done by Major Kaifesh and GySgt Kline and their men, and the friendships they made here will be remembered for a long time to come (some of you may have seen the well written article on our CA Team published on the USMC Official Website and the Camp Pendleton Scout's 9 Sept issue). Congratulations to these superb Marines who performed magnificently day in and day out to make Iraq a better place, and to bring freedom to the Iraqi People. May I also offer a note of thanks on behalf of the Commandant of the Marine Corps and our Battalion to the families of these men, who sacrificed at home over the past seven months to enable their loved ones to serve our Nation overseas in a time of war - our men couldn't accomplish the things that they have without you behind them.

With all the recent farewells came corresponding "welcome aboard" greetings. Our new Combat Engineers are led by Capt Mike Goldstein and GySgt Dewayne Walters. Our Combat Truck Platoon is led by Major George Hanlon and GySgt Mike Wittrock. All of our new Marines and Sailors hail from the fighting 14th Marines, based in the great State of Texas. Well aware of the incredible reputation held by our Brothers in the 4th Marine Division, we are honored and privileged to serve with them here in Iraq.

After a solid turn-over with their predecessors, these new members of the Thundering Third have hit the ground running and rolling, and are performing at the "3/1 Standard" in combat. Our new CA Team is led by CWO Gerald "Godfather" Reese, and SSgts Dan Mercado and Jason Mapel. These men lead a fresh, motivated crew of Marines and a Navy Corpsman, who have continued the great work of Major Kaifesh and his "Rough Riders" without missing a beat.

As promised in my last letter, I want to highlight some key points about the new Iraqi Army and the Specialized Special Forces that have been attached to us and are doing a tremendous job alongside our Marines and Sailors. Our success with the Iraqi National Guard (ING) has been mixed.

In the City of Al Karmah, a satellite city of Fallujah, pressure from terrorists and insurgents has been great on the local population. This pressure has translated into a significantly reduced level of effectiveness in our ING Company there. At the forefront of our efforts in Al Karmah, Lt Don Toscano and SSgt Nick Fox and their Combined Action Platoon (CAP) Marines from Weapons/George Company have performed above and beyond the call of duty and are making progress. These men have become part of an experiment created during the Vietnam War, where the CAP concept was initially formed (some might argue, however, that Marines have been performing missions like this since the days when Lt Chesty Puller and GySgt "Iron Man" Lee were marching as provisional Nicaraguan National Guard Officers through the steaming Nicaraguan jungle, chasing a terrorist bandit named Sandino and his cronies back in the early part of our last Century).

While the Al Karmah ING continues to develop, we have achieved marked success with India Company of the ING to the east in Nasser Wa Salaam. In fact, India Company is easily among the most successful ING Company in the Al Anbar Province. Cooperative efforts between our Combined Action Platoon (CAP), led by 1stLt Zach Iscol and his Weapons/George Marines (with support from Lima Company) have facilitated the creation of a very capable Iraqi ING Company led by very patriotic and dedicated Iraqi Officers, SNCOs, and NCOs. This unit has had a number of successes to date, including killing and capturing insurgents, locating caches and IEDs, etc.

A testament to the success achieved by our Marines and Sailors at India Base is the many dignitaries have visited over the past two months to see what they are all about. These dignitaries have included our Commandant and Assistant Commandant, and a former Commandant, who is currently the Supreme Allied Commander Europe. These distinguished gentlemen, and many other senior officers, have continuously demonstrated support of our efforts to create a viable Iraqi Security Force, which will assume the mission of security in Iraq upon our departure. I was on the range with them today and marveled at the level of proficiency they demonstrated in dry fire and movement training. Working side by side with Marines who live with them and know all of their Iraqi names and can give them basic commands and encouragement in Arabic, these men moved with aggressive enthusiasm and all stated that they are ready to go to Fallujah if called upon. This particularly special type of duty has matured our young Marines beyond their pay grades... looking across at the men who surrounded me for a few remarks, I couldn't help but think that I was looking at a group of NCOs instead of PFCs and LCpls with just a couple of Cpls in a crowd of over 20 men.

Your Marines are doing great things out here for Country, Corps, and the people of Iraq. We are also working with the Iraqi Specialized Special Forces (ISSF), led by an incredible officer, BGen Khalis. General Khalis is the former commander of the Iraqi Special Forces, where he commanded at every level up to Brigade and was director of the Special Forces Academy and Command and Staff College. This charismatic and exceptionally patriotic officer has formed two battalions from the old Iraqi Army. He has done this by carefully vetting and selecting his leaders for the challenges at hand. BGen Khalis has selected some superlative officers and soldiers, and the ISSF we are working with in the Thundering Third are superb Soldiers. These men share every hardship with us, are out patrolling everywhere we are, and have already shed their blood at our sides. They are particularly valuable at recognizing situations and especially people that are out of the ordinary (reminiscent of the old British expression, "absence of the normal, presence of the abnormal"). Unlike their ING counterparts, the ISSF are mainly composed of career special forces soldiers who received specialized training and were part of a small, elite group during the Saddam period. These men are from over 50 separate tribes across Iraq and have no political stance other than to support the Interim Iraqi Government. I would respectfully disagree with Ms. Ozernoy in her article below regarding the term "militia" as these men are career professionals who have returned to Army service in defense of their nation.

What is perhaps most laudable about all of the Iraqi Security Forces personnel, is the fact that every one of these men faces grave and imminent danger to their families as they carry out their duties. Indeed, BGen Khalis' family was abducted some weeks back by terrorists, who set fire and placed explosives at his home after taking his family away. Efforts to recover them are ongoing and they remain in our thoughts and prayers every day. Major Awda, our India Base ING Company Commander was also attacked by terrorists with automatic weapons on his way to his command post at India Base. Major Awda keeps his son with him at all times to ensure his safety when he is not at home. The terrorists here are ruthless, savage, and do not play by any rules. It takes an extraordinary level of sacrifice, determination, and heroism that most Americans cannot imagine to serve in the Iraqi Security Forces and government. Men like BGen Khalis and Major Awda, and many others, are serving in these conditions every day to bring freedom to their fellow Iraqis (please see the attached news article below about our brothers in the Iraqi Special Forces).

As stated at the beginning of my letter, all of our companies are doing great work here. Sgt Major Ed Sax and I want to take a moment to recognize a few standouts from each:

Kilo Company, the "Spartans", celebrated the combat meritorious promotions of Cpl's James A. Flattery and Jose F. Sanchez. Sergeant John M. Doyle also earned his Sergeant's stripes meritoriously in combat. SSgt Select Travis M. Fields, was selected on the most recent promotion board at Headquarters Marine Corps. Sergeant Jonathon C. Scarfe has been selected to attend university and earn his 2d Lieutenant's bars at OCS. The men of Kilo are proven adept at all tactical tasks assigned and have maintained an aggressive and persistent focus despite a high operational tempo. Among the many caches and IEDs they've discovered, they recently detained several high value targeted individuals working against Iraqi and Coalition Forces in targeted raids.

India Company the "Raiders" have combat meritorious Cpl Sammie D. Jackson, and LCpl's Cody M. Kyle and Alejandro Rodriguez. LCpl Justin M. Thompson was selected as the Bn's Marine of the Quarter. We also had two outstanding Sgts, Lawrence T. Love and Michael A. Vaz, selected for promotion to Staff Sergeant. India Company, continues to set a standard for sturdy Marines and Sailors focused on mission accomplishment. As described in the opening lines of this letter, they have identified IEDs, discovered weapons and explosives caches, and have captured a number of dangerous terrorists with incriminating materials, in addition to the many other combat tasks associated with the duties of a rifle company in Iraq.

Lima Company combat meritorious promotions include Cpl William J. Higgins, LCpl Mathew S. Sandy, and Private First Class Ryan O. Easton. Recently they conducted operations in our southern area of operations is support of US Special Forces, which resulted in numerous enemy killed, weapons captured and a bomb making factory destroyed. The "Warriors" of Lima Company continue to execute all assigned missions with esprit and professionalism.

Wpns/George combat promotions include Sgt John P. Monahan, Cpl Steven C. Gillespie, and LCpl's Jay G. Phillips and Cameran J. Urias. Cpl Mathew C. Bassett was selected as the Battalion NCO of the quarter. Sgt Christopher P Lopez was selected for promotion to Staff Sergeant. He has also done incredible work as a Combined Anti-Armor Section Leader in Combat. Our Weapons/George Marines continue to train Iraqi Security Forces, patrol the roads of our sector, fire mortars, heavy machine guns, TOW and Javelin missiles in support of combat operations, and a host of other mission profiles related to our duties here. Also, Corporal Dylan R. Collins, of Cap Delta / 81's Plt, has been selected to attend university and earn his 2d Lieutenant's bars at OCS.

Headquarters Company continues to superbly support the entire Battalion and is involved in every operation we conduct in some regard. Some of the Company standouts over the past month have been Chief Richard Tomlinson, who pinned on his new Anchors in a classy promotion ceremony, HM1's (FMF) Brian Dike and Rick Good who earned their Fleet Marine Force Warfare Pins, Cpl's Curtus Hartsell, from our Communications Plt and Cpl Anthony R. Roberts from our Supply Section earned combat meritorious promotions to Corporal, LCpl's Amado H. Sosa from our Combat Administration Section, and Marshall C. Lewis from our Communications Plt earned a combat meritorious promotions to Lance Corporal, Sgt Nathan Osowski who earned the opportunity to attend university and earn a commission as a 2d Lt in the Marine Enlisted Commissioning and Education Program, and Sgt Cayleu Wojcik, who was selected for Staff Sergeant. Meanwhile, Headquarters Company continues to do all the things required to keep our rifle and weapons companies in the attack, as well as our attachments.

The men described above are standouts in a reinforced infantry battalion full of standouts. It is one of my great privileges and pleasures in life to see these men earn combat promotions, NCO and Marine of the Quarter honors, and earn additional qualifications while participating in combat operations. I can well imagine the pride felt by the families of the above listed superlative Marines, who are serving their country most honorably in a time of war.

Morale and Welfare Recreation Center Update - thanks to continued generous donations from great Americans back home, GySgt Howard Payne, and his great Headquarters Company Marines have continued work on our battalion recreation center known as the "Bull Pen". Our Marines and Sailors are relaxing inside the cool movie lounge, watching satellite TV or movies on a plasma screen, with computer games and an ever increasing library, loaded with books and magazines and board games.

Large quantities of mail and packages continue to arrive and are greatly appreciated. Cpl Dick Rogge, a US Marine WWII Veteran and career G-Man, has sent us enough cans of Virginia Diner Peanuts to supply the entire Regimental Combat Team! Cpl Rogge recently fractured his leg back in Westlake Village, and the men of the Thundering Third wish him a speedy return to full duty. Col Clark Henry (a Thundering Third Veteran of Chosin Reservoir) and his Lady recently sent multiple boxes of Gatorade packs, which have been well received by our men across the Battalion's battle space. Captain Seamus Garrahy out in historic Gettysburg continues to keep the Thundering Third stocked with his "Gung Ho" Sauce - thank you Sir! Sgt and Mrs. Dan Frydrychowski, have sent half of San Clemente's Ralph's Supermarket shelves to us out here - they have a care package operation in their garage that is the envy of the Marine Corps Logistics Depot at Barstow. Indeed, we've received all kinds of great packages full of food, books, and hygiene items that all go to good use. SgtMajor Ed Sax has flash backs to his company gunnery sergeant days and never gets tired of distributing these items for delivery to our Marines, and sometimes to Iraqi children. I want to repeat that I cannot tell you how good it feels to know how many people are behind us back home. These packages and the inspiring messages contained within really make a great difference to our Marines and Sailors... all are deeply, deeply appreciated.

Like their forebears in the Thundering Third from WWII (15 Feb 42) to present, our Marines and Sailors have continued to serve with fortitude in the face of adversity. As you must know, we continue to sustain casualties here in Iraq. Due to great combat leadership and training, a high percentage of our wounded are returning to duty. Unfortunately, as noted in previous letters home and the comments above, we have had a few men hurt enough to be medevaced back to the USA. On this note, our Marines and Sailors continue to be blessed with visits by a number of the Battalion's Distinguished Veterans. These visits mean the world to our men and their families, and mean the world to the rest of us in Iraq, knowing that our lads are being well cared for in the rear. If any of our Battalion Families or Friends would like to visit wounded men in the Camp Pendleton area or on the east coast at Bethesda, please contact Gunnery Sergeant (Select) Ray Ortiz, at the 3/1 Rear Command…It is also my sad duty to report to you that we have lost three of our brother Marines killed in action here in Iraq that were close to many men in the Thundering Third. LtCol Kevin Shea, our Regimental Communications Officer, Corporal Steven A. Rintimaki, a TOW Gunner from Weapons/George Company, and Lance Michael J. Allred from Fox Company 2/1, who was a former Thundering Third Battalion Color Sergeant and 3/1 Veteran of OIF I. All of these men gave their lives for their brother Marines and Sailors here, and for all Americans in defense of the freedoms we are all privileged to enjoy. America owes these Marines and their families an endless debt of gratitude. They are greatly missed by their brothers here and by their families back home. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their Families. We continue the mission we began here together, as they would have wanted. I also want to recognize the loss Mr. Hajji Kameel, our Battalion's senior interpreter. Hajji Kameel, was a very compassionate and distinguished senior gentleman, who learned English working with British managers at the Iraqi National Oil Company in the years immediately following WWII.

Our brother member of the Thundering Third was killed in Baghdad during his off duty time.

We held an emotional memorial service with all available interpreters and many members of the Battalion to remember him. One of our young Corporals described how Hajji Kameel would never wear body armor or a helmet when out on the often dangerous roads of Iraq. On the road early every day with the Civil Affairs Team, the Corporal said that he used to enjoy watching Kameel "stare out the window, sniffing the cool morning dawn of freedom". This service was filmed and a copy was delivered to Kameel's family in Baghdad with condolences from the Thundering Third. Hajji Kameel is greatly missed by all of us, and his family is in our thoughts and prayers. The Koran reads, "From God we are delivered to the earth, and to God we return".

I will conclude this letter with all of our best wishes to you at home, especially to the great Ladies who continue to do great things in our Thundering Third Key Volunteer Network. A number of family related events have occurred over the past several months back in the USA, and our Key Volunteers have been there for our Battalion Families in EVERY circumstance. I do not have the words to express how important the compassionate work our Ladies are doing is for all of our Marines and Sailors and their families. Ladies, THANK YOU from all of us forward deployed for the continued superlative support - we all cannot wait to be home with you again soon.

As time permits, I will write again. I hope that this update has provided you with an insight into the Battalion's recent accomplishments and progress. In addition to your support for your Marines and Sailors over here, I also respectfully ask that you keep the families of our lost and wounded Marines and Sailors in your thoughts and prayers. The 3d Bn, 1st Marines honors the sacrifice of Corporal Stephen Rintamaki, Lance Corporal Michael Allred, and LtCol Kevin Shea, our RCT-1 Communications Officer, and Mr. Hajji Kameel, who are gone but never forgotten. John 15:13 "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."

God Bless and Semper Fidelis,LtCol Willy Buhl

Here is the link to the US News and World Report article that LtCol Buhl refers to in his letter.

Allawi-Irrefutable Evidence That War In Iraq Is Justified

2004-10-07T18:41:00.000-05:00

Interesting news coming out of the Congressional address by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq as irrefutable evidence that the invasion of his country was justified and that Bush administration policy there was working, hoping to defuse a growing campaign-season debate over the course of events in Iraq.

The media is in general saying that Bush's people wrote his speech for him.

"Today's speech by Prime Minister Allawi is proof of the tremendous progress in Iraq," said Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the No. 3 Republican in the House. "For Iraq's detractors, naysayers and critics, Mr. Allawi laid out a firsthand account of the positive developments in his country."

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, said Mr. Allawi "conveyed clearly what all Americans should know — that we are winning the war on terror, reconstruction efforts in Iraq are ongoing, and millions of people now live with optimism and the hope for a better life."

But some Democrats said that Republicans, worried about the potential political consequences of continued violence and loss of American troops, are simply trying to put a positive pre-election face on what is going on in Iraq and are misleading the American public in the process.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he welcomed the prime minister but that Mr. Allawi had an enormous challenge in governing in Iraq. "I believe that challenge has been made far more difficult by the continued mistakes and persistent miscalculations of the Bush administration," Mr. Kennedy said. "Our policies are failing and we need to correct course."

Kerry says Allawi doesn't know what he's talking about. But who pays attention to a weather vane, anyway? It's just 'blowin' in the wind'.

Mr. Allawi's appearance comes at a time when American media is doing a virtual smear on the war in Iraq, magnifying the violence there, but Allawai said violence is the price of building of democracy.

"I can tell you now, they will not succeed,'' Allawi told a joint meeting of Congress before White House talks with President George W. Bush. "The insurgency in Iraq is destructive but small, and it will not resonate" with Iraqis, he said. "Elections will be held on time in January," he said.

"Reconstructing a nation whose basic human institutions have been torn asunder by a brutal dictator is hard, painful work," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said.

Know The Enemy-Jihadis

2004-10-06T15:32:00.000-05:00

Did anyone notice when the media began referring to the KGB as the Russian Security Police? A week or so ago, David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times, wrote the following syndicated column:

Cult of death needs to be recognized, not explained away.

We’ve been forced to witness the massacre of innocents. In New York, Madrid, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Baghdad and Bali, we have seen thousands of people destroyed while going about the daily activities of life.

We’ve been forced to endure the massacre of children. Whether it’s teenagers outside an Israeli disco or students in Beslan, Russia, we’ve seen kids singled out as special targets.

We should be now have become used to the death cult that is thriving at the fringes of the Muslim world. This is the cult of people who are proud to declare, “You love life, but we love death.” This is the cult that sent waves of defenseless children to be mowed down on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq war, which trains kindergartners to become bombs, which fetishizes death, which sends people off joyfully to commit mass murder.

This cult attaches itself to a political cause but parasitically strangles it. The death cult has strangled the dream of a Palestinian state. The suicide bombers have not brought peace to Palestine; they’ve brought reprisals. The car bombers are not pushing the U.S. out of Iraq; they’re forcing us to stay longer. The death cult is now strangling the Chechen cause, and will bring not independence but blood.

But that’s the idea. Because the death cult is not really about the cause it purports to serve. It’s about the sheer pleasure of killing and dying.

It’s about massacring people while in a state of spiritual loftiness. It’s about experiencing the total freedom of barbarism – freedom even from human nature, which says, Love children, and love life. It’s about the joy of sadism and suicide.

We should be used to this pathological mass movement by now. We should be able to talk about such things. Yet when you look at the Western reaction to the Beslan massacres, you see people quick to divert their attention away from the core horror of this act, as if to say: We don’t want to acknowledge those parts of human nature that were on display in Beslan. Something here, if thought about too deeply, undermines the categories we use to live our lives, undermines our faith in the essential goodness of human beings.

Three years after Sept. 11 too many people have become experts at averting their eyes. If you look at the editorials and public pronouncements made in response to Beslan, you see that they glide over the perpetrators of this act and search for more conventional, more easily comprehensible, targets for their rage.

The Boston Globe editorial, which was typical of the American journalistic response, made two quick references to the barbarity of the terrorists, but then quickly veered off with long passages condemning Putin and various Russian policy errors.

The Dutch Foreign Minister, Bernard Bot, speaking on behalf of the European Union, declared: “All countries in the world need to work together to prevent tragedies like this. But we would also like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened.”

It wasn’t a tragedy. It was a carefully planned mass murder operation. And it wasn’t Russian authorities who stuffed basketball nets with explosives and shot children in the back as they tried to run away.

Whatever horrors the Russians have perpetrated upon the Chechens, whatever their ineptitude in responding to the attack, the essential nature of this act was in the act itself. It was the fact that a team of human beings could go into a school, live with hundreds of children for a few days, look them in the eyes and hear their cries, and then blow them up.

Dissertations will be written about the euphemisms the media used to describe these murderers. They were called “separatists” and “hostage-takers.” Three years after Sept. 11, many are still apparently unable to talk about this evil. They still try to rationalize terror. What drives the terrorists to do this? What are they trying to achieve?

They’re still victims of the delusion that Paul Berman diagnosed after Sept. 11: “It was the belief that, in the modern world, even the enemies of reason cannot by the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable.”

This death cult has no reason and is beyond negotiation. This is what makes it so frightening. This is what causes so many to engage in a sort of mental diversion. They don’t want to confront this horror. So they rush off in search of more comprehensible things to hate.

If Brooks were more familiar with Scripture, he would know there is NO “essential goodness of human beings,” but that the human heart “is desperately wicked” & in us “dwells no good thing.” In these acts, we are seeing man’s old sin nature on display. What is new in this is the determination to destroy the industrialized world, which they see as a refutation of the Quran, or die trying. They think they will go to Heaven if they die trying.

This is not a "cult of death", this is true Islam. Whitewash it however you wish; they are merely following what is written in the Quran. "Kill the unbelievers wherever you see them"

They are supreme fatalists, thinking that God controls every little thing on Earth, that He initiates the fall of each leaf, etc. As a result, one would think that three years of losses (at least 30,000 “jihadists” have died) would convince them that their concept of God is wrong and that, just perhaps, God does not favor their “jihad.” If God really favored their “jihad,” each day since Sept. 11 would have seen greater death & destruction in the Western world than that which occurred on Sept. 11.

Politicizing the Pay Gap-Equal Pay for Equal Work

2004-10-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

This has been a lefty leftist issue for the feminists as long as I can remember, and I'm sick of it. BTW, I not only hate her politics, but she's a dog. Nevermind the glamorama glitz pics; with a little airbrushing, makeup, lighting, and a good photographer, you can turn the wicked witch of the west into Princess Di.

Click here

Anyway, let's get on with the subject at hand, I digress. Abortion isn't the only issue that the Billary Squad squawks about. In the "March for Women's Lives" in Washington, Hillary spoke, "This administration is filled with people who...claim the pay gap between women and men is phony..." The term "pay gap" refers to the statistical observation that American women make 77 cents to every dollar earned by American men. For decades, militant feminists have maintained that the pay gap can only be explained by systematic workplace discrimination that puts less value on work done by women. But it's actually a rhetorical contrivance deployed in the service of an anti-free market agenda.

In Appleton, Wisconsin, an assistant business editor chimed in with a column that included the following remarks: "Before seeing those numbers, I really thought women and men who do the same job would receive the same pay. For example, at most businesses, receptionists--who are typically women--are paid less than delivery personnel or those who work in the warehouse, who are typically men. I'm sorry, but that's just not right. Is a receptionist's work any less of value than someone who works in a warehouse?"

There is an obvious contradiction between the first sentence and the example she used in the next sentence. So Brian Farmer called her on the phone, and their conversation went something like this.

"Why should anyone be upset about the pay gap?" Brian asked.

She replied, "Because men and women should be treated as equals."

"But the types of jobs done by women aren't always the same as those done by men," Brian countered.

"That doesn't mean that discriminating doesn't exist," she rebutted.

Pointing out her flawed reasoning, when she used an example of two different jobs to support her arguments that men and women should get the same pay for the same job, Brian then asked, "If the receptionist wants the same pay for the same job, Brian then asked, "If the receptionist wants to make more money, why doesn't she just apply for a job in the warehouse?"

"Look," she said, "why don't you just write a letter for the op-ed page?"

We couldn't help but recall a line from an old '80's tune: "Put 'em under pressure and you watch them fall apart."

In any case, who do YOU think should decide how much a receptionist is worth compared to a warehouse worker--the government or the free market? And why should we believe that there would be no discrimination if we were to leave it up to the government to decide?

Any study of the pay gap and the reasons for its existence comes up with the following:

Women leave the labor force for longer periods of time, primarily to bear and raise children. This slows career development, and the promotions and pay increases that go with enhanced work experience.
Men are generally physically stronger than women, so they domincate employment in fields where the work is physically demanding (e.g., heavy industry, mining, construction) and where there is a greater chance of physical injury. These types of jobs command higher wages to compensate for the greater risk of bodily harm.
Women work fewer hours per year, because more women work part-time, and more men work at jobs that are not only full-time, but offer overtime pay.
Women choose certain lower paying occupations for a variety of reasons not related to pay, such as status and workplace environment. For example, most women prefer to be secretaries, rather than auto mechanics, even though auto machanics generally make more money.

What critics want us to believe is that the pay gap is a symptom of a despicable social problem. Namely, gender discrimination in the workplace. But I haven't heard the answer to this very simple question: If such discrimination really exists, and a business could hire a woman to do a job for significantly less money than it would pay a man, why would any intelligent employer hire a man? It should be obvious that the free market competition would quickly eliminate any pay premium based on gender.

Why, then, do some people still want us to believe that the pay gap is due to job market discrimination against women? The answer is that some groups in society would benefit from policies that could be implemented, based on the assumption that such discrimination actually existed.

Comparable worth, pay equity, has been the most popular policy proposal put forward by feminists. It is based on the idea that wages and salaries should be calculated by the government on a scale of socioeconomic values that transcends the traditional economic forces of supply and demand. Each job is considered to have an intrinsic value to an employer, which proponents claim can be objectively determined. Some states actually attempted to implement comparable worth policies during the '80's, but the courts rejected them as a remedy for the alleged discrimination. Recent events show, though, those who want to expand the role of government in the workplace are not going to let this matter rest.

Anti-American Press Corps In Baghdad

2004-10-06T14:01:00.000-05:00

“To an amazing degree,” New York Post embedded reporter Jonathan Foreman documented in a piece for the May 12 edition of the Weekly Standard, “the Baghdad based press corps avoids writing about or filming the friendly dealings between U.S. forces here and the local population most likely because to do so would require them to report the extravagant expressions of gratitude that accompany every such encounter.”

Foreman detailed how reporters for U.S. media outlets have exaggerated or distorted the level of looting and destruction in Baghdad -- and he named names. Foreman recalled: “The Associated Press's Hamza Hendawi, for instance, massively exaggerated and misrepresented the nature of the looting in Baghdad in the first days after the U.S. armored forces took key points in the city.”

Complaining about “the myth constantly repeated by antiwar columnists that the military let the city be destroyed in particular the hospitals and the national museum while guarding the Ministry of Oil,” a tale Foreman dismissed as fantasy, he cited how “a typical piece of reporting on the 'destruction' in Baghdad came from the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran on April 22...”

Los Angeles Times reporter David Zucchino accompanied Foreman to one neighborhood, Foreman related, where a wealthy doctor said he's long had two bodyguards to protect him. But Zucchino reported that the doctor only hired the bodyguards after U.S. forces arrived in Baghdad, “as if the doctor had been driven to this expense by unrest following the arrival of the Americans.”

Foreman, who is embedded with the Scout Platoon of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division in Baghdad, penned the piece in the May 12 Weekly Standard titled, “Bad Reporting in Baghdad: You have no idea how well things are going.” An excerpt:

It's endlessly fascinating to watch the interactions between U.S. patrols and the residents of Baghdad. It's not just the love bombing the troops continue to receive from all classes of Baghdadi though the intensity of the population's pro American enthusiasm is astonishing, even to an early believer in the liberation of Iraq, and continues unabated despite delays in restoring power and water to the city....

It's things like the way the women old and young flirt outrageously with GIs, lifting their veils to smile, waving from high windows, and shyly calling hello from half opened doors. Or the way the little girls seem to speak much better English than the little boys who are always elbowing them out of the way....

But you won't see much of this on TV or read about it in the papers. To an amazing degree, the Baghdad based press corps avoids writing about or filming the friendly dealings between U.S. forces here and the local population most likely because to do so would require them to report the extravagant expressions of gratitude that accompany every such encounter. Instead you read story after story about the supposed fury of Baghdadis at the Americans for allowing the breakdown of law and order in their city.

Well, I've met hundreds of Iraqis as I accompanied army patrols all over the city during the past two weeks and I've never encountered any such fury (even in areas that were formerly controlled by the Marines, who as the premier warrior force were never expected to carry out peacekeeping or policing functions)....

Given that a large proportion of the city's poorest residents have taken part in looting the Baathist elite's ministries, homes, and institutions, that should tell you something about the sources preferred by the denizens of the Palestine Hotel (the preferred home of the press corps). Indeed it's striking that while many of the troops I've accompanied find themselves feeling some sympathy for the inhabitants of "Typhoid Alley" and other destitute neighborhoods and their attempts to obtain fans, furniture, TVs, etc., the press corps often seems solidly on the side of those who grew fat under the Saddam regime. (That said, imagine the press hysteria that would have greeted a decision by U.S. troops to use deadly force against the looters and defend the property of the city's elite.) Even in the wealthiest neighborhoods places like the Mansoor district, where you still see intact pictures of Saddam Hussein people seem to be a lot more pro American than you could ever imagine from reading the wires.

Perhaps this is just another case of reporters with an anti American or antiwar agenda. Perhaps living in Saddam's totalitarian Baghdad has left some of the press here with a case of Stockholm syndrome. It may also be a byproduct of depending on interpreters and fixers who were connected to or worked with the approval of the Saddam regime. And you cannot underestimate the herd instinct that can take over when you have a lot of media folk in a confined area for any length of time. But whatever the cause, the result has been very selective reporting.

The Associated Press's Hamza Hendawi, for instance, massively exaggerated and misrepresented the nature of the looting in Baghdad in the first days after the U.S. armored forces took key points in the city. Like so many Baghdad based reporters, she described an "unchecked frenzy" that did not exist at that time (the looting was targeted and nonviolent, in the sense that the looters attacked neither persons nor inhabited dwellings). Read her pieces and you'll meet a veritable parade of Iraqis who are angry with the United States.

Then there were those exaggerated reports of April 18 claiming (as Reuters' Hassan Hafidh put it) that "Tens of thousands of protesters demanded on Friday that the United States get out of Iraq....In the biggest protest since U.S. forces toppled Saddam Hussein's iron fisted, 24 year long rule nine days ago, Muslims poured out of mosques and into the streets of Baghdad, calling for an Islamic state to be established." Demonstrators did come out of one mosque, but reporters seem to have confused them with the large numbers of Shia Muslims gathering for the pilgrimage to Karbala a pilgrimage long forbidden by the Saddam regime.

There are frequent small demonstrations in the blocks outside the Palestine and Sheraton hotels partly because that is where the press corps is congregated, but also because it's an area that many Baath party officials fled to after the war began. Anyone who assumes that the atmosphere of that downtown area is in any way representative of the city would be gravely mistaken. However, many reporters have chosen to do just that rather than venture further out to places where they would have seen that far more typical and frequent "demonstrations" involve hundreds or even thousands of Iraqis gathering to cheer U.S. troops. Admittedly, some of those crowds include people begging for money, desperate for aid, or just curious about these strange looking foreigners....

More irritating is the myth constantly repeated by antiwar columnists that the military let the city be destroyed in particular the hospitals and the national museum while guarding the Ministry of Oil. The museum looting is turning out to have been grotesquely exaggerated. And there is no evidence for the ministry of oil story. Depending on the article, the Marines had either a tank or a machine gun nest outside the ministry. Look for a photo of that tank or that machine gun nest and you'll look in vain. And even if the Marines had briefly guarded the oil ministry it would have been by accident: The Marines defended only the streets around their own headquarters and so called Areas of Operation. Again, though, given the pro regime sources favored by so many of the press corps huddled in the Palestine Hotel, it's not surprising that this rumor became gospel.

A typical piece of reporting on the "destruction" in Baghdad came from the Washington Post's Rajiv Chandrasekaran on April 22, which repeated all the usual gossip about the ministry of oil and then quoted Saad Jawad, a professor of political science at Baghdad University: "The Iraqis had very high hopes for the Americans," Jawad told him. "But all this euphoria about change, all this relief, went away when they saw the amount of destruction to the infrastructure of the country and the carelessness of the Americans to the Iraqis' day to day lives." Yes, euphoria is bound dissipate, but there's no sign it has yet. More important, what infrastructure destruction?

The reporter lets the charge stand undisputed but must be aware that roads, bridges, power stations, and rails lines were all left unbombed and intact by U.S. forces. The exception was power substations that fed key government buildings and broadcasting facilities (unless you count army bases and secret police headquarters as "infrastructure").

But my favorite mad media moment was when an AP journalist turned up in a car heading to the Ministry of Information, the top floor of which was on fire. "Why aren't you putting out the fire?" she angrily demanded of Sgt. William Moore. He looked at her with astonishment and asked, "How the hell am I supposed to do that?" Turning away, he muttered, "Piss on it?"...

Even embedded journalists (or perhaps their editors) can unconsciously misconstrue the facts on the ground. For instance, David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times, who like me is embedded with the 4th Battalion of the 64th Armored Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, recently accompanied my Scout platoon on a patrol. We went to an upmarket residential area, in which houses that formerly belonged to top Baath officials had been taken over by looters and in which a house owned by Qusay Hussein had been destroyed by a JDAM bomb. I was talking to Dr. Ali Faraj al Salih, a cardiologist trained at Edinburgh, when Zucchino, a fine, experienced foreign correspondent, walked over and began listening in. I asked Dr. Ali if he'd had any trouble with looters. "No" he replied, "I have guns, with license from the government. And I have two bodyguards." "Have you always had the bodyguards?" I asked him. "Oh yes," he said.

But Zucchino's April 22 article in the L.A. Times headlined "In Postwar 'Dodge City,' Soldiers Now Deputies" reports "Dr. Ali Faraj, a cardiologist, stood before his well appointed home and mentioned that he has hired two armed guards," as if the doctor had been driven to this expense by unrest following the arrival of the Americans.

Things may yet go horribly wrong here in American occupied Baghdad. But it is bizarre and sad that so few journalists are able or willing to recognize this honeymoon period for what it is.

Oh This Is Priceless On The Part of NBC

2004-10-05T17:51:00.000-05:00

Today the Drudge Report linked to the MRC's cyberalert #3. And it's a killer. The MRC is getting so many hits that it's hard to get through. Keep trying, though, it's a scream. Here's the summary:

Four years ago, the NBC Nightly News tookseriously the appearance of the letters "RATS," in a single frame of an enlargement of part of the word "BUREAUCRATS," in an anti-Gore ad from the Bush campaign. The September 12, 2000 NBC Nightly News carried two full stories on the controversy. Jump ahead four years, and on Monday night the NBC Nightly News displayed the letters "ILIE" for 16 seconds next to President George W. Bush's face in a "Decision 2004" graphic beside anchor Tom Brokaw as he introduced a story by David Gregory. The letters came from the word "FAMILIES" in a sign on the far side of Bush, which read: "TAX RELIEF FOR WORKING FAMILIES." See, or try to:

Click Here for MRC's article

Let Ammash And Taha Rot In Prison

2004-10-05T09:26:00.000-05:00

Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, aka Dr. Germ and Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a biological weapons researcher known as "Mrs. Anthrax" should stay exactly where they are--in prison. Zarqawi with his cowardly threats can go screw himself! I don't know why some psychotic Americans are out on the internet 'demanding' their release-these are two dangerous and deadly women.

Ammash--aka "Chemical Sally" or "Mrs. Anthrax"

Chemical Sally, or "Mrs Anthrax", Huda Ammash, was No. 53 on the U.S. list of 55 most wanted Iraqis and the five of hearts in the deck. Born in 1953, Ammash received a masters degree in microbiology from Texas Women's University in Denton, Texas. She obtained a doctorate from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

- Huda Salih Mehdi Ammash was the only woman included in the U.S. military's list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis. She was number 39 on the list and the Five of Hearts in a deck of cards issued to soldiers to help them identify fugitives. She was taken into custody on May 9, 2003. Some reports indicate she gave herself up.
- U.S. officials believe Ammash was instrumental in rebuilding aspects of Iraq's biological warfare production capability during the mid-1990s. At that time, she served as head of biological laboratories at Iraq's military industrialisation organization.
- One of her mentors was Nasser Hindawi, believed to be the founder of Iraq's biological warfare programme.
- Ammash, the first woman appointed to Iraq's Baath Party regional command, earned a doctorate in microbiology from the University of Missouri in 1983. She earned a master's degree from Texas Woman's University in 1979.
- Ammash's father was a leader of the 1968 Baath Party revolution who served as an Iraqi minister and ambassador before being killed in the 1980s, reportedly on Saddam's orders. Later, she was obedient to her father's murderer.
- In the months before the war, she appeared in videotapes of Saddam meeting with his war cabinet.
-Ammash and Zarqawi know each other. They are old friends.

Dr. Rihab Taha - Although she was not on the U.S. list of 55 most-wanted Iraqis, Taha was described by the U.S. military as a former director of the Iraqi bacterial and biological warfare programme. She was taken into custody on May 12 last year. (Reports are she also gave herself up)

- Taha was exploring the weapons potential of pathogens that cause anthrax and plague at the Al Hakam research lab, beginning in 1987.
- Taha admitted producing germ warfare agents in the past, including anthrax and botulinum, but said all such Iraqi weapons were destroyed. (liar)
- She was educated in Britain at the University of East Anglia, where she completed a PhD in plant toxins between 1980 and 1984. She later returned to Iraq and took charge of the country's major biological facilities in the late 1980s.
- Taha is married to Amir Muhammed Rasheed, who ran Iraq's military industries until becoming oil minister in 1995. He was number 47 on the U.S. list.
- In an interview with ABC News, Taha said her work helped protect Iraqis from Israel: "We haven't done anything to harm other people. It is our right to be capable enough to defend ourselves -- all what we have done is just a deterrent."

"Defend ourselves"? These two murderous women ran tests on animals and humans in their labs on the effects of these toxins and were proud of their work. In fact, bragged about it.

I have to wonder about the effects of these and Gulf War Syndrome...and how they're connected. I have no doubt that Taha, Ammash and Zarqawi are to some degree responsible for what happened to our boys over there.

In addition, our priceless environmental GREEN organizations are running around claiming these two are ENVIRONMENTALISTS. One of them wrote a paper on how American chemical weapons are destroying the environment over there. If that isn't the biggest joke.

Let them rot in jail.

International Law Instead of The Constitution

2004-10-05T08:34:00.000-05:00

Our Constitution, developed by some of the brightest and most able statesmen in the history of the world, is the supreme law of the land.

Its carefully drafted text, with its careful concept of checks and balances, and a division of powers-resulted from the efforts of brave men in order to limit the reach and power of government and to protect liberty. A cursory glance at the tremendous freedom and economic prosperity of America as compared to other nations, even developed nations, should tell you that what the US Constitution and its principle foundation have allowed are the envy of the world.

Even the Wall Street Journal took notice of this, three years ago, reporting that in part, due to their legal tradition the "US and Britain have bigger stock markets and more shareholding citizens than Germany and France."

Foreign legal ideas from different legal traditions may be worth studying. But even if desirable, they should only be adopted through proper channels of legislative deliberation and enactment. More and more often, our judicial elite seem to believe the Constitution's principles can be "bent" to an agenda to make our law look more like that of other nations.

How being like other nations improves life in the US is hard for many of us to see, but Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has openly advocated this position in her remarks to the American Constitution Society, when she decided our country's "Lone Ranger mentality." Other justices say we can't ignore the rest of the world and they are correct. However, diplomacy is the job of the State department, not the judiciary.

If other nations want to adopt the legal infrastructure that makes America the economic destination of choice, great! But is it sensible to risk our pgoress for a gamble on judicial globalization? Judicial "transjudicialism" could very well make us like other nations in ways we won't like.

Foreign courts often cite US courts when "life and liberty are at stake", which is the way it should be. Why should we, as the world's only superpower and as the leader of the free world, bow to adopting foreign legal precedents to interpret-or reinterpret-our law? Legal precendents have enough unforeseen results, and we have enough trouble with our courts interpreting our own Constitution. Why go seeking fresh legal problems abroad?

If courts can amend the Constitution with the wave of a magic wand by selectively incorporating foreign law to reach their desired results, then they have too much power. God bless the memory of America's Founders who rejected other traditions of law of their day to create this, the best, most free and prosperous nation on earth.

The Left's Mantra:"Separation Of Church And State"

2004-10-04T16:28:00.000-05:00

There is no such thing. Anytime religion is mentioned as far as government is concerned, and even public life, people are mentioning "separation of church and state'. John Kerry himself said it with regards to the abortion issue, and I wrote apparently his sentiments are the same as the ACLU--it's ok for you to be a Christian as long as you don't act like one.

Actually, most people think that this statement "separation of church and state" appears somewhere in the Constitution in the first amendment. But the words "separation", "church", and "state", do not appear in the first amendment.

The first amendment reads:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."

The statement about a wall of separation between church and state was made in a letter written on January 1, 1802, by Thomas Jefferson, to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. The congregation heard a rumor that the Congregationalists, another denomination, were to become the national religion. This was very alarming for people who knew about religious persecution in England by the state established church. Jefferson made it clear in his letter to the Danbury Congregation that the separation was to be that government would not establish a national religion, or dictate to men how to worship God. Jefferson's letter, where the phrase "separation of church and state" came from, affirmed our first amendment rights.

He wrote:

I contemplate the solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would "make no law repsecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.

The reason Jefferson chooses the expression "separation of church and state" was because he was addressing a Baptist congregation; a denomination that he wasn't a member of. Jefferson wanted to remove all fears that the state would make dictates to the church. He was establishing a common ground with the Baptists by borrwing the words of Roger Williams, one of the Baptist's own prominent preachers. Williams had said:

When they have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the Church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the candlestick, and made his garden a wilderness, as at this day. And that there fore if he will eer please to restore his garden and paradise again, it must of necessity be walled in peculiarly unto himself from this world.

The American people knew what would happen if the State established the Church like they had in England. Even though it was not recent history to them, they knew that England went so far as forbidding worship in private homes and sponsoring all church activities and keeping people under strict dictates. They were forced to go to the state established church and do things that were contrary to their conscience. No other churches were allowed, and mandatory attendance of the established church was compelled under the Conventicle Act of 1665. Failure to comply would result in imprisonment and torture.

The people did not want freedom from religion, but freedom of religion. The only real reason to separate the church from the state would be to instill a new morality and establish a new system of beliefs. Our founding fathers were God-fearing men who understood that for a country to stand it must have a solid foundation; the Bible was the source of this foundation.

They believed that God's ways were much higher than Man's ways and held firmly that the Bible was the absolute standard of truth and used the Bible as a source to form our government.

There is no such thing as a pluralistic society. There will always be one dominant view, otherwise it will be in transition from one belief system to another. Therefore, to say Biblical principles should not be allowed in government and school is to either be ignorant of the historic intent of the founding fathers, or blatantly bigoted against Christianity.

Each form of government has a guiding principle: monarchy in which the guiding principle is honor; aristocracy in which the guiding principle is moderation; republican democracy in which the guiding principle is virtue; despotism in which the guiding principle is fear. Without people of the United States upholding good moral conduct, society soon degenerates into a corrupt system where people misuse the authority of government to obtain what they want at the expense of others. The U.S. Constitution is the form of our government, but the power is in the virtue of the people. The virtue desired of the people is shown in the Bible. This is why Biblical morality was taught in public schools until the early 1960's. Government officials were required to declare their belief in God even to be allowed to hold a public office until a case in the U.S. Supreme Court called Torcaso v. Watkins (Oct. 1960). God was seen as the author of natural law and morality. If one did not believe in God one could not operate from a proper moral base.

And by not having a foundation from which to work, one would destroy the community. The two primary places where morality is taught are the family and the church. The church was allowed to influence the government in righteousness an d justice so that virtue would be upheld. Not allowing the church to influence the state is detrimental to the country and destroys our foundation of righteousness and justice. It is absolutely necessary for the church to influence the state in virtue because without virtue our government will crumble -- the representatives will look after their own good instead of the country's.

Government was never meant to be our master as in a ruthless monarchy or dictatorship. Instead, it was to be our servant. The founding fathers believed that the people have full power to govern themselves and that people chose to give up some of their rights for the general good and the protection of rights. Each person should be self-governed and this is why virtue is so important. Government was meant to serve the people by protecting their liberty and rights, not serve by an enormous amount of social programs. The authors of the Constitution wanted the government to have as little power as possible so that if authority was misused it would not cause as much damage. Yet they wanted government to have enough authority to protect the rights of the people. The worldview at the time of the founding of our government was a view held by the Bible: that Man's heart is corrupt and if the opportunity to advance oneself at the expense of another arose, more often than not, we would choose to do so. They firmly believed this and that's why an enormous effort to set up checks and balances took place. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. They wanted to make certain that no man could take away rights given by God. They also did not set up the government as a true democracy, because they believed, as mentioned earlier, Man tends towards wickedness. Just because the majority wants something does not mean that it should be granted, because the majority could easily err. Government was not to be run by whatever the majority wanted but instead by principle, specifically the principles of the Bible.

Our U.S. Constitution was founded on Biblical principles and it was the intention of the authors for this to be a Christian nation. The Constitution had 55 people work upon it, of which 52 were evangelical Christians.(3) We can go back in history and look at what the founding fathers wrote to know where they were getting their ideas. This is exactly what two professors did. Donald Lutz and Charles Hyneman reviewed an estimated 15,000 items with explicit political content printed between 1760 and 1805 and from these items they identified 3,154 references to other sources. The source they most often quoted was the Bible, accounting for 34% of all citations. Sixty percent of all quotes came from men who used the Bible to form their conclusions. That means that 94% of all quotes by the founding fathers were based on the Bible.

The founding fathers took ideas from the Bible and incorporated them into our government. If it was their intention to separate the state and church they would never have taken principles from the Bible and put them into our government. An example of an idea taken from the Bible and then incorporated into our government is found in Isaiah 33:22 which says, "For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our king..." The founding fathers took this scripture and made three major branches in our government: judicial, legislative, and executive. As mentioned earlier, the founding fathers strongly believed that Man was by nature corrupt and therefore it was necessary to separate the powers of the government. For instance, the President has the power to execute laws but not make them, and Congress has the power to make laws but not to judge the people. The simple principle of checks and balances came from the Bible to protect people from tyranny. The President of the United States is free to influence Congress, although he can not exercise authority over it because they are separated. Since this is true, why should the church not be allowed to influence the state? People have read too much into the phrase "separation of church and state", which is to be a separation of civil authority from ecclesiastical authority, not moral values. Congress has passed laws that it is illegal to murder and steal, which is the legislation of morality. These standards of morality are found in the Bible. Should we remove them from law because the church should be separated from the state?

Our founding fathers who formed the government also formed the educational system of the day. John Witherspoon did not attend the Constitutional Convention although he was President of New Jersey College in 1768 (known as Princeton since 1896) and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His influence on the Constitution was far ranging in that he taught nine of fifty-five original delegates. He fought firmly for religious freedom and said, "God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable and that unjust attempts to destroy the one may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both."(4)

In October 1961 the Supreme Court of the United States removed prayer from schools in a case called Engel v. Vitale. The case said that because the U.S. Constitution prohibits any law respecting an establishment of religion officials of public schools may not compose public prayer even if the prayer is denominationally neutral, and that pupils may choose to remain silent or be excused while the prayer is being recited. For 185 years prayer was allowed in public and the Constitutional Convention itself was opened with prayer. If the founding fathers didn't want prayer in government why did they pray publicly in official meetings? It is sometimes said that it is permissible to pray in school as long as it is silent. Although, "In Omaha, Nebraska, 10-year old James Gierke was prohibited from reading his Bible silently during free time... the boy was forbidden by his teacher to open his Bible at school and was told doing so was against the law."(4)

The U.S. Supreme Court with no precedent in any court history said prayer will be removed from school. Yet the Supreme Court in January, 1844 in a case named Vidal v. Girard's Executors, a school was to be built in which no ecclesiastic, missionary, or minister of any sect whatsoever was to be allowed to even step on the property of the school. They argued over whether a layman could teach or not, but they agreed that, "...there is an obligation to teach what the Bible alone can teach, viz. a pure system of morality." This has been the precedent throughout 185 years. Although this case is from 1844, it illustrates the point. The prayer in question was not even lengthy or denominationally geared. It was this: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country." What price have we paid by removing this simple acknowledgment of God's protecting hand in our lives? Birth rates for unwed girls from 15-19; sexually transmitted diseases among 10-14 year olds; pre-marital sex increased; violent crime; adolescent homicide have all gone up considerably from 1961 to the 1990's -- even after taking into account population growth. The Bible, before 1961, was used extensively in curriculum. After the Bible was removed, scholastic aptitude test scores dropped considerably.
There is no such thing as a pluralistic society; there will always be one dominant view. Someone's morality is going to be taught -- but whose? Secular Humanism is a religion that teaches that through Man's ability we will reach universal peace and unity and make heaven on earth. They promote a way of life that systematically excludes God and all religion in the traditional sense. That Man is the highest point to which nature has evolved, and he can rely on only himself and that the universe was not created, but instead is self-existing. They believe that Man has the potential to be good in and of himself. All of this of course is in direct conflict with not only the teachings of the Bible but even the lessons of history. In June 1961 in a case called Torcaso v. Watkins, the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others." The Supreme Court declared Secular Humanism to be a religion. The American Humanist Association certifies counselors who enjoy the same legal status as ordained ministers. Since the Supreme Court has said that Secular Humanism is a religion, why is it being allowed to be taught in schools? The removal of public prayer of those who wish to participate is, in effect, establishing the religion of Humanism over Christianity. This is exactly what our founding fathers tried to stop from happening with the first amendment.

1. Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Writings, Merrill D. Peterson, ed. (NY: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 1984), p. 510, January 1, 1802.
2. John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (MI: Baker Book House, 1987), p. 243.
3. M.E. Bradford, A Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution (Marlborough, N.H.: Plymouth Rock Foundation, 1982), p. 4-5.
4. John Witherspoon, "Sermon on the Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men" May 17, 1776; quoted and Cited by Collins, President Witherspoon, I:197-98.

Check This Out-Kerry Must Have Had Too Much Botox-He Looks The Same IN Every Shot

2004-10-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

The DNC has put together a medley of clips from the debate meant to show President Bush's "frustrated" reactions to Kerry's comments (they should have seen my face!). I'm glad Bush showed some honest emotion. But what is more interesting in the DNC compilation is to watch Kerry's countenance -- it looks exactly the same in every shot!!!! Too much botox? Or too much coaching? (This is probably one of the funniest clips I've ever seen....)

Allah and God

2004-10-04T09:17:00.000-05:00

In my internet surfing and forum travels, I have been running across some very interesting facts and information having to do with Islam.

This website is very interesting; it contrasts Islam versus Christianity. For some reason, I had assumed that "Allah" was God. "Allah" is not God, as Christians see him.

The Spirit of Islam

Allah is not love. Allah is not the "Father".

Take a look at how this doctor contrasts the differences between the Islamic ideology and the Christian ideology. More and more, I get the impression that what we're dealing with here is a Satanic Cult.

Some time ago, I watched a show on television where it was talking about how Christians are moving out of Jeruselum. Now I have a better understanding as to the reason why.

The First and Gracious Phase of Islam

When the prophet Muhammad began to call people in Mecca to Islam, he was weak. He needed the help of the Jews and the Christians, so he praised them. Here is what the Koran, the holy book of Islam says about Jews and Christians at that time:

Verily, those who believe [Muslims] and those who are Jews and Christians and Sabians whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day and does righteous good deeds shall have their reward with their Lord. On them shall be no fear nor shall they grieve. (Surat Al-Baqarah 2:62)

In this verse the Koran puts Jews and Christians at the same level and privilege as Muslims.

There are many kind verses quoted in the Koran from this first and gracious phase of Islam. Muslim Clerics used such verses to establish that Islam is a religion of freedom and peace. However, these verses were abrogated lately, which means they were cancelled.

The Second Phase of Islam

The later phase of Islam, and I may say the permanent phase of Islam, according to the doctrine of abrogation in the Koran, came when the prophet Muhammad migrated to Medina and organized a strong army. When he saw that Jews and Christians rejected his prophethood and Islam, he commanded the Muslims to change the Kibla, the direction in which Muslims turn when they pray, from Jerusalem to the Kaaba in Mecca. At that time in history the Kaaba was a shrine for 360 idols.

Then Muhammad exterminated Jews and Christians from the Arabian Peninsula. He renounced Jews and Christians as polytheists, therefore impure and defiled. As such, Muhammad commanded that they never come near the Kaaba in Mecca. To this day no Jew or Christian can enter the Mecca, or come near Al-Kaaba, the Holy shrine in Saudi Arabia. Here are the words of the Koran:

O you who believe [Muslims] the Mushrikun [polytheists and unbelievers in Allah and the Message of Muhammad] are najasum [impure, defiled]. So let them not come near Al-Masjd Al Haram [the Kaaba in Mecca] after this year. (Surat Al-Tauba 9:28)

This is the phase of Islam we encounter today.

To be sure Islamic Terrorism was practiced in Muhammad’s days. The Koran commands Muslims to terrorize and strike the necks and smite the fingers and toes of the infidels [Jews and Christians]. The Koran says:

I will cast terror into the hearts of those who are infidels, so strike them over the necks and smite over all their fingers and toes. This is because they defied and disobeyed Allah and His Messenger [Muhammad]. And whoever defies and disobeys Allah and His Messenger, then verily, Allah is severe in punishments. This is (the torment), to taste it; and surely, for the infidels is the torment of the fire. (Surat Al-Anfal 8:12-14)

Before September 11th, we saw Islamic terrorism in Egypt—where many Egyptian Christians were murdered—in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and other parts of the world. When the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., occurred on September 11, 2001, Americans woke up, as from a nightmare. Their financial and military institutions had been attacked. And a third plane was aimed to destroy the White House, the executive institution. But, thank God, it crashed in Pennsylvania.

On that day, Americans began asking three questions:
First, “Who are those people who attacked us?”
Second, “Why do they hate us?”
Third, “What motivated them to commit these horrific attacks?”

Before answering these three questions, I have to say that there are three kinds of Islamic Terrorism:

First, physical terrorism,
Second, intellectual terrorism,
Third, psychological terrorism.

By discussing these three kinds of terrorism, we will have the answer for our three questions.

Physical Terrorism

Shortly after the barbaric attacks, the investigations of the CIA and FBI concluded that the attackers were deeply religious young men from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who dedicated their hearts, minds, and souls to the religion of Islam. Blas Pascal, a mathematician who lived in 1670 AD, said, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

The hatred ignited by the teaching of the Koran, in the hearts of those young men who attacked us was so horrible. It blinded them from thinking or imagining the agony and suffering of those thousands of innocent men and women who were murdered in the attacks and the terrible grief of those loved ones who were left behind.

The most horrible thing is that those attackers did not feel any sense of guilt. The Koran taught them that their acts are not acts of evil, but rather acts of a high level of righteousness intended to eradicate the infidel Christians from the face of the earth. The Koran taught them also that there is a great reward waiting for them in paradise if they die as martyrs.

The Koran taught them that their sins will be forgiven, and each one of them will be married to one hundred virgins, with wide lovely eyes in paradise. These are the words of the Koran:

And if you are killed or die in the Way of Allah, forgiveness and mercy from Allah are far better than all that they amass [of worldly wealth].
(Sural Al-Imran 3:157)

Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers [Muslims] their lives and their properties for (the price) that theirs shall be the Paradise. They fight in Allah’s cause, so they kill (others) and are killed. It is a promise in truth, which is binding, on Him. (Surat Al-Taubah 9:111)

The Koran describes life in paradise in the following verses:

Eat and drink with happiness because of what you used to do. They will recline (with ease) on thrones arranged in ranks. And we shall marry them to Hur (fair females) with wide lovely eyes. And we shall provide them with fruit and meat such as they desire. (Surat Al-Tur 52:17-20,22)

Paradise is all sensual, nothing spiritual.

Another picture of paradise is described in the following words:

I looked at Paradise and found poor people forming the majority of its inhabitants; and I looked at Hell and saw that the majority of its inhabitants were women (Sahih Bukhari 4:464 see also Bukhari 7:124, 7:125)

The second picture:

Water flowing constantly and fruit in plenty whose supply is not cut off and reclining on couches raised high: verily we have created from them (women) of special creation and made them virgins of equal age. (Surat Al-Waqiah 56:31-37)

The third picture:

Gardens and vineyards and young full-breasted virgins of equal age and a full cup of wine. (Surat Al-Naba 78:32-34)

With these pictures of paradise—dreaming about one hundred virgins awaiting each one of them—those young people with their Egyptian leader Muhammad Atta committed suicide and died with their victims.

Preparations for the September 11th attacks took many years. Ben Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahri with their associates of men of very evil minds began to test the Americans with terrorist attacks. They saw that Americans ran away from trouble in Beirut, Lebanon where 243 marines were murdered. Americans ran away from Somalia, and they did not do anything when they were attacked in Saudi Arabia, Nairobi, and Yemen.

Ben Laden, who is from the radical Wahhabi Islamic sect established in Saudi Arabia in the 18th century, and with roots even well before that, concluded that America is a paper tiger. Hit Americans hard and they will collapse. Ben Laden thought, that the time had come to establish an Islamic Empire, where Islam would be the only recognized religion in the world, and the sharia (law) of the Koran will be the only law. Ben Laden and his followers were in great shock, when they saw what America did in a short time in Afghanistan. They saw that America is not a paper tiger but a fierce tiger.

They are now living in hiding, somewhere in an Islamic country. That indicates that there are Muslim countries who harbor terrorists and sympathize with Ben Laden’s beliefs and terrorism. If Islam is a religion of peace and freedom, Ben Laden should be arrested by the Islamic country, which gives him refuge. For Ben Laden and his associates to be given refuge, in any Islamic country is a declaration that Islam and terrorism are associated.

Last November, Russian president Vladimir Putin made a strong statement. The London Telegraph reported on November 12, 2002, the following:

Islamic radicals are pursuing the systematic annihilation of non-Muslims…president Putin said that western civilization faced a mortal threat from Muslim terrorists, and claimed that they had plans to create a world wide caliphate which means a world wide Islamic Empire.

At this point I will mention but a few of the physical terrorist attacks committed by Muslims after the September 11th.

On April 22, 2002, four Islamic fundamentalists kidnapped and killed Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter, in a barbaric, horrific way, just because he was an American Jew.

On May 12, 2002 a gas cylinder was set on fire under Milan’s huge Gothic cathedral in an apparent bid to cause an explosion. Police found a cloth scrawled with the Islamic cry “God is great” nearby (The Washington Times, May 13, 2002).

On October 23rd Chechen Muslim gunmen seized the Moscow Theater and took hundreds of people hostage. 129 hostages died and 41 hostage-takers were killed (The Washington Post, January 26, 2003).

On November 28, 2002, suicide bombers destroyed an Israeli-owned beach resort in Mombassa Kenya, shattering lives of villagers outside Mombassa. The terrorists tried to attack an Israeli jet liner taking off from the airport nearby, but they failed.

On December 30, 2002, gunman killed 3 U.S. missionaries at a hospital in Yemen. Those were medical doctors serving the Yemeni people for many years (The Washington Times, December 31, 2002).

On January 7, 2003, British anti-terrorism police discovered traces of ricine, a highly toxic poison in a north London apartment. Six Africans, all of North African origin, were arrested. Prime Minister Tony Blair said after the arrest “this danger is present and real and with us now, and its potential is huge” (The Washington Post, January 8, 2003).

Time will not allow me to tell you about many other terrorist attacks around the world. The most recent ones are the murder of the American diplomat in Amman, Jordan, and the attack on the club in Bali, Indonesia.

We have heard through the media, that the terrorists attacked us because we stand with Israel against the Palestinians. This is a totally false accusation. Many centuries before the existence of the state of Israel, in the year 1895, the Turkish Muslims massacred more than 60,000 Armenian Christians in many cities in Turkey and crushed them like grapes during the vintage in one night. There was no Israeli-Palestinian conflict during that time. Those butchers were motivated by their Koran.

When we say that Islam and terrorism are related to each other, is this a false accusation? Is it to insult Islam? Or is it a fact based on the clear worlds of the Koran?

Please listen carefully to these verses from the Koran:

(1) The Prophet Muhammad urges Muslims to fight in the cause of Allah,

O prophet Muhammad urge the believers [Muslims] to fight. (Surat Al-Anfal 8:65)

(2) The Koran commands Muslims not to befriend Jews or Christians.

O ye who believe [Muslims] take not the Jews or the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors of each other. And he among you that turn to them [for friendship] is of them. (Surat Al-Maidah 5:51)

(3) The Koran commands Muslims to fight Jews and Christians.

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, no forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger [Muhammad] and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam) among the people of the Scripture [Jews and Christians] until they pay the Jizyah with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Surat At-Taubah 9:29)

We have to understand that Jizyah is a special high tax to be paid only by Jews and Christians who live in Islamic countries and who do not want to renounce their religion and convert to Islam.

(4) The Koran declares that those who wage war against Allah and Muhammad must be crucified and tortured in a sadistic manner.

The recompense of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger Muhammad and do mischief in the land is only that they shall be killed or crucified or their hands and their feet be cut off from opposite sides, or be exiled from the land. That is their disgrace in the world, and a great torment is theirs in the Hereafter.
(Surat Al-Maidah 5:33)

(5) The Koran commands Muslims to fight the infidels who are neighbors and close to them:

O you who believe [Muslims]! Fight those of the infidels who are close to you, and let them find harshness in you; and know that Allah is with those who are pious. (Surat Al-Taubah 9:123)

(6) The Koran commands Muslims to convert non-Muslims to Islam by force:

Kill the Mushrikun (polytheists, Christians and non-Muslims), wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush. But, if they repent and perform As-salat (public prayer with Muslims) and give Zakat (Islamic alms), then leave their way free. Allah is oft forgiving, most merciful.
(Surat At-Taubah 9:5)

(7) The Koran commands Muslims to fight non-Muslims until they exterminate all other religions and make Islam the only religion in the world:

And fight until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah) and (all and every kind of) worship is for Allah (alone).
(Surat Al-Bagarah 2:193)

There are almost one hundred verses in the Koran calling Muslims to Jihad, holy war against Jews, Christians, and non-Muslims. Do these clear verses of the Koran indicate that Islam is a religion of peace?

Intellectual Terrorism

There is another kind of terrorism in Islam: intellectual terrorism. Islam is a prison with no way out. Once a person enters that prison, he cannot leave it alive. In Islam, the democratic right to free thought and individual decision concerning religious matters is totally denied. We have more than one example of this intellectual terrorism, I will mention but a few.

The first is Salman Rushdie. Salman Rushdie was born to a Muslim family in Bombay, but spent much of his life in London, England. He wrote a book entitled The Satanic Verses. Muslims though this book was an insult to the Prophet Muhammad and Islam. So Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini issued an order to assassinate Rushdie and promised $5 million to the one who would kill him. Khomeini, Iran’s spiritual leader at that time, said in a statement read for him on the radio in 1989: “Anyone who died attempting to kill Rushdie,” he promised, “would go straight to paradise.” Rushdie’s head is very expensive!!

The second is Dr. Farag Foda, the great author who was assassinated in Cairo, Egypt in 1993 because he wrote many books exposing the true face of Islam and Islamic society. He was accused of being an apostate Muslim and was shot and killed in front of his son.

The third is Professor Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid, who was accused of being an apostate Muslim because of his books about the Koran. The court in Egypt ruled that he must divorce his wife, Ibihal Younes. He fled from Egypt and is now living with his wife in Holland.

The fourth is the well-known Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz, who became the first Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Muslims stabbed him in front of his house in an attempt to kill him. The man is over 80 years old. They wanted to kill him because they thought that he insulted Muhammad in his novel, The Children of Gabalawi. It is of great importance for any American or any secular Muslim to know what kind of society he or she will live in if fundamentalist Muslims rule.

Psychological Terrorism

That brings us to the third kind of terrorism in Islam: psychological terrorism.
Instilling fear in the hearts of those who disobey the Koran is a vital factor in Islam. This psychological terrorism was practiced when the Taliban regime ruled Afghanistan. During that period of time any woman who would show more than her eyes was flogged in the street. Music, television, even sports were not allowed.

In Saudi Arabia, a woman is banned from driving a car or from walking down the street alone, or without covering all her body with the hejab. Women in Islam live under constant fear of beating or divorce. The Koran says the following in Surat Al-Nisa Chapter 4:34:

As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them, refuse to share their beds (which means do not have sex with them) and beat them.

Add to all that the threat against any Muslim who apostates from Islam (renounces Islam). He or she is to be executed. Today we are hearing on radio and television many Muslim Clerics saying that Islam means peace. The truth is that the word Islam means submission, not peace. A Muslim is one who is in submission to Allah. Since Allah is invisible, so submission should be to the sharia (law) of the clerics who interpret the Koran. Peace is granted only to Muslims.

Islam divides the world’s population into two camps, Dar Al-Harb (House of War) where Jews and Christians live, and Dar Al-Islam (House of Islam) where Muslims live. They believe that Jihad, Holy War, should continue against those who live in the House of War until they are all exterminated or converted to Islam.

Fundamentalists dream of a global Islamic empire. They believe that if they destroy America and western countries they will achieve this dream.

Christianity and Islam

Al-Shaab, the weekly newspaper of the Labour Party, published in Egypt, wrote the January 27th issue, that this symposium of Christian Coalition of America is aimed to create hatred for Muslims in the US.

Let me tell the Muslims, we cannot hate you, because we are commanded by Christ our Lord to love you, even after that horrible attack on the 11th of September. These are Christ’s words in Matthew 5:44-45:

Love your enemies, bless those who curse your, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.

Meantime, I would like to say to the Muslims that there are major differences between Christianity and Islam. Christianity created free societies, where freedom of religion is granted. Muslims took advantage of this freedom and built hundreds of Mosques in England, in Australia, in Canada, and in the United States of America. While in Saudi Arabia, they do not permit the construction of even one church. In Afghanistan, during the reign of King Zahir Shah the only existing church, which had been built by president Eisenhower’s request of King Zahir, was demolished on May 17, 1970.

While the Saudis distribute thousands of copies of the Koran in the US and elsewhere, they do not permit even one Bible into the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. This is one major difference between Christianity and Islam.

The other major difference, which really should be the first, is the denial of the crucifixion of Christ in the Koran. We have the testimony of many witnesses, who saw with their own eyes the crucifixion of Christ, and the print of nails in his hands after his resurrection, and testified that he was crucified, and sealed their testimony with their blood, yet the Koran attacks the cross and denies the crucifixion of Christ. Listen to the words of the Koran, in Surat An-Nisa 4:157, that they said:

We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah,” but they killed him not, nor crucified him. Only a likeness of that was shown to them. And those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no [certain] knowledge. But only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they kill him not.

Charles Haddon Surgeon, who was called the prince of the British preachers said the following:

Leave out the cross and you have killed the religion of Jesus Christ. Atonement by the blood of Jesus is not an arm of Christian truth; it is the heart of it. The cross answers the question of every human being. Who will pay the penalty for my sins? Christ paid that penalty when he shed his blood on the cross.

This is the greatest major difference between Christianity and Islam.

Conclusion

Now, how do we solve this problem of Jihad and Islamic Terrorism? I have two suggestions to the Muslims.

First: It is the responsibility of the intellectual Muslims, and they are many, to join hands and declare to the Muslims and Muslim countries that the verses of the Koran calling for Jihad and killing of Jews and Christians were for Muhammad’s time. These verses should not be applied in our modern civilizations for they create havoc.

Second: I would suggest to all Muslims, since they shout in every occasion, “Allah Hu-Akbar” (Allah is greater) to leave Allah to defend Islam. If Islam is the only religion He accepts, then let him defend it. Using young men and women to be suicide bombers is an insult to the greatness of Allah, if they really believe that Allah is great.

I would advise Muslims to join the forces of freedom and advanced inventions, to make the planet earth a better place for human life instead of making it a jungle of beasts.

To the Christians, I would repeat the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Preach the gospel to the Muslims, they most of all, are people who need to hear and know and understand the gospel of the love of God, demonstrated by the death of His son on the cross.

2004-10-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

Looking for loose dirt or any signs of recent digging, the Combat Engineers used mine detectors and mine proves to find the weapons cache and booby traps just in case. Since the information that they received said they were buried, mine detectors help find any metal under the ground.

2004-10-03T21:30:00.000-05:00

When the mine detector starts beeping it means there is something underground. Next they check with a mine probe to check for booby traps and then start digging. They found artillery rounds, mortar rounds and other ammunuition. The items were wrapped in plastic to ensure they will not get damaged.

2004-10-03T21:20:00.000-05:00

When everything was collected the Engineers and EOD team took the cache to a open area and disposed of the items. All in a day's work that day they knew those rounds could not be used for IED. (Improvised Explosive Device)

2004-10-03T21:00:00.000-05:00

1PLT Capture RPG and Rocket Launcher: 1 PLt captured several RPG launchers with ammo along with a homemade rocket launcher all in one night they disrupted a attack that was being prepared by terrorists but when they saw the military vehicles they left everything behind knowing one more minute and they would be captured. The rocket launcher was homeade with a control box to launch the rockets. Terrorists are adapting ways to use all ammo looted during the war. All illegal equipment that confiscated is immediately turned in to be destroyed to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands again. Before pictures have to be taken for evidence and proof of existence.

2004-10-03T20:30:00.000-05:00

Home made rocket launcher

MSG Simmons In Iraq

2004-10-03T19:52:00.000-05:00

Simmons says-We have been busy here at the 1st Cavalry Division Civil Military Operations. There are so many projects that we are working to support the Iraqi people. We assist them in the areas of water/sewer, power, renovating schools and universities. The media doesn't always tell you the good news stories here. There are many Iraqi people who are glad that we are here helping them in every way that we can. A group of ladies from 1st Cavalry Division and other subordinate units go into Baghdad once a week to meet with the Iraqi Women's Council. It is very interesting meeting with women from this country. They are single, married, mother, daughters, wives. Some of them are housewives and many of them work outside the home.

They all want a peaceful, free country just like we did when we fought for our nation's freedom.

So many people have sent wonderful, thoughtful packages and letters. Thanks to everyone for keeping home near and dear to our hearts! They say the six month period is a tough time for soldiers. Our soldiers have been going on leave and going home to see loved ones. This has helped enormously. The soldiers come back well-rested, with more positive energy.

We would really like to have coffee. It seems most everyone drinks it and we drink allot of it working the hours that we do. Some people have sent special brands from different places. It is really special to try a new, unique coffee (some of the guys call it "foo foo" coffee), as well as having the great regular coffee: Folgers and Maxwell house. Believe it or not, the PX store runs out of regular coffee! Any snacks are appreciated as well. We sure eat it up!

Your care and kindness continues to move me. Thank you all for the support.

I would just like to give my heart felt thanks to all who have responded with kind words, boxes full of surprises, and most of all your prayers. You have made the soldiers that I work with feel so much closer to home with your gifts, letters, and cards. We believe in what we are doing here in Iraq. We are making a difference. This is NOT another Vietnam! We fully support our Commander and Chief in this war on terrorism. Thank you for standing beside us in our fight. God Bless America! Keep up the prayers for our Free Country. HOO-AH!!!

MSG Dana L. Simmons

Slam The Newsweek POLL!!!

2004-10-03T19:19:00.000-05:00

Let's all SLAM the News "Weak" Biased Poll...News "Weak" is definitely showing bias against President Bush ... before they take the poll down, and show John "White Flag" FONDA favored, please take their short poll and - email it to your friends !

Oh he's just so wacky that John Kerry!

2004-10-03T03:30:00.000-05:00

Click here for Wacky John Kerry

Iraqi National Beheaded

2004-10-03T03:00:00.000-05:00

Ibrahim talking to the camera

Well this is new. A video was released, by a group calling itself the "Armies of Ansar al Sunnah" showing the beheading of an Iraqi National. He confessed to "collaborating" with the American forces. Without the orange jumpsuit, this man was beheaded in his streetclothes and outside somewhere.

Taji access badge

The man, identified on the video as Nafi'a Daoud Ibrahim, shows Ibrahim wearing an access badge (shown above) and making a statement to the camera.

Ibrahim says to the camera: "I have set up three telecommunications networks for the Iraqi National Guard. I have been working in Taji since June 2004."

Ibrahim said his work for US forces at Taji camp involved "building water and sewage networks and refrigerating equipment'' .

Oh. He was helping rebuild. And for this, the Islamist terrorists said this: They had beheaded the ``apostate, infidel'' --"This apostate is considered one of the big contractors, having struck several deals with the US crusader forces to carry out projects to build water and sewage networks and (instal) refrigerating equipment in US camps at Taji,'' the statement said.

"We tell anyone who would serve and work with the crusader forces to repent to God and leave the crusaders and apostates ... Otherwise, the mujahedeen (Islamic fighters) will catch up with you one after the other, no matter how long it takes, and you will meet the same fate as your friend,'' it said.

So in other words, if you help the Americans, you are labelled an 'apostate' or "mushrikeen" as though you've abandoned your muslim faith. And then, you are sentenced to death.

But this is all so twisted because the Americans are helping the Iraqis to fresh, clean water, electricity which they haven't seen in years, totally helping them to build up their infrastructure. The Iraqi people can see all that they have to gain by "helping" the Americans. By "helping" the Americans, they are simply helping themselves.

But Islam tells its followers not to befriend Christians or Jews...

Yet, as you will see, we "apostates" are helping the Iraqis to rebuild their world, showing them the love and compassion that Islam does not teach.

"Chipping" The Population: Inmates Of A Global Prison

2004-10-03T02:52:00.000-05:00

Microchip for chipping the population

The emergence of Mexico’s surveillance state offers the US a sobering look into the future, if the Power Elite’s proposal for a "continental security" perimeter becomes reality.

What would it take to force people to accept the loss of their privacy? Could people be terrified into surrendering their priceless right to be left alone by the state? How could a population be persuaded, or compelled, to accept such radical measures as implantable data chips in the name of "public safety" — even when they knew that doing so would radically expand the power of a corrupt government?

For citizens of Mexico, these are not hypothetical questions. And as the drive accelerates to consolidate the Western Hemisphere under a single economic, political and security structure — known as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) — those questions will become increasingly important for citizens of this nation as well.

We are already importing many of Mexico’s (and the rest of Latin America’s) social and economic problems, such as crime, poverty and unskilled labor. If our political systems become "harmonized" — and ultimately merged into a continent-wide or hemispheric-spanning security perimeter — it is likely that we will adapt to Mexico’s small but expanding anti-kidnap program involving the use of implantable digital information chips. After all, the reasoning would be, since the crime of kidnapping would no longer be limited by borders, neither should the solution.

Mexico’s "chipping" program, while more advanced that anything presently underway in the U.S., shares crucial assumptions found in Washington’s approach to Homeland Security. Merger with Mexico would certainly provide a pretext to adopt increasingly radical security measures, particularly as migration (no longer called immigration) — including infiltration by Middle Eastern terrorists — -escalates.

So it’s important for Americans who value national independence and personal autonomy to appreciate the manner in which the population of Mexico has been manipulated into accepting a surveillance program that, if fully developed, would make an Orwellian future a reality.

Kidnapping Plague

"The videotapes and photos arrived every few days. They showed a young woman, bound and scared, crying out as her kidnappers slapped her face and beat her. The pictures, the sounds of pain, tore at her uncle Gerardo like a dull razor."

On the tapes or in the phone calls — which always came in the middle of the night — the kidnappers would ask, "when do you want us to stop?" continued the September 17, 2002 Washington Post account.

Demanding $5 million in ransom, the kidnappers "threatened that the next time they would send her tongue, her eye, her ears, [or] her fingers." This was no idle threat. In some kidnapping cases throughout Mexico, victims have indeed been returned to their families — one piece at a time.

Gerardo was also warned that his niece, mother or children would be killed if he called the police. Chillingly, the kidnappers knew enough about Gerardo to offer "specific suggestions about which of [his] properties and businesses he could sell" to raise the ransom money.

This tragic and horrifying account typifies a growing plague south of the border. In Mexico, "a kidnapping occurs every six hours on average," observed the September 17, 2002 Christian Science Monitor — a statistic that calculates to over 1,400 abductions per year. Other sources now place that figure as high as 3,000 or 4,000 annually — a discrepancy that should be considered significant, for reasons we will examine shortly.

As the numbers of victims mount, the brazenness and bestiality of the kidnappers increases. The June 27, 2004 Washington Post noted that in Mexico "front-page news stories of horrific kidnappings and of their victims — including two brothers recently killed and dumped in a garbage bin after their family paid the ransom — have become commonplace in recent weeks." Added the June 17 Economist, "kidnappers have become more violent. In the past, victims were rarely molested. Now female captives are usually raped, and men are often beaten and mutilated."

Not surprisingly, a continual state of fear has gripped much of the country. And with that fear has come a desperate willingness to do whatever it takes to end the onslaught.

On June 27, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Mexico City to demand government action to end the kidnapping epidemic. Their sentiments were summarized by one demonstrator, who told the Washington Post, "we can’t bear it any longer. Something has to change."

Prentend Crisis, Corrupt Opportunity

Unfortunately — if predictably — these desperate people were looking for help from the same government that was implicated in creating the crisis in the first place.

As previously noted, estimates of kidnap victims in Mexico vary widely. One reason for this discrepancy, according to some private investigators, is that anywhere from less than one-third to one-quarter of the victims’ families ever report a kidnapping. This is because of a widespread fear of, and suspicions about, the involvement of Mexico’s notoriously corrupt law enforcement in the kidnappings. And that fear is amply justified: An April 14 BBC report on the kidnapping plague in Mexico stated that "legal representatives of victims claim at least 70% of kidnaps involve police or ex-police participation."

Pedro Fletes Renteria, director of a private school in Mexico City, was kidnapped at gunpoint while on his way to work in March 2001. As was in the case of Gerardo and his niece, Fletes’ abductors "knew -everything about him," reported the Post.

After being released from nearly two months of captivity, Fletes hired private investigators to find out who was behind his kidnapping. His team found evidence of involvement at the very top of Mexico City’s police department. According to Jose Antonio Ortega, head of a security committee conducting the investigation, "telephone records show that the cell phone used by the kidnappers was also used to make calls to the home of a top official from the department’s anti-kidnapping unit."

What is the solution to an epidemic of kidnappings staged with the help of top-echelon Mexican law enforcement personnel, who have access to detailed personal information about their victims? According to the Mexican government, it is to provide that same corrupt law enforcement elite with unprecedented powers to keep the entire population under surveillance.

In mid-July, Rafael Macedo de la Concha, Mexico’s attorney general, "announced that several senior members of his staff plus 160 employees at a new crime database center have … received … [a subdermal] ‘anti-kidnap’ chip," reported the United Kingdom’s Register. In a story bearing the revealing headline, "Kidnap-wary Mexicans Get Chipped," the Register explained that Mexico’s attorney general took the "unusual step of having an ‘anti-kidnap’ chip stuck in his arm and then making the fact public...."

In a significant admission against interest, Macedo stated that his reason for being implanted was because of "widespread corruption" in his own government, which is "considered to be a major factor in the authorities’ lack of success in tackling the kidnap problem." It was further announced that the surveillance system would "serve both as an identity device and a tracking mechanism should they be kidnapped."

In addition to Macedo and his 160-member staff receiving the chip, "more [federal employees] are scheduled to get ‘tagged’ in coming months, and key members of the Mexican military, the police and the office of President Vicente Fox might follow suit," noted a July 15 Associated Press report. Macedo said that the chips "were required to enter a new federal anti-crime information center."

Even though Mexican officials quietly began receiving the implants in November 2003, Macedo used the current political climate to make the announcement. Having cultivated the kidnapping crisis, the corrupt Mexican government is now reaping the benefits — to the detriment of its hapless population.

Of course, measures like "chipping" do nothing to protect the recipients from kidnap gangs, who could simply amputate the implanted appendages and send them to family members as tokens of a ransom demand. But terrifying people into accepting the implants will leave them branded like cattle — stripped of their remaining freedoms and trapped in a total web of surveillance.

One Continent, Under Surveillance

It’s imperative to recognize that what’s happening in Mexico is of immediate concern to U.S. citizens. This is true because of the huge, largely undefended border we share with Mexico, and because of the growing problem of illegal immigration — including infiltration by radical Islamic terrorists — from that country. It is also true because our own leaders are determined to merge our nation with Mexico and Canada in a "continental security perimeter" that would eventually encompass the entire hemisphere under an FTAA regional government. I've been talking about FTAA all along, another article will be up in another day or so.

This process inevitably means not only absorbing Mexico’s crime and corruption, but also adapting to the measures undertaken by that government supposedly to combat those problems. And, as we will see, similar efforts to impose "biometric identifiers" — including implantable data chips — are underway both here and abroad.

Just as the Mexican people are being worn down to accept microchip implants for their kidnapping plague, Americans are being softened up psychologically by the threat of terrorism to cave in to similar surveillance state solutions. The American people are continually being held in suspense and bombarded with warnings that sooner or later terrorists will strike again — even as our nation’s leaders refuse to correct our porous border problem.

Jerry Hauer, a former director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management, pointed out to the July 30 ABC News: "Al Qaeda has recognized that one of our vulnerabilities is our [in]ability to completely seal and control access through Mexico." According to the Tombstone Tumbleweed, a weekly newspaper published in that storied Arizona town, Middle Eastern terrorist groups have exploited that weakness.

The Tumbleweed reported in late July that "a flood of middle-eastern males have been caught entering the country illegally east of Douglas." Although a spokesman for the Tucson, Arizona, sector of the Border Patrol disputes the account, the paper stands by its claim.

The weekly declared that it "has confirmed at least two documented accounts of Border Patrol agents encountering large groups of [non-Spanish speaking] males in the Chiricahua foothills...." Border Patrol agents, speaking to the newspaper on condition of anonymity, stated that these men spoke Arabic and that they "all had brand new clothing," unlike the poorly clad, impoverished Latin Americans usually detained at the border.

This disputed account is buttressed by information provided to the August 8 Houston Chronicle by Texas Representatives Solomon Ortiz (D) and Henry Bonilla (R). The congressmen reported that "federal law enforcement officials have told them that suspicious foreigners have been detained on the Texas border," who "claimed to be from South or Central American countries, but couldn’t speak Spanish."

Sheriff A. D’Wayne Jernigan, of Del Rio, Texas, is outraged by what federal prosecutors scathingly call the government’s "catch and release" program of illegal immigrants who are classed as "Other than Mexican" (OTM). He told the Chronicle that "entering this country illegally is a crime, and we’re turning our heads and ignoring it." Homeland Security officials acknowledge that 70 percent of those released have disappeared from "law enforcement’s radar," which calculates into the U.S. currently having a fugitive population of 400,000 OTM’s.

By leaving our borders porous and largely undefended, Washington is allowing Middle Eastern terrorist groups to build cells and networks in the U.S. — thereby increasing the likelihood of catastrophic terrorist attacks and, inevitably, the draconian counter-terrorist measures that would result.

Totalitarian Tools

Because the U.S. Border Patrol doesn’t have the manpower to stop the flood of immigrants, calls for the technology to do so are starting. According to an August 24 Associated Press story, T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, made this disturbing recommendation: "It should be simple for any law enforcement officer, anywhere in the world, if they encounter someone suspicious to run one biometric check that would link them to all this information so that they would know if this person is a suspected terrorist or a criminal." (Emphasis added.)

This biometric control mechanism is also one of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Its report states: "Secure identification … [means] biometric identifiers [that] measure unique physical characteristics, such as facial features, fingerprints, or iris scans, and reduce them to digitized, numerical statements called algorithms." The report added: "Americans should not be exempt from carrying biometric passports."

Such a totalitarian recommendation is no surprise. Half of the 10-member (supposedly "independent, bipartisan") 9/11 Commission was comprised of members of the world-government promoting Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). CFR members on the commission included Thomas H. Kean, who served as chair, and Lee H. Hamilton, the vice chair, along with Jamie S. Gorelick, Bob Kerrey, and John F. Lehman. Philip D. Zelikow (CFR), one of three members of the commission’s staff, was the executive director.

If biometric identification is deemed insufficient, the "solution" would be to make unique ID more "tamper-proof," such as by implanting the microchip, as is now beginning to take place in Mexico. A July 27 Associated Press report noted that Applied Digital, which manufactures the chips being used in Mexico and elsewhere, is positioning itself to market implantable microchip technology in the United States — where thus far it has received a chilly reception.

According to its publicity materials, Applied Digital plans to promote the technology, known as the VeriChip, for a variety of uses, including "homeland security and secure-access applications." Company literature describes the VeriChip as "a miniaturized, implantable radio frequency identification device (RFID) that has the potential to be used in a variety of security, financial, and other applications."

Each microchip implant is about the size of a grain of rice, with a unique verification number, which is captured through the use of a proprietary scanner. The company is also attempting to develop an implant that would contain a Global Positioning System, which would allow the implanted carrier to be pinpointed anywhere on the planet.

"Mexico is the first country to go public with its use of the microchip for law-enforcement purposes," observes VeriChip’s president Keith Bolton. Russia, Switzerland, Venezuela and Colombia have also purchased an undisclosed quantity of chips. And Italy’s Ministry of Health announced last April that it would be putting the chips to use in hospitals as part of a six-month trial.

Bolton told the August 4, 2004 Christian Science Monitor that VeriChip’s executives were "inspired to use the device on humans after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when they saw firefighters heading into the twin towers ID-ing themselves by writing on their arms with magic marker." At that moment, Bolton said, "we then realized that our chip was also a product for the human market."

Either Mr. Bolton suffers from a memory lapse, or he is being disingenuous. One year before 9/11, the company’s Web site claimed that "future versions of the device [subject to FDA approval] may be able to be implanted within the body" and that it was specifically designed "for use with humans." As with many federal proposals — from creation of a Homeland Security department to the war on Iraq — introduction of the VeriChip is being piggybacked on the 9/11 tragedy as a way of gaining mainstream acceptance.

Applied Digital proposes that the system would be used to control authorized access to sundry public and private institutions, such as government installations, private-sector buildings, nuclear power plants, national research laboratories, prisons and jails, and sensitive transportation resources. It would also be used to enhance security for airports, airlines, cruise ships and ports.

"In these markets," notes the official Web site, "VeriChip could function as a stand-alone, tamper-proof personal verification technology or it could operate in conjunction with other security technologies such as standard ID badges and advanced biometric devices (i.e. retina scanners, thumbprint readers or face recognition devices)." Additionally, the company "recently unveiled VeriPass™ and VeriTag™, which will allow airport and port security personnel to link a VeriChip subscriber to his or her luggage (both during check-in and on the airplane), flight manifest logs and airline or law enforcement software databases."

Bluntly stated, should this technology be fully implemented, it would be the nucleus of an all-encompassing global network of continual surveillance of everywhere we go and everything we buy. It would no longer be necessary for security officials to demand "your papers, please." It would simply be a matter of limiting people’s access to where they are permitted to travel, where they will live, or where they will work.

Projecting the Lines

The new VeriChip/biometric trend syncs up nicely with a recommendation in the September/October 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs, the house journal of the Council on Foreign Relations. In an article entitled "The Neglected Home Front," Stephen E. Flynn (CFR) wrote: "The government must do more to safeguard critical U.S. infrastructure and mobilize the American public to help. For starters, it should create a semi-independent federal agency tapping into private resources that would develop and enforce security standards." That is, a marriage between private and public sectors for developing "security standards" would be arranged — with government undoubtedly being the senior partner. In Germany and Italy such a perverse partnership was called fascism.

Introduction of the VeriChip system in Mexico takes on an added ominous significance in light of a proposal published in the January/February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs. In an essay entitled "North America’s Second Decade," Robert A. Pastor (CFR) laid out a plan for a consolidated continental security system — which would almost certainly include the use of high-tech identification systems.

Referring to the events of 9/11 as a "shock to the North American body politic," Pastor claimed that the emerging political entity called "North America" has two possible courses that lay ahead. The first would "strengthen border enforcement and impede movement." This would strike most Americans as the common sense position. But, in typical fashion, Pastor and his fellow internationalists prefer the opposite course — that of integration.

By exploiting "security fears … as a catalyst for deeper integration," the CFR globalists hope to develop "common institutions." Accordingly, Pastor wrote, deeper integration "would require new structures to assure mutual security, [and] to promote trade … [combined with] a redefinition of security that puts the United States, Mexico, and Canada inside a continental perimeter."

Pastor’s "most important" recommendation is for the "Department of Homeland Security [to] expand its mission to include continental security — a shift best achieved by incorporating Mexican and Canadian perspectives and personnel into its design and operation." The "perspective" of the incurably corrupt and relentlessly predatory Mexican government is typified by its willingness to use VeriChip technology against its increasingly helpless -population.

Democratic presidential contender John Kerry (CFR) has caught Pastor’s vision for a North American "continental perimeter" of "security." In an August 2004 interview with Poder magazine, Kerry spoke of his intention to "create a ‘North American Security Perimeter’ to facilitate the legitimate travel of law-abiding citizens and crack down on bad actors trying to enter the United States. By working closely with our neighbors to coordinate our customs, immigration and law enforcement policies, we can better protect the region from terrorist threats."

This is not to say, of course, that a re-elected President Bush would pursue a significantly different course. In fact, he has repeatedly endorsed the political and economic consolidation of the Western Hemisphere via the FTAA "free trade agreement" fraud.

During his first term, Mr. Bush has worked consistently to integrate our economy and security system with that of Mexico. And of course, he has presided over the creation of an immense Homeland Security department with an open-ended mandate to treat U.S. citizens — not foreign terrorists — as the chief threat to public order. If elected to a second term, Bush, like Kerry, would undoubtedly pursue a politically merged Western Hemisphere, with a security perimeter that would include both North and South America.

Security Perimeter, or Global Prison?

In such a "security perimeter," the terrorists who have been permitted to infiltrate here would be left inside with the doors closed behind them. And in order to root them out, it would supposedly be necessary to target all people as potential enemies. The easiest "solution" to this predicament would be to uniquely identify everybody with some sort of ID, be it by microchip implant, biometric scanning (such as finger or retina) or a combination of the two.

Over 30 years ago, in an article for the December 1973 issue of American Opinion (predecessor to The New American), author Gary Allen surveyed the predictions made in Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell’s famous novel warning against a totalitarian future. Orwell’s major premise, wrote Allen, "was that government would use technology to establish a surveillance society which would end all privacy."

"A dying George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four as a warning to us," Allen soberly concluded. "His message is that once political and scientific power are centralized we will have no chance to escape tyranny."

It is precisely because we have departed from our Constitution in various ways and degrees that political power is being centralized in this nation. And we are being duped and primed by the same Power Elite — which has created or exploited so many of our nation’s and the world’s problems — into accepting a manufactured need for all of these surveillance trappings and high-tech measures.

The Roman satirist Juvenal asked millennia ago: "Who will watch the watchers themselves?" Once total power — including that of surveillance — is given to an unaccountable elite, freedom is quickly extinguished.

Fortunately, we’ve not reached that dismal milestone yet. But it’s looming ever larger on our horizon; and it must be stopped.

Americans must act soon to restore our Constitution and Republic, before a universal surveillance state is erected — and we become inmates in a global prison without walls.

Presidential Debate

2004-10-02T18:46:00.000-05:00

Ok forget the fact that John Kerry has taken so many different positions on the issues facing the country that he would benefit from an overview of the most interesting debate -- the one John Kerry is having with himself. He's been for the war, against the war and for it and against it again. Last week, he became an anti-war candidate again. This is a fatal flaw and the American people see through it. John Kerry is not able to take a principled position and is the wrong choice to guide America through this critical time.

While taking stage right to President Bush in last night's debate, Senator Kerry's stand -- or stands, I might say -- on issues of national security placed him at far, far stage left. Style notwithstanding, the substance of Kerry's exchange on national security was anything but reassuring.

"My position on Iraq has been consistent." Sen. Kerry repeated those same words some half dozen times over the course of the 90-minute debate, so we just can't resist saying it: "Methinks he doth protest too much." (Of some mention, Kerry referenced his Vietnam "service" about half a dozen times, too.) Highlighting the "consistency" of his position, over the course of 90 minutes Kerry managed to say the war with Iraq was a "colossal error of judgment" on the part of the President and referred to the war as a "distraction" from "the real war on terror," but he managed to add that he believed Saddam was a threat when he voted to authorize the use of force, that the Iraqi people deserved to be free, and that he could "win the peace," while beginning to withdraw U.S. forces within six months, making our "bribed and coerced" allies, whose contributions he "respects," pick up the slack. He also implied he'd build a real coalition for Iraq, including France and Germany, and open reconstruction contracts to those nations -- the very ones who profited most (illegally under UNSC sanctions) from Saddam's rule, and who have both refused (as recently as this week) to be a part of any such coalition, even in the eventuality of a Kerry presidency. Consistent eh?

On the subject of our troops engaged in Iraq, Kerry remarked, "I understand what the president is talking about because I know what it means to lose people in combat. And the question, 'Is it worth the cost?,' reminds me of my own thinking when I came back from fighting in that war. And it reminds me that it is vital for us not to confuse the war -- ever -- with the warriors. That happened before."

More to the point, who was the one perpetuating that confusion? Was Kerry criticizing the war when he testified before Congress in 1971 of war crimes by U.S. forces in Vietnam? NO! -- Kerry was accusing U.S. troops in the field of countless atrocities, playing directly into the hands of the Communist North. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet bloc, said of Kerry's anti-American activities during the Vietnam War, "KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. ... As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements." General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam's most decorated military leader, wrote in retrospect that if not for the disunity created by Kerry and his ilk, Hanoi would have ultimately surrendered.

Kerry can't have it both ways. His undermining of U.S. resolve, and that of our allies, in the war against terrorism, specifically on the Iraqi warfront with Jihadistan, is a direct assault on Americans fighting in Iraq. American and Allied Forces, and countless Iraqis, are being injured and killed because of the political dissent Kerry and his ilk are fomenting -- not unlike the American casualties Kerry's 1971 protests caused in Vietnam.

Back to the war at hand, Kerry relentlessly attacked President Bush, saying, "Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us." Then, when asked about the most dangerous security threat in the world today, Kerry didn't hesitate to reply, "Nuclear proliferation," to which President Bush added, "in the hands of terrorists." Though we can -- and have -- laid bare Kerry's national-security credentials, President Bush said it best, last night: "To say there's only one focus in the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war on terror...the front of this war is in more than one place."

Though he recognizes nuclear proliferation to be the imminent threat to our nation's security interests, Kerry seems not to grasp -- dare I say it -- the "nuances" of dealing with such a threat. The Senator apparently thinks he can publicly ridicule Russian President Vladmir Putin as a tyrant one minute, then vow to secure all fissile materiel in the former Soviet bloc within four years the next minute. Does Kerry really believe we can do this apart from Russian cooperation? Who's the brazen unilateralist now?

To wit, Kerry's debate performance on these other fronts was equally disastrous. On the subject of Iran, Kerry was obviously confused on the whole issue of nuclear technology, as well as the historical facts concerning the sanctions against Iran.

The man who thought he spent Christmas in Cambodia first said we needed sanctions against Iran, then, when confronted with the fact that there are sanctions against Iran -- and you can't sanction them again -- Kerry blamed the President for the "unilateral" nature of those sanctions, to which Mr. Bush corrected, again, that those sanctions were in place "long before I came to Washington." Indeed, 29 October 1987, for the first set of sanctions, under President Reagan. 16 March 1995, under President Clinton, for a second set. 19 August 1997 for another set of sanctions, again under then President Clinton. Again, consistent?

By way of contrast, on the subject of North Korean nuclear armament, Kerry bemoaned the President's decision to abandon bilateral talks with dictator Kim Jung Il in favor of multilateral pressure -- a coalition, some might say -- involving China, Russia, South Korea and Japan. For some reason, when President Bush employs multilateral diplomacy it's a bad idea; Kerry would return to Clinton's tried-and-failed diplomacy of appeasement -- the same diplomacy under which North Korea was able to advance its nuclear program in secret, even adding enriched uranium to its plutonium-based weapons development.

And that's just how "consistent" Kerry can be in 90 minutes; let's not even think about four years.

Perhaps the key moment of the debate, as well as the point most clearly delineating just how stage left Kerry is on national security, was his comment, "No president through all of American history has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to pre-empt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do it in a way that passes the test. That passes the global test [original emphasis] where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing. And you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

Mr. Bush replied, "I'm not exactly sure what you mean: passes the 'global test.' You take pre-emptive action if you pass a global test? My attitude is you take pre-emptive action in order to protect the American people."

This tells all. The foreign-policy difference between Kerry and Bush is not multilateralism versus unilateralism. Both are, at times, legitimate tools of foreign policy, but not policies themselves. The difference, rather, is one of globalism versus national sovereignty in the promotion and defense of U.S. interests abroad. Kerry's globalist agenda, by his own admission, would sacrifice U.S. protection of her citizens and soldiers abroad to the caprices of the International Criminal Court. Kerry would seek UN approval for "preemptively" defending the United States -- approval of the same agency that so effectively issued no fewer than 17 resolutions against Saddam's Iraq and refused to enforce any of them, with Kofi Annan recently declaring the resolutions' enforcement "illegal."

With an approving reference to Charles DeGaulle, the French president who abandoned the U.S.-led coalition in the defense of the free world at a crucial moment of the Cold War, Kerry said he would restore our "credibility" with such leaders around the world.I unapologetically reply: It's time for these foreign leaders -- the likes of France and Germany, who have continued unhesitatingly to obstruct U.S. interests abroad and security around the globe -- to restore their credibility with us.

National security is not for the faint of heart, and John Kerry's feints of heart prove that the Senator from Massachusetts, replete with his history of foreign policy waffling and betrayal of the national trust, is simply not up to the task.

On the eve of our assault on al-Qa'ida and other Jihadistan forces in Afghanistan, President Bush addressed the nation, and closed with these words: "We will not waiver, we will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail." Indeed!

Quote of the week...

"If America shows uncertainly or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. That's not going to happen so long as I'm your president. ... We will continue to stay on the offense. We will fight the terrorists around the world so we do not have to face them here at home. We'll continue to build our alliances. I'll never turn over America's national-security needs to leaders of other countries as we continue to build those alliances." --President George W. Bush

Here are a few more of Kerry's "Flips" in previous statements and "Flops" in the debate.

On Iraq as a source for terrorist WMD... Flip: "Saddam Hussein has already used these [WMD] and has made it clear that he has the intent to continue to try, by virtue of his duplicity and secrecy, to continue to do so. That...is a threat with respect to the potential of terrorist activities on a global basis." Flop: Now Kerry says Iraq posed no terrorist threat, but then flips again in the middle of the debate, saying, "I have always agreed on that, and from the beginning, I did vote to give the authority because I thought Saddam Hussein was a threat."

On support for American forces in combat... Flip: Kerry voted against $87 billion in funding to equip our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with essential supplies like ammunition and body armor even though he said before the vote, "I don't think any United States senator is going to abandon our troops and recklessly leave Iraq to ' to whatever follows as a result of simply cutting and running. That's irresponsible." He explained later, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Flop: Now Kerry now says, "My message to the troops is...help is on the way. I believe those troops deserve better than what they are getting today."

On "lies"... Flip: Kerry accused President Bush of lying: "This administration has lied to us. They have misled us." Flop: Kerry now says to the moderator, "Well, I've never, ever used the harshest word ["lie"] as you just did."

Memo to "undecided" voters: If Thursday night's debate left you wondering who really has the right stuff to be president, link to -- http://kerry-04.org/right_wrong.php

The pre-debate positioning and challenging was fascinating to watch.

"You cannot expect to lead this world if you try to take both sides of every position," President Bush challenged Kerry earlier in the week.

And Mr. Bush joshed of Kerry's multi-positioned nuances, "It's been a little tough to prepare [for the debate] because he [John Kerry] keeps changing positions on the war on the terror. He voted for the use of force in Iraq and then didn't vote to fund the troops. He complained that we're not spending enough money to help in reconstruction in Iraq and now he's saying we're spending too much. He said it was the right decision to go into Iraq and now he calls it the wrong war. He could probably spend 90 minutes debating himself."

Vice President Dick Cheney also took up the theme, saying, "The idea that somehow we could pull back and simply sit behind our oceans and not aggressively be going after the terrorists and those who sponsor terrorists, I think misreads the situation completely. ...I'm waiting to see what he will say Thursday night. It'll be interesting."

Meanwhile, Kerry shot back, attempting to find his footing, "I'm looking forward to tomorrow night for an opportunity to share with Americans the truth, not the sound bites, not the advertisements, the truth."

The truth? Well, the central political "truth" for Campaign Kerry is that his support is eroding. The announcement that the Rev. Je$$e Ja¢k$on is joining up came just as polling showed that black voters are not inclined to pull the lever for the John-John ticket. Moreover, Kerry is losing female voters' support, too. And the three key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, recently counted safely within the Demo column, are now trending toward Bush country.

No wonder Kerry climbed aboard the national-security bandwagon this week, tacking toward the steady Bush take on Iraq with this: "Look, we have to succeed. There are more terrorists in Iraq today then there were before, and you can't allow it to become an unstable regime that's a haven for terrorism."

John Edwards kept up the attack, softly though, saying, "The truth is they're [Team Bush] trying to exploit one of our nation's greatest tragedies for personal gain. It is immoral, and it is wrong. This isn't a Republican issue or a Democratic [sic] issue." So, Edward is charging that when Bush campaigners address national security, it's out of bounds. But when he and his cadre want to advance the topic...

On Wednesday, Edwards further claimed, "Umm...it [extending the war with Jihadistan into Iraq] certainly made us more vulnerable to the possibility of a nuclear attack. What I know is true is that Iran and North Korea have moved forward with their nuclear-weapons program [sic]. This President has basically ceded the responsibility for dealing with Iran to the Europeans and with the North Koreans to the Chinese -- which is a huge mistake because they create such a threat to America that it creates a much more serious nuclear threat to America."

What?

Taz Posing Like Eminem

2004-10-02T17:54:00.000-05:00

Taz posing like Eminem

Taz showed me his best these last few days. What a great young man he's turned out to be. I am proud that he stepped up to serve our country. These days leading up to the election are going to be tough. With his feeling as though having John Kerry in office will be suicide for the troops, I know it will be weighing heavily on his heart. After the election, having the holidays without him around will be tougher, still. Please include him in your prayers.

Taz Walking To His Car

2004-10-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

Taz walking past my car to his old beater

Over the past 15 days I've learned a lot about what a War can do to change a man. Taz is coming into his own. He talked about the future, how he'd like to find a nice girl and settle down, and make me a grandmother.

Taz Is On His Way Back To Iraq-Loaded For Bear

2004-10-02T17:52:00.000-05:00

Taz getting ready to go

This picture is from earlier today when I drove out to Taz's place and picked him up to go to the airport to return to Iraq. He is renewed. He had 15 days of R&R and a lot of fun. He travelled around town, did a little wheelin' and dealin', sold some things to turn over some quick cash, (as he is apt to do, even in Iraq)--made some new contacts, straightened up his place, went roller skating (which is a passion of his), went out to eat, saw relatives and friends, and generally had a great time.

He's now loaded for bear.

Pro Lifers And Alan Keyes For Bush

2004-10-02T14:06:00.000-05:00

Pro-life activists say if President Bush can win the land of Lincoln, he'll win the White House. They are focusing on helping the president and Senate candidate Alan Keyes win uphill battles in the largely Democratic state.

"If Bush wins in Illinois, Bush will win the Presidency," Michael L. McGlynn, chairman of the Illinois Federation for Right to Life political action committee, said.

According to McGlynn, Illinois holds a "substantial and decisive" number of electoral college votes among "undecided" states.

"Pro-lifers can make the difference if we decide to make the push for Bush," said McGlynn. "If Kerry is elected, all our hard work in the recent past and the foreseeable future will be nullified by Kerry-appointed, pro-abortion federal judges."

But the Oval Office is not the only office on the minds of Illinois’ pro-life voters. Many have been energized by charismatic conservative Alan Keyes’ decision to run against pro-abortion Democratic state legislator Barack Obama in the race for U.S. Senate.

In the minds of some pro-life voters, Keyes represents a dream candidate.

Known as an eloquent speaker, the former State Department official has electrified crowds with his fiery oratory. Keyes has said that abortion represents a breach of the fundamental principles of the public moral code and that partial-birth abortion is horrifically evil.

Keyes supported the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act, legislation that was inspired by an Illinois nurse who discovered that newborn babies were being left to die at a number of hospitals--including the one where she worked. Keyes has said that the fact that Obama, a state senator, cast a vote that would have allowed such “live birth abortions" to continue in Illinois was the deciding factor in his decision to run for the Senate.

In his announcement speech, Keyes said, "When he embraces an extremist position on abortion that countenances even the murder of living young children outside the womb, Barack Obama abandons the principles of our Declaration, and destroys the foundations of our national union."

Both African-Americans, Keyes has chided Obama, for holding the "slaveholder's" position on abortion -- meaning that the abortion industry treats blacks as property that can be disposed.
In addition to his staunch opposition to abortion, Keyes opposes human cloning and would back legislation to ban cloning for both reproduction and scientific experimentation.

Pro-life leaders in Illinois are also hoping to educate voters about the fact that not all Democrats are pro-abortion. For instance, the IFRL PAC has endorsed both pro-life Republicans and pro-life Democrats for Congress, the Illinois Senate, and the Illinois House.

In one featured race, the PAC is endorsing Democratic state Representative William Grunloh, but recognizes that his Republican opponent, David Reis, shares similar views on pro-life issues.
"Our policy has been that when the challenger and incumbent are pro-life, the incumbent should be given the endorsement," IFRL lobbyist Nicholas J. Stojakovich said.

Illinois pro-life voting guide - http://www.wevoteprolife.com/illinois.htm
IFRL PAC endorsement list - http://www.ifrl-pac.com/candidates/2004/endorsed
Alan Keyes campaign website - http://www.keyes2004.com/

Criminal T-Shirts

2004-10-02T09:12:00.000-05:00

A construction worker, Jayson Nelson, supervisor in Wisconsin's Outagamie County, "was forced to leave President Bush's campaign rally" [in Green Bay] because he was wearing a John Kerry T-shirt, reported the July 18 Appleton Post-Crescent.

Nelson had attended a "Kerry for President" rally in Fond du Lac earlier that same day. After he threw a button-down shirt over his t-shirt, Nelson, holding a CIP pass he received as a local government official, quietly and patiently waited outside Green Bay's Reach Center auditorium. A complaint from a woman standing next to Nelson prompted security guards to force him to remove his dress shirt, and once the Kerry t-shirt was revealed, Nelson was plucked out of the line and delivered into the Secret Service's custody. Nelson was released after a brief background check, but wasn't permitted to attend the event.

"I was told that no law was broken, but I was nearly treated like a criminal for the terrible crime of wearing a t-shirt," Nelson commented. Nelson had no right to attend the event, according to Merrill Smith, Midwestern regional spokeswoman for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort. "These events are for people who are going to get out and support the president and who are going to work on his behalf between now and November 2."

Interestingly, the Secret Service said they would have done the same thing at a Kerry event, reported Nelson. (If he were wearing a Bush for President Tshirt, I would think.)

Hey. Nelson should consider himself fortunate. He could have been arrested and charged with "trespassing", as were Nicole and Jeff Rank of Charleston, West Virginia. The Ranks were part of a crowd of spectators during a July 4th event billed as a "presidential appearance," rather than a "campaign rally." Like other participants, the Ranks acquired the proper tickets for the event, held on the steps of the state Capitol. They sang the National Anthem, and conducted themselves respectfully. But--unlike GOP loyalists sporting pro-Bush t-shirts and accoutrements, the Ranks were clad in t-shirts reading: "Love America, Hate Bush."

Police took Nicole and Jeff Rank were taken away in handcuffs from the event," reported the July 14 Charleston (West Virginia) Gazette. The couple was then fingerprinted and booked on "trespassing" charges --as if the Capitol steps suddenly became the property of the president and his supporters. Additionally, Nicole, who had worked as an environmental liaison for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was later told by the agency that "she was no longer needed in West Virginia."

Noted the paper: "The Secret Service had been telling local police to sequester anyone displaying an anti-administration message, usually in areas completely out of sight or earshot of Bush." This leaves local police and municipal governments on the hook for a federal policy intended to protect the president from the spectacle of public criticism of his performance. The charges against the Ranks were dropped, and the Charleston City Council offered a perfunctory apology. But the Secret Service Policy remains firmly in place....

Solutions to Terrorism

2004-10-01T06:45:00.000-05:00

On September 11, 2001, the federal government failed in the most important of its few constitutionally enumerated functions: Protecting our homeland from attack.

The only effective defense of our country on that day came from a handful of desperate private citizens on United Flight 93, and the heroic efforts of state and local police, fireman, and emergency response teams. Despite spending trillions of dollars on a global-spanning military establishment, and an intelligence apparatus consisting of no fewer than 15 seperate agencies, Washington left us vulnerable to an unprecedented murderous attack on our home soil.

A rational person would assume that addressing Washington's failure on 9/11 would require fundamental changes in the foreign, military, and intelligence policies that contributed to the debacle, as well as stern measures to hold accountable those officials who presided over it. After all, since the government failed the people, it is government, not the people, that should bear the burdens and make the necessary changes.

Yet, the independent 9/11 Commission recommends exactly the opposite. (???) It calls for radically enhancing the power of the federal government, and imposing expanded burdens on the rights and liberties of the people whom the government failed to protect on that dreadful morning three years ago.

We don't need "the government to increase its presence in our lives," as the 9/11 commissioners openly advocate. Here are a few simple measures that should be implemented:

Secure our borders. The 9/11 Commission report incorrectly stated that "better technology and training to detect terrorist travel documents are the most important steps to reduce America's vulnerability to clandestine entry." Of course, a person who simply wades across the Rio Grande doesn't have to worry about secure biometric travel documents. When the overwhelming majority of terrorists committing acts against us are foreign nationals, it is more important than ever to secure our borders!!!

The 9/11 Commissioners were right about one thing: It is elemental to national "security to know who is coming into the country." Though the 9/11 commissioners had nothing to say about closing down illegal immigration from our southern borders, this is perhaps the highest priority for national security.

Monitoring and enforcing the time limits on the millions of visas issued to foreign tourists, students and business persons is a must! All of the 9/11 hijackers had been legally admitted into the US at one time or another.

More federalism, less federalization. "No single layer of security is foolproof" the 9/11 commissioners correctly stated at the same time they called for for broad-based federalization of police powers and identification papers. Instead of proposing multiple layers of security at all levels of government (local, state and federal) the 9/11 commissioners have essentially recommended merging all security within a single layer of protection: the federal government! Yet, information in the 9/11 Commission's own report reveals that the federal government was the biggest failure on 9/11 and that state and local police agencies posed the greatest obstacles to the terrorists carrying out a wider path of destruction.

Congress should require intelligence agencies to share foreign intelligence with state and local officials on an advisory basis, thereby strengthening the other layers of law enforcement protection against terrorism.

More legislative oversight, not less. The Commission report recommended reducing congressional oversight of the intelligence function of the federal government. But Congress should have more committees and subcommittees investigating the threat of terrorism, not fewer, as the 9/11 commissioners recommend.

Restore genuine intelligence collection. A new "national intelligence director" Cabinet agency and new bureaucracies are not needed in order to correct the shortcomings that became so clear on September 11, 2001. Congress needs to pass legislation overcoming the Ford administration-era regulations banning the collections of information on organizations and individuals that threaten to break the law, or that have ties to foreign governments, foreign intelligence agencies, subversive movements or groups with recoreds of support for terrorism and totalitarian ideologies.

Focus on Islamic Immigrants. "The enemy is not just "terrorism" some generic evil," the 9/11 commissioners stated. "The catastrophic threat at this moment in history is more speicific. It is the threat posed by Islamic terrorism--especially the al-Qaeda network, its affiliates and ideology." The 9/11 commissioners even singled out specific geographic bases where terrorists would likely locate themselves. Afghanistan, Western Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yeme, Somolia, Kenya, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria and Mali. As long as most terrorists originate from these countries, immigration offocials should be focusing additional scrutiny upon immigrants form there and ignore politically correct dogma that bands "racial profiling".

An end to empire. The 9/11 commissioners argue that "the American homeland is the planet", requiring decades of troop deployments, foreign aid and nation building to secure. But the premise is not true. America's security interests do not encompass the planet. In fact, American military advneurism abroad has stirred up a hornet's nest of resentment against the United States, providing more fuel for the terrorists.

Al-Qaeda itself was created in reaction to the creation of US military bases in Saudi Arabia (where the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina are located); after the first Gulf War restored the Kuwaiti emirs to power. Muslim terrorism against the United States was virtually unheard of before American troops were sent to occupy Beirut in the early '80's, an occupation that resulted in the bombing of the US embassy and Marine barracks in the city. Bringin American troops home from abraod, except those making specific reprisals for terrorist actions, would do a lot to quiet resentment against the United States and make terrorist attacks against Americans far less frequent.

Be Prepared. "To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace," said George Washington in his first annual address to Congress. That advice is as true today as it was then. And it is as appropriate to intelligence preparedness as it is to military preparedness.

It is now fairly widely known that Washington had prior knowledge of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but failed to alert our commanders in Hawaii. The publicly available evidence of intelligence faillures connected to the more recent 9/11 attacks indicates that three of the 9/11 co-conspirators could have been apprehended prior to 9/11--possibly reducing the number of attacks on that day, and perhaps even foiling the plot altogether.

Preparedness should extend not only to the US military, and to intelligence and law enforcement agencies at all levels, but to the people themselves. During WWII, Switzerland's preparedness, based largely on an armed citizenry ready to mobilize at a moment's notice, dissuaded the Nazis from attacking. Hitler recognized that, by attacking Switzerland, he would have to defeat not just a military force, but an entire armed population. He decided it wasn't worth the risk.

Troubling Story From Released Hostage

2004-09-30T17:04:00.000-05:00

Italian Hostages Released

In Iraq, seven kidnapped hostages including two Italian women abducted three weeks ago have now been released. In the case of the Italian women Italy's President Berlusconi won't say whether there was a ransom or some other quid pro quo. Is there any question in your mind? There isn't in mine.

Another recently released hostage, a Canadian, is reporting something very ominous.

Scott Taylor

Canadian Journalist Scott Taylor spent five days as a kidnapped hostage in Iraq. He was "tortured and beaten" and "also told I was going to die. They were going to behead me on Friday." He said he can barely walk because of the beatings he endured.

Scott Taylor, Canadian Journalist and Former Hostage in Iraq tells his story:
"They pronounced that I would be executed the following morning and I was handcuffed and chained to the bed and I laid there for about 6 or 7 hours just anticipating my own death. "

But what's most chilling about Taylor's story is what he'd already learned by then. From the moment of his capture as he and a Turkish journalist approached an Iraqi police checkpoint outside the city of Talafar.

TAYLOR: "We were instructed to get into a car with four masked gunmen, this is by the Iraqi police, and the masked gunmen were sitting next to the checkpoint."

The Iraqi police, mind you, are the ones we're counting on to provide security for the January elections. BY then it's hoped there'll be 145 thousand of them. But as his kidnappers were driving their hostages to Mosul, they encountered MORE Iraqi police. And guess what?

TAYLOR: "They actually welcomed these guys like you would welcome home the local baseball team after a game. These were obviously about 30 heavily armed mujahideen coming in dusty cars across the desert with captives, evident captives, myself and the Turkish journalist, inside the car. They were giving them cigarettes, giving them water."

Taylor says this wasn't just garden variety police corruption.

TAYLOR: "This wasn't something where these guys were just paying protection and turning a blind eye. They were actually willingly encouraging the mujahideen in their fight against the American occupiers: And they were LAUGHING." says Taylor.

TAYLOR: "They were laughing about this because it meant that in fact the munitions they were purchasing for the resistance were in fact being bought with American money that was intended for the salaries of the Iraqi police and army that were supposed to be combating the resistance, so they found this rather ironic."

Don't YOU find that troubling? I do.

Founding Fathers Learned Lessons From History

2004-09-29T06:09:00.000-05:00

As the Founders read the histories of the rise and fall of the Greek and Roman republics recorded by Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus, Sallust, Plutarch, Polybius and others, they learned that the liberties enjoyed by the citizens of those commonwealths were quite often targeted by conspiracies of men determined to enslave the people an establish themselves as tyrants. The Founders recognizes that the conspiratorial view of history was not a theory--it was a fact.

Ancient historians were straightforward in their eports of the secret plots. Surveying the library of British monarchial abuses, our Founders rightly perceived that the shrouded hand of evil conspiracy was at work in America and England. Just as it had been in the Roman republic they so admired. Famed patriot Charles Carroll of Carrollton invoked the record of Roman historian Tacitus when he wrote that the conspiracy of this own time had led America and England to "that degree of liberty and servitude which Galba ascribes to the Roman people in the speech to Piso; those same Romans, a few years after that period, deified the horse of Caligula."

The equally eminent and historically minded John Adams also applied analogies from the Romand republic to the increasingly open threat to the foundations of English liberty by corrupt legislators. The government of England, he said, "quoting Roman historian Sallust), had descended to the level where "the Roman republic was when Jugurtha left it, and pronounced it a 'venal city, ripe for destruction if it can only find a purchaser.'" SSallust was a valuable and oft-cited source of warnings in the consquences of government corruption and intrigue.

Our Founders heeded these warnings about power elites who used corruption, intrigue, and personal immorality to neutralize public concern and dampen zeal for the protection of liberty. From the 18th to the 21st century, ti would seem, times have changed very little.

James Madison insightfully noted that most of the tyrants of history masqueraded as democrats, and over time, revealed themselves to be power hungry dictators and shameless demagogues. Alexander Hamilton, an astute student of classical history, devoted his first contribution to the Federalist Papers to a writing against tyrants of "men who have over-turned the liberties of republics, commencing as demagoguges and ending as tyrants."

From such statements, it is evidence that Adams, Madison, Hamilton and other Founders understood that, throughout the history of the Greek and Roman republics, tyrants were more likely than not to begin their political careers as populists and democrats and end them as despots. Such demagogues were men of prominence who used their popular support to force their will upon an unsuspecting and trusting populace. As greek historian Thucydides remarked, "You may rule over anyone whom you can dominate."

Madison's study of the ancient Greek confederacies revealed to him that almost every one of these republics came to an end as a result of conspiracy among domestic demagogues and foreign allies. Hamilton called these insiduous cabals the "Grecian Horse to a republic." Both men worried that the same scheme would eventually destroy the American union. This fear, coupled with a thorough understanding of history, made the Founders vigilant guardians against the rise of such combinations in their own nascent republic.

Madison, James Wilson and others, who systematically studied the ancient republics and confederacies, noted that conspiracies were rampant among them. Those who were successful in carrying out such evil designs would expose and vehemently rail against similar acts on the part of others, thus painting themselves as guardians of liberty. The source of all this evil was an unquenchable thirst for power. Power was the end, and conspiracy was the means commonly used to satisfy the rapeicious appetitie for domination.

From Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, Jefferson, Adams, Dickinson, Madison, Hamilton and other diligent patriot-scholars, learned of a particularly permicious deception practiced by tyrannically minded conspirators. These instigators would place their fellow cinspirators in leadership positions on both sides of a controversy, constantly inciting the "opposing" factions against one another until the innocent citizens didn't know what to believe. Our American republic in the 21st century is little different, as Democrats and Republicans adamantly "oppose" on another, while between their rival policies lurks not a dime's worth of difference.

A companion of evil to the conspiracies that contaminated and eventually annihilated the ancident commonwealths was the gradual erosion of liberty by seemingly harmless and legal acts. In Demosthenes' writings, the Founders read of how Philip of Macedon--by slow and nearly imperceptible means--dismantled Athenian freedom. Philip was an enemy even to those who fancied themselves his allies. He used "legal" means to subvert the constitution and rob Athens of her liberty. His favorite tactic was to create frivolous diversions and provide luxuries to lull the Athenians into a false sense of security and distract them from noticing Philip's usurpations.

Unfortunatley, Philip succeeded in gaining control of Athens and in making her formerly freedom-loving citizens slaves to his will. Jefferson described such gradual and planned usurpations this way:

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day, but a series of oppressions, began at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan of reducing us to slavery."

Will we prove wiser and more zealous protectors of our sacred liberties?

One of the best ways of demonstrating our respect for our Founding Fathers, and our dedication to the principles of liberty they bequeathed to us, is to study the books they studied. By doing so, we will come to appreciate, as they did, that republics are as fragile as they are glorious. We will also more fully recognize that unassailable personal virtue and vigilant loyalty to constitutional principles are the only hope for perpetuation of the freedom that our forebears bought with their blood. May we learn from successes and failures of the ancients and not allow the "lamp of experience" to be extinguished in our lives.

Hey-Don't Play With My Son's Life

2004-09-29T05:03:00.000-05:00

Liberals like Hillary and the dangerous politics of the left are poison to the souls of patriotic Americans.

Patriotic Americans don't blame the deaths of our soldiers on our government--they blame them on the enemy who pulled the trigger or ignited the truck bomb. Patriotic Americans don't criticize the government for "losing the peace" when we are, in fact, winning the war. In the War on Terror, we're not at peace, and we're not losing.

Patriotic Americans don't take a noble cause such as defending your country and liberating the oppressed and turn it into a set of talking points aimed solely at the political destruction of a rival. Patriotic Americans chose their country, first. The politics come later.

Former VP Al Gore, with all the motion he could muster, Dean-screamed, "This nation has never in our two centuries made a worse foreign policy mistake than what George W. Bush made in putting our troops into that quagmire in Iraq. It was a horrible misjudgment."

Would-be Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean claims that Saudi Arabia tipped off President Bush about the September 11, 2001, attacks and he failed to act, and claimed America is no safer with Saddam Hussein behind bars.

Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking to the Center for American Progress, attacked the Bush Administration, saying that it had "broken faith with the American people, aided by a congressional majority willing to pursue ideology at any price, even the price of the truth...." Earlier, Kennedy had called the awar in Iraq a fraud "made up in Texas." "There was no immminent danger," he continued, "and we should never have gone to war."

General Wesley Clark, the "Perfumed Prince", campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, referred to the war in Iraq as "not patriotic. Not smart, I don't think it was a patriotic war. I think it was a mistake, a strategic mistake." Clark also called for an impeachment probe of President Bush. "I think the Congress needs to investigate precisely (how the US wound up in a war with Iraq) that was connected to the threat of Al-Qaeda." Clark said, "This was an elective war, "He complained. He also charged that Bush "never intended" to capture Osama bin Laden. Let's just watch for the coming October surprise.

A clear indication of the extremes the former general was willing to go to for votes was demonstrated with his machismo pose on the cover of the Advocate magazine (a national gay and lesbian news source) sporting an open shirt over a v-neck t-shirt for the gay readers.

George Soros, the radical billionaire philanthropist and friend of Bill Clinton who funds groups supporting abortion, atheism, gay marriage, euthanasia, drug legalization, sex education and other liberal causes...vowed to do whatever necessary to bring the President down.

Soros' brain trust for the effort is Morton Halperin, a former Clinton Administration official and liberal mastermind who organized the highly damaging campaign of the '70's to strip the intelligence gathering capabilities of the FBI and CIA; and John Podesta, former Clinton White House chief of staff.

It would serve well for the Clintons...Gore, Kenney..and Clark (who seems to have lost whatever military sense he had when he became Democratic presidential candidate and tried to get to the left of Howard Dean) to remember this: America's servicemen and women are engaged in combat.

Coalition Of The Wide Eyed

2004-09-29T04:38:00.000-05:00

Click here for The Faces Of John Kerry’s Democratic Party

The Founding Fathers' Heroes and Villains

2004-09-28T10:45:00.000-05:00

Ancient history provided the Founders with examples of behavior and circumstances that they could apply to their own circumstances. Their heroes were Roman and Greek republicans and defenders of liberty. All of the Founders' Roman heroes lived at a time when the Roman republic was being threatened by power-hungry demagogues, bloodsthirsty dictators and shadowy conspirators. The Founders' principal Greco-Roman heroes were Roman statemen: Cato the Younger, Brutus, Cassius and Cicero--all of whom sacrificed their lives in unsuccessful attempts to save the republic--as well as the celebrated Greek lawgivers Lycurgus and Solon.

Cato the Younger was a Roman of sterling reputation who lived from approximately 95 BC ro 46 BC. He is described as being "unmoved by passion and firm in everything," even from his youth. He was renowned for finishing whatever he started and for hating flattery. He embraced every Roman virtue, and he was especially appreciatef for his sense of justice and his even temperment. As a senator, Cato was always in attendance when the Senate was in session. A no-nonsense legislator, Cato was hated by Pompey and Caesar for his integrity and for his refusal to aid them in their corrupt plans to usurp power. Although they imprisoned him, the public clamored for his release and Caesar reluctantly complied.

Unable to squelch Cato's attacks on their corrupt policies, Caesar and Pompey sent him to Cyprus. Finally, Cato aligned himself with Brutus against Caesar, a decision that would eventually cost him his life. George Washington admired Cato so greatly that he had Joseph Addison's play about Cato performed in Valley Forge to boost the troops' morale.

Roman heroes very dear to the hearts of the Founders also included Brutus and Cassius. Brutus was admired by his contemporaries for his pleasant disposition and virtuous temper. Even those who opposed his attack on Caesar believed that Brutus was motivated by a genuine concern for the republic and not by personal animosity toward Caesar.

Marc Antony himself said that Brutus was "the only man that conspired against Caesar out of a sense of the glory and justice of his action; but all the rest rose up against the man, and not the tyrant...." America;'s Founders looked to Brutus and Cassius as role models because their only aim to overthrowing Caesar was to restore the constitutional Roman government and republican liberties.

The most popular Roman hero of the Founding Fathers was Cicero, the silver-tongued Roman orator. Cicero lived from approximately 106 BC to 43 BC. John Adams, in his Defense of the Constitution, said of Cicero: "All of the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero...." First as a lawyer, then as a consul and senator, Cicero boldly defended the republic against the rise of dictators. Cicero delivered his greatest speeches in defense of the republic against the Catilarian Conspiracy.

The Catilarian Conspiracy was a plot to overthrow the republic, hatched by aristrocrat Lucius Sergius Catiline with the help of a cabal of aristocrats and disaffected veterans. In 63 BC, Cicero exposed and thwarted the plot, and Catiline was forced to flee from Rome. For his service in saving Rome, Cicero was given the title "Father of his Country" by his countrymen. Like Brutus and Cassius, Cicero's courageous defense of republican liberty in the face of designing conspirators made him a logical model for emulation by our Founding Fathers.

Regarding the Greek classics, the American Founding Fthers greatly admired lycurgus, the lawgiver of Sparta, Lycurgus lived in the 9th century BC and reformed the centire Spartan commonwealth. His most important reform was the establishment of a senate equal in authority with the monarchy in matters of great importance. Prior to Lycugrus' innovation, the Spartan government swayed between monarchy and democracy, depending on whether the king or the people had the upper hand. The senate served as a check on the excesses of both king and subjects. The biographer Plutarch called Lycurgus' institutions "one of the greatest blessings which heaven can send down."

Another Greek famed for his reform of the law was Solon, born in Athens about 638 BC. Solon achieved glory as one of the "Seven sages of Greece". Around 390 BC he was given the task of reforming the Athenian constitution. Solon's improvements included the right of trial by jury and the division of society lines into several bodies that would balance and check each other in governing Athens. After finishing his constitutional reform, Solon left Athens for 10 years. While he was away, Pisistratus, his former friend, usurped control of the government and fastened tyrannical controls on Athens. Both Lycurgus and Solon appreciated the need for incorporating checks and balances into government, a need that the American founders understood just as acutely.

1st Amendment and Swift Boat Veterans For Truth

2004-09-28T08:45:00.000-05:00

Responding to the controversy over ads run by the Swiftees, Bush urged that all campaign ads by independent groups be halted. The television ads by the Swiftees prompted media scrutiny of all "527" groups--independent organizations created to run attack ads against political candidates.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reports on August 25 that Mr. Bush planned to file a lawsuit to squelch compaign ads by 527 groups. If court action doesn't work, the president would be willing to pursue legislation action with senator McCain on that.

Under the campaign finance reform law signed by Mr. Bush in 2002, 527 groups who run advocacy ads must avoid "coordination" with any political campaign.

Criticism of the Swiftees by liberal partisans (as pro-Republican ads) prompted retaliatory criticism of pro-Democrat 527s such as MoveOn.org and other similar groups bankrolled by billionaire leftist investor George Soros.

The Kerry campaign extended the logic of stifling free speech by further demanding that the Swiftees book "Unfit for Command" be pulled from store shelves. That demand provoked this reply from Republican Joan Goldberg, editor at large for National Review Online: "Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is surely as dishonest as anything the Swift Vets can be alleged to have made up. Why not try to ban Moore from making his movies?"

In fact, as noted earlier, the GOP front group Citizens United actually filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission calling Moore's film "a political weapon against President Bush" and demanding action to suppress advertising for the film. The group also sent harassing letters to broadcast outlets running ads for the film, warning them of possible FEC action against them. So the Kerry campaign was merely planting in furrows that had already been dug by Bush supporters.

As liberal Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson observed in an August 25 essay:

"The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of "campaign finance reform," Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees...We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this....the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking--and so hardly anyone does."

New World Order-The NEA & Indoctrination

2004-09-27T10:40:00.000-05:00

Year after year, one of our nation's most powerful labor unions continues to slip its leftist agenda past an ever-gullible public and impressionable young students.

On July 4th weekend, the National Education Association (NEA) held its annual national convention, called the "Representative Assembly" (RA). It received little news coverage. Given the ultra-radical agenda of the NEA, the near-blackout by the media was to the organization's benefit.

When people read the name "National Education Association", they don't immediately think "union", they think "professional organization". But the NEA is one of the most powerful labor unions in the US. Certainly, teaching is the most unionized profession, with a staggering 68 % of teachers belonging either to the NEA, or its much smaller AFL-CIO competitor, the American Federation of Teachers. Compatively, nearly 9.4% of private sector employees are unionized (as of 1998).

In 1857, when the NEA was organized, it was a professional organization, concerned with standards, ethics and educational techniques. But in 1917, the NEA was taken over by socialist progressive educators. In the '60's, the NEA morphed into a public sector union--a union with a subversive purpose.

On the surface, the NEA will have you believe it's merely concerned with teacher salaries, teacher professionalism and the educational well being of our children. But a closer look at NEA officials, NEA ties with other organizations and NEA policy, reveals a different story. The NEA's true goal is to nationalize our education system, with the NEA in control, and in the process, "dumb down" and morally corrupt our children, in preparation for acceptance of socialism and a new world order.

Morality
One of the areas where the NEA is most active is in destroying traditional morality of the nation. Reading the list of resolutions from last year's and past NEA Representatives Assemblies is an eye-opening experience. This year's resolutions have not been published yet. But consider the following excerpts from recent RA (Representative Assembly) resolutions:

Sex Education: The NEA recognizes that the public school must play an increasingly important role in providing the instruction. Teachers...must be legally protected from censorship and law suits. (Resolution B-36, 1998)

Diversity: Funds must be provided for programs to alleviate race, gender and sxual orientation discrimination and to eliminate portrayal of race, gender and sexual orientation sterotypes in the public schools. (A-13, 1996)

Abortion: "The NEA supports family planning, including the right to reproductive freedom...." The NEA "urges the implementation of community-operated, school-based family planning clinics that will provide intensive counseling by trained personnel." (I-12, 2003)

The NEA officially claims to take no stand on abortion-just on "family planning" and "reproductive freedom". But a closer look at their publications and the curricula in public schools exposes that lie. In fact, one of the NEA's own publications is entitled Why the NEA Must be Pro-Choice.

In most public schools, the curriculum reflects the NEA abortion bias. One health test used in the Massachusetts school system teaches ninth-graders the following in the discussion on abortion:

"You may come to the conclusion that growing up means rejecting the values of your parents."

The NEA doesn't pretend that they take no stand on homosexuality. They're all for it. The NEA's Human & Civil Rights Action Sheet (that bears the NEA logo) makes this clear. Following are just a few of the Action Sheets' recommendations:

Work with the school district, the parent-teacher organization, and community groups to provide information to other members, parents, and counselors about the developmental and health needs of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual students.
Recommend...that the library includes positive learning materials about homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals.
Encourage the establishment and mainteance of peer-support and community self-help programs for homosexual, lesbian and bisexual students.
Work with the school district to develop or expand school policy and curricula, including accurate portayals of homosexuals, lesbians, and bisexuals throughout history, and to ensure repsect for diversity, including homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals.

The NEA bases its position on "diversity" on the skewed long-discredited "research" of Alfred Kinsey. The Action Sheet restates Kinsey's assertion that 10% of the US population is homosexual, a grossly inflated figure.

One of Kinsey's co-authors, Wardell Pomeroy, helped found the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS). The NEA is a regular bedfellow of SIECUS, and regularly endorses publications and videos products by this squalid group (many of whose projects have been endorsed and funded by Playboy's Hugh Hefner). In a triumph of euphemiatic rhetoric, the National Educational Association called SIECUS "a new, voluntary health agency."

But the roll call of SIECUS organizers tells the real story. Many SIECUS officials and authors were notorious Communist fronters. Pomeroy himself endorsed both child sex and incest. Tellingly, the January, 1967 NEA Journal featured an article by Mary Calderone, SIECUS co-founder and former Planned Parenthoos medical director. The article was entitled "Planning for Sex Education."

Another favorite organization of the NEA is the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). In 2000, the then-president of the NEA, Robert Chase, gave the keynote address at the GLSEN conference. GLSEN distributes homosexual propaganda throughout our schools. For example, their book Celebrating Families features lesbian mothers with adopted daughters. Their movie That's a Family depicts homosexual couples as normal, healthy "families". The accompnaying lesson plan for fourth through sixth grade compares opposition to homosexuality to anti-Christian persecution. In 1999, the then-director of communications for GLSEN stated that "we're going to raise a generation of kids who don't believe [the claims] of the Religious Right.

It is also common knowledge that the NEA opposes a "moment of silence" at the beginning of the school day. For fear that some children might utter a prayer to God during that moment. But the NEA has sponsored an entire "Day of Silence" for homosexual students, with the goal of promoting awareness and acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle.

On almost every front, the NEA gushes that its policies are "for the children" or in some cases, "for the teachers." But again, that is just rhetoric. Every policy and every plan laid by the NEA is intended to expand its own power and influence in pursuit of its goal of total control over education in this country--and total control over the mental and moral development of our children.

Promoting World Government
To understand why the NEA is doing what it's doing, let's understand the ties between the NEA, socialism and world government.

The NEA has long supported the UN and the goal of a new world order. In 1946, Joy Elmer Morgan, the editor of the NEA Journal, wrote:

In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher has many parts to play. He must begin with his own attitude and knowledge and purpose. He can do much to prepare the hearts and minds of children for global understanding and cooperation. At the very top of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession.

Forty years later, the NEA was still singing the praises of a UN-dominated global government. A 1985 NEA Representative Assembly resolution reads: "The NEA recognizes the interdependence of all peoples and urges that the United States make every effort to strengthen the UN to make it a more effective instrument for world peace."

In particular, the NEA favors the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). As the global school board for the UN, UNESCO was a big sponsor of SIECUS. However, the agenda is bigger. A close examination of UNESCO's beliefs also reveals an organization inimical to American independence.

The UNESCO publication "In the Classroom with Children Under Thirteen Years of Age declared that early and diligent methods would be required to "correct many of the errors of home training [which] cultivate attitudes running directly counter to the development of international understanding...As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only precarious results."

In 1998, the UNESCO World Confederence on Higher Education had on its agenda "a far-reaching reform of higher education worldwide." Two NEA higher education leaders were invited to that conference. They were Roger Knutsen the then-president of the National Council for Higher Education, NEA's advocacy group for higher ed issues, and Virginia Ann Shadwick, a librarian at San Francisco State University and a member of the California Faculty Association.

Not so incidentally, Shadwick went as one of five delegates, representingEducation International (EI), the NEA's international affiliate. This international teachers' union is headquartered in Brussels, and is the result of the merger between the World Confederation of Organizations of the Teaching Profession and the International Federation of Free Trade Unions. None other than Mary Hatwood Futrell, past president of the NEA, was the mastermind of this "global NEA". According to the EI Cosntitution, the EI acts toward the "establishment and protection of open, publicly funded and controlled educational systems and academic and cultural institutions."

What can be done
Destroying morality in this nation is an important step in bringing an end to the American constitutional republic and replacing it with a socialist one-world order. John Adams, our second US president, stated:

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadaquate for the government of any other."

Creating an amoral and humanistic society unsuitable for constitutional liberty is a necessary prelude to the creation of a socialistic, one-world government.

The NEA's militantly humanist, aggressively globalist agenda is difficult to reconcile with the warm fuzzy image of a beloved local teacher--who happens to be a dues-paying member. But remember, the NEA is a multi-level organization. Teachers at local schools may have neither the time nor the inclination to follow what the state and national levels of the union are doing with the money the teachers pay every year. And even if they are aware of the issues, they may feel powerless. Many states require teachers to join the NEA, and teacher who refuse to join the NEA are often marginalized.

But it is imperative that more teachers an parents wake up to the goals and methods of the NEA, and that they begin to weaken the NEA's grip on our nation's education system and on our children. So what can we do?

First, teachers fortunate enough to work in one of the 22 right-to-work states can drop their NEA memberships. They can also write letters to school officials, their fellow teachers, and the local newspaper outlining their reasoning.

Those working in a state requiring NEA membership have two options. One is to become an agency fee payer. This means that the portion of NEA dues (usually about 20 %) used for political purposes may be refunded. They must ask for the refund, every year, in writing. Another course is to file as a religious objector. If successful, this claim would send all NEA dues to a charity of the claimant's choice.

Of course, the NEA will not give up dues without a fight. It took Shawn Austin, a part-time school transportation secretary in Michigan, two years to win her religious objector status. It took industrial-arts Teacher Dennis J. Robey of Ohio eight years to win his.

As a replacement for NEA membership, teachers can investigate joining other organizations such as the Assciation of American Educators. Not only does the AAE provide teachers with a support organization, but it also provides group liability insurance. (Many teachers join the NEA because they believe it's the only way to affordably obtain insurance.)

It is also crucial that parents monitor their child's textbooks, tests, reading assignments, and so on. Parents cannot assume what their children bring home is the whole picture. They should agitate in local schools for moral choices in educational materials. And parents must discuss moral issues with their children on a regular basis, so their children have a framework by which to judge what they are being taught. After all, whether or not children attend public schools, their education is an inescapable parental responsibility.

Breaking the NEA's grip on our nation's education system is not an easy task, and it won't be done overnight--but it can be done. The loosening of that grip on impressionable young children starts with you.

The Founders and the Classics

2004-09-27T09:46:00.000-05:00

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past."
~Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775

Patrick Henry's view of the value of history was not unique. The men who framed our constitutional republic agreed with French author Charles Pinot Duclos, who observed:

"We see on the theater of the world a certain number of scenes which succeed each other in endless repetition: where we see the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first, we might have avoided the others. The past should enlighten us on the future: knowledge of history is no more than an anticipated experience."

All of the founding fathers believed that history was a precursor of the future. In the annals of history, particularly that of the Roman and Greek republics of antiquity, they believed they could find the key to inoculating America against the diseases that infected and destroyed past societies. Indeed, it has been said that the Founders were coroners examining the lifeless bodies of the republics and democracies of the past, in order to avoid sccumbing to the maladies that shortened their lives.

The Founders learned very early in life to venerate the illuminating stories of ancient Greece and Rome. They learned these stories, not from secondary sources, but from the classics themselves. And from these stories they drew knowledge and inspiration that helped them found a republic far greater than anything created in antiquity.

Classical training usually began at age eight, whether in a school or at home under the guidance of a private tutor. One remarkable teacher who inculcated his studients with a love of the classics was Scotsman Donald Robertson. Many future luminaries were enrolled in his school: James Madison, John Taylor of Caroline, John Tyler and George Rogers Clark, among others. Robertson and teachers like him nourished their charges with a healthy diet of Greek and Latin, and required that they learn to master Virgil, Horace, Justinian, Tacitus, Herodotus, Lucretius and Thucydides. Further along in their education, students were required to translate Cicero's Orations and Virgil's Aeneid. They were expected to translate Latin and Greek passages aloud, write out the translations in English, and then re-translate the passages back into the original language, using a different tense.

The standards were no less rigorous for those taught at home. George Wythe, the renowned Viriginian who would come to be known as the "Teacher of Liberty", was himself taught to appreciate the writings of the ancients at home by his mother. Tragically, Wythe's mother died when he was very young, but she lived long enough to anchor her son's education on very firm moorings. Before she died, she taught Wythe to read and translate both the fundamental languages of antiquity, Greek and Latin. According to one early biographer, Wythe "had a perfect knowledge of the Greek language taught to him by his mother in the backwoods."

Whether at home or in a schoolhouse, the goal of education in the early days of our nation was to instill virtue in the students. The Founders were taught that free societies were sustained by a virtuous populace, and that, if a society were to abandon a study of the classics, that same society would eventually abandon the virtues championed by the classical authors.

There was a more pragmatic side to the Founders' classical education as well. Twenty-seven signers of the Declaration of Independence were college-educated. Moreover, of the 53 delegates who attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1987, 30 were college graduates. That is an impressive feat, given the challenging entrance requirements of the 18th-century universities. Fortunately for the young Founding Fathers, the teachers of the day exercised their students in Greek and Latin, so that their pupils could meet the rigorous entrance requirements of colonial colleges. Those colleges stipulated that entering freshmen be able to read, translate and expoud the Greco-Roman classical works.

Such requirements were nearly universal in America and remained unchanged for generations. Teachers concentrated their lessons on the works of those classical authors on which students would be tested prior to admission to college. A brief survey of the entrance requirements for colonial colleges will testify to the enlightenment of our Founding Fathers--as well as the astounding decline in the educational standards of today.

In 1750, Harvard demanded that applicants be able to extemporaneously "read, construe, and parse Tully (Cicero), Virgil, or such like classical authors and to write Latin in prose, and to be skilled in making Latin verse, or at least know the rules of Prosodia, and to read, construe, and parse ordinary Greek as in the New Testatement of the Bible, Isocrates, or such like and decline the paradigms of Greek nouns and verbs. Of note is the fact that John Tumbull, the illustrious artist, passed Harvard's exacting entrance exam at only 12 years of age.

Alexander Hamilton's alma mater, King's College (now Columbia), had similarly stringent prerequisites for prospective students. Applicants were required to "give a rational account of the Greek and Latin grammars, read three orations of Cicero and three books of Virgil's Aeneid, and translate the first 10 chapters of John from Greek into Latin."

James Madison had it no easier when he applied for entrance to the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) in 1769. Madison and his fellow applicants were obliged to demonstrate "the ability to write Latin prose, translate Virgil, Cicero, and the Greek gospels and a commensurate knowledge of Latin and Greek grammar."

College lessons were as demanding as the entrance exams. American colonial curricula was based on the Latin "trivium" of rhetoric, logic and grammar, as well as the "quadrivium" of arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Unlike modern universities, where elective courses are innumerable and often inane, the colleges attended by our Founding Fathers offered very few elective courses and coursework focused chiefly on the study of classical works. And those works were in the languages in which they were written!

Students were taught lessons in virtue and liberty from the works of Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch, Livy, Sallust, Tacitus and Polybius. Thomas Jefferson's classmates recall that he studied at least 15 hours a day and carried his Greek grammar book with him wherever he went.

Even the commencement ceremonies were dedicated to classical learning. They featured contests of Greek and Latin translation or extemporaneous debates in those languages.

Because of this formidable classical curricula at colonial colleges, the classics became a well from which the Founders drank deeply. In the classics, the Founding Fathers found their heroes and villains, and they also detected warning signs along the road of statecraft on which they would tread.

Muslim Indoctrination in Our Schools

2004-09-27T08:20:00.000-05:00

A lawsuit was filed in 2003 by several Christian students and their parents to stop the Byron Union Public School District in California from teaching Islam to their children.

Seventh- graders were required to pretend they're Muslims, wear Islamic garb, assume Islamic names, recite prayers in class, memorize and recite verses from the Quran, simulate Ramadan fasting by going without eating for a day, pray to Allah, and even play "jihad games".

According to a recent WorldNetDaily article [Judge Rules Islamic Education OK in California Schools] US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton ruled in her 22-page disclosure that Excelsior Elementary Public School in Byron, California "…is not indoctrinating students about Islam when it requires them to adopt Muslim names and pray to Allah as part of a history and geography class, but rather is just teaching them about the Muslim religion."

Is this just teaching the children about the Muslim religion, or is it indoctrination? By the way, this curriculum is being taught to all seventh-graders in California. What will you and your pastor do when it comes to your school? Will you have the love and courage to remove your children and homeschool them?

The black-robed judges have ruled that it's OK to remove the Bible, praying, displaying the Ten Commandments and even mentioning the word "God" from our public schools. Aren't they educational as well? Yet, it's OK to replace the above with the Quran, praying to Allah, and other Islamic symbols because it is all only for "educational purposes". It appears the idea of "separation of church and state" applies only to Christianity.

We are a Christian nation and logic dictates that our tax-funded public schools should be teaching our children about our Judeo-Christian heritage. In fact, during the 1800's the Bible was used in our public schools to teach children to read. So much for freedom of choice and equal rights.

Today, if you bring the Bible to public school you could get sued, reprimanded and expelled. Where are the so-called God-fearing pastors when God, His Son, the Bible and the 10 Commandments are trashed? Hiding behind the pulpit with the collection plate in hand, I presume.

What will the pastors do for a living once Christianity is outlawed and replaced with a One World Religion like Environmentalism? Will they compromise to keep their jobs?

Try removing Allah from Muslim schools and see the sparks fly. Not so with Christians.

In Mobile, Alabama The Christmas Parade was renamed The Jolly Holiday Parade in order not to offend anyone. During the hearings there were lots of pastors present, not one spoke publicly against it, not one. They were all concerned about looking politically correct.

Imagine that, The Christmas Parade is not politically correct, but The Gay Pride Parade is.

Did Jesus teach us to be sheep or did He teach us to stand up and be counted? Are the lukewarm Pastors part of the problem?

Atheists and homosexuals are hard at work destroying the Judeo-Christian foundation that America was built on, while Christians and most of the pastors do nothing.

Do we get the government and pastors we deserve?

This is how evil took control of this nation.

Throughout history, there has always been a battle between good and evil. First, evil demands 'equal rights'. Once the people are duped into accepting 'equal rights' with wrong, then it begins its true agenda to dominate and control, until the moral fiber of a nation is totally destroyed, and they're in control. Once in control, the trend will never be reversed.

Evil has to destroy the contrast between itself and good. It must 'put out the light of the world' so that it can never be challenged again. Because evil doesn't do consensus.

What will you tell your grandchildren when they ask you "Why did you allow this to happen?"

Some solutions:

1 Stop giving your lukewarm pastors money. Tell him when he finds his backbone you'll reconsider. In the meantime find another church with a courageous pastor.
2 Take your children out of the public school system. Don't tell me you can't, where there is a will there is always a way. Ask with a sincere heart and a way will be shown to you.
3 Get involved in your local community. Stand by your convictions and DO NOT COMPROMISE!
4 Write letters-to-the-editor in your local paper about important events that you read on reputable online news sources.
5 Tell everyone you meet about NewsWithViews.com and other reputable news sources.
6 Print out informative articles. Then go to the printer and have a few hundred copies made and pass them out in front of the post office or other places. Make sure you get the owners permission first.
7 Take criticism gracefully and do not resent or argue with people who disagree with you, they have a right to disagree. Remember, we all have free choices. We can accept a lie and reject the truth, or we can accept the truth and reject a lie. One must be free to CHOOSE.
8 Run for local office, such as county commissioner, school board, or the city council.
9 If your local paper is biased, organize and start a weekly picket.
10 Support organizations or groups that are actively involved with finances or volunteer labor. Caution: Thoroughly check out any organization(s) to make sure they're on the up and up before donating money or labor.

Remember; Doing something is better than doing nothing.

Help Us Wake Up America.

Judge's Ruling-It's OK To Teach Islam In Byron School

2004-09-26T17:26:00.000-05:00

The Windy City Times (gay publication) Obama ad...open your mouth a little more, baby....

Opposes Constitutional Amendment To Ban Gay Marriage
Supports repeal of Defense of Marriage Act
Chief Co-Sponsor of Human Rights Bill in Springfield
100% Pro Choice Voting Record
The only candidate with a legislative record
Supports expansion of hate crimes legislation
Supports repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" military policy

Personally, I don't see any reason why we should accept gay marriage as a new institution. Let them have their civil unions....Marriage is for procreation. Gays can't do that. Sodomy is wrong; it's against biblical principles.

If Obama gets his way, the hate crimes legislation that he refers to would prevent conservatives or preachers from talking about the Bible, biblical principles, or that sodomy is wrong.

This guy's prochoice voting record is the most extreme pro choice stand I've ever seen. Picture a nurse holding a baby as it's dying, asking someone to please let her help it live. The answer? Lay it down and let it die!!! This is a baby who lived in spited of its mother trying to kill it. So I call that infanticide. It's murder. And it's wrong.

Will we shortly lose our right to talk about this stuff?

I'm going to talk shortly on the "Separation of Church and State" since people say it so much. Nowhere in our founding documents is that phrase found. And there once was a time when a person was a Christian in public and private life. I fear we're losing our right to do that, and it's absolutely not what the Founders had in mind.

Kerry: I Love My Illegal Communist Chinese Assault Rifle

2004-09-26T16:20:00.000-05:00

Kerry: I Love My Communist Chinese AK-47

Two weeks John Kerry blasted Bush for failing to push for an extension of the assault weapons ban, saying he's never met anyone who wanted to use an AK-47 to shoot a deer.

But that was before Kerry admitted in a magazine interview that he owns a Chinese assault rifle. Read: Open mouth, insert foot.

"My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam," Kerry tells Outdoor Life in its October issue. "I don't own one of those now, but one of my reminders of my service is a Communist Chinese assault rifle."

(By the way that particular gun is illegal to own in Massachusetts or Washington D.C. It's probably a ChiCom AK-47 'war trophy' he brought back from Vietnam. Very illegal to do so and just as illegal to own where he lives and works. )

The Kerry campaign stonewalled questions on their candidate's illegal gun stash, with spokesman Michael Meehan telling the New York Times only that his boss was a registered gun owner in Massachusetts.

Meehan said that Kerry had been unable to respond to questions about his banned weapon because his voice was too hoarse. (awww pobrecito) The Kerry aide refused to return follow-up calls.

"It's O.K. for John Kerry to own these kinds of firearms, but it's not O.K. for John Q. Public?" complained National Rifle Association spokesman Andrew Arulanandam, in an interview with the Times. "He certainly owes people an explanation as to why there's a double standard," Arulanandam added, noting that if the top Democrat brought his illegal assault rifle home from the war as a souvenir he could be subject to court-martial.

Keyes On Morality

2004-09-26T10:00:00.000-05:00

Moral Conscience-Keyes and Douglas

The candidate who will win, Dr. Alan Keyes, our U.S. Senate hopeful in Illinois, called on a crowd to return the country to its moral values and "conscience," speaking where Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas debated for a Senate seat. Isn't this picture just a kick?

About 250 people converged on Lincoln-Douglas Square Downtown Alton for the midday, 90-minute rally featuring Republican candidate Alan Keyes, who is facing Democrat Barack Obama in the November election.

Before touting reasons that Illinoisans should vote for him, Keyes pushed for the re-election of President Bush."There is more at stake than there ever has been," said Keyes, 54, of the Nov. 2 election as he stood on the platform between brass statues of Lincoln and Douglas. "It is life and death for our country and life and death for moral principles and for the heart and soul for our people. We will make decisions that will influence the fate of our freedom and of our public."

The difference between Bush and challenger John Kerry, he said, "is one has proved he will defend our lives and someone who doesn’t understand they are at stake."

Keyes holds a doctorate in government from Harvard University. He repeatedly stressed his "pro-family, pro one-man-one-woman marriage, pro-Second Amendment and pro-life" stances in a quick, booming voice."We do not have the right to take the life of a human being based on its stage of development," he said regarding abortion. He accused Obama of "talking out of both sides of his mouth" regarding gay marriage -- depending on the audience -- and for voting for anti-business bills in the Illinois Senate that kill jobs and the state’s tax base.

He referred to Obama as "left wing" and himself as "mainstream.""If you elect Barack Obama, Sen. Dick Durbin will be your conservative senator," he said, referring to the generally liberal Durbin.Keyes localized his speech to rail against the medical malpractice climate in Madison County and said the election of Republicans to the Illinois legislature would send a mandate for tort reform.

His platform also includes caps for medical malpractice awards; elimination of the inheritance tax; school choice, including charter and magnet schools and vouchers; replacing the federal income tax with a sales tax; low taxes for businesses; and reversing trade policies.In response to criticism that he doesn’t live in Illinois but is running for office to represent the state in Washington, D.C., Keyes said he has a national power base that would benefit his constituents.

"They will pay me more attention than someone who has no constituency in their state," he said of other senators. "There are senators who know they are in the (U.S.) Senate because I worked to get them there. Barack Obama can talk until the cows come home, but he can’t have that influence for 1,000 years that I have today."

He also said it is to the advantage of Illinoisans to have a senator who is not part of a "small Chicago neighborhood clique."

"We have the opportunity to end the reign of self-serving politicians," he said.At the event was a truck bearing Texas license plates pulling a trailer with two, 6-foot-tall gray-painted, foam "tablets" with the Ten Commandments and a large replica of the Liberty Bell.

Someone rang the bell during portions of the rally, including to announce Keyes’ speech.Rebecca Stewart of Brighton said the rally was her first and called it "exciting."

"I think he was honest and straightforward, and he represents how I feel as a resident of Illinois," Stewart said.

James McAfee drove from Belleville to hear Keyes. "He was good, pretty much what I expected since I’ve been following him closely."

He said he shares Keyes’ viewpoints on abortion, "pro-family and one-man-one-woman for marriage." Gay marriages, he said, "are a threat to our whole culture and society."

Madison County Republicans also spoke in behalf of, among others, Madison County Board member Eugene Frizzo, who is running for County Board chairman; and for Judge Lloyd Karmeier, running for Illinois Supreme Court.

Hell No!

2004-09-26T09:35:00.000-05:00

Dear Senator Kerry,

Since it has become clear that you will probably be the Democratic nominee for President, I have spent a great deal of time researching your war record and your record as a professional politician. The reason is simple, you aspire to be the Commander in Chief who would lead my sons and their fellow soldiers in time of war. I simply wanted to know if you possess the necessary qualifications to be trusted in that regard.

You see, I belong to a family of proud U.S. veterans. I was a Captain in the Army Reserve, my father was a decorated Lieutenant in World War II; and I have four sons who have either served, or are currently serving in the military.

The oldest is an Army Lieutenant still on active duty in Afghanistan, after already being honored for his service in Iraq.

The youngest is an E-4 with the military police. His National Guard unit just finished their second tour of active duty, including six months in Guantanamo Bay. My two other sons have served in the national guard and the Navy.

In looking at your record I found myself comparing it not only to that of my father and my sons, but to the people they served with. My father served with the 87th Chemical Mortar Battalion in Europe. They landed on Utah Beach and fought for 317 straight days, including the Cherbourg Peninsula, Aachen, the Hurtgen Forest, and the Battle of the Bulge.

You earned a Silver Star in Vietnam for chasing down and finishing off a wounded and retreating enemy soldier. (A violation of the Geneva Convention)

My father won a Bronze Star for single handedly charging and knocking out a German machine gun nest that had his men pinned down.

You received three purple hearts for what appears to be three minor scratches. In fact, you only missed a combined total of two days of duty for these wounds.

The men of my father's unit, the 87th, had to be admonished by their commanding officer because it had been brought to his attention that some men were covering up wounds and refusing medical attention for fear of being evacuated and permanently separated from their organization...

It was also a common occurrence for seriously wounded soldiers to go AWOL from hospitals in order to rejoin their units.

You, however, used your three purple hearts to leave Vietnam early.

My oldest boy came home from Iraq with numerous commendations and then proceeded to volunteer to go to Afghanistan, and from there back to Iraq again. My sons and father have never had anything but the highest regard and respect for their fellow soldiers.

Yet, you came home to publicly charge your fellow fighting men with being war criminals and to urge their defeat by the enemy. You even wrote a book that had a cover which mocked the heroism of the U.S. Marines who raised the flag on Iwo Jima.

Our current crop of soldiers has a philosophy that no one gets left behind; and they have practiced that from Somalia to the battlefields of the Middle East.

Yet, as chairman of a Senate committee looking into allegations that many of your fellow servicemen had been left behind as prisoners in Vietnam, you chose to defend the brutal Vietnamese regime.

You even went so far as to refer to the families of the POWs and MIAs as Professional malcontents, conspiracy mongers, con artists, and dime-store Rambos.

As a Senator you voted against the 1991 Gulf War, and have repeatedly voted against funds to supply our troops with the best equipment, and against money to improve our intelligence capability.

I find this particularly ironic since as a Presidential candidate you are highly critical of our pre-war intelligence in Iraq. However, you did vote to authorize the President to go to war, but have since proceeded to do everything you can to undermine the efforts of our government and our troops to win. Is this what our fighting men and women can expect of you if you are their Commander in Chief? Will you gladly send them to war, only to then aid the enemy byundermining the morale of our troops and cutting off the weapons they need to win?

Our country is at war Senator, and as has been the case in every war since the American Revolution, a member of my family is serving their country during the war. Now you want me to trust you to lead my sons in this fight.

Sorry, Senator, but when I compare your record to those who have fought and died for this nation, and are currently fighting and dying, the answer is not just no, but Hell No!

Sincerely,
Michael Connelly
Dallas, Texas

2004-09-26T08:45:00.000-05:00

New Vietnamese Money