Same-O, Same-Oh: "I Did It For Your Own Good," "The Check's in the Mail," "Sure, I'll Respect You in The Morning," etc.

December 29, 2005:

Recently (a couple of days, as nearly as I can remember - I caught a cold so scary I thought might be the avian flu), FoxNews military analyst Colonel David Hunt commented on a recent demonstration of how poorly a Homeland Security Agency exercise had gone. Asked by the host why the agency - and by obvious implication, I thought, the federal government in general - fails so miserably, the colonel said, "Nobody gets fired."

Bingo! And nobody gets fired because a public mostly dead between the ears doesn't demand it. That's due a number of things, none more effective than the relentless mind-control and behavioral conditioning science wielded by a fourth estate that has been co-opted by the very government it is supposed to oversee. There are hundreds of recent examples, but the latest revelation of crime by Emperor Bush, that of ignoring the Fourth Amendment, is easily the most revealing and probative. This is, in fact, probably the most concerted damage-control effort ever brought to bear in U.S. History. In my six decades of watching the news, I have never seen or heard more downright asinine and bizarre defenses raised by White House supporters, nor commentary by supposed opponents as inept and feckless. This is so obvious that as proof of theories having to do with the "dumbing down" of nation it is absolutely conclusive. Anyone who doesn't see this as the forensic and polemic equivalent of pro wrestling is braindead.

The media assault on the public's right to know and sanity reached its zenith last night (or the night before - like I said, I've been out of it for days) with Fox Business (anybody who takes this guy's financial advice doesn't have both oars in the water, that's sure) Analyst Stuart Varney's belligerent and bewildered insistence that persons who reported that the President had committed a crime should be prosecuted for having done so.

That, my dear sir, turns the concept of law and order on its head. A crime to report a crime! Good grief! How Uriah Heepian can you get? How "un-American?"

"Nobody gets fired." There you have it. No matter what people in government do, they are never held accountable. Operate any other organization, any business, or group endeavor like that and you will have what we have in Washington, D.C. Spastic confusion. Remember this?

“At Ruby Ridge, federal agents shot in the back and killed a child’s dog, shot in the back and killed the fleeing child as well, and then blew off the head of that child’s mother . . . even after a cover-up was discovered, the federal government refused to prosecute the killers. At Waco, the government . . . roasted twenty-two children like wieners on a spit and cremated more than fifty adults in the same inferno. Yet no federal officers were prosecuted.” Gerry Spence, Esq. –“Give me Liberty”

Of course, that's a quote from "Letters," my book, and it represents only a small sample of what I'm talking about. And FoxNews' White House toady Varney is a microcosm of the public that has brought us to this sorry state. More about that tomorrow. I'm bushed, still not over this cold (I hope). Oh, before I quit, here's a quote from Mark Twain that comes to mind having listened to the pundits lately:

“There never was a just war, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war. Statesman will invent cheap lies, putting the blame on the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities . . ., and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

See you tomorrow . . .

December 30, 2005:

Whew! If this isn't the bird flu, it's the King Kong of colds. Murder. Me, a guy who does the U.S. Army Ranger PT Test once a week, had a chore in coming upstairs to the office where I type. Funny, now that I think of it - if I called the government right now to say I was being attacked by the bird flu, there would be help coming from all over the place. When I called to say I was being attacked by the disease known as IRS, I couldn't get even a lawyer to help. Maybe you can tell yourself what the difference is.

Try the definition of "hypocrite."

Which brings me back to George W. Bush, who obviously has an idea entirely different from the rest of us about what it means to be President of the United States. His excuse for repudiating the oath of office he took is that it's for our good. It's to protect the public. Sure. "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." Just the fact that the man doesn't seem to understand how that sounds to all of us reveals how "out of it" he is. Another president, Reagan, said those were the ten most fearful words in the English language. They're usually included in other examples of cynically meaningless blabber, stuff like "Sure, I'll still respect you in the morning," "The check's in the mail," and "I love my country." Just useless noise, but they're what our wannabe emperor comes up with to justify attacking what a Supreme Court Justice (Brandeis) called the fundamental freedom. George, if you can't stand guard without peeking in the bedroom window, find another line of work.

I used the present tense back there a minute ago. You don't really think that just because they got caught they've stopped, do you? Why would they stop doing what they've been doing since the Nixon Administration? "Nobody gets fired." Ever. You name it, they get away with it. The result is a nation whose daily news sounds like a reading of Uncle Remus. There is no kind of chicanery we don't endure - and pay for. Our Constitution, under relentless assault by federal government since the Korean War, has now been made a mockery. Once a bulwark against tyranny, it is now its weapon. People, this is ridiculous!

The answer? WE, THE PEOPLE, HAVE TO TAKE BACK CONTROL OF OUR NATION! How? First, any regulatory law that doesn't provide for penalties is like a watchdog without teeth. Emperor Bush will go on violating the Constitution as long as he likes, in other words, certain that his handlers in the Military Industrial Complex will buy as many Senators as is necessary to avoid impeachment. Write you congressman? Sure. That's more of that "I'll respect you in the morning" crap. In my book "Letters," I tell about it. Literally hundreds of letters, about blatant crime by government - not one response (one Senator, Phil Gramm, thanked me for my interest in the "Savings and Loan Crises;" I wrote to him about a burglary and filing a false official report by a federal officer).

The Constitution is the people's document, and the People's Courts - that's a Grand Jury elected by the people - should try any federal officer who violates it. For one federal official to try another federal official is plainly absurd; more, it's the sole reason "nobody gets fired." The fine upon conviction of violation of the Constitution by a federal official should be life in prison. No exceptions. No time off for good behavior, no paroles - straight hard time, until death. We are talking, after all, about the most precious thing there is here, as precious as life itself. Liberty.

"Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined." – Patrick Henry, Virginia's Ratification convention, 1788

That's how serious this is. We are about to piss away the greatest nation, the most important experiment in government every attempted. I say this again and again, because it bears repeating: If we give up our rights, our children and grandchildren will desecrate our graves. And we're doing it (what follows is from my books, "Letters to Aaron," and from "The Four Freedoms - Citizen Power to Control Government"). Among the critical liberties we have left derelict to state and federal courts is that of the petit jury. We need to free the jury of twelve from tampering by the court. What we have is absurd, a blatant encroachment on the Sixth Amendment by the government. If you think my use of the word "absurd" to strong, listen to what one of the greatest of us once said.

"It would be an absurdity for jurors to be required to accept the judge's view of the law, against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience." -- John Adams

Compare that to a " jury charge" typical of those given these days in the "Land of Laws." This is California:

"It becomes my duty as judge to instruct you concerning the law applicable to this case, and it is your duty as jurors to follow the law as I shall state it to you ... You are to be governed solely by the evidence introduced in this trial and the law as stated to you by me."

Can you find a better microcosm, or parallel to what government has done to our Constitution and rights? Thomas Jefferson said, "I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." That we have what we have - almost total loss of control of government and our freedoms - could not be better proof that he was right. I could go on, because there is more, much more. Obviously, we need a better way to select our government, one free of corruption by money and the super rich. "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." -- Thomas Jefferson. Emperor Bush is obviously a product and member of the "small elite."

We need a way to avoid the rise to power of his kind, and I suggest, as does the great attorney, Gerry Spence, a lottery.

In fact, I intend to reprise the "Citizen Powers" series, and quote extensively from it here. In view of the way things are going with this latest federal outrage against our rights, is seems to me high time you knew what your rights - and responsibilities - are, and just how bad things really are. But this will do for today. Meanwhile, here are some sites you ought to check out:

http://www.fija.org/

http://www.greenmac.com/eagle/ISSUES/ISSUE23-9/07JuryNullification.html

http://deoxy.org/juryrite.htm

Ciao!

More of Schroedinger's Cat From the Bush League Administration

The putrescence of politicians that runs our rapidly decaying nation continues “damage control” concerned with the latest supposed revelation of federal government assault on the one restraint still possibly effective against their Brobdingnagian excesses, that being the U.S. Constitution.

I said “supposed” because I know, first hand, better than this is being made to appear.

We’re being told that the Bush League’s latest sally against Jeffersonian Democracy, the illegal wire-tapping, had to do only with international calls and communication (just a little vague on exactly how much of the wide possibility that might include, huh?) from outside in; or was it inside out, or just overseas – what? Who knows? Who cares?

If I look with what seems a jaundiced eye, it’s because this same U.S. Government bugged my phone, read my mail – even my damned newspapers and magazines, matter of fact – thirty years ago, between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and the state lines of Missouri and Minnesota, for the supposed purpose of income tax collection courts later said I didn’t owe. Now that I think of it, though, the U.S. District Court did say that my records were a matter of national security. That no one could figure out how the hell that was – not even the U.S. Attorney on the case could explain it – should come as no surprise to anyone following this, the latest outbreak of Texas legal procedure and tortured linguistics raised to a national scale.

Anybody watching the Tom Delay circus? It isn’t money-laundering if you write a check. Some of us once thought that was the classic example. No more, I guess. Anyway, that’s Tom’s legal defense, and in Texas, it will probably work.

Anyway, this, the newest “F- you” for proponents of the Fourth Amendment has quickly taken on the Schrödinger’s cat reality which characterizes everything this government does. Things are both true and false, directions are both up and down, geometry is both outside and inside. Maybe positively. Positively maybe.

The language is being tortured – that’s okay now even where human beings are concerned, you know - yet again, words so far removed from context as to make you wonder whether they’re even part of the English language, and the U.S. Constitution doesn’t mean what you think it means. There is a part of “no” you don’t understand. The lawyers will decide. One thing seems clear, that “unreasonable” in the Fourth Amendment is unreasonable. The President will decide that.

The President wants us to bear with him, too. “Just this little bit” (“unreasonableness,” remember?), “and I won’t ask for more.” And we are supposed to be encouraged that the courts will decide. Sure, just like the FISA court decided this one. Remember Roe vs. Wade? That monument to high court jurisprudential and political sucking up made it legal to kill anyone in the first trimester of his life. Just that, proponents for reduction of national and societal mores said, and we’ll be satisfied. If you believed that, you’ll believe the government where your privacy is concerned.

The beauty of crime by the government – at least as far as they are concerned – is they go ahead and do it; then we get to debate whether they should have – was it “unreasonable,” or wasn’t it – later. When you get to do that each time, in each new instance, it amounts pretty much to carte blanche, doesn’t it? Pretty much the same thing as “totalitarian” or “tyrannical,” huh?

Oh, and for the ex FBI wonk on Span this morning, the guy caviling on the ninth part of the “unreasonable searches and seizures” phrase in the Fourth Amendment hair: sir, school children ninth grade or higher – bright ones even sooner – know that that means “without a warrant.” Lawyers know it, too – some of them. They even know that the courts have so ruled literally hundreds of times.

Are you still reading Dr. Seuss?

A Humble Question to the President

With revelation a couple of days ago that the president ordered the National Security Agency to spy on citizens of the country, we have seen an orgy of official and officious lying in proportions unprecedented even for this government.

Two, among the first, were downright astonishing. Offensive, actually – anybody who tells you a lie this obvious thinks you’re stupid, or powerless to do anything about it. New York Representative Peter King, for instance, looked a nationwide television audience directly in its collective eye when he said with a straight face that Article Two of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the president to violate the privacy of U.S. citizens. I reached for my copy of that document honored more in the breach than the observance these day (when you’ve lived the life I have, you have one the way I have), then read Article Two aloud to others in the room.
No, of course, not – there is nothing that even remotely suggests such a thing. The man lied (well, we have to think either that or that a U.S. Congressman doesn’t know much about the nation’s highest law).

Attorney General of the United States Alfredo Gonzales didn’t go so far; just far enough to make himself a liar. He said the Bush Administration’s lawyers “considered” that the U.S. Congress “intended” for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to authorize the president to spy on citizens.
Sure, that’s why they set up a special court just for the purpose in question.

Mr. Gonzales, there may be some stupid lawyers - you seem a likely candidate for the title - but none THAT stupid.

So here we go again. The blizzard of lies has begun. Federal, Bush League, “damage” control. As a matter of fact, and to be fair when it’s hard, the only one of the bunch who has come near the truth is the president himself. He admitted immediately that he did it, but said he did it because it was the right thing to do. He says he’s mad at the New York Times for breaking the story because it will make it harder to get intelligence having to do with the war on terror (that Osama bin Laden and cell phone story was a beaut, wasn’t it?).

Mr. President, you’re right as rain. Damned right it will make things more difficult. Doing the right thing is, indeed, awfully difficult sometimes; for the federal government these days it seems damned near impossible, matter of fact. But consider the alternative. If the “terrorists” can make us repudiate the Bill of Rights, the very freedoms you say they hate, they win. We lose.

Now, I may be oversensitive where this matter is concerned. The record of what happened is what it is, and what the U.S. District Court for Colorado a few years ago was so intent upon concealing. You and your patrician gestapo treated me like a pet rabbit, a critter without rights or value. Now you say it’s just this one time, and just for the terrorists. You would never take advantage. Trust you. Sure. The check’s in the mail, if we’re pregnant, you’ll do the right thing, and you won’t -oops! Would you please tell me why - with the record federal government has where truth is concerned - we should trust you? I wouldn’t trust you as far as I can throw you.

That’s fundamentally the reason I had some very harsh things to say here a few paragraphs back. I don’t, parenthetically, take any of them back; this, matter of fact, is my Declaration of Albraoth. This isn’t about pride, bluster, or machismo. It isn’t even about honor. This is about a man who will not be dominated. It’s about freedom, “which no good man surrenders but with his life.” I said this, too, a few lines ago here, but it bears repeating: let me catch you in my house illegally and with the customary federal malice, and I will kill you there. Send one of your SWAT teams, and some, maybe all, will die. I invented the concept, don’t forget, and I still study and train regularly to defeat that kind of intrusion. I have a right to be secure in my house, and I will defend it against everyone and anything.

Which brings me to another thing that seems perhaps to lie at the heart of your apparent misconceptions. That is the fact that it is often heard these days from officialdom, including the Supreme Court, that the Constitution “grants certain rights.” That is a very grave error, sir. The constitution, in fact, grants NO rights; it guarantees certain rights. Rights come from god, from the fact of being man. Neither does the Constitution limit the rights of man to those contained in its enumeration and recitation. That, sir, is the meaning of “free” where a citizen of the United States of America is concerned.

But. If you and your confederates in Washington are so afraid of our enemies, let me help. Obviously, if this kind of thing – destruction of freedom in order to save it - is all you can think of, you obviously need a great deal of help. Just as I offered before you let the same kind of really stupid advice mire us in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’ll offer some advice.

You do not make the camp in hostile territory (and that, whether you’ve thought of it or not, sir, is the basic nature of war with terrorists) more secure by dispersing or sending your defensive forces out into the night. Any military tactician knows that to take a fortified position requires numbers many more than to defend it. More, the weaponry and logistics of attacking “walled cities” – to quote Sun Tzu – requires far more of the attacker than the defender.

But that’s what it’s about, isn’t it? The transport, delivery, and supply logistics of attack are many times that of defense. To attack costs many, many times what it costs to defend. Halliburton and the military industrial complex that owns you body and soul would literally hate to hear that Abu Massad Al-Zarqawi had been captured (matter of fact, I hear that he actually was at one point – why am I not surprised?), or that Osama bin Laden were dead (he is – isn’t he . . .?).

Tell me, why is it that with everyone else in the nation being asked to sacrifice for the “War on Terror,” if the citizenry can be asked to pay the staggering costs, if our soldiers can be asked to give their lives, why is it that certain of us are allowed, even encouraged, to profit immensely? Why aren’t Halliburton and the rest required to contribute some or all of their staggering profits (increased some 280% since the Iraq War began)?

If we are being asked to surrender our freedoms, what will they contribute?

The President Must Be Impeached; Anything Else is Illegal

"Carthago delenda est." Publius Cornelius Scipio - "Scipio Africanus," once he had succeeded. It means "Carthage is history" (actually, it's most often translated as "must be destroyed," but Latin's ablative absolute voice was a device by which a speaker made it sound as though what he proposed was an accomplished fact).
Why do I mention it here? Well, Carthage was Rome's arch enemy, the bone of contention was the Mediterranean Sea, and the price of failure was the demise of Rome. Momentous. Two days ago, I heard news that shook me as nothing ever in my lifetime has since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was announced. I'll never forget it. To the five year old I was then, it was like hearing of the impending end of the world. Shocking, and the principle reason that history became the principle interest and guiding light of my life. Scipio ended each and every address to the Roman Senate and people with the expression "Carthago delenda est." From here on, I will do the same with the expression "George W. Bush must be impeached." Here are my reasons.
Two days ago, the President of the United States announced publicly that he had deliberately violated his oath of office. Specifically, he said that he had ordered persons under his command to violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution he is sworn to preserve, protect and defend. Just for the record, in case we have forgotten, I will recite that oath again here:

 "I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

There is therefore no question concerning the facts. The crime is admitted, and there is an agency of government as big as the National Security Agency as witness to the fact of the crime having been carried out in presumably thousands of instances. On the home page here, I stress the word "must," because to do anything other than impeach the president is a crime in itself, that of subornation or misprision. That means that for the "Nation of Laws" to fail to impeach the president makes it a nation of criminals. Nothing else is legal. There is no legal alternative.
Of course, we will witness again in the days to come yet another vindication of the charges I've made in my book "Letters to Aaron." It will demonstrate yet another time the truth of what I said on the capitol steps in Denver, Colorado all these years ago (1987). I promised that day to avail myself of Colorado's then infamous "make my day law," and to kill anyone I caught in the burglary of my house, home, or office. Turning to agents of the federal government standing above me on the capitol steps that day, I said directly, "If I catch you in my house, I will kill you there." In my book, the second edition of which is soon to be published, I tell of a decades long war with a government who did repeatedly what the president has admitted doing and arrogantly defended.
For years, beginning in 1977, the federal government of the U.S. violated my constitutional right to "be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures . . ." at will. They "seized" (stole) everything they happened to take a fancy to - even pictures of my wife in the nude. They stole things as legally meaningless to an official purpose as a World War Two German medal. Whatever purpose was officially stated, another was obvious - deliberately so. That was to demonstrate to me that I was helpless before their power, nothing. They were wrong. They were wrong because they made their assessment of my strength on the basis of their own corrupted concept of strength. They have no real understanding of freedom, its price or exercise, you see.
Therefore, Mr. President, I will repeat myself here: If I catch you in the illegal invasion of my house, I will kill you there. If I catch you tapping my telephone, or reading my mail - email or otherwise - you will pay the most severe price I can legally exact. If you or your criminal agents harass or assault me publicly, I will smash the hand or hands that touch me. Inasmuch as I still respect the law you hold in public contempt, I will also deliver the criminals to a magistrate. Go to my home page here and read the motto. I am not some rabbit you hold in a cage; I am a free man, and I will stay free or die in the effort.
I suggest further that you consider how long now, and how many times, I have proved that.
For my country, whom I would teach the discipline of freedom and free men, we are at a turning point in the history of our nation. As I have been saying here (see my essay), our government has been taken over in a covert and largely silent coup d'etat. Steadily, the military industrial complex and its owners have chiseled away pieces of our hard-won and much-cherished freedoms. To be sure, we have invited them. We've invited them by following the path taken by the Athenians as described by the historian Gibbons. Let me again remind you:

“In the end, more than freedom, the Athenians wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all - security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

 For the sake of security, to be free of fear, want, illness, and the necessity for development of the character that made us great in the first place, we have handed over more and more of our responsibility to and for self to government. The male republic, as Plato warned, gave way to the female democracy, and the effeminate democracy would not tolerate those who wanted to remain free of the seemingly protective and comfortable social prison provided by resultingly bigger and bigger government.
 Now this. The effeminate nation, dominate politically by women and effeminate, metrosexual males chose a bumbling and bungling incompetent whose one apparent life accomplishment has been having escaped incipient alcoholism; and those same, effeminate people somehow decided that Mr. Bush's bellicose speeches would mean safety from a bugaboo enemy, one created largely by both the limp-wristed bungling of his predecessor (another feminist favorite, need I remind you?) and that of the incompetent in question during his first term.
The astonishing stupidity of having put back on guard duty the guard who slept during the new enemy's first sneak commando attack will leave history's head shaking for the rest of time. Only the female proclivity - utterly atavistic need, as a matter of fact - for convolute, malapropping, euphemistic and reality-evading language can explain anything so irrational and un-male. Whatever. All I will accomplish with that is more idiotic rhetoric and polemics. "Let's talk." Suffice it to say that we have come from a time when "Americans" (I continue to remind you that there are thirty-four other nations in this hemisphere) concept of freedom was expressed thusly,

"Those who would trade safety for freedom deserve neither.” -Thomas Jefferson

“Those who would sacrifice a little freedom for temporal safety deserve neither to be safe or free.” -Benjamin Franklin

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” -Samuel Adams

“Why stand we here idle? What is that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of the chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what the course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” -Patrick Henry

to a time where a public official dares the latest outrage by the Bush Administration (if, by the way, you think me too harsh in my remarks concerning feminism and the new male equivalent, consider and compare the public remarks of women in the Congress today).
Oh, I can hear it already. It's Sunday morning, and were I not here typing (and could I stomach it), I could go downstairs and listen to the sycophant apologists for their cynical and sneering hero president. I'm not "into" one-liners, but this one is a slam-dunk. The end will justify the means. If the Bush League puts us in a big, continental-wide prison, we'll be safe. Maybe we should remind them again concerning how well federal protection worked in New Orleans. But there is a greater danger, even, than the sometimes (can anybody really be this stupid, or are they up to something . . .?) incredible incompetence of federal government. In the next few days, we will decided before the world whether we are in fact, that "Nation of Laws" so vaunted to the world, or just another criminal oligarchy run by the criminally avaricious, acquisitive, and concupiscent rich. CAN THE GOVERNMENT VIOLATE THE LAW WITH IMPUNITY? QUIS CUSTODET IPSOS CUSTODES - WHO WILL WATCH THE WATCHMEN?
So we decide. For those who need to convince us that we are winning the latest war foisted upon them by the people who sell war like a pimp sells sex, those who say they must win at all cost the "War on Terror," let me point out that if you let a president get away with what this one has done, you are losing. The enemy has accomplished a very important mission, to destroy the very thing this president himself has proclaimed "they hate - our freedom."
Let me, finally, remind the feminist females and the disgusting male willing to pander for their favor of something: That is that during my adult life, I have never experienced any real difficulty with the common or even corporate criminal. Just too strong and too smart - made that way by "the animating contest for freedom." But I have struggled to survive against the overwhelming and ruthless power of the criminal in federal government. In "Letters," I tell of the street bullies who once made my life a nightmare. I tell how I learned from them, too, however. I learned to recognize one of their kind at five hundred yards, just from the way he moved and walked. I learned to read his face, his eyes, his hands. George W. Bush is an arrogant bully. You let him get away with this, and you will have repeated the mistake made by so many like the Alabama National Guard, the Texas Rangers, and a host of others. Remember how he got to where he is. He'll keep going. When the inch this time has become the mile it inevitably will, you'll have learned the lesson the bullies of my boyhood taught me. You'll have learned the lesson the Athenians learned.
Fortunately for me, I learned the lesson before it was too late. In your case we're about to see.

A "Nation of Laws" Whose Government Violates Its Own Laws

December 16, 2005:

Remember this?

“It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
George Orwell – “1984”

Bush now admits having ordered U.S. Citizens - people like me in particular - spied upon without court approval. That's without even approval from the Nachtgericht affair unconstitutionally provided for by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that's totally on his own. Like a goddamned dictator. That's without approval of the United States Constitution too, you'll notice. More vindication (see my article above here) for my book "Letters to Aaron, of course. Vindication, too, for essays written for sites like UselessKnowledge.com, Yahoo 360, Google Blogsite, and others; all of which drew howls of indignation from Bush and federal government sycophants. "We don't do things like that." Now the same people will attempt double-talking and equivocating justification.

Well, let me point out a couple of things to people like my UselessKnowledge friend Dr. Brooks Mick and his ilk: What your fearless while feckless leader has done is a crime. It is unconstitutional - which you somehow choose to forget is a law. For an official of the federal government - and I remind us all that the President of the United States is an official of the U.S. Government - to ignore the Constitution of the United States is "a high crime and a misdemeanor." You may also recall that that is grounds for impeachment, and I have begun writing my representatives in the U.S. Congress to demand just that.

This president is not only incompetent, he is a criminal. The same day he admitted his crime, he "changed his mind" about torturing prisoners. CHANGED HIS MIND! ABOUT TORTURE! This man has not only lied for the purpose of serving the interests of the military industrial complex who bought and paid for him, and to send us into an illegal war, he permitted, either by knowing silence or by order, torture of prisoners. Now this. What the hell does it take to impeach this son of a bitch?

I said "demand." I'm going to do more than that. I'm going to file my lawsuit against the federal government again, adding this latest outrage to the already ample grounds. There is no doubt whatever than I was among those illegally abused, and I have proof in the form of both computer records data and witnesses. I wrote about it at the time, besides.

The question that remains is what will the public do? What will the Congress do? What will the lawyers and the courts do? To know that a crime has been committed and do nothing, let me again remind us all, is a crime, a crime known as "subornation." In other words, for George W. Bush to stay in office makes the other branches of federal government criminals, should they fail to act. More, it makes criminals of everyone in the nation who does nothing to have him impeached.

Lawyers all over the country know that everything I say here is true. Yet I can predict with a high degree of probability that I will be right when I say that nothing will be done by any of them. But it will prove one thing incontrovertibly, and before the world. This, "The Nation of Laws," is a nation that contemptuously violates law, including its own. Then, if that weren't enough, people like Ward Churchill, Fidel Castro - and, yes, me - face a Greek chorus of sycophants like Fox News, the good Doctor Mick, and the all the "patriots" of the right wing when we wonder how a nation and government that can't be trusted to obey its own enactments can be expected to obey any other law, including international.

IF GEORGE W. BUSH ISN'T IMPEACHED, THAT FACT WILL HAVE REMOVED ANY REMAINING DOUBT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES AND THE THREAT IT REPRESENTS FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD. Professor Ward Churchill and President Fidel Castro will have been vindicated. EVERYONE WILL KNOW WHAT I HAVE LONG KNOWN, AND WHAT PEOPLE LIKE THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS HAVE RECENTLY LEARNED - THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ITS GOVERNMENT CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

I suggest you think about that.

The Righteous Right Sends a Middle-Aged Woman to Do Its Fighting

December 14, 2005:
My god, they’re calling up a forty-two year old woman for Iraq. Who in their wildest dream forty years ago would have dreamed that the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave would do anything so depraved and despicable? Of course, “men” like Neal Boortz, Bill O’Reilly, Sean (“The Great American”) Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and the crowd blowing the bugles to summon OTHERS to combat will not volunteer. They probably won’t even comment. Just for the record, I’ll publish their names again, with their illustrious records of military service. As I said earlier, you may put “did not serve” behind each and every one.

Neal Boortz
George Will
Chris Matthews
Bill O’Reilly (hid in England, from what I gather)
Paul Gigot
Bill Bennett
Pat Buchanan
Rush Limbaugh (how about that - 4-F with a ‘pilonidal cyst’ on his chicken ass!)
Michael Savage (aka Michael Alan Weiner)
Pat Robertson (claimed during 1986 campaign to be a “combat veteran.” In reality, was a “Liquor Officer.”)
Sean (“The Great American”) Hannity
Michael Medved
Charlie (you know - the redneck fiddle player?) Daniels
Ted Nugent
Phil Hendrie

Of course, it is a fact that I myself have volunteered to go, and several times. I not only have offered my services as a sniper and private security specialist (that with recommendation from an internationally known and respected bodyguard and security specialist), but I offered the United States, in letters to the President, Vice-President, Secretary of Defense, and Department of the Army, my services months before the war began. It will be remembered - it is a matter of record the government guards so zealously - of course, that I invented the tactical doctrine and methods practiced and followed by the now ubiquitous Special Operations Forces like SAS 22 Regiment, U.S. Delta Force, and U.S. Navy SEALs. With war threatening, I offered to remove Saddam Hussein, rather than have happen what I knew would happen and what, of course, is now happening. It is, as I’ve just said, a matter of record.
That this could have been done without the horrendous loss of life thus far is not a debatable question. That has been demonstrated repeatedly in the last several decades by units like the ones I just mentioned. I could have done it. We have done it; we did do it - does no one remember Manuel Noriega? Or is that too inconvenient . . .?!

Now this. A middle-aged woman. Yesterday, as with just about every day, four more killed by roadside bombs. While you, the gutless wonder public and its heroes like the those listed above, follow “news” like the Natalee Holloway affair with bated breath. When, as you soon will, you get what you deserve, let there be no pretense concerning why.

Meanwhile - while you suck more scum like the news from Aruba - New Orleans continues to listen for the cavalry. FEMA continues as fecklessly as before, a perfect example of what anyone might expect from Putrescence on the Potomac, Washington, D.C., in the event of any disaster, much less a terrorist attack of really military proportion. That, when it comes, will be your fault, too. You leave these pimps posturing as “leaders” in office. That same cabal of corrupt criminality also has just announced a massive cut-back and suspension of foodstamps. Of course. It’s bread or bullets, and the military industrial complex who runs things here reserves for itself top preference. The kids will have to resort to the garbage cans I mentioned in my last essay here.

The foreign news services continue to report efforts by foreign governments to discover and expose U.S. Torture installations in their countries. The U.S., of course, and true to it’s long ago established practice, continues to posture and deny. Like when the U-2s got caught over Russia, remember? Our Secretary of State denies that we torture prisoners, while the President refuses to rule it out, and our media repeatedly betrays the fact of our doing it. The Roll of Honor above strives to justify and make acceptable the practice, meanwhile. All while the Right Wing - folks like my http://www.useless-knowledge.com/ friend Dr. Bruce Mick continues to insist that our President isn’t a liar. Whew! And, of course, anyone who follows the news - especially in the foreign press - knows that I could go on, and on. Like Dr. Ward Churchill, for instance.

Suffice it to say that the truth of the evil lurking behind the “Nation of Laws,” “Sweet Land of Liberty” facade maintained by “America” is, more and more, right there in our faces. Read ‘em and weep. For myself, I saw it many, many years ago - May 6, 1985, matter of fact. That’s the night I caught the “Land of the Free” burglarizing my home.

Still more meanwhile, charges I made in my book “Letters to Aaron, the Hal Luebbert Story” continue to be vindicated. The “Incredible - I don’t believe it” cop-out is wearing thinner and thinner. The latest of a long list of such is National Public Radios exposé concerning CIA operatives having to take legal insurance as the result of being sold out by their employers and their government. The story says that since 1980 and the Iran Contra Affair, CIA and other federal operatives have realized that they will not be protected by their government and their employers from lawsuits and criminal charges brought against them as the result of their criminal operations. Left “out in the cold” (for those sufficiently knowledgeable to recognize the term another meaning, I apologize for the pun) by their masters, the “spooks” are trying to purchase certainty that they will be able to pay a lawyer when and if the time comes. I told you so.

The story, of course, did not mention that the U.S. has refused to be signators to the World Criminal Court (now trying Slobodan Milosevic for “crimes against humanity”), nor that it has good reason for doing so. NPR pays taxes, too. And IRS is the criminal operation the government DOES protect - and at any cost. But me? Me, I’m reminded of that confrontation between my CIA “handlers” and myself after my return from Cuba in 1961. How would they convict someone of refusing to commit a murder? What would happen, if they did - as they threatened - court martial me, and I were to take them to court? How would the nation and the world react to learning that we were actively trying to assassinate the leader of a foreign nation, that covertly and without the declaration of war demanded by all international law?
This is not the nation our Founding Fathers created, folks. Face it, this one the world will have no choice about. This one is the fat man at the table, eating everything there is, spoiling and destroying everything he can’t consume, and looking for more. As Bishop Fulton Sheen observed back there during the height of the Cold War, “You can’t co-exist with a neighbor whose idea of co-existence is to use the siding on your house to heat his. You can’t live beside a neighbor who eats your children.”

Someone else said it another way. “If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in one way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism.” That was Fidel Castro, years ago.

The sickening fact, the one staring us in the face from inches away now, is that the world has caught on. It won’t be long now.

And, as Bill O’Reilly likes to say, “That’s a memo.”

"Support Our Troops" and Phony Rhetoric Designed to Cop Out of Responsibility

December 12, 2005:

If there's anything that tires my septuagenarian ass more than still another remake of "Titanic," King Kong," or today's crop of sorry "entertainers" (why doesn't somebody tell them there are other things in the world besides mindless violence - choreographed, of course - and adolescent, also choreographed, sex?!), it's the "Support Our Troops" propaganda being promoted by the people who have sent them to yet another Vietnam-like death. For Christ's Sake, people, this isn't a damned high school pep rally, and it's not a football or basketball game. Don't you understand (hell no, you don't - because it's not your son or daughter)? Our young people are dying by the dozens every week, young people who had their entire lives to live.

It's time, high time to fish or cut bait. It's time to knock off the idiotic bickering between "Liberal" and "Conservative" and the moronic name-calling from either polarized side, and do something one way or the other. It's time for the critics of our mendacious president to either impeach this sorry son of a bitch, or just shut the hell up. It's time for the power brokers and lobbyists, for the media like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity (to name only a couple of the same despicable pack), who shill for the White House to stop yelling "treason" and "traitor" every time somebody points out what has become obvious - namely, that we were lied into this incredibly stupid adventure by a president bought and paid for by those same military industrialists who are alone profiting (immensely), from the Iraq war.

When the truth has become bad for the troops morale, something is damned, awfully wrong.

So, aware that the people of this country have nothing like the integrity and courage to simply leave Iraq, it is time to first define what we mean by "victory," then do whatever it takes to achieve it. To do anything else is immoral ( and I say that aware that in the nation we have become, it may also be necessary to define "morality" ). When General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur said, "There is no substitute for victory," he was talking about the morality of war. When he died, someone - Stewart Alsop, I think - observed that the last of the humane generals had died. Human generals, the columnist said, are those who wage war so as to end it as quickly as possible.

You may want to compare that tactical doctrine with the Bush League's version of the same - assuming they have one.

It is therefore time for the public and their congressional representatives - and everyone else with the moral fiber necessary - to demand an all-out effort to destroy all opposition to what we profess to be doing. That's democracy, of course, at least on the surface. That the world knows what it's really about - oil and domination of Iraq's oil industry - need not be a factor.

It's either-or time. We either dial the steering wheels, turn around, and leave Iraq, or we send as many troops, tanks, guns, ships, and planes as it takes to hunt down and destroy all the people opposing us. If that means 500,000 troops, or 1,000,000, then so be it - with the O'Reillys and the Hannitys in the first wave. ANYTHING ELSE IS DESPICABLY IMMORAL! The fact that the nation and public keep avoiding the issue by engaging in petty, venomous, vicious, and partisan rhetoric while some few of our families pay the price is contemptible. No, it's beneath contempt.

In only a few years, the self-surfeiting and decadent "American" public - all of it - will demand access and control of the world's oil, anyway.

Let's cut out the Pecksniffian and phony values selection of the prominent media pundits and political party bosses. It's all just rhetoric designed to ignore whatever might imperil their position, their own loved ones, or their already staggering wealth, anyway. Let's stop avoiding the issue.

The Howard Stern Nation should cut out the f------ hypocrisy, in other words.

Howard Stern, The No Spin Factor, and Garbage

Last night, on the Bill O'Reilly "No Spin" Factor (I guess - I have hype filters, you know, so I don't hear the "spin") television show (and I stress the "show" - that, after all, is what it's all about), Howard Stern (remember? - "The Shock Jock") said something fascinating (no, not scrofulous or scatological - just plain talk). Shocking, too (even without the filth). He said the reason he is the most popular (or well-paid; and maybe that equates - my "spin" and hype filters block that sort of thing) entertainer in the world is because he tells the truth.
Right on, Howard. I think you're right. Sad as it is, I know you're right. I know you're right because I know a starving child will eat out of a garbage can. He's that desperate, that hungry. And the people of this country are so starved for truth - the facts without "spin", hype, and the Schrödinger's Cat atmosphere of the rhetoric reality asylum they've been forced into, even an opportunist freak like Stern is preferable. That's what we've become.
It was quite an evening. During discussion, I was forced to admit that I invariably prove to be what someone called a "polarizing influence." Any time I'm part of a conversation having to do with politics, I wind up dead in the middle, with the two political extremes shouting at me. Like this morning’s paper: Two columnists declaiming in stentorian terms that George W. Bush is heroic, and his detractors traitorous scum, two pontificating just as loudly that he is a lying murderer. And I, my Spockian self, in the middle, trying to figure out what the hell the truth might be.
I have a feeling, witness the e-mails I get from some, that I'm not alone. We'd like to find somebody, somewhere, from whom we can get the truth. We're like the starving kid at the garbage can. It may be garbage, but it's real food, food that isn't poisonous; somebody ate it without dying instantly, after all - if he had, the Health Department wouldn't have them risk poisoning the cats here in the alley. That's more than you can say for the fare served up in restaurants and supermarkets like FoxNews, CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and the print version of the Fourth Estate Fifth Column. The public listens to Howard Stern because he's the truth.
I suppose that may be what things like pornography are all about. More than thirty-five percent of the Internet's commerce is sale of pornography. It's the way the country really is, and we know it. We know it by ourselves. "I think, therefore I am." Yeah, and what you think is probably what you ARE.
Does anybody remember the old Marty Robbins song that went, "The story of your life is on your face? It's written there in little, subtle lines . . .?" I've known the truth about my country for a long time. I wrote about it in my books. "Everything's for sale," Johanna, the heroine in my novel said. What you are tells me what you think. Look around, and if you're a Spock like me, you know that Stern was right. Stern and I weren't surprised when surveys and studies revealed things like the fact that thirty-some percent of "American" women said they would have sex on film with a stranger for money. We weren't surprised when another survey said sixty-odd percent of married women admitted (I don't suppose today's feminist would agree with my choice of terms, matter of fact) having had sex with someone other than their husbands during their marriages - and that without remorse or guilt. It was "just casual," they said. Howard Stern and I weren't surprised when state records having to do with tracking down "dead-beat dads," revealed that as many as thirty-three percent of the children weren't fathered by the guy who thought he had fathered them.
We weren't even surprised when courts ruled the cuckold would have to pay for support of kids that weren't his. It's a feminist, effeminate, country, after all.
You don't see a connection between things like that and the kind of government we have? Really?
Whatever. At any rate - and if anyone had ever told me I'd say it, I'd have hit him - my hat's off to Howard Stern. I care that much for the truth.
It's just too bad that's where we have to go to get it.

The Quantum World of George W. Bush

December 8, 2005, postscript to my last:

Listening to our president's speech day before yesterday, I had an epiphany. I've been studying Dr. Hugh Everett and cosmology's Many Worlds Interpretation recently, and it suddenly occurred to me that we have in our government and its seemingly schizoid machinations a metaphor of MWI. That might explain why this man Bush and his bucolically stolid followers never seem to be in the same world with the rest of us. More, the extreme Left and extreme Right don't seem to be talking about the same reality, either. Everything with this administration is a variation on the old, "well, are you going to believe me or your eyes?" joke. With this cockamamie administration ("administration?!" Man, that's more of the same - isn't it?), there doesn't seem to be any way to distinguish between what is real and what is unreal, or any way to decide what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.

Everything is quantum physics. Schroedinger's cat, both dead and alive. We won the war - "Mission accomplished!" (remember?) - but the guys we beat are still kicking hell out of us. Everything is going to plan, too. Excuse me?! Where is Heisenberg, he of the famous Uncertainty Principle, when we need him?

But listening to Bush's speech, something hit me. Damn! Maybe this guy does believe what he says. Maybe he did believe all the crap his advisers and "intelligence" told him. Hell, he gets the news about the same way the rest of us do. As just about every single person in the country knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had a highly dangerous arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, most or all of which could be unleashed in minutes to bring about hideous destruction and death. We were assured again and again that was true. Word of honor (that, right there, should have told us something).

Well, it wasn't true. Surprise. If that weren't enough, we were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Qa'ida and shared responsibility for the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001. We were assured that was true, too. Word of honor.

It was not true.

When it obviously wasn't true, we were told that Saddam's Iraq threatened the security of the world, anyway. We were assured it was true. Word of honor.

That wasn't true, either.

Now we keep hearing explosions, shooting, and horrendous casualty figures. It sure as hell sounds like a war to most people. But Mr. President says it's just an "insurgency." Nothing to worry about. We've held elections, Saddam is on trial, the Iraqi economy is booming, and there's lots and lots of "positive" news (just ask Fox). It isn't what it appears to be.

Now, friends, individual the president or administration and government, what we have here is either a liar leading a pack of liars or a cuckoo bird leading a flock of cuckoo birds like him - a lunacy of loons, to coin a collective noun. This government must live in another world, another space time continuum, even. How else do you explain all this?

I don't really care, anymore, about whether this clown and his cockamamie cohort are liars. Hell, facing the obvious alternative, I wish they were. I'd rather believe the people in Washington, D.C. are just thieves trying to steal anything they can as usual than believe they're what they've obviously become - a bedlam of psychotic nitwits living in another world.

Neither am I only worried about the government. It's the nation of damned fools who have somehow become so biased, so incapable of cogent consideration as to pretend this is all real and sane.

My god, now we're talking about "Exit Strategy!" EXIT STRATEGY?! That goes into the ludicrous lexicon of lunacy right along with "abortion," "women's reproductive rights," "separation of church and state," "holiday trees," "gay marriage," and fifty more examples of rhetoric become reality for the mentally meandering. If there's one thing I don't want this putrescence of politicos on the Potomac deciding, it's exit strategy in Iraq. Let's not forget how their exit strategy for New Orleans in the even of a hurricane turned out.

We won and now we can't figure our how to leave . . . That makes sense to you?

Honor and Acts of Congress

December 2, 2005:

Wednesday, ten more in Iraq. Marines, walking on a god-damned road. GOD DAMN IT! People, we need some truth! Let's hear from those "embedded" (or does it mean "in bed with?") reporters some specifics. Stuff that will let people with a little more brains than the kind who listen to the Laci Peterson-Natalee Holloway stuff and read the "Christ-is-back-on-earth-disguised-as-an-alligator" tabloids decide for themselves whether guys like me know what we're talking about.

Specifics, please. Like, what kind of "improvised explosive device" was this? The bursting radius of a given artillery shell like those used in these things is known and certain data, you know. Tell us about that. It can tell us some other things, some things we ought to know. How far from the road was the thing planted? That would let people ask questions like "How the hell did somebody manage to bury two, three, or even four big - 105mm, or even 155mm, for instance (the kind, size, and distance from the road determines everything) - without being seen?

Why in all that is holy would anybody with brains enough to put boots on and tie the shoelaces walk down a road an enemy like the Iraqi "insurgents" has had access to for long enough to dig a pit and plant a bomb that big? WHO IS MAKING THE RULES HERE?

In short, my friends, we need facts. No more of this Pasteurized, homogenized, sanitized, and laundered-for-political-purposes crap. Tell the people what all the weapons all do. Talk to them about tactics. Explain to them the 'why-fore' and wherefore of doing things, and for Christ's sake stuff the kind of experts CNN, Fox, and the rest prostitute for White House purposes where the sun doesn't shine and where they belong.

I WANT TO KNOW WHY SOLDIERS ARE DRIVING DOWN ROADS IN THIN-SKINNED VEHICLES DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR OFF-THE-ROAD USE, ROADS THEY KNOW MAY BE MINED WITH FOUR OR FIVE HUNDRED POUND BOMBS. I WANT TO KNOW WHY THE HELL THEY ARE WALKING DOWN THE SAME KIND OF ROAD. Nobody is this f------ stupid!

And if you're bright enough to suspect that I smell politically-correct orders - more of that "rules of engagement" horse manure - you're mighty well told.

God damn it (again - I'm in a damned, awful foul mood this morning), we have known how to explode mines harmlessly for damned near a century. Hasn't anybody seen World War Two newsreels and the tanks and armored vehicles with the rotating flails ("Hobart's Funnies") out in front? WE NEED AN EXPLANATION OF WHY THIS IS HAPPENING, AND IT HAD BETTER BE BETTER THAN THE BULLSHIT WE GOT FOR EXPLANATION ABOUT WHY WE'RE IN IRAQ IN THE FIRST PLACE. Better than the nitwit nostrums being bloviated by "Colonel Hunt" and the rest, too.

Every life that is lost in Iraq, both Coalition Forces and Iraqi, is being thrown away. Anyone with a brain as good as that of a cat is smart enough to know the United States will be rid of this war as soon as it's rid of this president and his military industrial complex cabal (oh, the latter won't be long in coming up with another excuse, even if they have to bomb Red China, but we'll have at least a brief respite). For one thing, we simply won't be able to pay for it. There are a hundred things for which we need the money we're spending now (even government like ours can't just print more, you know). Like New Orleans, for instance. Like Social Security. Et cetera. This war was too compulsively stupid, too miserably planned, for anything else to happen. We're not going to "succeed" in Iraq, because it was never possible, and the people who started this never intended that kind of "success." It was only business for them. Weapons sales.

As to all those fearless "leaders," well, face it - this was red-neck, Texas football stuff. "Support our troops" is NOT like "Support the Dallas Cowboys." This is not drink Budweiser, sit in the stands, and cheer. This is not touchdowns and field goals, and guys trying come up with their own, super sexy version of a bump and grind in the end zone. This is planes, tanks, and guns. This is massive destruction, maiming, and death. Women and kids' deaths (and a helluva lot more of that than Saddam ever did, too). The dead are not back next Sunday, or on the next installment of the story. Their wounds were not put on in the make-up department, and their missing limbs are not "special effects."

Everything about this clusterfuck operation smacks of traditional Texas politics, even to the revelation by foreign media (sometimes, our own newspeople are dragged - kicking and screaming - to a story) of news orchestrated and planted in Arab news media to show our occupation of Iraq in a favorable light. Have we all forgotten how the same thing happened during the first campaign for president waged by this president? Modus operandi never changes.

But there's "cut and run," you say. We can't "cut and run." What's this "WE" shit? WHO can't 'cut and run?" Why the hell can't "we?" What, really - I mean in plain, clear, and no uncertain terms - would happen if we did? Do you mean that we would be less able to defend ourselves? How? How would the biggest, best equipped, most capitalistically ruthless military - and that by several times - in the history of man - be more vulnerable? What does having 150,000 of our best soldiers days, weeks, from home do to protect us from foreign "terrorism" here at home? Tell me in specifics, not bullshit generalities, slogans, and pseudo-patriotic horseshit.

While you're at it, tell me how the people being added to the poverty roles by the massive inflation resulting from the mountains of money being spent - money being transferred from the public's cash and currency accounts to the real, property and power accounts of Halliburton and the industrial military complex - will recover. Tell me about that, redneck - if you have even the faintest idea about what's really doing on.

SUPPORT? Save the kind you're giving for people who give a shit for it. Cheering is for cheerleaders. Save the yellow ribbon, car stickers for the local football team. This isn't football, and this isn't a goddamned pep rally. IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS, GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY OF THE LUNATICS - BOTH THE ONES WHO PLANT THE I.E.D.S AND THE ONES WHO PICKED THIS FIGHT FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF OBSCENE PROFIT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

One more thing. Strange, isn't it, that the people who wanted to stay out of war, and who are wanting to get out now, are mostly veterans of war. That's while all the "hawks" who want "us" to stay have never served a day in a uniform, much less "seen the elephant." Just out of morbid curiosity, I did a little research. Here's a summary of all those "hawks," the gunslinger wannabees who have evaded military uniform like it was the plague:

Of course, and appropriately, our Vice-Fuehrer Mr. Cheney leads the list. That's with five - one, two, three, four, five (do you wonder how the hell you get away with that) - deferments during Vietnam.

Then, there's this stellar list (put "did not serve" behind each one):
George Will
Chris Matthews
Bill O'Reilly (hid in England, from what I gather)
Paul Gigot
Bill Bennett
Pat Buchanan
Rush Limbaugh (how about that - 4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst' on his chicken ass!)
Michael Savage (aka Michael Alan Weiner)
Pat Robertson (claimed during 1986 campaign to be a "combat veteran." In reality, was a "Liquor Officer.")
Sean ("The Great American") Hannity
Michael Medved


And the list goes on. Savage, incidentally, is really a piece of work. His real name is Weiner. Can't you just hear it? "The Whiner (Weaner?) Nation!" How about - that from 'whiner' or 'weaner' to "savage.' That tells you more than a little, right there - doesn't it?

These are the guys calling guys like Congressman Murtha a 'cut and run' coward. Ann Coulter - the flesh-and-blood sneer with the bitch-in-heat eyes - has the Brobdingnagian (yeah, I know, inadequate - best I could come up with on short notice) nerve to imply the Vietnam-era hero's two purple hearts are tainted. The woman takes chutzpah to a whole, new level, doesn't she?

You know, at the risk of sounding trite, even stooping to their same level, I can't help wondering why these great and famous people - if they are so damned determined that we should not 'cut and run,' and so eager to "free the Iraqi people" - don't volunteer for combat there. Hell, with all that greatness, all that fervor and genius, they'd be invaluable; and, superior beings that they are, that in a manner far disproportionate to their numbers. Yeah, that's it: man, what rag-head Arab would stand against a charge by the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael (Weaner) Savage, and Ann Coulter?

Yeah, yeah - I know. Well, hell - how about helping with the cleaning up in New Orleans? Or is it that "patriotism" and "public service" are attractive only in terms of how much money it makes? How much self-aggrandizement it lends? Yeah, maybe that's it.

Want to talk "cut and run?" Let me, one who has been in more fights both judo competition and lethal-with-guns, than any of you can even imagine, tell you something - that since the closest you've ever been to a real fight is one of those logomachy television debates you sell to your hog-fat, Budweiser-swilling, wannabee warrior audiences:

Very often - more often than not, matter of fact - it takes a damned site more courage to walk away from a fight than it does to start it. True, I fought, most of the time, for practice. Yeah, and with time, fun (at first, I hated it). But when finally it came to having to hurt somebody, I would - could; it was hammered into me like the temper in steel - only repair to my upbringing. That was by an old, German nobleman who insisted that while killing would always be necessary in life, the rules by which it was decided and done were absolutely rigid, and laws of god. A thing of honor. When I killed my first game, a jackrabbit, I paid it the required ritual respect with the "Letzterbissen," a "last bite" morsel of food placed in its mouth. I have never taken life without doing that, even if only in spirit. I have never counted, either. Oh, where men - and that one woman - were involved, I could. I just haven't. You don't do that. Not with honor.

Silly? Maybe, but a formative ritual as old as German history. For men of honor - and my grandfather would tolerate the company of no other - even the life of a rabbit demands respect. When it is men, women and children, it demands, far, far more.

It demands an act of Congress. It demands the commitment of all the people whose sons and daughters will take, and give, it. It is not a political thing. It is not a matter of rhetoric or philosophy. It is not a matter of economics, or filthy capitalist profit. IT IS NOT DONE LIKE THIS! Not by people of honor.

My country had honor, once.