If you ask
most right wing Republicans if dissent makes the United States weaker, they
will assuredly say “yes,” and they will continue to say that speaking out
against the President and his policies on War embolden our enemies.
These
Republicans will say it is OK to be against the War, just don’t tell anyone.
The latest
polls show that 69 percent of the nation is now against the War, and 30 percent
are still gung ho.
I have found
that the majority of those who still support the War have never served in the
military and most come from the fringes of the right wing. These Chickenhawks
have no problem sending their neighbors off to war.
The
definition of a Chickenhawk: someone who
refuses or refused to fight in any War they have started or support.
Both
President Bush and Vice President Cheney fit this description. Neither has
served in a War, and Bush, who did join the Texas Air National Guard, never went
to Vietnam; in fact, the Jets that he trained in were obsolete and would never
see action again. Dick Cheney received five deferments to keep from serving his
country in the military.
Republicans
have been using the first amendment against our country, and have accused those
who would dare to speak an opinion that is contrary to government policy of
treason.
Over the two
hundred plus years that our nation has existed, millions have fought and died
to protect our constitutional rights. But in today’s caustic political
atmosphere, protesting and speaking out are frowned upon and considered
anti-American and Un-Patriotic -- more so than ever before.
Fred
Thompson, one of the ten GOP elephants running for President, said in his first
interview after he declared his candidacy, “If we look weak and divided in this
country, we’re going to pay a heavy price for it in the future.”
He went on,
“We’re living in the era of the suitcase bomb. And they’re not going to go
away. They’re here now, they’re armed and dangerous, and they’re trying to get
weapons of mass destruction.”
Rudi Giuliani
a couple of months back said, “if a Democrat is elected president in 2008,
America will be at risk for another terrorist attack” on the scale of Sept. 11,
2001. But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him,
“terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.”
Republicans
have been playing the fear factor for the last three elections, and they have
been doing a very good job of instilling fear across our nation. But in the
2006 election, Americans started to wise up to their fear tactics.
But old
tricks die hard. Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and the other elephants are
sticking with the fear factor. Each one supports Bush’s war in Iraq.
And each has
said, at one time or another, that dissent makes the United States weaker, and
emboldens the enemy.
Dissent
Emboldens our Enemies. What a bunch of BS.
Rep Ron Paul
(R-TX), one of the ten GOP elephants, is the only GOP candidate that wants us
to withdraw from Iraq. In fact, he wants us to withdraw from every corner of
the world, but that is another story.
Since Sept.
11, 2001, showing even the slightest difference with Bush and his policies has
had many chilling effects. People have been removed from airliners for wearing
T-Shirts emblazoned with Bush’s picture and the word ‘Liar.’ At political rallies, people have been
forcibly removed for speaking out. Protest rallies with permits are now caged
and out of sight. People are arrested at rallies for no reason, only to be
released 24 hours later with no charges and no apologies.
Dissent has been turned
into an ugly word
Bush, Cheney
and Rove fanned the flames of patriotism to garner support for Bush’s folly in
Iraq.
The Nazi
Herman Goering, while a prisoner during the Nuremburg trials following World
War II, told intelligence officer Gustave Gilbert, “Naturally, the common
people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for
that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it’s the leaders of
the country who determine the policy and it’s always a simple matter to drag
the people along, whether it’s a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a
parliament or a communist dictatorship.”
Chided for
not grasping that in a democracy the people have a voice and must be listened
to by the leaders, Goering replied, “Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice
or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and
denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to
danger. It works the same way in any country.”
If you take a
good look at the quote, you will see that is exactly what Bush did to bring
about his war in Iraq. Because of Bush’s abuse of the Executive Office he has
brought about several illegal policies that he has used to help squash dissent,
all in the name of fighting Terror and the Evil Doers.
Massive databases are being collected
on every single American in the World
The
Department of Homeland Security has a data-mining program that attempts to spot
terrorists by combing through vast amounts of information about average
Americans, such as flight and hotel reservations. Similar to a Pentagon
program, Total Information Awareness, killed by Congress in 2003 over concerns
about civil liberties, the new program could take effect as soon as next year.
But
researchers testing the system are likely to have violated privacy laws already
by reviewing real information instead of fake data, according to a source
familiar with a congressional investigation into the $42.5 million program.
Bearing the
unwieldy name Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic
Enhancement (ADVISE), the program is on the cutting edge of analytical
technology that applies mathematical algorithms to uncover hidden relationships
in data.
The idea is
to troll a vast sea of information and extract suspicious people, places and
other elements based on their links and behavioral patterns.
The privacy
violation, described in a Government Accountability Office report that is due
out soon, was one of three by separate government data mining programs,
according to the GAO. “Undoubtedly there are likely to be more,” GAO
Comptroller David M. Walker said in a recent congressional hearing.
The chairman
of the Senate committee that oversees the Justice Department said the database
was “ripe for abuse.” The American Civil Liberties Union immediately derided
the quality of the information that could be used to score someone as a terror
threat.
Some of the World’s Largest Computer
Banks
The National
Security Agency is home to some of the largest banks of computers in the world;
they also have one of the largest fields of satellite antennae. The NSA data
mines as well, and pays for information from companies that collect data. One
company, ChoicePoint, sold the NSA 20 billion statistical points on 300 million
Americans.
Dissention is
one of the cornerstones of our constitution -- freedom of speech is America.
Bush spies on
Americans; is the country Bush fears most America?