It has been a while, too long, since I posted at Townhall, hopefully it was worth the wait.

It didn’t take long for the Dems to get caught in a scandal and do what the voters in 2006 feared if the they became the majority of the 110th Congress - members of the "Moon Bat" community …

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) seems to be able point fingers, like other members of her political elite of Sociocrats, at political opponents and at the same time get caught in a congressional ethics concern – and as usual without any repercussions other than stepping down from her position in a committee:

CNSNews, Fred Lucas:

Government watchdog groups want more answers as to why Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) stepped down from a military appropriations subcommittee at a time questions were being asked billions of dollars in federal defense contracts going to her husband’s companies.[1] Feinstein resigned her post as chairwoman of the Senate Subcommittee on Military Construction Appropriations last week. The decision came less than two months after Metro Newspapers, a group of alternative weekly papers in northern California, detailed the number of defense contracts awarded to Perini Corp. and URS Corp., both of which her husband, Richard C. Blum, has ownership, according to the newspapers. The investigation was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute, a non-profit organization affiliated with the liberal magazine The Nation.[2]
”This was a critique from the left,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest group, told Cybercast News Service. “These were left-leaning papers. The fact that she stepped down from the committee lends credibility to the charges.”
… The California weeklies detailed examples that included a subcommittee hearing in which Feinstein asked Pentagon officials about increasing anti-terrorism protection for Army bases. The next year, in March 2003, Feinstein asked why the funds for anti-terror protection had not been spent. Just a month later, URS announced a $600 million contract to provide services for U.S. Army bases that included anti-terrorism force protection. In another instance, Feinstein asked another military official when money would be spent on a maintenance facility for the C-17 Hickham Air Base in Hawaii. URS later announced a $42 million contract to build it. Also, Feinstein’s subcommittee in mid-2005 approved funds to reinforce roofs at military stations in Iraq, and in October of that year, Perini got a $185 million federal contract for that purpose, the papers reported.
The matter should be probed further, said Kenneth Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative government watchdog group. However, he isn’t that confident in the Senate’s ability to police itself.[3] … “Congress needs an independent watchdog. The ethics committees are partisan. They have an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, but the reality is that things don’t get looked at that should get looked at.”
Meanwhile, Melanie Sloan, executive director of the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, reportedly said the Feinstein matter could eclipse other congressional scandals.
… “You would think that, considering all the money Feinstein’s family has pocketed by waging global warfare while ignoring the plight of wounded American soldiers, she would show a smidgen of shame and resign from the entire Senate. Not just a subcommittee,” Bryne wrote.[4]

Voters in California who have continued to retain such a person representing that state and voting upon issues that concern all American while in Congress – should be ashamed. Just as I am ashamed of voting for President Bush, despite the fact that the choice between Senator John Kerry being president and Bush #2, as a pick of the best of the worst. The key element in the voting procedure is to get the right candidate for the final vote for presidency – which means more people need to quit abstaining from voting in the primaries and leaving their vote for the final election. In addition, it should be allowed to vote in primaries concerning any political entity, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or whatever – anyone should vote in the primaries of any political candidate. This would help to ensure that quality candidates reach the point of the final vote for presidency. In the case of voting for congressional members, Americans must quit voting strictly by the election rhetoric from the candidate and look objectively at their past voting record and periods in public office. What is said is not as important as what they do. Again, President Bush is a prime example. He has disassociated from members of his own party, and insulted and ignored the people who put him in office. But, why should he care? After FDR, Congress passed an amendment that doesn’t allow a president to serve more than two consecutive[5] terms. This can be a good thing, but we also see a bad thing. President George W. Bush will get his presidential library. In that library his legacy, in his eyes, will be established. But his legacy is only positive when looking at the basic fundamentals of his foreign policy, with his domestic policies being a record of shame, as well as turning his back upon the political platform from which he did not adhere to. Yet, if asked the question” “Which is a better president, William J. Clinton or George W. Bush?” – the answer would, for me, be a no-brainer – President George W. Bush – and not just because of the Lewinsky scandal, as some may surmise.

And, for those of you who are contemplating replacing GW Bush with Hillary Clinton, remember that her scandals amount to almost as much and a part of the William Clinton scandals. She has changed her political rhetoric during the course of her tenure as Senator of the US Congress, not because she has changed her views, but wants to encourage more voters. Her recent action, at least by those who represent her in her campaign efforts to be noted and voted for a possible presidential candidate involving a fellow sociocrat, Barack Obama (D-IL) is a prime example that she has not changed her vicious means of obtaining votes for her continued zeal in involving herself in the affairs of the US government and her personal ideology of American socialism.

Moral of the story: Voters who complain about the actions or inaction of those they voted for should look upon themselves to be a more responsible voter and quit being loyal to political parties that are nothing but a “good fellow club”.

I authored a book in the late 1980s entitled: History of the 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry: The Quarterhorse during the period of my military career as a soldier assigned to the “Quarterhorse”, the 1st/4th US Cavalry, short for 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, and a lifetime membership awarded in 1983 by Command Sergeant Major Tuemler, whose wife made me a 4th Cavalry banner as a going-away gift when I was reassigned to Fort Riley Commanding General’s Office. I thought I would pass on some of the highlights of the history of this famous cavalry that represents an era long gone in history, but still remains as a symbol of the U.S. Army cavalry’s heritage. Maybe one day I will reprint the original limited edition volume that is registered and exists at the Library of Congress and a copy within the 1/4th Cavalry Museum that is located within their HQ at Fort Riley, Kansas. The only unit, to date, who is authorized a unit museum at their headquarters location. It is now attached to the 1st Infantry Division (Big Red One is historically famous onto itself).

The United States 4th Cavalry Regiment can be traced back to the middle of the 19th century. It was most effective against Army operations against Indian uprisings on the Texas frontier. As stated above, only two elements remain of the original regiment – the 1st and 2nd Squadron of the 4th US Cavalry. The 1st Squadron of the 4th Cavalry has a nickname – “Quarterhorse”, in honor of the breed of horse that was customary to use in horse cavalry operations. It is the only operational element of the old 4th Cavalry that still has a horse unit that attends change-of-command ceremonies and other official functions, such as parades. The riders are trained to ride the horses and are uniformed and saddled in the historical tradition of the US cavalry. The rider wears the period blue uniform and his accoutrements include a US cavalry sword. The saddle used is the famous McClellan saddle. During certain events, the riders will demonstrate a cavalry charge with their swords drawn. Training techniques and other interesting facts about the cavalry can be found at the post museum at Fort Riley, Kansas and is open to the public. The 2nd Squadron of the 4th Cavalry is also part of the 1st Infantry Division, Fort Riley, Kansas.
The 4th United States Cavalry regiment was established as part of a growth of mounted U.S. Army units that started in the early 1850s, mostly used in Indian Territory operations. It was officially organized on March 26th, 1855 at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri as the U.S. 1st Cavalry Regiment. One year after it was established, the 1st Cavalry Regiment’s first military action was a peacekeeping mission in what became known as Bleeding Kansas, where pro-slavery and Free State factions were fighting each other. During this period the 1st Cavalry also fought against hostile Plains Indians in the area. The first commanders were Colonel Edwin V. Sumner and Lieutenant Colonel Joseph E. Johnston; both would later become Civil War generals. The regiment fought its first combat on July 39th, 1857 at the Battle of Solomon River in Kansas against a large force of Southern Cheyenne warriors. The regiment was under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, which was his last command in the Federal Army before the outbreak of the American Civil War. When the War Between the States officially began in 1861, the 1st Cavalry Regiment was dissolved and then reorganized immediately. Many of its commissioned officers became famous during the American Civil War, including Robert E. Lee, mentioned above, as well as George B. McClellan (the cavalry saddle named after him) and J.E.B. Stuart.
The War Department, as early as 1854, wanted to redesignate all mounted regiments as cavalry by renumbering them in order of seniority. As the 1st Cavalry Regiment was the fourth oldest mounted regiment in terms of active service, it was redesignated as the 4th United States Cavalry Regiment on August 3rd, 1861. Most of the regiment was assigned in the Western Theater, but fought against Confederates in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and the Indian Territory . In 1861 and 1862, two companies served (with distinction) in Virginia in the Army of the Potomac before they were reunited with the rest of the regiment in Tennessee. Those companies fought in the major battles of the First Bull Run Battle, the Peninsula Campaign, Fredericksburg, and Antietam. Most of the regiment fought continuously in the western theater from Shiloh to Macon and participated in fights at Chickamauga, Stones River, and Battle of Nashville. All these names being familiar with Civil War buffs.
So many regiments were sent east to support the war that the 1st U.S. Cavalry was kept (initially) on the frontier until other units were established to protect settlers and townsfolk from Indian raids. On June 22nd, 1861, former 1st Cavalry officer George McClellan, who became a major general, requested Company A and Company E to serve as his personal escort. These two companies were the units that fought at Bull Run, Peninsula, Antietam, and Fredericksburg campaigns and did not rejoin the main unit again until 1864. The rest of the 1st Cavalry was commissioned to support operations in Mississippi and Missouri. The 4th Cavalry company units became scattered from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Coast. Their missions consisted of the traditional operations of reconnaissance, screening and raiding – not too much differently than what they are designed to do today, only instead of horses and light artillery they incorporate helicopters, scouts and light armor in their missions.
On December 31st, 1862, a two-company squadron of the 4th Cavalry attacked and caused the retreat of a Confederate cavalry brigade near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. From 1863 to 1864, companies of the 4th Cavalry saw action in Tennessee, Georgia and Mississippi. On June 30th, 1863, another squadron of the 4th Cavalry charged a six-gun battery of Confederate artillery near Shelbyville, Tennessee, capturing the entire battery and three hundred prisoners.
By the time of spring of 1864 came, the success of the Confederate cavalry corps under the command of J.E.B. Stuart had convinced the Union to form their own Cavalry Corps in the east under General Philip Sheridan. The 4th Cavalry was ordered to reunite as a regiment and, on December 14th, 1864, it joined in the attack on Nashville, Tennessee as part of the Western Cavalry Corps commanded by General James Wilson. The 4th helped turn the Confederate flank that sent them in retreat. A Confederate force attempted to delay action at West Harpeth, Tennessee, but an element of the 4th Cavalry led by Lieutenant Joseph Hedges charged and captured a Confederate artillery battery. For his bravery, Hedges received the Medal of Honor, the first one as a member of the 4th Cavalry.
General Wilson, in March of 1865, was ordered to take his cavalry on a drive through Alabama to capture the Confederate supply depot at Selma. As the column of cavalry moved south into Alabama, it encountered the famed Confederate cavalry leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. Wilson’s cavalry had superior numbers and firepower, so it defeated the Confederates, which allowed the Union troops to arrive in Selma the next day. The 4th Cavalry led a mounted charge on April 2nd, 1865 where they were stopped by the railroad and fence line. They then dismounted and stormed the town on foot. Selma’s storage of munitions and supplies were destroyed and foundries and arsenals were leveled. Next Wilson joined General Sherman who took Montgomery, Alabama, and Columbus, Georgia before arriving in Macon, Georgia. It was there that the word came that General Lee and General Johnston has surrendered their armies. The regiment stayed in Macon as occupation troops. The last battle of the war for the 4th Cavalry was the Battle of Columbus, where the regiment assisted in capturing the Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
In August of 1865, the 4th Cavalry was sent to Texas. During the next thirteen years its units of twelve companies occupied military posts between the Rio Grande River and Jacksboro and between San Antonio and San Angelo. Before 1871, the 4th Cavalry’s operations were limited to guarding the US Mail and settlements against Indian attacks and attempted to overtake bands of Indians on raids. The skirmishes were commanded by Colonel Lawrence Pike Graham, which none of the Indian skirmishes were of any major significance.
When Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie took command in December of 1870 this changed and orders were received to stop Comanche and Kiowa raids along the Texas frontier. On February 25th, 1871, Mackenzie set up command at Fort Concho. One month later he moved the headquarters to Fort Richardson, near Jacksboro, while some companies of the 4th Cavalry remained at Fort Griffin and Fort Concho. In May of 1871, Kiowa near Fort Richardson brutally mutilated teamsters from a wagon train at nearby Salt Creek Prairie (see Warren Wagon Train Raid). A few days later General William T. Sherman had three leaders of the raid brought to Fort Sill, Oklahoma – Satank, Satanta and Big Tree where they were taken to Jacksboro to stand trial for murder. Satank killed a trooper while attempting to escape along the way; Satanta and Big Tree were sentenced to life imprisonment.
In August of 1871, General Mackenzie led an expedition into Indian Territory against the Comanche and Kiowa who had left the agency, but he was later ordered to return to Texas. He then led eight companies of the 4th Cavalry and two companies of the 11th US Infantry (600 men) in search of Quahadi Comanches, who had refused to live on the reservation. On October 10th of 1871, a skirmish took place in Blanco Canyon, near the site of present-day Crosbyton, but the band of renegades escaped across the plains. The following summer of 1872, Mackenzie, with six companies of the 4th Cavalry, continued its search for the Quahadis. On September 29th, 1872, 222 cavalrymen surprised and destroyed Chief Mow-way’s village of Quahadi and Kotsoteka Comanches on the North Fork of the Red River about six miles of the present-day site of Lefors. It was estimated that 52 Indians were killed and 124 captured with a loss of 3 cavalrymen killed and 3 wounded. For at least one year, Kiowa and Comanche remained peaceful.
After the Southern Plains Indians initiated the Red River War in June of 1874, the Grant administration cancelled the Quaker peace policy and authorized military control of the reservations in order to subdue the hostile Indians. During this period, Indians who had settled in Mexico began to perform raids in Texas. In 1878 General Sherman, at the request of the Texans, transferred General Mackenzie and six companies of the 4th Cavalry to Fort Clark. At this time Mackenzie led a large and extensive expedition into Mexico, restored the system of cavalry patrols, and reestablished peace in the region of South Texas. After the annihilation of George Armstrong Custer’s command at the Battle of Little Bighorn in June of 1876, General Mackenzie forced Red Cloud and his band of Sioux and the Northern Cheyenne to surrender. In the autumn of 1879, Mackenzie with six companies of the 4th Cavalry subdued the hostile Utes in Southern Colorado without firing a shot and in August 1880 forced them to move to a reservation in Utah Territory. The 4th Cavalry was then transferred to the Arizona Territory, where Mackenzie assumed command of all military forces and subdued the hostile Apaches. Within one month the Apaches surrendered or fled to Mexico, and on October 30th, Mackenzie and the 4th Cavalry were transferred to the new District of New Mexico. From 1884 to 1886 the 4th US Cavalry operated against the Apaches in Arizona and was instrumental in the capture of the legendary Geronimo. This operation ended the regiment’s participation in any Indian Wars that remained. In 1890 the regimental headquarters was moved to Walla Walla, Washington.
In the early part of the 20th century, the 4th Cavalry served on the Mexican border in Texas from 1911 to 1913. For the next six years, the regiment served at Schofield Barracks in the Territory of Hawaii, but did not participate in World War I.
However, by World War II, the regiment exchanged horses for armored vehicles and tanks. It was put ashore in the allied operation of D-Day on islands off the coast of France. The regiment experienced fierce fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy and in the Hurtgen Forest during the Battle of the Bulge.
In 1965, the First Squadron of the 4th Cavalry (1-4 Cavalry) deployed to the Republic of Viet Nam, spending eight years fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The unit became known as the Fire Brigade because of their firepower, effective mobility and the shock effect of hit-and-run tactics used since the Civil War.
In 1990, after the period of reconstruction of military units initiated by the Reagan administration due to the ending of Cold War tactics, the First Squadron deployed to Saudi Arabia, as part of Operation Desert Shield. This led to the Squadron’s spearhead of the division assault into Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. On May 4th, 1991, the 1-4 Cavalry received the Valorous Unit Award for service in the Gulf.
During the Balkans Conflict, in 1995, the 1-4 Cavalry was the first cavalry unit deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina, supporting the peacekeeping mission that was under the Dayton Peace Accord that lasted for a period of eleven months at Camp Molly, called the “Dog Pound” and Eagle Base at Tuzla Main. From 1999 to 2000 the 1-4 Cavalry, its air-cavalry elements of the Quarterhorse (D Squadron) returned to the Balkans to serve at Kosovo as members of Operation Joint Guardian II. In the middle of 2002, soldiers with the 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment (1-4 Cavalry) were suddenly told their mission was canceled and that they would not be deploying to Kosovo for peacekeeping missions. A spokesman of the U.S. European Command stated that he could not comment on the change and referred it back to V Corps. The first trainload of the squadron’s equipment that was headed for the Balkans from Germany had to be called back. The Schweinfurt unit of the Quarter Cavalry was to be a rotating task force under the command of the 1st Infantry Division. The squadron was to lead the aviation task force with their OH-58 Kiowa and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, as well as provide perimeter guards from their scout troop units at the headquarters at Camp Bondsteel. To date, the reason for the change is unknown, and apparently was still classified at the time – thus the reluctance of the 1-4 Cavalry and European Command leaders to make any comment.
During the 4th Cavalry’s long history, it did not participate in two wars – World War I and the Korean War.
Its unit awards include: (1) Presidential Unit Citation (Army) for Binh Thuan Province; (2) Valorous Unit Award for Quang Tin Province; (3) Valorous Unit Award for FISH HOOK; (4) Meritorious Unit Commendation (Army) for SOUTHWEST ASIA; and (5) Valorous Unit Award for Desert Storm 1st Squadron.
BIBLIOGRAPHY -
History of the 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry: The Quarterhorse, Izmir Press & Binding, Izmir, Turkey; LC #87200809; 1987 by Keith A. Lehman
4th U.S. Cavalry Regiment Association
United States Army Center of Military History; CMH Publication 60-1; “Army Lineage Series: ARMOR-CAVALRY, Part I: Regular Army and Army Reserve.” Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 69-60002.
Order of Battle: U.S. Army, World War II; Presidio Press, 1984; ISBN 0-89141-195-X by Shelby L. Stanton
Spurs to Glory: The Story of the U.S. Cavalry; Rand McNally, Chicago 1966 by James M. Merrill
Battle of the Red River
4th US Cavalry and the Lee-Peacock Feud (Texas) 1869
Wikipedia
Encyclopedia Britannica
Answers.com
Kansas Civil War Soldiers
New York Tribune – Horace Greeley Civil War Coverage
Unit History – SC 4th Cavalry
Regimental History of 4th Cavalry (Mary Lee Stubbs and Stanley Russell Connor)
4th NY Cavalry Regiment During Civil War (NY Military Museum)
SUGGESTED READING -
A History of the 4th Wisconsin Infantry and Cavalry in the American Civil War by Michael Martin.
Cooke’s Cavalry Tactics by Philip St. George Cooke, Brig, Gen. U.S. Army, Lippincott Publications, Philadelphia, 1862.
United States Military Saddles 1812-1943 by Randy Steffen, Oklahoma University Press, 1973.
Crossing the Border with the 4th Cavalry – Mackenzie’s Raid into Mexico in 1873 by Richard A. Thompson, Texian Press, Waco, 1986.
The Old Sergeant’s Story by Captain Robert G. Carter, Hitchcock Press, 1926. (Biography of the days of the 4th Cavalry via letters to Captain Carter) Rare, out-of-print; may find at e-Bay or Biblio.com.
On the Border with Mackenzie by Captain Robert G. Carter, circa 1910 (first-hand account of the 4th Cavalry in Texas).

I would like to take a moment to commend and thank the Native Americans web site for their preservation of Indian history and their invaluable information in the form of biographies of famous tribal leaders. History must be preserved, and it is good that the history of the "original" Americans remain for all to study and know that it is all part of American history.

On November 3^rd, 1984, Andrew Kopkind wrote in America’s oldest weekly journal of political and cultural news, opinion and analysis that was established in 1865 – The Nation:

Not since the era of the late junior Senator from Wisconsin has an American political figure given this country an eponymous ism. Reaganism is now an established movement and an important historical event. Its roots can be discerned in periods long past, and its consequences will carry beyond the Presidential tenure, and perhaps the earthly existence, of the man who gave it a name. … Like other native American movements – Populism, Progressivism and the various “new radicalisms” of this century – Reaganism lacks sharp ideological definition and programmatic coherence. It has not yet produced a unitary creed to resolve the differences among its components: the Moral Majority, the corporate class, blue-collar ethnics and the country-club set. … those who are making the movement have a precise idea of their goals and a fair sense of the strategies to achieve them. … The rise of Reaganism is focused in the electoral arena this year, but it is not primarily a phenomenon of political campaigns, public office or even Republican Administrations. A landslide victory for Reagan and his allies next week would certainly advance the movement, but a good Democratic showing would not stop or reverse it. For power is already in place to continue the movement’s mission in the coming years. The first targets of choice are clear: all those liberal institutions that have defined and shaped American culture for fifty years or more – the press, the churches, unions, academia, local public education, urban government, philanthropic foundations, the artistic establishment, Hollywood, publishing, Federal service, the liberal professions and their organizations. They will come under increasing pressure to redirect their orientation along lines that have already been drawn, to change their social roles, to reassess their values – even the term “liberalism” has been dropped from political discourse. A major ideological conflict is under way. It’s not necessary to establish a conspiracy or identify a cabal to confirm the reality of Reaganism. … Reaganism underscores the issues and subsumes the symbols of the electoral debate. Grenada, Central America, the Pentagon budget, taxes and deficits, school prayer, abortion, family values, patriotism, leadership – those words have specific referents, and in an ordinary campaign they would acquire no larger meaning. … Reaganism’s long-term policy of destroying socialism and preventing revolution in the Third World … Defense spending is not a set of figures but a way of increasing militarization of America’s political economy, and its cultural life as well. Taxes and deficits are tools for increasing the power and enriching the coffers of the corporate class. Family values refer to more rigid social controls, leadership means authoritarianism, school prayer and support for religious education are means of hastening the privatization of American society – a key strategy. … Reaganism has developed from the several trends and transient phenomena that followed the convulsive social activity of the 1960s. It takes ideas, energies and some personnel from such varied elements as the George Wallace movement, neo-conservatism, the New Right, neoliberalism, fundamentalism, post-feminism, the “back-to-basics” movement in education, the “return to roots” trend in Judaism, Catholic orthodoxy, the white backlash to integration and affirmative action, the straight-male hostility to women’s liberation and gay rights, the Anglophobe aversion to bilingualism. It also draws on historic American Populism, especially its racist, nativist and regional themes. It twines with some curiously contradictory threads in Progressivism: America Firstism and moral imperialism, a distrust of politics and politicians, an antagonism to Wall Street and monopolies. For its personal values it draws on social Darwinism, but its economic vision looks quite the other way, to a heavenly city of corporate control. Chronologically, Reaganism belongs to a late period of America’s imperial drama, as fear of impending doom and a sense of inevitable loss prepares the actors for unwonted roles. Many people or groups of people feel that they lost something, or lost out, in the Vietnam era and after. … There is nothing new or inherently sinister in the process of ideological institution building. Liberals did a good job of it for many decades and succeeded in creating a liberal value system for the whole country. Radicals made a stab at the same thing in the 1960s. … Reaganism grasps that simple and profound reality, and is taking appropriate measures. … For a long time liberals carried on a painful search for “new ideas,” a self-defeating maneuver which merely confirmed the popular impression that the liberal intellectual and political program was finished. Next, liberals began adopting Reaganist constructs – family values, national security, and patriotism – and attempted to give them progressive content.

But what about the founder of what has become known as Reaganism? In the next part I will examine and relate the history and diversity of one of the best presidents to date in American history; and while George W. Bush has, on occasion, alluded that he falls into the ideology established by Ronald Reagan, he doesn’t come close in his actions and policies during the two terms he served as president. Ronald Reagan was not great because he belonged to a certain political party; he was great because of his character, genuine love for America and appreciation of the American people, America traditions and American history. Something to keep in mind as you formulate your pick of a presidential candidate for 2008.

I believe the author is referring to the death of Senator John W. Reynolds, Democrat who died of heart failure in 1984, World War II veteran (1942-1946) and was also the Governor of Wisconsin from 1963 to 1965.

Progressivism has given way to liberalism after its long history of gradual change, but continued to strive to assimilate the concept of socialism and the welfare state. In other words, the change in descriptive terminology has changed, but their concept of the basic population remains clear within the concept of its inceptors – Karl Marx, Lenin, et cetera – who all proclaim the common public as useful idiots.

The primary decade of the advent of progressive socialism in America, and those who committed themselves as protesting college students then are now a part of the academic and political group who still remain in the mind set of the 1960s. And how can this be so when that decade represented the birth of the Civil Rights movement, long overdue after the Civil War, in which the phrase “all men are created equal” became more than just written words in the preamble of the American institution?

To be continued ...

Last summer, the New York Times perceptive and thought-provoking columnist, Thomas L. Friedman,[*] wrote an article in the journal Foreign Policy that didn’t receive the attention it deserved – entitled - The First Law of Petropolitics.[†] Friedman’s piece laid out a law that relates to both this piece on failed and failing states and even more directly to the previous one on the Red Storm Rising in Russia.

The First Law of Petropolitics, as Friedman explains, is that as oil prices rise, the pace of freedom and democratization in oil-rich nations’ declines.  Conversely, as oil prices fall, these same regimes are forced to find new ways of economic survival other than sticking a straw into the earth and sucking it dry, resulting in more freedom for their people.

As the price of oil has plateaued at historically high levels, we are seeing this scenario play out in country after country.  Rich with oil wealth, countries like Russia, Venezuela, Iran and others have become increasingly bold and bellicose.  Since they don’t have to tax their citizens to spend growing amounts on the latest military hardware, WMD programs and other ways of suppressing their own citizens and threatening those of other countries, they become increasingly disconnected from their own populations and world economic realities.  Spending their oil wealth like a party-prone frat boy with a hefty trust fund, these countries don’t have to connect with the rest of the world to make ends meet.  Their leaders, like Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad in recent weeks and months, are flush with cash to carry out whatever grandiose visions they might have.

Now look at the other side of the coin.  As Friedman notes, the first Arab state to run out of oil was Bahrain.  Is it a coincidence that as the oil spigot trickled to a halt, Bahrain became the most democratic state in the Persian Gulf, the first Gulf state to sign a free trade agreement with the US and the most egalitarian for women’s rights?  In order to survive, Bahrain’s leaders recognized that they had to tap a new source of wealth, their people.  And the standard of living in Bahrain today is among the highest in the Arab world, including those countries sitting on vast oil reserves.

You don’t have to search very hard to find a common denominator for the wealthiest nations in the world, the ones with the highest standards of living and the highest incomes.  The common denominator is freedom.  Simply put, those states without artificial wealth created by oil or other natural resource riches have to make money the old fashioned way.  Their people must be free to become creative, productive and innovative.  To unleash their human economic potential, you have to unleash their spirit to provide opportunities for people to succeed.

But when you are sitting on a pot of gold, especially black gold in today’s world, those realities go out the window.  And as oil prices remain high, those countries sitting on vast oil wealth are not only disconnected from the realities of world politics but also from the need to broaden their economies to spread wealth more evenly throughout their societies.

Iran is a fascinating case study.  With somewhere between 7% and 10% of the world’s oil reserves, depending on which study you believe, the country should be awash in cash as crude prices hover near $60 a barrel.  Yet recent studies, including one here (http://www.cfr.org/publication/12661/irans_dire_oil_straits.html?breadcrumb=%2F ) done by the Council on Foreign Relations, show the country is actually spending itself into the poor house.  The combined effect of a dilapidated energy infrastructure, combined with U.S. and international sanctions related to its nuclear program, is actually putting a bad pinch on the Iranian economy.  It’s as hard to imagine as Greenland importing ice cubes from Mexico, but Iran has actually become a net importer of energy.  With price subsidies on everything from gasoline to food in order to keep its own people happy, the country may literally be spending its oil wealth faster than it can produce it, even at today’s prices.  Some analysts even speculate that some of Ahmadinejad’s more belligerent policies, like his insistence on pursuing nuclear technology, may be designed to promote regional instability for no other reason than to keep oil prices high.  If Iran could be headed for an internal economic implosion, like the Soviet Union when confronted with its own economic failings in the 1980s, you have to wonder why we don’t just sit back and watch it happen rather than play into their hands by providing Iran’s leaders with a convenient scapegoat for their own failings with saber-rattling policies of our own.

There are really two major implications for American policy implicit in the First Law of Petropolitics.

First, to the extent that we can help lower world oil prices by lowering American demand, we are actually advancing the cause of freedom and democratization.  By reducing our own dependence on foreign oil supplies, we can actually make the world a safer place.

This won’t be as easy today as it was back in the Carter administration, when tougher CAF?standards and other conservation measures actually reduced American oil consumption by 16% over a three-year period with a minimum of pain and suffering.  First, we’ve already picked the low-hanging fruit.  Although we can still make dramatic reductions in our own energy demand, there will be costs and trade-offs in other sectors of our economy.  But to the extent that we can make the world safer and reduce our need for a far-flung military that currently has more than 2.5 million men and women under arms throughout the world, the costs may well be worth it.

Second, we aren’t the only energy hogs on the block anymore.  As China and other nations industrialize, they are demanding an increasing amount of oil.  China has been especially aggressive about forging economic ties to oil-producing countries in Africa, South America and, of course, the Middle East to quench its growing demand for fuel.  Friedman has elsewhere advocated the equivalent of a new Manhattan Project to harness the best brains throughout the industrial world in a crash program to develop new, alternative energy sources that will help us reduce the world demand for oil while cutting pollution.

The second major implication of Friedman’s law is that we need to engage more with the rest of the world, not less.  And that includes engaging our enemies and potential adversaries, not just our friends.  You and I part company here a little Keith.  You are absolutely right that allowing China into the WTO without corresponding concessions on their part for political freedom and human rights was a setback for those causes.  But I would argue that while we temporarily lost that battle, we are actually winning the war.  I think the evidence shows that the rapid modernization of the Middle Kingdom, especially evidenced by the entrepreneurial spirit that is rampant throughout the Chinese economy, is creating irresistible internal pressures for change.  What politics and diplomacy failed to accomplish, capitalism is doing very nicely.  As the Chinese people see the benefits of economic growth and engagement with the rest of the world, the pressures for more internal freedom and democracy are growing.  I predict that we will see capitalism eating out the rotten core of the decrepit Chinese communist political system within our lifetimes.  And I think similar outcomes are possible throughout the world as nations slowly realize that economic progress depends on freedom.

As far as Bahrain and what Friedman wrote[‡] - Bahrain[§] is expected to run out of oil. It is a constitutional monarchy, not a democracy, but of course better than the theocracy that surrounds it. “morality issues” are still on the platform of politics, Wikipedia states:

 The opening up of politics has seen big gains for both Shia and Sunni Islamists in elections, which has given them a parliamentary platform to pursue their policies. This has meant that what are termed “morality issues” have moved further up the political agenda with parties launching campaigns to impose bans on female mannequins displaying lingerie in shop windows, sorcery and the hanging of underwear on washing lines. Analysts of democratization in the Middle East cite the Islamists’ references to respect for human rights in their justification for these programmes as evidence that these groups can serve as a progressive force in the region.

But, as Ken points out, women’s rights have moved forward there, and for the first time in 2002, women voted. Thus far, however, women do not hold public office.

Ken also describes the economic situation, via Friedman, excerpts from Wikipedia give a background on the country of Bahrain:

In a region currently experiencing an unprecedented oil boom, Bahrain has the fastest growing economy in the Arab world, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia found in January 2006. Bahrain also has the freest economy in the Middle East according to the 2006 Index of Economic Freedom published by the Heritage Foundation /Wall Street Journal, and is twenty-fifth freest overall in the world. In Bahrain, petroleum production and processing account for about 60% of export receipts, 60% of government revenues, and 30% of GDP. Economic conditions have fluctuated with the changing fortunes of oil since 1985, for example, during and following the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990-1991. … A large share of exports consists of petroleum products made from imported crude. … Unemployment, especially among the young, and the depletion of both oil and underground water resources are major long-term economic problems.[**]

Unlike other nations of the Middle East, there is a well-defined middle-class because of the political and economic reforms. The middle class and upper class are cosmopolitan, not always dressing according to the custom of the region, and presently Bahrain’s youth favor the mainstream hip hop music of the West. The most detailed and updated facts concerning Bahrain can be found at The World Factbook published by the CIA and what I used while serving in the U.S. Army.

If Bahrain is running out of oil or as stated, already has – than how can the statistic of oil being 60% of Bahrain’s export receipts?[††] The Bahrain government has wisely diversified and privatized its economy to reduce the country’s independence on oil – not just because it is “running out of oil” but because they are shrewd knowing that diversification is best, especially when the oil market fluctuates so often.  I can see the view of Ken and Friedman on this respect, but one must realize the tiny country has more limited real estate, unlike Saudi Arabia. This is a key factor in their diversification program because they know that oil production may decrease, as well as the market is expected to change in the future.

As far as Russia, the “rich with oil wealth” scenario doesn’t face up to facts. If Russia is doing so well in oil production, why are they selling – against international sanctions that they have agreed to – illegal weaponry and associated products under the table?  It is mainly because of Putin’s yearning for the “good old days” in communist Russia, formerly known as the Soviet Union. Putin, despite his outward display, is working towards moving back to communism; and that communism, of course, would be different than what was practiced during the days of the Soviet Union.

Ken is right – free trade will change things, even in China – but it doesn’t mean we should trust them any farther than the present leadership in Russia. The point I was making in the “Red Rising” article was that China should have been forced to comply with the United Nations professed concerns of human rights before giving China carte de blanche in respect to world trade and the fact that the Chinese intend to "flood " the market - they have not lost their desire to dominate the world. When I say "they" I am referring to the leadership and political infrastructure of China. Once we had the same concerns about Japan (except not in a peace-threatening scenario). If China's goals are so noble, why are they trying, with Russia at its side, to  increase their military (even in space) in a threatening manner - not as America that is preoccupied with defense measures? Red China has been and still is militarily aggressive.

The wealth acquired from crude oil in the Middle East has done little to help the common folk there. They are acquiring the wealth, but it is limited to only the elite of the nation, and despite the ability to change it, their social life is still medieval in respects – because of the leaning towards theocracy.

If Iran is spending itself into the poor house – it is because they are making the mistake the Soviet Union did – it is militaristic and spending it on means to comply with their publicly announced intentions in the world of foreign affairs. They are also, as Ken points out, being stifled because of sanctions due to their behavior in world affairs, their insistence that Israel be obliterated, and its theocratic stance concerning Western and free nations.

Ken states:

If Iran could be headed for an internal economic implosion, like the Soviet Union when confronted with its own economic failings in the 1980s, you have to wonder why we don’t sit back and watch it happen rather than play into their hands by providing Iran’s leaders with a convenient scapegoat for their own failings with saber-rattling policies of our own.

Saber rattling – Iran and North Korea are good at this, more so than even China. Americans do not realize how, back in the early 1990s how close we came to confrontation with North Korea. In a now unclassified subject, Operation Silver Bullet was real, and messages came into our headquarters that were emphasized as not being a “scenario training mission” – information that I knew then, but could not discuss because of signing a military document that stated that nothing from that operation or pertaining to it could be discussed by any means seven years from the year of discharge from military service in 1994. At the time I held a Top Secret/Atomal clearance. And while the situation was defused, it is not wise to ignore “saber-rattling.” And, accusing the US of “saber rattling” is not correct – the policies of Ronald Reagan have proven this. His stance of “peace through strength” is appropriate – not the liberal-progressive way that has been set in recent times that began during the Vietnam conflict period. Harry Truman was a Democrat, yet he used common sense when it came to this topic. He saw that by participating in “police actions” or small wars entitled “conflicts” – it prevented escalation into a world war. Unfortunately, the Western nations failed to see the indications of danger when it came to the era of terrorism, and when they did not nip the problem while organized terrorism was a fledgling process, it resulted into what it has become today. Terrorists were treated as a criminal entity, rather for what they were – organized and yet without any specific nation. The main problem with dealing with terrorism or fighting against it, as what is happening in Iraq is because it is something America has not dealt with in such a large scale before. We are fighting an enemy with no specific nation, non-uniformed armies, and people who will willingly sacrifice themselves to kill as many as they can in the process – whether military or civilian. Unfortunately, after all that has gone on since September 11^th, 2001, there are still too many of those who just do not get it.

I have been an advocate for American independence when it comes to crude oil, as Ken states … so why do the people who agree keep voting for those who have put a monkey wrench in the goal to become self sufficient? It was the Democrats who put a stop to the Alaska oil proposal. It was the Democratic Party, backed by the environmental whacko crowd who cares nothing for the truth, but only their agenda – who has prevented the building of another refinery (needed in the past 30 years) and/or increasing the opportunity of increased production with the refineries in place. It is the Democrats who have stopped further oil exploration and recovery off the shores of America – and meanwhile, Great Britain (without polluting the seas) has increased their oil production offshore. These same political prostitutes sided with Saddam Hussein, the one who created the worst environmental disaster in the history of the industrial age by setting fire to oil fields in Kuwait and opened up valves to allow oil to flow out into the beautiful and clean Persian Gulf Sea.[‡‡] And the same people who cry that we use too much crude (and causing “Global Warming” are the ones who are transporting about in big limos and private Leer jets; as well as, wanting to increase the population in the United States with porous borders (specifically the southern one) and give amnesty to people who have come here illegally. Increased population equals more fuel consumption across the spectrum.

There is no doubt that we should strive to find an affordable alternative energy; but in the meantime, we need to be obtaining our own crude oil and provide the means to process it.

We will always have “far-flung” military around the world – different strengths for the need. It is part of “peace through strength” and the means to afford people of other nations other than ourselves to experience and work at achieving democracy with the freedoms and liberties that too many Americans take for granted. And it is debatable as to whether the concept of globalization, especially politically, would decrease or make war obsolete as the utopians of the liberal-progressives believe.[§§]

And, Ken, we are "engaging" with our adversaries and potential adversaries - not just militarily; as we have done in the past. It took 12 years of Saddam's refusal to comply with UN resolutions and, indeed, the very treaty that made up the cease fire in 1991 - but it was clearly evident of his intentions and lack of interest in reform. Why is it that the anti-war crowd always ignores those facts. I am truly sick of reading/hearing the anti-American Americans who would side with our enemies rather than confront them. Diplomacy should always be in the forefront, but it cannot be the only option - not if we, as a nation, wish to survive; and that goes for any other free nation. We must negotiate, but at the same time we must keep our military strong, well-trained, properly equipped, provide good military leadership and remain vigil, but at the same time be reluctant, as in most cases in American history, to use force. I might remind everyone that it wasn't America who initiated the war on terrorism - it was forced upon us, as well as other nations. Just as Pearl Harbor, September 11th, 2001 was the "straw that broke the camel's back".

And despite some interesting discourse Thomas Friedman is not Milton Friedman.  

I would like to thank Ken “from Tennessee” for his interesting topic and insight concerning the subject of this article, and also thank him for livening up the commentary here at LP Journal. It has been stimulating and thought provoking, to say the least. In the near future, I would like to spotlight Thomas Friedman in a separate article and compare his stance on foreign policy with that of Bill Gertz and the legendary economist Milton Friedman; as well as the concept of the term globilization.

Social Security, as it is posted in Wikipedia:

…refers to the Federal Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. The original Social Security Act and the current version of the Act, as amended, encompass several social welfare or social insurance programs…. The Social Security Administration is headquartered in Woodlawn, Maryland. Largely because of solvency problems ranging from immediate crisis to large projected future shortfalls, reform of the Social Security system has been a major political issue for more than three decades during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. … The largest component of OASDI is the payment of retirement benefits. Throughout a worker’s career, the Social Security Administration keeps track of his or her earnings. The amount of the monthly benefit to which the worker is entitled depends upon that earnings record and upon the age at which the retiree chooses to begin receiving benefits. For the entire history of Social Security, benefits have been paid almost entirely by using revenue from payroll taxes. This is why Social Security is referred to as a pay-as-you-go system. … The Supreme Court decided, in Flemming v. Nestor (1960 that “entitlement to Social Security benefits is not a contractual right”. In that case, Ephram Nestor, a Bulgarian immigrant to the United States who made contributions for covered wages for the statutorily required “quarters of coverage” was nonetheless denied benefits after being deported in 1956 for being a member of the Communist party. In simple terms, the decision means that Congress can cut benefits at any time.

And for any reason they decide is right. So, tell me, is it your fund in a private account designated by the established social security number system? An answer other than “no” would be naïve.

As a side note here - argument recently that illegal immigrants, whether legally here or not, deserve to receive benefits if they paid into the SSA system. Nonsense. The argument would be that they are here illegally, and just as the Supreme Court decided concerning a legal immigrant who had been deported (cited above) because of his affiliation with the Communist Party was denied benefits, how can those elected officials in Congress say that illegal immigrants have the right to benefits for legal immigrants and American citizens? Another point to make if you are fighting Congress on the amnesty issue.

Trust Fund Operations – SSA government historical site:

Even though there is presently more FICA taxes coming in each year than benefits paid out, this has not always been the case. Since 1937, there have been 11 years in which benefits paid out exceeded income and so the assets of the Trust Funds had to be spent to make up the difference. This cashing-in of the Trust Fund bonds amounted to about $26 billion in those 11 years.

And since its inception by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, it has never been voluntary. Anyone working is required to have an FICA designated amount deducted from their payroll and self employed individuals must pay a quarterly or yearly amount called the Self Employment Tax. Participation is mandatory, and therefore just another means of taking away the citizens’ freedom of choice – an intrusion, as well as a scam. There have been, however, exceptions to this rule where persons working for state/local governments, under certain conditions, have been able to voluntarily choose to have their employment covered or not covered. Which means if you don’t work for the government, your FICA deductions are in control of the government – who decides what to do with your money; and it certainly could never be called an investment because investments are designed to provide one with some level of return and the money you invest is yours – not under control of some entity that uses it for purposes of their own choosing and tells you that it is not “contractual” funds nor benefits provided. Thus, all the hype about how great and/or necessary the SS system is to American workers – the government, as an old Missouri saying goes, is “pissing down your back and telling you it’s raining.”

The tax rate in the original 1935 law was 1% for each employer and the employee (co-pay system) on the first $3,000 of one’s earnings. The rate was never fixed and the amount taken out of employee payrolls and the amount that employers are required to pay has risen sharply since that time because Congress has claimed that the system is going bankrupt. But it is not going bankrupt because the government doesn’t collect enough, the government over the years (no matter what political party congressional members are affiliated with) have committed embezzlement, plain and simple. They have taken funds from the “trust” fund and used it for other expenditures. This is why the Supreme Court has made decision after decision on the side of the shady characters we elected that is constitutes the legislative body of government we call Congress. And don’t let any congressional member fool you – it is Congress that is responsible for the government funds, and not the presidential administration (other than its enforcement under the Treasury Department, et cetera).

Many say that President Roosevelt promised that the money the participants paid would be put into the independent “Trust Fund” rather than into the general operating fund, which would make it only for the use of the Social Security Retirement (and disability) program. From its inception, the “Trust Fund” was not really anything like its name. It is true the method of government spending is complicated and the government will deny that they have used the funds supposed to be held in “trust” for the American people who have contributed to the system, it has been handled more like an entitlement rather than a retirement investment program.

Originally, Social Security benefits were not taxable income, but it was not set down in writing by President F. Roosevelt’s administration. Treasury rulings can be found at the SSA government site. The taxation of Social Security benefits did not become law until 1983, a bill that President Reagan should not have signed and the Supreme Court should have disallowed it - because it taxes money already taxed. And because the government pays no dividends or interest on the money, there isn’t any “income” to be taxed. Another argument against the income tax system as well. The puny amount we get per month from the SSA when we retire is taxable, sometimes with some deductions that we may see at the end of the fiscal year. In addition, the government penalizes those retirees that supplement that puny retirement income with either full or part-time employment by either reducing your monthly retirement check or stopping it altogether. So, tell me once again, how all that money you have put into the system (and your employers' contributon) is YOUR money.

A good publication to read is Kent Smetters, Yale University Press, Real Deal: The History and Future of Social Security obtainable in PDF or HTML. You need to read it and you should also arm yourself with real facts about the system and then continually write to your congressional members (you voted for) and hound them until something is done. Don’t bother writing to the President, this one or any future ones – it is Congress who is responsible for fixing this. President GW Bush, in one of the few things he has advocated that is useful or good, is the idea to have the option of American citizens to privatize their SS funds, and, more importantly, make it truly an individual account. Congressional idea of reforming the system is raising the amount taken from your paycheck and the like amount collected from your employer. That is nonsense. And, by investing part of or all of those funds, if the person so chooses, there will be some return from the principle paid and become truly a retirement trust fund instead of just an IOU that is stymied by rules made up along the way by our government.

And, I cannot emphasize enough that it is you the voter who is responsible for who sits in Congress. If they are not performing their job as you expected – vote to fire them. But before you elect anyone, be sure to check our their voting record, as well as their personal background – not by what the opposing candidate and his/her party accuse them of, but what they have actually been involved with and, if they have served in any capacity in the government, just what they voted for and approved in the past. This is important, and it is also the responsibility of the voter. If we do not like the way our government is handled, we can only look in the mirror and point your finger at the image you see. Voting should not be an extension of your emotions, nor a reflection upon how you see the person to be elected or remain in office physically or how well the person orates (Hitler was a dynamic orator) – but what that person holds to be his/her ideology, their stance upon the adherence to the Constitution, their past voting record (if they have one) and their views on the various issues at hand. This means research – and research is important, as Kritter Girl at Kritter Korner will tell you when deciding on a particular pet to be added to your household. [Forgive the plug, couldn’t help myself].

Let’s work together to ensure that elected officials keep in mind why our government exists and that they adhere to and protect the U.S. Constitution, and advocating the standards and principles that the founders of our nation worked so hard to achieve. Don’t be more loyal to political entities – be loyal to our nation and your fellow Americans.

Further Research:

How Stuff Works
Social Security Benefits
Benefit Calculator
Understanding Social Security Benefits [PDF]
Understanding Social Security Benefits [HTML]
The Social Security Scam by Lew Rockwell
The Social Security Scam by David J. Stewart
Energy Bulletin
The Social Security Scam and Immigration by Paul Craig Roberts
Your Social Security Number - How Secure is it?
Social Security: From Scam to Scandal by Doug Dowd
Making Economic Sense - Mises Organization
Leiter Reports - Social Security Privatization
The Folly of Social Security Privatization - Mother Jones [an alternate view]
Scam for Social Security by Robert Freeman
How to Find Out if Your Social Security Number has been Stolen

It is that time of the year again, the time that most of us dread, even if we use the “short form” method of filing. Yes, I am talking about income tax. And, it seems that the American voter doesn’t think about this until it is this time of the year that ends on April 15th - despite the fact that the solution is in Congress being ignored. And when that deadline is done, all the paperwork is done, the people who make a living from your aggravation and misery that our government requires us to do and they receive their compensation for preparing the paperwork and filling out the complicated forms – you either get a refund or write a check to the branch known as the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). Then there is a state of amnesia when it comes to this misery because the human brain naturally wishes to put aside negative thoughts and experiences – until the same period the following year. And year after year the system gets more complicated as the government figures out new ways to forcefully deduct funds from your paycheck before you get it and then what is collected from some taxpayers, those who really are carrying the tax burden, is redistributed to other citizens. And some of those who are receiving “refunds” are not only getting back what little they paid, but are getting an additional amount in their refund checks through government created entitlements called tax credits. And all those who have paid throughout the year and seem so pleased and thankful they are receiving a check instead of writing one out do not realize that the government is holding your money without compensation in the form of interest – yet, if you are found to have underpaid for one reason or another, too often you are compelled to not only pay the difference owed, but interest and penalties. And every year the paperwork gets more complicated in a tax system that is not only unfair, but inefficient and costly for the government and the taxpayer alike. The nightmare stories of those involved in tax-related incidents are numerous. The growing number of citizens within this tax system that receive more annually than what they put in is increasing, which forces the government to restructure the tax laws (whose pages grow yearly) in a manner that will squeeze more out of those that receive a higher income in order to pay for the entitlements and still receive funds in order to pay the government’s spending bills. Then after realizing how out of budget they are, elected officials in the government look to either raise the taxes of certain income level citizens or create a taxation in an area that wasn’t taxed before – all the while not looking for ways to cut spending (in a serious manner) and at the same time increasing the bureaucracy (that brings more cost) to the government. And while foreign governments have learned from their mistakes and America’s when it comes to the way in which they collect taxes, our American bureaucrats continue to hang on to a tax system that was argued against, but still was ratified February 3^rd, 1913. It is called Amendment XVI (16^th Amendment), which states:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

In the creation of our nation as a sovereign entity, after a declaration of independence and a bloody revolution – and several years of discussion, drafting and planning, the U.S. Constitution was officially declared the law of the land and a concrete set of rules for our government to follow. And, as time went by, the Constitution was appended by adding amendments that has come to be known as the Bill of Rights (actually the first ten amendments). In respect to taxation and the collection thereof, the U.S. Constitution provides that the

Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises … but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.

And that –

Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers …

And that –

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

Wikipedia –

The power to impose taxes (whether deemed direct or indirect taxes) is granted by Article I, section 8, clause 1. Indirect taxes (or “excises,” in the parlance of the text of the Constitution) are required to be geographically uniform, according to Article I, section 8, clause 1 and the court decisions interpreting that provision (see Knowlton v. Moore and Flint v. Stone Tracy Co). Until the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment, all direct taxes were required to be apportioned among the states according to each state’s population, per Article I, section 2, clause 3 and Article I, section 9, clause 4. This essentially meant that the dollar amount of direct taxes imposed on the taxpayers in any given state was required to bear a relationship to the dollar amount of direct taxes imposed in the entire nation that was equal to the ratio of that state’s population to the total population of the nation. Prior to the 1895 Supreme Court decision in the case of Polock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co., all income taxes had been considered to be excises (indirect taxes) required to be imposed with geographical uniformity, but not required to be apportioned among the states according to population. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894 attempted to impose a federal tax of 2% on incomes over $3,000, Derided by its opponents as “communistic,” it was challenged in federal court. Until that time, direct taxes had been deemed to include only capitations, or poll taxes (taxes directly on persons) and property taxes imposed on property by reason of its ownership (generally, ordinary ad valorem property taxes). Until 1895, all income taxes – regardless of the sources of the incomes – had been considered indirect taxes (“excises”). … The Pollock ruling made imposition of an income tax politically unfeasible from 1895 until the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment. At the same time, Congress was reflecting the growing concern among many elements that the wealthiest Americans had consolidated too much economic power. … the Sixteenth Amendment was passed by the Sixty-first Congress and submitted to legislatures of the several states on July 12^th, 1909. The amendment was the crowning feature of a larger trend of legislative action meant to curb the power of the wealthy. … The amendment was ratified by 42 states: Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, Illinois, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Maryland, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Indiana, Montana, California, Nevada, Nebraska, North Carolina, Colorado, Kansas, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Maine, Tennessee, Arkansas, Wisconsin, New York, Arizona, Minnesota, Louisiana, West Virginia, New Mexico, Delaware, Wyoming, Vermont, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Ratification was rejected by Rhode Island, Utah, Connecticut, and Florida. Virginia and Pennsylvania failed to complete action on the amendment.

In the Supreme Court case of Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co., Mr. Justice Butler said:

It was not the purpose or the effect of that amendment to bring any new subject within the taxing power. Congress already had the power to tax all incomes. But taxes on incomes from other sources had been held to be “direct taxes” within the meaning of the constitutional requirement as to apportionment. The Amendment relieved from that requirement and obliterated the distinction in that respect between taxes on income that are direct taxes and those that are not, and so put on the same basis all incomes “from whatever source derived.” “Income” has been taken to mean the same thing as used in the Corporation Excise Tax of 1909 (36 Stat. 112), in the Sixteenth Amendment, and in the various revenue acts subsequently passed. After full consideration, this court declared that income may be defined as gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, including profit gained through sale or conversion of capital. … In Commissioner v. Glenshaw Glass Co., the Supreme Court laid out what was become the modern understanding of what constitutes ‘income’ to which the Sixteenth Amendment applies, declaring that income taxes could be levied on “accessions to wealth, clearly realized, and over which the taxpayers have complete dominion.” Under this definition, any increase in wealth – whether through wages, benefits, bonuses, sale of stock or other property at a profit, bets won, lucky finds, awards of punitive damages in a lawsuit, qui tam actions – are all within the definition of income, unless Congress makes a specific exemption as it has for items such as life insurance proceeds received by reason of the death of the insured party, gifts, bequests, devises and inheritances, and certain scholarships.

The definition of income tax, as posted at Wikipedia:

An income tax is a tax levied on the financial income of persons, corporations or other legal entities. Various income tax systems exist, ranging from a flat tax to a progressive tax or graduated income tax system. A tax levied on the income of companies is often called a corporate tax, corporate income tax or corporation tax. Individual income taxes generally tax the total income of the individual (with some deductions permitted), while corporate income taxes often tax net income, the difference between gross receipts, expenses and additional write-offs. … Tax rates may be progressive or flat. A progressive tax taxes differentially based on how much has been earned. For example, the first $10,000 in earnings may be taxed at 5%, the next $10,000 at 10%, and any more income at 20%. Alternatively, a flat tax taxes all earnings at the same rate. A tax system may use both progressive and flat taxes for different types of income. Often income tax systems will have deductions available. Deductions lessen the total tax liability by reducing total taxable income. … Income tax is often collected on a pay-as-you-earn basis, with small corrections made soon after the end of the tax year. These corrections take one of two forms: payments to the government, for taxpayers who have not paid enough during the tax year; and tax refunds from the government for those who have overpaid.

When the United States was a young nation, from 1791 to 1802, the government levied few taxes and was supported by internal taxes on distilled spirits, carriages, refined sugar, tobacco and snuff, property sold at auction, corporate bonds, and slaves. The high cost of the War of 1812 brought about the nation’s first sales taxes on gold, silverware, jewelry, and watches. In 1817, Congress did away with all internal taxes and relied upon tariffs on imported goods to provide enough funding to operate the government. In 1862, in order to support the Civil War, Congress enacted America’s first income tax law, and was based upon the principles of progressive taxation and withholding income at the source. During the Civil War, a person earning from $600 to $10,000 per year paid tax at the rate of 3%. Those with incomes of more than $10,000 paid taxes at a higher rate. Additional sales and excise taxes were added, and an “inheritance” tax also came to be imposed. The Act of 1862 created the office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who had the power to assess, levy and collect taxes, as well as the right to enforce the tax laws by seizing property and income and through prosecution. This power and authority remains today in the office of the Internal Revenue Service, known as the IRS.

In 1981, Congress passed the largest tax cut in U.S. history that totaled approximately $750 billion over a six-year period. On October 22^nd, 1986, President Reagan signed into law the Tax Reform Act of 1986, one of the biggest reforms in the tax system since it began in 1913. The top tax rate on individual income was lowered from 50% to 28%, the lowest it had been since 1916. At the same time, the act also increased business taxation with a decrease in individual taxation over a five-year period. Political opponents jokingly called it “Reaganomics” – but they quit laughing when the economic boom of the 1980s kicked in and they say the benefit of it.

President Clinton signed the Revenue Reconciliation Act of 1993 on August 10^th, 1993 that reduced the federal deficit by about $496 billion. In 1997, President Clinton signed another tax act, this time cutting taxes by $152 billion, which included cuts in capital-gains taxes for individuals (because more middle-class citizens were involved with stocks, securities, and bonds that was previously considered only for the wealthy); a child tax credit of $500, and tax incentives for education.

President George W. Bush also signed a series of tax cut laws, which have been estimated to save taxpayers across the board $1.3 trillion over a ten-year period, which is the third largest tax cut since World War II. The cut also created a new low tax rate – 10% for the first several thousand dollars earned. It also established a schedule of incremental tax cuts that will double the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000 with adjusted tax brackets for middle-income couples who owe the same tax as compared to middle-income single citizens and cut the four tax rates across the board (28% to 25%; 31% to 28%; 36% to 33%; and 39.6% to 35%). Congress also passed a series of tax brakes that included an option to deduct the payment of whichever state taxes were higher, sales or income taxes – something you will see in this year’s income tax filing paperwork.

Presently, as of January 16^th, 2006, according to the Heritage Foundation (Dr. Stuart M. Butler, PhD, Domestic and Economic Policy Studies), federal taxes take about 17% of the Gross Domestic Product (called the Gross National Product before the 1980s), “GDP” as an acronym. And while the figures show that the recent tax cuts slowed the growth rate of taxes, it hasn’t solved the problem of the inefficiency and unfairness of the income tax system itself. State and local taxes also add another 10% to the average a family pays. Presently, a person born this month will be paying at least 25% before the child reaches the age of 45. In other words, if income tax is still in place, it will double. If a national sales tax is enacted it will be over 20% if Congress (and the White House) continues to expand its bureaucracy and continue on its present spending course. This means doubling taxes on both the employer and the employee – and that is not good for business, nor is it good for the economy as a whole. Meanwhile, the cost of living will continue to rise with little chance of our wages coming close to catching up. What will happen in the economic picture of the United States is what is happening in Germany and France today.

The income tax is inefficient for a couple of reasons: (1) the cost of collecting it is now 22-cents for every dollar collected; (2) there is a greater chance of “cheating” the system for the mere reason of its complexity and loopholes that even employees of the IRS cannot comprehend. In 2005,

The 265.1 billion compliance burden represented over 6 billion hours spent by individuals, businesses and nonprofits complying with the federal income tax code. [Tax Foundation, Special Report No. 138]

As far as cheating the system, there is another source of this practice and it may or may not surprise you, as described by a member of the Acton Institute of Religion and Liberty, Karen Woods:

… With charitable giving running at $245 billion a year, even the recent string of disasters – the Asian tsunami, Pakistan earthquakes, and the Gulf Coast hurricanes, it doesn’t seem to have fatigued donors. The Center on Philanthropy at the University of Indiana estimates that some $5 billion was donated to Katrina and tsunami relief last year, and that philanthropic giving overall was actually spurred by these events. So it was not a little surprising to read the lead article in the Winter 2005 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review and learn that U.S. philanthropy, whether aimed at educational programs or projects designed to help the needy is shortchanging the poor. Charitable giving is actually a federal subsidy that benefits wealthier people more than the poor, argues author Rob Reich. … First of all, a gift of money or goods and the resulting tax deduction is only a government subsidy if you believe the money or goods belonged to the government in the first place. …wealthy people get a bigger write-off than poor people because poor people can’t give to charities – they’re poor. And, finally, private charity works faster, better and closer to the problem. The evidence that government does a sorry job of helping the needy is everywhere before us. … The real problem with government ‘charity’ is that government takes a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the problem of poverty. That, really, is all a bureaucracy can do. Government agencies are not designed to understand unique circumstances or to care about personal problems. And government certainly is not equipped to provide total coverage for major disasters like the Gulf Coast hurricanes. Government also pretends to distribute its help in an equitable and even-handed manner, an error of policy that results in waste, fraud and corruption. Just wait till government auditors dig into the FEMA program that put hurricane evacuees into thousands of hotel rooms across the country, many of the rooms paid for but empty. To be sure, nonprofits don’t get a free pass on waste and fraud. … From the declaration of the War on Poverty to the decade of the 1990s, some $5.4 trillion government (i.e., taxpayer) dollars were targeted to poverty programs. The poverty rates in 1990 were almost exactly the same as 1960. … Historical evidence is quite clear: Governments do a bad job of alleviating poverty. Making social justice the equivalent of wealth redistribution isn’t a new idea, but it’s still a very bad one. So let’s drop all the talk about the government’s generosity in subsidizing American philanthropy.

Now that the Democrats are back as the majority of congressional members, we can look forward to taxes being raised and/or new ones devised, based upon the conception that the wealthy should pay even more than they do; yet polls have shown that Americans think that the tax rate should be no higher than 20% regardless how much anyone makes. It is because most realize that the “wealthier” American provides a means of employment and income-producing opportunities for the rest of us. Since the Contract With America of 1994, there has been a movement to either go to a flat income tax or delete the 16^th Amendment and go to a flat consumption tax, and it is backed by leading economists across the nation who have demonstrated that it would benefit not just the American people, but our government as well – promoting a step in the reform of U.S. government in an effort to reduce its intrusiveness and increase its efficiency (performing its duties with less instead of more). But this reasonable and viable solution has met opposition all along the way, providing obstacles to tax reformation. Freedom Works:

One major obstacle to tax reform is the confusion in the minds of most Americans (and many members of Congress) about average versus marginal tax rates. … People make decisions on the basis on their marginal rates, not their average rates. Thus, you may be offered an opportunity to take on an extra money making project, but if your marginal tax rate is 30 percent, (even though your average tax rate is only 15 percent) you may decide the extra effort is not worth it, if you are only going to get 70 cents out of each extra dollar you earn. … The first obstacle is getting agreement about whether to make the system more or less progressive. The second obstacle is making sure that there are more winners than losers (which is tough to do without actually cutting taxes). The way to overcome the obstacles is to greatly broaden the tax base by getting rid of all deductions and exemptions (with the exception of the personal deduction for each taxpayer and dependent), and then reducing the existing marginal rates to roughly the current average rates. … The imposition of the above as a replacement income tax system would produce as much revenue as the current tax system. However, in the short run, it would cause some people to have higher tax bills. This is because they built their financial lives around the existing system. … The above proposed tax reform is far from perfect (the maximum marginal rates would still be too high, and productive savings and investment would continue to be double taxed), but it would be far less economically damaging, greatly simplify peoples’ lives and reduce the ambiguity in the current system. However, its greatest virtue is that it should be politically doable because it provides a greatly simplified alternative, while avoiding the fight over whether to make the system more or less progressive.

HM, Illinois, recently sent an email with a list of the taxes we pay all our lives, something that has been floating around the Internet for some time with different variations and added comments at the end. Here is a list of taxes we pay now that many did not exist 100 years ago: Accounts Receivable tax, Building Permit tax, CDL License tax, Cigarette tax, Construction tax (fees other than building permits), Corporate Income tax, Dog License tax, Federal Income tax, Federal Sales tax (excise, like tires and certain imported items), Federal Unemployment tax (FUTA), Fishing License tax. Food License tax, Fuel Permit tax, Gasoline tax (presently 48-cents per gallon average across the nation), Hunting License tax, Inheritance (“Death”) tax, Interest Earned (double taxation because the interest earned on a savings account is a tax that was already taxed on the money that was put into the savings account in order to earn interest), Inventory tax (not quite sure about this one), IRS Interest Charges, IRS Penalties (double taxation or triple, if you count the original amount of tax owed being charged interest & penalties), Liquor tax, Luxury (certain personal property, like boats & motor homes) tax, Marriage License tax, Real Estate tax, Service Charge tax, Social Security (considered a tax because the money paid in is not under the individual’s control), Road tax, State Sales tax, School tax, State Income tax, State Unemployment tax (SUTA), Telephone Federal Excise tax (which we will get a rebate on part of because the government was still charging us for the Spanish American War tax tacked on to telephone charges even though the war ended August 1898), Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee tax (thanks to Al Gore’s idea that ‘poor’ people in America need computers), Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge tax, Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge tax (what you are charged when you try to save money by not using your telephone much because you’re budget is strapped from paying all these taxes plus the higher cost of living, such as utilities and fuel with no increase in income), Telephone Recurring and Non-Recurring Charges tax (I can’t figure out this tax’s justification), Telephone State and Local tax, Telephone Usage Charge tax (versus the “non-usage”), Utility tax, Vehicle License Registration tax, Vehicle Sales tax, Watercraft Registration tax, Watercraft (according to size) Sales tax, Well Permit tax, Workers’ Compensation tax, Zoning tax (applied in some state and/or local communities). And HM, adds that she still has to “Press 1” for English. Which is another expense passed on to taxpayers – the bilingual system of the added cost of printing documents, government instructions and even instructions at the voting booth in both Spanish and English.

In a general sense, all contributions imposed by the government upon individuals for the service of the state, are called taxes, by whatever name they may be known, whether by the name of tribute, tythe, tallage, impost, duty, gabel, custom, subsidy, aid, supply, excise, or other name. Joseph Story (Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833)

Representative John Linder (R-GA), who was the co-author of Linder/Peterson Fair Tax Act, H.R. 25, the first bill submitted at the opening of the 109^th Congress of 2006, says that employees should get 100% of their pay earned (no more “net earned” entries on your pay stub) unless there are employee approved deductions or legal garnishments involved. Federal, and eventually states, will have to rely on excise or consumption tax because the income tax and the 16^th Amendment must go the way of the Dodo bird – extinct. If you are not familiar with the Fair Tax Act, please take a moment to visit John Linder’s new Fair Tax website, where you can find answers to questions about the make-sense tax reform proposal that President Bush and members of Congress have ignored for too long. Ask any economist worth their salt and they will tell you that tax reduction is only a temporary fix for a failing economy – real tax reform is the long-term solution. John Linder will explain why with information and input gathered from leading economists around the nation, as well as in discussions for the past five years in congressional committees – and the bill still sits waiting to be recognized by the majority of members of Congress to vote upon. Remember, it takes a 2/3 majority in order to rescind an amendment to the Constitution. It is time to make April 15^th just another day and the 16^th Amendment null and void forever. Let’s have a tax system that doesn’t give the government power over our paychecks or the power to use the income system as a fulcrum to wedge against our freedom/liberties.

In matters concerning the war against terrorism, initiated after many dastardly attacks around the world by groups of anarchist, religious-fanatics and led by evil men who dream of a world-wide theocracy established on their interpretation or convenient use of a religion known as Islam whose lust for power is only surpassed by their twisted ideology has become a concern around the world – and that has already infiltrated nations as members of legitimate religious organizations and sleeper cells – have been in serious and heated discussion among many from different nations. The plans of these organizations that have basically the same ideology, whether it be the al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Hezbollah, and other groups dedicated to the same purpose, has been instituted and formed long before September 11^th, 2001, when the United States openly declared war against all those who organize, implement, and support terrorism finally recognizing too late (as was found during the era known as McCarthyism concerning communist infiltration) that a fifth column was being dealt with.

Encyclopedia Britannica describes fifth column as:

Clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal. The term is credited to Emilio Mola Vidal, a Nationalist general during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).

Wikipedia also has an entry, but the factual accuracy has been disputed and the entry does not cite its references or sources:

A fifth column is a group of people which clandestinely undermines a larger group to which it is expected to be loyal, such as a nation. … The term is also used in reference to a population who are assumed to have loyalties to countries other than the one in which they reside, or who support some other nation in war efforts against the country they live in, which makes them traitors. … Today the term “fifth column” has a pejorative connotation, whereas partisan can be considered a positive or negative term.

Depending upon which side of the coin one is looking at, the Fifth Column can undermine a nation’s national security and even sovereignty – but to some they are partisans or advocates against war in general, for example. Concerning national security, they are nothing more than traitors. If their ideology or the actions they take in believing those that try to lead people into a consensus that what a nation, America for example, is wrong and yet we are not at war – then the matter is just an opinion and/or advocacy. If a nation, America for example again, is at war declared officially by Congress and any entity – organization or individual – takes the side of the enemy or its fifth element (underground organization, sleeper cells, et cetera) than those individuals are traitors – no question.

Therefore, the situation presently in Iraq is disconcerting, not that we should not be involved in the reconstruction process, but because the enemy, declared as so since September 11^th, 2001, has used every effort to hinder and stop the success of the Iraqi people to become a self-sufficient nation, governed under a democratic republic and all the liberties and freedom that comes with it; and, I might add, all without changing their basic beliefs in Islam. Turkey, as I use quite often as an example, and indeed should be a model for the new Iraqi government, is a democratic republic and it is over 90% Muslim with a small percentage of Christians and Jews who live peaceably among the majority of the population whose religion is Islam. The religion had been separated from the state at the outset by the first leader of the democratic republic, who became the president/prime minister and whose government has a parliament as the legislative body – a system tailored more to the European style of democracy rather than the American style – but nevertheless with the freedom of elections and freedom of religion found in democratic type nations.

But the fifth element, those leftovers who liked living under the system of Saddam Hussein and the religious fanatics some call Islamofascists or terrorists. They cannot really be coined as freedom fighters or partisans because the U.S. and coalition forces are not occupying Iraq, they are protecting the new government and its people from the very element who wants to see that there is no victory in Iraq when it comes to the reconstruction process. They are not even from Iraq, but neighboring rogue states that threaten world peace.

In the article The Wahhabi Fifth Column, written by Susan Katz Keating:

The latest public relations missive from Riyadh complains bitterly that alarmist Americans “have gotten out of control” with accusations that Saudi Arabia supports terrorism. But there is good reason to state the opposite: That we ignore to our peril the degree to which the Saudis spread extremist anti-Americanism. It is particularly unsettling that the Saudis stoke such sentiments here, in our own country. They do this by funding American outposts of the intolerant, militant Wahhabi form of Islam. … the Saudis government has spent some $87 billion to promote Wahhabism in the United States and the Western Hemisphere. … In 1932, an Al-Saud warlord, Abdul Aziz, fulfilled his ancestor’s dreams; he declared himself sovereign of his own newly conquered terroritories, which he named the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Abdul Aziz adopted the Islamic holy book, the Koran [sic], as his nation’s constitution. To this day, the official constitution of Saudi Arabia remains the Koran. This might be little more than political curiosity if not for two factors. First, that a geological twist of fate gave Saudi Arabia considerable prominence in world economic affairs. Secondly – and significantly – Islam is not content to coexist peacefully with other faiths or systems of government. Says Bernard Lewis, widely recognized as the foremost Western scholar on Islam: “In time, in the Muslim view, all mankind will accept Islam or submit to Islamic rule.” … Of that $87 billion religious propaganda budget, the Saudis have allocated considerable line-item space toward institutions that mold minds in the model of Wahhabism. The most malleable minds belong to children. An estimated 30,000 of them attend Saudi-funded Wahhabi day schools. In America, parochial schools have long been noted for their high educational standards. But Wahhabi schools do not emulate other American church-based nativities of faith and knowledge; nor do they follow the American model of rigorous intellectual inquiry. Students at ISA are not required to study U.S. history or government. They do, however receive instruction in Wahhabism. Outsiders are not permitted to observe Wahhabism lessons or any other classes at ISA. But early this year, students at the academy told two Washington Post reporters some of the things they learn at school. Among other things, students discover the intricacies of Judgment Day. One event on that formidable day will be that Muslims will fight and kill Jews. … Students also are said they are taught “it is better to shun and even dislike Christians, Jews and Shiite Muslims.” Furthermore, students learn, it is okay to hurt or steal from a non-Muslim. The Saudi-supplied textbooks at this and other Wahhabi schools state that Muslims are obliged to consider all infidels the enemy. Certain enemies are not even acknowledged in geography class. Wahhabi schools in America are notorious for doctoring maps of the Middle East, and hanging them in classrooms – with Israel blotted out. Such is the curriculum of education-minded Saudis. … According to Safa, the Saudi have funded more than 80 percent of the mosques built in the United States within the last 20 years. The newcomers do not embrace the American religious community’s spirit of inter-faith cooperation. They are distinctly isolationist. This attitude came to light as early as the 1990’s, when Wahhabi mosques in America refused to accept help from local churches wanting to donate food to Bosnian Muslims. Apparently Wahhabi will not work with infidels, even if the purpose is to help other Muslims. The Saudis, meanwhile, have directed considerable outreach toward the American Black Muslim community. … the Saudi’ enfeebled King Fahd pledged as much as $8 milion for a lavish mosque in shabby South Central Los Angeles. The Saudis; Islamic Development Bank pledged an additional $295,000 for a school attached to the mosque. … According to Safa, as much as 90 percent of American converts to Islam are black. According to some estimates, if the conversion rate continues, Islam could emerge as a dominant religion among urban blacks. [this being odd because of the traditional Arabic-Islamic tradition of promoting and allowing slavery, as well as being the first slave traders that created the business that supplied the Western world with slaves along North Africa’s shorelines during the age of British and American slave trade days].
This is a trend worth watching. Many of America’s Black Muslims have harshly criticized America, and have deemed it an “immoral society.” Increasingly, black Muslims oppose U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and are adopting a Saudi-influenced view of Arab-Israeli relations. … Insightful Saudi-watcher Daniel Pipes reports that significant elements within American Islam seek to replace our Constitution with the Koran. … Federal officials formed Operation Green Quest, aimed at tracing the money trail to Islamic terrorism. In the course of their investigation, agents raided more than a dozen Saudi-funded organizatrions, such as the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Leesburg, Virginia. Investigators are still working to unravel the complicated network of financial ties between the various organizations and their charities. … Political commentator William Kristol couches the Saudi’s export of Wahhabism – via its funding of schools, mosques and think tanks in America – as a “clear and present danger to the United States and its citizens.” America must respond aggressively to that threat. Rather than accept continued transparent professions of innocence, Americans must insist that the Saudis immediately stop funding Wahhabi schools, mosques, charities and think tanks in this country. We can no longer tolerate such an overt onslaught on our national values.

And while this Fifth Column has been operating here in America, there is also another one that has been in the works, addressed in the book Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson where he states:

The flood of illegal immigration into California raises urgent questions that the whole nation must face. [City Journal, Spring 2002]

The Bush administration is fostering that Fifth Element through the little known and rarely advertised proposition of a North American Union – and, because the Bush administration has kept this idea and policy development under wraps from the general public, it indicates that it is a purposeful intention to go along with the Mexican thought that the Mexican people must retake those lands in America that belonged originally to their ancestry. This in fact is another Fifth Element in America that has proved just as dangerous as the infiltration of the Wahhabi element that intends to eventually change the American government system, its society and indeed create an America that no one would ever recognize. This is not paranoia, as demonstrated after the Pearl Harbor attack and the initiation of a policy formed by the FDR administration in the early period of the beginning of America’s entry into World War II. Then as now, we waited for a dastardly attack before we finally did something about the intent of Nazi, Communist and Imperial intent of world domination. Indeed, all three elements had a Fifth Column presence here in America, and in the case of communism, based upon socialist ideology, has continued today. It has infiltrated our higher educational institutions, because they know that the first step in winning over any nation is to take over the minds of a nation’s youth – working on their eager sense of being part of an advocacy.

In Our Islamic Fifth Column, Farrukh Dhondy writes:

My first name gives rise to confusion. It’s a common Muslim name, so people I meet, or who read my byline, assume that I am of the faith. Most recently, in response to a column I write for an Indian paper, in which I confessed to having met a few terrorists in my time and attempted to analyze their limited grasp of the world, I received a lot of hate mail. … I was born a Zoroastrian, in India, a descendant of refugees from the Muslim conquest of Iran by Arab armies in the seventh century. The India of my childhood was full of superstition, of faith in myriad manifestations of the unseen, but even then one knew that Islam and its followers were distinctive. … They believed that theirs was the only creed, that their book was dictated by God, that Hindus were idolaters and the worshipers of trees and monkeys, that Zoroastrians were fire-worshiping infidels, and that Christians were an ancient military enemy. Their faith seemed to me even at the time to exclude what it had not invented. In the searching years of adolescence, when we all tried to come to terms with the great ideas of democracy, liberalism, the possibilities of life embodied in literature, only the pious Muslims among us seem impervious to taking part in the passionate arguments. They seemed to have an inbuilt view of the world and of history, formed and sanctioned by the Quran. Even then I wondered: if they would not assimilate the world, how would the world assimilate them? I arrived in Britain at 20, just when the Muslim migration there, principally from India and Pakistan, was under way. … In 1989 came the most significant divide in the multicultural history of Britain: the Rushdie affair, which uncovered a multicultural fifth column, whose literary criticism entailed book burning and death threats. The British Muslim community echoed the call of the Ayatollah Khomeini to hunt down and kill the writer. … Thought the supposedly liberal Muslim commentators whom the British press retains were not in favor of the death sentence, none would extend himself to a defense of the book. … Kalim Siddiqui, who was forced to admit to an investigating press that he and his operation were financed by the government of Iran. He subsequently set up a “Muslim Parliament of Britain,” which professed to dispense laws and promulgate rules for the Muslims of Britain. … in the 1980s, a new Muslim leadership of mullahs inspired and paid for by various Islamic powers around the world was entering the country and setting up bases in Britain, thanks to an immigration-law loophole that allows religious personnel open-ended permission to stay. Iranian money, Saudi money from worldwide foundations for the promotion of Islam, was establishing mosques and setting up madrasas, schools that purvey primitive religious instruction and teach the Quran by rote. … If you prostrate yourself to an all-powerful and unfathomable being five times a day, if you are constantly told that you live in the world of Satan, if those around you are ignorant of and impervious to literature, art, historical debate, and all that nurtures the values of Western civilization, your mind becomes susceptible to fanaticism. Your mind rots. Worse, it can become the instrument of others who send you out on suicidal missions. … The governments of Algeria, Egypt, and Yemen may not be able to root out the fundamentalists in their midst who resort to terror, but Western countries have no option. One can’t shelter in one’s home those who would kill you. Britain has given extended permission to stay to the likes of Hamza and Bakri. The very liberalism against which they preach has nursed this fifth column. It must be rooted out. … Yet even when liberal Muslims declare that what was done to the victims of New York, of the Pentagon, and of the four airliners was an atrocity contrary to the tenets and teachings of the Quran, that it was indeed a sinful transgression of Islam that will not lead to paradise but to hell, the majority of Muslims around the world don’t believe them, because they have been convinced by the interpretation of the fundamentalist, whom liberal Muslims allowed to remain unchallenged for so long. Ironically, this terrible act is destined to mark a day of judgment for world Islam. In its 1,400 years, Islam has inspired and incorporated the great mystical movement of the Sufis. It has also suppressed it. It has spawned in its time liberal jurisprudence, great art, scientific endeavor, and the simple idea that what is not forbidden by the Quran is allowed. And yet Islam has, in the twentieth century, funded by oil and inspired by the work of Mohammed Wahab, an eighteenth-century fundamentalist, led its followers back to the book. … They don’t for a moment consider that the world doesn’t want a religion that suppresses women, adopts a medieval creed of crime and punishment, forces people to prayer at the behest of the police, forbids the writing of novels, the making of films, and the playing of music, and destroys the minds of its young and leads them to fanatical acts of suicidal terror in which murder upward of 6,000 innocents. This barbaric interpretation of Islam has inevitably come into moral and now mortal conflict with the West and its dominant state power. … What Islam needs is a reformation, and if this very concept is forbidden in the unchangeable world of the Quran, there is enough Islamic history to support a reforming and radical interpretation of the law of living with others. There have been movements in Islamic history that are by no means inimical to peace, tolerance, and even to democratic and liberal principles. The U.S. has in the last three decades countenanced the immigration of millions of Muslims from the Indian subcontinent, from the Middle East, and North Africa. Some of them died in the World Trade Center, where they had a mosque on the seventh floor. The Muslims of American now live in what, with all its imperfections, is a free, advanced, democratic society. … They must now see that an interpretation of the Quran that belittles all preceding human history and that refuses to be modified by the discoveries of the Enlightenment of scientific advance and social liberty, cannot coexist with the rest of the modern world. … Western Muslims must now discover in their own history and theology that nothing forbids the rise of a single or collective Martin Luther who will defy the medievalist mullahs (a self-appointed clergy) and will pin theses, renouncing the world conquest, on the doors of every mosque. The development of Islam, though constantly hijacked by fundamentalist sects like the Wahabis, has always had a strong, non-proselyizing, mystical Sufi current, to which 80 percent of the world’s Muslims have some connection. And Islam has always had in its theological armory the sanctioned concept and tradition of ijtihad, which means coming to conclusions about prescription, behavior, and morality through argument and the application of reason rather than through dogma. It is in a sense parallel to the reliance of the Christian Reformation on the supremacy of conscience.
True, passages in the Quran urges believers to “kill those who join other gods with God wherever ye shall find them” and to wage war on neighboring infidels. But a hundred suras of the Quran also enjoin the faithful to tolerance: one specifically says that killing one innocent person is akin to the murder of the whole world. An Islamic Reformation would de-legitimate literal interpretations of Quranic passages stoking intolerance and emphasize those that resemble the Golden Rule. As for the officials of America and Britain, they need to redirect the effort and money that they have poured into race relations and multiculturalism into a clear, reasoned, energetic defense of the values of freedom and democracy. Their future depends on it.

National Perspective by Jim Kouri [CAIR, the other Fifth Column]:

The Islamic terrorists’ Fifth Column in the US – no, not the news media, the other Fifth Column – the Council on American-Islamic is once again at the forefront of mischief-making in their goal of undermining US efforts in combating terrorism. … According to a report from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and HomelandSecurity: The Council on American-Islamic Relations and its employees have combined, conspired, and agreed with third parties, including, but not limited to, the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Global Relief Foundation, and foreign nationals hostile to the interests of the United States, to provide material support to known terrorist organizations, to advance the Hamas agenda, and to propagate radical Islam. … Dr. Daniel Pipes, a foremost expert on radical Islam and terrorism cites several criminal cases involving CAIR officials … To be sure, the Bush Administration intentionally or unintentionally provides CAIR with cover, but the officials with whom CAIR staff claim they work are usually people such as Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat serving a large Muslim population in Michigan, and a long-time terrorist and Marxist sympathizer. CAIR and other Muslim groups have funneled campaign contributions to Conyers, who in January begins his tenure as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Now tell me there isn’t a Fifth Column in the US representing fanatic Islam – and now in the very halls of Congress. And tell me that there isn't a Fifith Column representing the invaders from Mexico. The liberals continue to feed the Fifth Element with their "flower power" ideology, and certain circles of conservatism are either willingly or ignorantly feeding it as well.

I leave you with a quote from Michael Moore that sums up the Left's thoughts on terrorism and its demise:

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy.' They are the Revolution, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow – and they will win.

Further Reading:
North American Union to Replace the USA?

The New American Union

Wahhabi Movement

Global Security - Wahhabi

Islamist Fifth Columnists - Washington Times

Front Page Magazine - Fifth Columnists

Fifth Columnists - 1940s

Tell Congress "NO" to the North American Union

Top Ten Stories and Non-Stories of 2006

The KGB's Useful Idiots

Whitewashing - The "Victims" of the Blacklist

Why Nancy Pelosi Thinks as She Does

Cindy Does Seoul

The ACLU Shadow

Readying your plans for the New Year celebration? Thinking of what the New Year might bring? Maybe formulating a New Year resolution? How about this New Year’s resolution:

I will do all I can, write to senators, representatives, the Attorney General and the President of the United States and protest until a wrong is righted – full pardon of two Border Patrol agents who will spend the last New Year with friends and family before being carted off to prison for at least ten years, unless they are paroled earlier – and if they survive being in prison. I will do all I can to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I will do all I can to stop the amnesty/guest-worker program pushed by President Bush and those who agree. I will endeavor to be a responsible voter, not paying attention to political entity diatribe, bogus TV ads - but instead look at the background and voting record of the candidate. I will endeavor to stand by those who believe that the Social Security system is the biggest government ripoff in the history of government and, indeed, civilization itself - and encourage those who can, reform it at this point and eventually phase it out into something where it truly belongs to the individual who invests in it. I will endeavor to not stop all social programs, but encourage those who can reform it to do so and stop adding more overly expensive and non-producing programs not worth the money except for those who abuse and rip it off. I will endeavor to let representatives and senators know that the buck stops in Congress, and quit pointing fingers across the political aisle and whoever is in the Oval Office - owe up to their own responsibility and their tasks set forth in the Constitution of the United States of America. I will stand by the side of anyone who is fed up with the judiciary branch of our government, who has become so powerful and shady that they legislate from the bench when an ideology or law cannot be passed successfully through the legislative branch. I will encourage our elected officials to review constantly the legislation in the system and thoroughly review legislation intended to be passed - paying attention to the long-term effects upon the people of America and the American nation, instead of what it will do for special interest groups. I will endeavor to always sift the truth from the sea of misinformation that the media and their political handlers provide. And I will always respect those who serve their country and support them as they perform their missions. And above all, I want to see justice done.

I am talking about Ramos and Compean, and isn’t ironic that they are Hispanic-Americans? Where are the Hispanic organizations who claim to be so righteous? Why are they not speaking out as violently and profusely as they are to obtain amnesty for illegal immigrants?

All they wanted for Christmas was to not to be sent to prison for performing their duty – stopping illegal immigrants and especially apprehending drug smugglers. What happened to the drug smuggler? Oh, our Attorney General of the United States granted him immunity for his testimony in the affair where he was breaking the law, resisted arrest and ended up getting shot in the posterior. Maybe that is what the judiciary is mad about – officers shooting a criminal in the butt.

American Daily –

In less than month, U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean are scheduled to begin their 11 year and 12 year prison sentences respectively. Their crime? … Chasing and shooting a Mexican drug dealer! Several Congressmen have petitioned President Bush to issue a pardon for these agents. Bush refused, but did pardon more drug dealers. Earlier this week, Bush granted the traditional end-of-year pardons. Of course, he failed to grant one for Agents Ramos and Compean while seeing fit to grant pardons for several convicted drug dealers and commuting the sentence of another. Here are the drug dealers who Bush pardoned this week: (1) Marie Georgette Ginette Briere of Gatineau, Quebex, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute; (2) George Thomas Harley of Albuquerque, N.M., aiding and abetting the distribution of cocaine; Eric William Olson of Okai, CA, possession with intent to distribute hashish; Phillip Anthony Emmert of Washington, IA, conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine (commutation of sentence). A few years ago, President Bush granted a pardon to Wendy St. Charles who was convicted in the 1980’s of distribution of cocaine. Ms. Charles is an attorney for Denver based MDC Holdings. MDC Chairman Larry Dizel donates heavily to the Republican Party. It is more troubling that we currently have a man in the White House who helps put drug dealers back on our streets, while directing Justice Department officials to prosecute law enforcement officers for pursuing drug dealers. It has become evident that Bush truly wants to destroy this nation and expose every U.S. citizen to the dangers posed by a Third World existence.

The whole thing revolves around a central theme – Bush’s dream of a North American Union – they are planning to change the name of our currency from “dollar” to “Ameros” – and that is the gist of it. He doesn’t want to offend the Mexican government, so he and his administration railroad two law enforcement officers. This is the same man who is asking for more funding to increase the cadre of Border Patrol personnel – but who would want to work for an institution where the rules of engagement are one sided and there is always a chance one will go to prison for doing their duty?

Please not only remember these two officers, victims of a system, but speak out where it will be heard – let the halls of Congress and the White House hear the plea of full pardon for two Americans who deserve much more than they have received at the hands of “justice.”

Have a great New Year celebration and may progress be made in our endeavor to correct mistakes and reform this nation back to being a democratic republic – a sovereign nation not in conglomeration with a nation the likes of Mexico, whose history has proven it is a haven for enemies of the United States (World War II, for example), and today demonstrates that its intentions, through the Mexican invasion of its illegal immigrant population and established entities (drug cartels and fifth column instigators) our nation, as the transcribed quotation above, will truly become an environment of Third World mentality and sociality. We cannot let this happen – and no political entity should even encourage it.

In the meantime, let us let the President eat crow from his own words:

Together, we will address some of society’s deepest problems one person at a time, by encouraging and empowering the good hearts and good works of the American people. This is the essence of compassionate conservatism, and it will be a foundation of my administration. George W. Bush

 Grassfire has an online petition that you can visit on the Web. Also the Minuteman Project and Friends of the Border Patrol are working on obtaining a pardon for the two officers. The White House not responded to a letter from me, as editor of Lighthouse Patriot Journal nor a letter sent from World Net Daily News. WND also has a poll on the subject.

A blog, Flopping Aces, reports on officers that will probably not be prosecuted, to demonstrate the equality of justice. 

This posting is in conjunction with the Coalition Against Illegal Immigration. Also read a statement from the Attorney General's office.

In a June 2^nd “Snippet” I disclosed a “heads up” piece of information that a reader (CJ, Wisconsin) had found concerning a plan to form a North American Federation consisting of Canada, Mexico and the United States by the Bush administration and my question was – Why have we not read or heard this in mainstream media? Well, World Net Daily news has published a report and a follow up. The term used by the Bush administration is Partnership of North America and ideas such as this are not unconstitutional, unless the President is doing so without the knowledge or the sanction of the Congress of the United States. The Bush administration has not kept it a secret, but if you have had the chance to read about it, the plan ties in with President Bush’s insistence upon amnesty for illegal immigrants and a joint statement was proclaimed on March 23^rd of this year. It seems that GW is following up on the dream of his father concerning globalization; and that idea was not well met and GH Bush let it slip away into history. It was a time when most realized that the United Nations had become a failed entity, before it was found to possess a pocket of corruption starting with the leadership of the United Nations and continuing in committees such as the Human Rights Council and the “Food for Oil” program where illegal trading actions and bribery became the gist of the operation to sanction Saddam Hussein in an effort to neutralize him or change his policies. In the case of the Human Rights Council, it was clear that those nations who have a record of anti-human rights policies were members of the council. Even after changing the name and a reinstitution of “new” membership, the UN allowed those nations who disregard human rights to be allowed a vote into the “reformed” council.

With that background, you can see one good reason why this “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” is not a good idea. The trilateral meeting reported at USAINFO.STAT.GOV quoted the statement from presidents Bush, Fox and Martin:

In a rapidly changing world, we must develop new avenues of cooperation that will make our open societies safer and more secure, our businesses more competitive, and our economies more resilient.

In effect, the plan was nothing more than a North American model of the European Union and we have seen the results of that major venture of European countries.

In Jerome R. Corsi’s article, Bush Sneaking North American Super-State without Oversight, points out that the Bush administration has “launched extensive working-group activity to implement a trilateral agreement with Mexico and Canada with no authorization from Congress.” The North American Free Trade Agreement has already been implemented by the office of the Department of Commerce an implementation of SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership), the major point being that the joint declaration has not been submitted to Congress for review. The Canadian government and the Mexican government have also established SPP offices like that of the U.S. office, and on the part of President Bush, demonstrates that he once again violated the trust of the American voters who believed he would downsize the bureaucracy of government and has shown several times that he has only increased the size and scope of the government by adding agencies and offices, which in turn puts more of a burden upon the U.S. budget.

The Bush administration denies SPP being a secret because they publish material on the newly established website, but this does not mean that it has become public knowledge until now. Communication problems between the American people and President Bush has been another item that has been on my list of grievances against this president who flaunts himself a conservative and “talks the talk, but doesn’t walk the walk.” Geri Word is the head of the SPP office and she told WND:

 We did not get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public.

WND has searched for congressional legislation that authorizes the SPP working groups and found one that was introduced by Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) on April 20^th, 2005 – after the trilateral agreement meeting in Waco, Texas. The bill is listed as S. 853, and was named “North American Cooperative Security Act” that explains that it is to “direct the Secretary of State to establish a program to bolster the mutual security and safety of the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The bill never emerged from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee according to WND. In addition, “In the House of Representatives, the same bill was introduced by Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), on May 26, 2005.” As of yet, there are no congressional committees in charge of overseeing the SPP activity. This means that there is no “congressional oversight.” This also is not in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. For those of you who do not have a copy of the U.S. Constitution, here is an excerpt from Article II, Section 2 that clearly states the powers of the executive branch and the President of the United States:

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur …

Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO), responded to the WND report and is “demanding the Bush administration fully disclose the activities of an office implementing a trilateral agreement [treaty] with Mexico and Canada that apparently could lead to a North American union, despite having no authorization from Congress.” According to the article, the Bush administration has been working on this program for two years.

You could email President Bush and demand full public disclosure and request that he initiates a congressional committee; but I have found that his email office will send you a “thank you” and state that the President is busy. I would suggest that you write a letter, try to keep it one page and address this issue with the added question, is this behind your plan of amnesty for 12 million illegal immigrants and during his terms in office the reason why the executive branch has failed in enforcing immigration laws that require rounding up illegal immigrants, deporting them, and fining their employers? In fact, the president can consider this an open question in this posting.

Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minuteman Project, has endorsed Tancredo’s decision, according to WND and quotes:

If President Bush’s agenda is to establish a new North American union government to supersede the sovereignty of the United States, then the president has an obligation to tell this to the American people directly.

And, it is obvious why he hasn’t done so. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the SPP plan and the illegal immigration problem is all tied in together. President Bush has been a major disappointment to his constituents, as well as his political party. It is strange that the Left continually bombard President Bush over the situation in Iraq and his policies concerning national security and the War on Terrorism -- but fails to address the real problems with George W. Bush -- his failure to reduce the size/scope of government, failure to insist that the Social Security system be reformed in a manner that will change it to private, individual retirement system, failure to address the issue of the unfair income tax, and other domestic issues that is important to America's future, economically or otherwise, and important to the freedom of choice and liberties of the American people -- such as the illegal immigration problem.

The following report is a wake up call for all American citizens - we are being invaded and California seems to already have been overrun ...

A rally took place in (August 26^th) Maywood, California near Los Angeles at a U.S. post office concerning illegal immigrants and counter-protestors took down the American flag that traditionally flies in front of a post office, stamped on it and replaced it with a Mexican flag – and the police just stood there, according to witnesses and a video of the event.

Police officers later came to the pole to remove the flag and the protestors then threw bottles and rocks at them, as reported by a radio listener by the name of Sandra to the Terry Anderson Show, KRLA in Los Angeles.

Maywood has declared itself a city of sanctuary for illegal immigrants, ignoring the immigration and border laws of the federal government. Photographs can be seen at the website Save Our State, which is a border-security group and the Minutemen are protesting that the city is giving sanctuary to illegal immigrants.

Protestors at the rally shouted “Death to the Minutemen.” Sandra, who was present at the rally stated “They pushed me around and told me if I was to take one step further, they would beat the s*** out of me. I looked to the back of me and there were about four police officers leaning on their vehicle just watching, doing nothing!” Sandra was a protestor against illegal immigration, and she said “as she stepped forward the counter-protestors stole her sign and ripped it up and another person threw water on her.” A police officer eventually escorted her back to her group. No one was arrested for their violent actions or for desecrating government property (the post office) and dishonoring the American flag. Historically, if one flag replaces another, it means defeat. Apparently to the Maywood police officers this means nothing or the mayor of Maywood and police chief who give orders to the police.

Sandra also stated that police officers watched as another woman was beaten, as well as an elderly man. She stated: “I believe that all Americans need to know about this and need to see that Mexican flag hanging at an American post office. We are being invaded and the American people need to wake up.”

Another person at the event was a Blogger by the name of Bridget Johnson, who said that the Maywood town was “flouting immigration law” as a “sanctuary city,” and “has disbanded its police department’s traffic unit so illegals without driver’s licenses won’t be fearful of getting their cars towed.” But Bridget also stated that she was there standing with the counter-protestors with the usual signs indicating that California was stolen from Mexico and had a different story to tell concerning the flag raising: "And after the local post office took down the American flag at closing time, pro-immigration demonstrators promptly ran the Mexican flag up the flagpole."

Also see:

Maywood Stops the Invasion by Leslie Radford

Maywood Stands Against the Minutemen by Marcus

And there is more …

Hundreds of Chicano marched down Whittier Boulevard in East LA and the photo looks much like something one would see in Palestine. They are against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for solidarity with the people of Palestine, and against the militarization of the U.S. border in the south, and prevention of arrests of illegal immigrants at their workplaces and homes. Read Hundreds March on the Streets of East LA by Jose X Lara.

Strange how these things are not mentioned by the mainstream media, isn't it?

World Net Daily White House correspondent at the White House, Les Kinsolving, asked the White House spokesman (Tony Snow) whether Bush would use his power to pardon two Border Patrol agents sentenced for shooting and wounding a fleeing drug-smuggling, who made his way back across the border. And what was Snow’s reply?

That’s an unanswerable question, Les. The president is the person who is responsible for pardons. You can tell the network, which made you ask that question, that it is nonsensical.

World Net Daily was one of the very first to report this incident, which began a movement to save two Border Patrol officers, Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacios Ramos from prosecution. But the U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cordone in El Paso, Texas handed down the sentence of 12 years for Compean and 11 years for Ramos – despite

…a plea by their attorney for a new trial after three jurors said they were coerced into voting guilty in the case. [Washington Times]

The "network" that Snow referred to are WND readers who submitted questions to ask the president via Snow at press conferences via WND Forums, which is a new addition to World Net Daily’s website and the input was:

Retired Sgt. Major William Mitchell said the bottom line is the officer should not have fired a weapon at a suspect to prevent his escape, ‘but feeling that the suspect was openly armed and consideration of the prevalent use of weapons in border conflicts at least dictates a minimal sentence. All of use (are) handicapped in our judgement (sic) by not being there, but the judge seems to be the only one to not realize it.

I also wrote my view on the circumstances and WND used my point in the article and in questioning why the President was not pardoning these two officers ….

Keith Lehman also weighed in. “The rules of engagement should apply. Whether the officer only perceived to see (sic) a weapon, the fleeing criminal had attacked one officer and the other thought that his partner was injured by the fleeing criminal. And as far as the ‘victim’ criminal: When you break the law, you are subject to whatever comes your way – especially when attacking a law enforcement officer. The Border Patrol agents convicted need a pardon yesterday. They then should be returned to their duty, if they so desire, and be reinstated with their record wiped clean and receive all back pay lost to them during this fiasco they call justice.

Meanwhile, while two officers are being processed to serve time in prison, the “victim” criminal who attempted to cross our southern border illegally, for whatever reason, has not been charged nor will be put on trial – and he is in the process of suing the United States government.

The trial needs to be reopened, or the verdict thrown out … the whole affair sounds like someone with authority has been pushing for conviction from the start. We already know where President Bush stands in matters concerning illegal immigrants and his dream of a North American Union is behind all of these events taking place. Meanwhile, what kind of message are we sending to the drug cartels and those who disregard the immigration laws of the United States? Where are the fellow officers of these two railroaded Border Patrol agents? They should be waving signs in protest and demand a retrial or a pardon.

Friends of the Border Patrol group told WND:

This is the greatest miscarriage of justice I have ever seen. This drug smuggler has fully contributed to the destruction of two brave agents and their families and has sent a very loud message to the other Border Patrol agents: If you confront a smuggler, this is what will happen to you.

Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila of Mexico was the suspect that was allegedly shot. In his van there was 800 pounds of marijuana.

What kind of President of the United States would put foreign government diplomacy before its own citizens and U.S. laws – especially when they are officers serving to enforce our nation’s law? What kind of president would feed his enforcement officers to the wolves of liberal judicial nonsense?

No, Mr. Snow, the question is not “nonsensical” – and people that used to read your columns and listen to you on your talk shows thought you were a conservative and patriot. What’s nonsensical is the circumstances leading to the arrest, trial and conviction of these two Border Patrol agents, one of them who had been nominated for Border Patrol Agent of the Year (Ramos) and an 8-year veteran of the U.S. Naval Reserve.

Mr. President, pardon those officers or give them the right of a fair trial.

Whether or not the illegal immigrant arrived here with the purpose of just making his/her life better, as soon as they arrive they become part of the criminal element in the United States, and the criminal element takes advantage of this. How fair is this to a person who wants to really become an American to improve their lives and join us to keep this nation strong and alive, both in economical and security measures?

America’s fairly new big business is supplying illegal documents so illegal immigrants can obtain real driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, library cards – all under false names. This enables them to illegally drain from the treasury of the United States that is the citizen tax money provided to run our government. This also enables terrorists and real criminals, like drug traffickers, to gain entry into our nation and make a laughing stock of our so-called Homeland security system of terrorist watch lists and “No Fly” lists, all with the help of the corrupted Mexican government system.

In the criminal world, false identification is practically a way of life.

Mike Cutler of the Family Security Foundation, Inc., wrote:

Recently, 6 illegal aliens were arrested who set up shop in Georgia and were cranking out a wide variety of false identity documents to enable their clientele, presumably most of whom were illegal aliens, to obtain various benefits and obtain illegal employment in the United States. Clearly there is great demand for such documents that are coveted by aliens seeking to embed themselves in our communities and work at various jobs that the laws of our nation would prohibit them from doing. Of course, if the President had his way, these bogus document vendors would be put out of business for once and for all by none other than our federal government. It is not that the President or his staff want to hire an adequate number of special agents for ICE to enforce the laws where the production and sale of counterfeit or altered identity documents are concerned, it is that he and quite a few members of Congress, on both sides of the political aisle, want to provide those very same illegal aliens with legitimate identity documents – potentially in false names. With the 20 million or more illegal aliens who would undoubtedly rush to participate in the guest worker amnesty program that they are pushing hard to implement, our beleaguered bureaucrats would undoubtedly provide illegal aliens, among them criminals and terrorists, with official identity documents in any name they provided. These identity documents act as “breeder documents” enabling illegals to obtain genuine driver’s licenses and Social Security Cards that they can use to open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, and even library cards, all in false names. This enables the terrorists and criminals who have gained entry into our nation to circumvent the various terrorist watch lists and “No Fly” lists. Such a program makes it unnecessary for the illegal aliens to have to go to criminal aliens operating in our country, peddling phony identity documents – they could get the real thing in any name they wanted! Hopefully the guest worker amnesty travesty will never be reached. Meanwhile, the vendors are out there, on street corners throughout the United States, providing illegal aliens with a means of circumventing our laws. There is no shortage of customers for these “entrepreneurs” considering how many illegal aliens are in our country today and how many more will be here tomorrow. I would remind you that the 19 terrorists who visited such destruction upon our nation on September 11, 2001, in the aggregate used some 364 separate pieces of identification in order to embed themselves in various communities around our nation as they prepared to slaughter those who fell victim to their malevolence.

Please visit the 9-11 Commission site and read the findings of the commission concerning this important subject. I wish I would have published this and other factual and poignant postings before the November 7^th election, although I did warn Americans to stop and think before voting by the solid plan to rid Congress of those in favor of providing amnesty for criminals (whether Democrat, Republican or any other political entity) who are dangerous for the United States, not just in the scope of national security, but in a venture that will lead to economic and political destruction upon our beloved nation. Fifty-six men worked hard and put their lives in danger to put together a government that would be truly democratic and provide the American people with a democratic republic they can be proud of – and that would last. Because we have bended rules, ignored Constitutional law, and other infractions, our government, or rather the people within our government, have slowly steered America toward the rocky shoals of destruction; some have done so out of ignorance and others doing so out of a bankrupt moral fiber and corrupted political ideology. Whatever the reason, we need to act now and never give up until the illegal immigrant amnesty is forever buried in the files of lost legislation that was simply a bad idea. It is unfortunate that the voters who believed the DNC and the Republican RINOs allowed themselves to be duped into making the political entity that has done nothing to stand up against the idea of a North American Union or the illegal immigrant issue that the Bush administration is so fervently trying to make happen, the majority. It demonstrates that the American people truly have a short memory as the politicians believe and use that knowledge in their political games. And, remember this: those illegal immigrants who have false identity can vote, with the help of scrupulous politicians (specifically, as the record shows, the DNC) and the criminal element providing them with the false identification that paves the way to becoming a false citizen. Any political entity should be removed from any office within the government – federal, state or local – who puts their political interests and the desire for votes above the law and the protection of our nation.

See The Uncooperative Blogger, Brian Bonner.

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let Brian Bonner know at what level you would like to participate.

Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin is author of articles for the Violent Crimes Institute, her website. Her background is right on the site:

For twenty years, Dr. Schurman-Kauflin has studied serial killers. After starting her own company in 1997, the Doctor has profiled aberrant sex crimes, sadistic murders, serial rapes and murders, stalking, abductions, and other unusual cases for police around the world. In her first book, The New Predator, the Doctor detailed first ever in depth interviews and profiles of female serial killers. These profiles have been successfully used by police around the United States, and several of the Doctor’s cases have been featured on the Discovery Channel and CNN. In her second book, Vulture, the Doctor explores the minds and crimes of sadistic serial predators. After examining her own cases, studying dozens of other solved cases, researching the killers’ lives, and interviewing convicted sadistic killers, Dr. Schurman-Kauflin created new profiles of sadistic serial killers. Vulture provides a comprehensive, fascinating new look into the minds and crimes of sadists. … One of her studies was used to help get convicted child molesters removed from hotels near Disneyland in California.

Despite the politically correct crowd’s opinion, profiling is an important aspect of law enforcement. It helps in every day police situations, as well as Homeland Security in identifying and preventing terrorist acts occurring on a day-by-day basis.

Now Dr. Schurman-Kauflin has completed a 12-month study of illegal immigrants who committed sex crimes and murders for the time period of January 1999 through April 2006 and has clearly shown that the American public is facing a dangerous threat from predators that cross the southern border illegally, something else that is on the agenda and concerning the dark side of illegal immigration that has put a burden on the American people economically, as well as decreasing the chance for American citizens to remain on unemployment statistics. All because our government refuses to abide by and enforce the very laws it has created and put political interests and globalization ideology, such as the North American Union fiasco, as well as create programs like NAFTA that puts foreign business interests ahead of American interests.

According to Dr. Schurman-Kauflin’s report, there were 1,500 cases analyzed in depth. They included: serial rapes, serial murders, sexual homicides, and child molestation committed by illegal immigrants. Police reports, public records, interviews with police and media accounts were all included. Offenders were located in 36 states, but most offenders were located in states with the highest numbers of illegal immigrants. California was the first on the list, followed by Texas, Arizona, New Jersey, New York and Florida. According to Dr. Schurman-Kauflin:

Based on population numbers of 12,000,000 illegal immigrants and the fact that young males make up more of this population than the general U.S. population, sex offenders in the illegal immigrant group make up a higher percentage. … This translates to 93 sex offenders and 12 serial offenders coming across U.S. borders illegally per day. The 1,500 offenders in this study had a total of 5,999 victims. Each sex offender averaged 4 victims. This places the estimate for victimization numbers around 960,000 for the 88 months examined in this study. … Of the child molestations, 47% of the victims were Hispanic, 36% were Caucasion, 8% were Asian, 6% were African American, and 3% were other nationalities. In most instances, the offenders were familiar with their victims. In fact, 82% of the victims were known to their attackers. The other 18% were molested by strangers. … In rape cases, the offenders were less likely to know their victims.

So, we are not just allowing the importation and advocating amnesty for persons illegally crossing our borders and using illegal identification, but our immigration system, or rather the lack of one, has importing increased crime rates in America.

As I have written previously, America is literally being invaded with a large number of criminals, gang members, those that believe that the United States stole geographical areas from Mexico (Aztlans) and terrorists disguised as Mexican nationals – all entering the United States because of shoddy or lack of enforcing the immigration laws. It makes the Homeland Security system seem pointless. This issue of illegal immigration has divided our nation, taken jobs from American citizens, robbed the tax payer funding that is supposed to be for running our government and providing help through social programs to citizens only; creating a Balkan state effect, and threatens America’s national security and sovereignty through illegal immigration and the insane idea of the Bush administration in forming a North American Union.

In WND’s special edition: Alien Nation – Secrets of the Invasion, published by the Whistleblower magazine, the following is revealed:

1. The powerful and influential Council on Foreign Relations (“shadow government”) has issued a comprehensive report last year that provides a five-year plan for the “establishment by 2010 of a North American economic and security community” with an “outer security perimeter.” It is insane for several reasons, and the authors of this grand scheme have failed to examine the track record of Mexico’s foreign policy, as well as the habit of harboring enemies of the United States within the Hispanic nation. And instead of the Mexican people working at cleaning up the corruption of their government, they choose to illegal enter the United States in order to “seek a better life.” But when they get here, if they are not part of the criminal element already, they become part of the criminal element here that look on illegal immigration as a lucrative business.
2. In the next few years, according to the 59-page report entitled Building a North American Community, the United States must be integrated with the socialism, corruption, poverty and population of Mexico and Canada. “Common perimeter” means wide-open U.S. borders between the U.S.. Mexico and Canada.

Phyllis Schlafly writes in the Whistleblower article:

This CFR document asserts that President Bush, Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin ‘committed their governments’ to this goal when they met at Bush’s ranch and at Waco, Texas, on March 23, 2005. The three adopted the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America’ and assigned ‘working groups’ to fill in the details. It was at this same meeting, grandly called the North American Summit, that President Bush pinned the epithet ‘vigilantes’ on the volunteers guarding our border in America.

1. Radical immigrant groups – including the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) and the National Council of La Raza (La Raza) – not only share a revolutionary agenda of conquering America’s southwest, but they also share common funding sources, notably the Ford and Rockefeller foundations.

Here is a quote from one of the organizations mentioned above:

California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who does not like it should leave. Mario Obeldo, former head of MALDEF.

The states of the U.S. Southwest – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and Utah – are considered by MEChA and Aztlan organization as belonging to Mexico. Why is the Rockefeller and Ford foundation supporting such groups?

Why are American politicians from both sides of the political aisle in Congress allowing our nation to be invaded, and even attempting to provide amnesty to illegal immigrant criminals for the past 30 years. There hasn’t been a stiff policy or proper enforcement of immigration laws since the Eisenhower administration. Why are government officials ignoring their own laws and the will of the people? Why is the media ignoring the actions of MS-13, one of the most violent gangs in America that comprise of membership of illegal immigrants?

Why are two Border Patrol agents now facing ten years in prison, while New York policemen have killed and injured “suspects” that were unharmed and are still on the city’s law enforcement payroll?

Will America’s Judeo-Christian culture be lost to the fanatics of Jihadists?

Are we in for more successful terrorist attacks as they infiltrate the Mexican (and other nationals) illegally crossing our southern border disguised as Mexican nationals?

The most notable activist against illegal immigration and proposed amnesty is Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo (author of In Mortal Danger) – yet he is treated as Senator McCarthy was when he tried to prove that communism and socialism was infiltrating our government and its political entities?

These are questions we should be asking our senators and representatives in Congress - as well as President Bush.

The American people and the media quickly denounced the idea of President George H. Bush’s proposal for globalization where there would be one government to rule the world and it would be tailored under the direction of the United Nations. Yet, the idea has not been tabled. Now his son, George W. Bush, has silently put together a committee that is a form of a agency of the federal government (at tax payers’ expense) something called the North American Union – against what the majority of Americans want, a step toward his father’s dream of globalization.

Those of us who voted for President Bush feel duped, and rightly so. Unfortunately, because of the disappointment and anger against President Bush, voters in the last election thought they would take it out on the GOP in general and make the DNC a majority once again – instead of just weeding out the bad element from both political parties, such as those who favor illegal immigrant amnesty and not doing anything about the constitutional illegality of the North American Union.

Edward Gibbons, English historian, wrote The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. There is also an updated version by Peter Heather. I hope an author doesn’t write The Rise and Fall of the United States of America. In the case of the Roman Empire, Mr. Gibbons wrote, around the time of the American Revolution, that ancient Rome rotted from within. It gave in to barbarian invasions because of lack of civic virtue, hired barbarian mercenaries and fell away from the republic form of government.

America needs strong and honest leadership, and it cannot happen if the American voters are too lazy to do their homework when it comes to who they vote for. On occasion, though, the voters may find that the candidate, as in the case of GW Bush, he or she will change course from what they have established as their criteria and policy. The GOP party has suffered because of members like him and others like him, as well as the problems with the leadership in the DNC that has pushed progression towards socialism and the welfare state.

1. Illegal immigration hurts American workers, despite what you hear from both sides of the political aisle – “Mexicans take jobs that Americans don’t want.” Actually this is an insult to the Mexican people, but looking at the statistics, the general population of Mexican illegal immigrants shows they are uneducated and generally unskilled workers. Over the past five years, the rise in immigration employment, in this case including legal immigration, has broken down America’s labor laws and labor standards, as well as

undermining the unemployment insurance and Social Security systems and basic worker protections that have evolved over the last century. … Market forces lead employers to pay for labor at the lowest possible rate, and if a large number of workers are willing to work below the minimum wage or in environments that violate labor laws that the government is not enforcing, many employers will hire those workers. … Arguments about the sometimes adversarial role immigration has with labor interests have been around for a long time. … Cesar Chavez, who founded the National Farm Workers Association, sued the federal government in the 1970s for its failure to enforce immigration laws, which allowed the continued influx into the United States of illegal farm workers, who competed for jobs with his union members.

It is unclear what is going to happen in Congress in 2007, but one thing is certain – those that are for providing illegal immigrants amnesty and in favor of a North American Union are counting on the American people to either forget or give up in their stance on this issue. Prove them wrong and set them straight.

Please write to your representatives and senators, whatever political party they belong to or if they are independent – and tell them that you haven’t forgotten and you are not giving up on this important issue. America is in enough danger from without and we do not need to continue a major problem from within. Demand the Bush and Congress reform itself now.

Further Reading from The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration ….

Morning Coffee
Want to Become an American? Why Wait? It’s Easy!
Take Back Georgia
WND – 45,000 Terror-Threat Illegals Released into U.S. Population

**This was a production of The Coalition Against Illegal Immigration (CAII). If you would like to participate, please go to the above link to learn more. Afterwards, email the coalition and let Brian Bonner know at what level you would like to participate.

Last week, Judge Audrey Collins ruled at the federal district court in Los Angeles, Mexifornia, that terrorists shall not be called “terrorists.” And you thought political correctness was dead. I guess this is just the death throes of it, since there seems to be those still lingering around who abide by it.

What business is it of Judge Collins in the matters of national security?

The actions of a President (and Congress) upon matters of national security began in 1917, concerning these matters, in the Trading with the Enemy Act, where Congress granted the president the authority to “investigate, regulate … prevent or prohibit … transactions” in times of war or declared emergencies. And in 1977, Congress extended that authority in the International Economic Powers Act that included the power to “investigate, … regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any acquisition, holding, withholding, use, transfer, withdrawal, transportation, importation or exportation of” property in which a foreign country or person has an interest, but only in the presence of an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

On September 23, 2001, President Bush announced the existence of such a threat in his Executive Order 13224, he declared that the grave acts of terrorism and the continuing and immediate threat of future attacks on the United States constituted a national emergency. President Bush then froze the assets of 27 groups and individuals that were designated as specially designated terrorist groups. (SDGT) Except for the most left of the Leftists, this was applauded.

The PKK is an international Marxist-Leninist revolutionary group that dedicates itself to creating a Kurdish homeland – and always advocates violence. It was the PKK that carried out bombings on civilian and military targets in Turkey (who took in Kurdish refugees that were being abused by the likes of Saddam Hussein and made them Turkish citizens). In 1999, the PKK founder and leader of the terrorist group – Abdullah Ocalan, was captured and convicted of terrorist crimes.

In Judge Collins first paragraphs of her opinion she describes the PKK as:

… a political organization representing the interests of the Kurds in Turkey, with the goal of achieving self-determination for the Kurds in Southeastern Turkey.

But in reality, the Kurds of southeastern Turkey are in fact stabbing the very people and nation that saved them from extermination. And, what is their gratitude? Demanding that the southeastern portion of Turkey be renamed Kurdistan and become a sovereign state. Their real homeland, formerly Kurdistan, is in western Russia, formerly the Soviet Union and the reason why they lost their homeland is because of the expansion of the Soviet Union under Lenin and the refusal of the Kurds to stop their tribal form of politics and quit fighting amongst themselves in clan-type internal strife. It is kind of like the Mexican illegal immigration movement -- coming here illegally and then demanding all the rights and privilege, including instant citizenship, just because they are poor and oppressed instead of dealing with their own corrupted government and instituting reform in Mexico -- trying to make our country like theirs.

Judge Collins stated that President Bush’s Executive Order was vague and it

provides no explanation of the basis upon which these twenty-seven groups and individuals were designated.

She claims it is in violation of the Constitution.

She also stated that the Executive Order violates the First Amendment and freedom of association. In other words, part of the war against terrorism is that we must stop the flow of economic supply in order to win the war and be a part of the overall strategy of the war – and she says this is unconstitutional.

Judge Collins then continued with previous and recent national security rulings that was against the administration and its efforts in the War on Terrorism, or the “Long War”. Appearing more than 11 times in her opinion, Judge Collins uses the words unfettered decision that concerns President Bush’s duties and authority in fighting the War on Terrorism.

Our system of government, as set by the founding fathers, provided that during peacetime and in matters of domestic policy, there is a separation of powers. But when at war, and our history shows this in matters of legal and political concerns, the president has been allowed more authority (as FDR was given to fight a world war) when it concerns national security. President Roosevelt had personal letters from military individuals serving in the European and Pacific Theaters read/proofed by thousands of clerks and certain references to actions and military locations be stricken out with a black marker, put back in the envelope and then forwarded to the soldier’s, marine’s, and sailor’s mail. It is definitely a violation of constitutional rights of those individuals in PEACE – but it was a necessity during the period of World War II. No question.

It is to the point of insanity that Judge Collins or any member of the U.S. court would go against the given authority of President Bush (or any president) who is executing privileges in order to win a war – in this case, designated terrorist organizations.

Judge Collins ruling is just another victory for the enemy, provided by the progressives of America who claim they follow the path of democracy, but in fact are socialist progressives that are undermining our national security as well as diluting our constitutional laws.

As Michael M. Rosen states, attorney and columnist in San Diego:

But more fundamentally, this is a major symbolic blow to the War on Terror. If we are not allowed even to define the enemy, how can we possibly hope to defeat him? If we are deprived of the very opportunity to identify the nature of our adversary, we have already fallen into his clutches. The administration has vowed to appeal this ruling, as it has all of the others it has recently lost. Here’s hoping it prevails – for all of our sakes.

Well said, Mr. Rosen.

The war against terrorism continues to be fought in Iraq, and other battles are taking place as well. Battles are being fought in newsrooms in New York, London and Cairo. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: “Violent extremists plan and design their headline-grabbing attacks using every means of communication to intimidate and break the collective will of free people.” The American media and their counterparts in Europe are working at breaking the resolve of people to fight against Jihadis, and they are orchestrated by leadership like Kennedy, Kerry and Clinton who continue their campaign to bring the Bush administration down in the eyes of Americans and other nation citizenry. According to them the Iraq people no longer want us there, have grown to despise American troops, and if the American military would leave all would be peace and tranquility in Iraq. If you read some articles and blog posts, it is the American troops who are bloodthirsty souls and the real evil behind the continued engagements. When was the last time you have read in the New York Times or L.A. Times something positive that our military leadership and troops are involved in? My friend, America is being duped by others that call themselves Americans.

The Federalist Patriot Post (formerly The Federalist and also called The Patriot Post) reprinted a letter written by the mayor of Tal Afar, Najim Abdullah al-Jubouri, to General George Casey, Commander of U.S. Forces in Iraq, in January of 2006:

“Our city was overrun by heartless terrorists, Zarqawi and his followers, who unloaded their bloodthirsty and voracious action of evil on this city for several months by indiscriminately killing men, women and children. Tal Afar was a human slaughterhouse. Simple services were not possible, causing people to suffer, until the day you dispatched your troops, who were our lion-hearted saviors. Your troops came to rescuer Tal Afar led by our heroes, whom Tal Afar will never forget. After the major operation, your wonderful soldiers started nursing the wounds of this city by rebuilding the damaged lives and buildings with great compassion and speed. These soldiers have done more than their original mission required of them … God bless this brave [3^rd Armored Cavalry] Regiment; God bless the families who dedicated these brave men and women. From the bottom of our hearts we thank the families. They have given us something we will never forget … Let America, their families and the world be proud of their sacrifice for humanity and life.”

Now tell me that our troops are not putting their best efforts to do a good job in Iraq, and tell me once again how troops in Iraq are doubting the validity of what they are doing or do not think that what they are doing will make a difference.

I am a veteran of the Persian Gulf War, the liberation of Kuwait and it hurts me to the very depths of my soul to see our troops and their commanders being attacked and slaughtered by words written and spoken in the media of our nation. I could understand if such bias came from the pages and TV newsrooms of socialist-run media outlets of other nations – but Americans who are actually aiding the al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations with helpful propaganda for their Jihad. In that way, this war is definitely “like Vietnam.” I have seen troops, American and their allies fight battles as brave warriors; and despise war in general. Yet, they, as well as myself know that the terrorists and despot national leaders who support them must be fought to prevent their strength from growing and organizing to keep them from the shores of our beloved America. When we read in the 1980s of terrorists doing damage and killing civilians in their unholy raids upon cities and places on foreign soil, Americans felt badly for those victims; yet our government and the government of our coalition troops did not comprehend that the beginning of a world war was taking place. This world war was not like the last, where nations gathered together called the “Allies” fought against a specific and defined enemy called the “Axis.” This world war is being fought against an enemy who has a twisted concept of the Islamic religion, who uses fear and threat as their means of keeping Moslems in sympathy to their hateful cause; and the leader of the largest terrorist organization in the world – Osama bin Laden – has made their purpose clear: they will not stop until totally defeated or the world comes under their Jihad Islamist theocracy. We have Americans here, some may be our neighbors, who actually believe that President Bush is more evil than the Hamas or the al-Qaida; and that is not an “opinion” - it is traitorous. Whenever you see an organization that is supporting our troops to let them know we appreciate their loyalty and sense of duty – please join them and let the troops know that as they have not let the Iraqi down, neither shall we, as Americans back home, will not let them down. Since the first shot was fired in Operation Iraqi freedom and the second phase of reconstruction began in Operation Enduring Freedom 2,557 American military have died in action and 17,597 have been wounded (about 25% of those wounded were returned to duty, DOD report as of March 2006). The death toll for Iraqi civilians at the hands of terrorists is about three times that amount. Yet, we still have men and women in America who are voluntarily signing up for active duty, active reserve and National Guard units because they feel that the terrorists and terrorism must end – wherever they are. These young men and women are your neighbors’ children next door or just up the street. Don’t let them down by falling for the propaganda you read or see on TV or from the rhetoric from politicians whose only loyalty lies with their political party. These politically motivated anti-Americans are even using a grief stricken parent (out of 2,557) as a tool in their propaganda efforts.

I highly recommend that you read James Philips’ analysis, The Myths About Iraq – who is a Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies who has shown that the Democrat leadership’s criticism is strictly politically motivated.

And, as an afterthought, it is quite ironic about those aforementioned (except for John Kerry, who shamed himself and those who served in the 1970s) – they’ve never wore the uniform of the United States military so couldn’t possibly know what the troops are going through or their commanders are dealing with. Not everyone can or would want to be a volunteer in America’s military, but we can certainly do our part here from the comfort of our homes - that won’t be too comfortable if the likes of Osama bin Laden would have his way.