"History tells me that we can't change
people's opinions at the point of a gun. If
America wishes to continue as a
world leader, it will be because we live up to the
ideals embedded in our founding."
- Sheldon
J. Baer
"War will end when recruits throw
down their guns, refuse to fight and the American people rise up and drive from our midst
the warmongers at the highest levels of government." - Kim W. Carney
"Since 1945
American aristocracy has insisted on acquiring
and maintaining military supremacy. The United
States continues to expand its power and military reach. The
United States 'defense' budget currently is
roughly $500 billion a year, not including the $100 billion supplemental
spending in Iraq and
Afghanistan."
- Robert Kagan
"We have kept ourselves in
military operations since World War II not to make us safer or to bring
freedom to the world,
but chiefly to keep our Defense and Munitions industries alive and profitable."
- Robbie Gennet
"American aristocracy is indeed running the old
world order, and we will for a while longer. But as
with most empires, we are destined to implode. The overreach of the
American empire (more than 700 military
installations around the world in 120 nations),
coupled with a defense budget of$1 trillion annually (all related "defense"
expenditures) cannot be long sustained."
- Mitch Paradise
"American aristocracy thinks it has the right to destabilize and
dominate the entire globe. Can any clear-thinking person still believe that the America is a peace-loving nation?"-
Chris Apostal
CIA - DCI Counterterrorist Center "Terrorist
Buster" Logo
"How
can the people who were supposed to be keeping us safe when catastrophe hit be
looked upon as the ones who will keep us safe the next time around? " - Chris
Wolfe
"No indication of terrorism in
the collapse of the bridge in Minneapolis? I don't buy it. It's the direct
result of the terrorist-in-chief in the
White House bankrupting the country with war, ignoring urgent needs such as
infrastructure repairs.
al-Qa`ida will never
destroy us.
George W. Bush
and the rest of the traitorous Republicans, the wimpy Democrats and, worst of
all, the comatose American public who care
more about 'American Idol" than the
American republic are doing it for them." - Tama
Winograd
Americans are told daily
by mass media that we
are winning the war
on terror. The
way Americans
categorize and stereotype
other human
groups and cultures outside of the
America is heavily clouded by
arrogance.
This is a way of
thinking that American aristocracy began to aquire during World
War I . This arrogant
opinion of other nations, cultures and societies became embedded in the American pysche by the end of
World War II.
The
arrogance that dominates the
minds of American
aristocracy imagines that the
Islamic nations fail to understand the benign intent of
American foreign policy.
In order to make the decisions and
allocate the resources needed to ensure
American
security,
Americans must
understand the
Earth as the Earth
is,
not as American aristocracy wishes,
imagines or fantasizes the Earth
to be.
Lack of approval of American
foriegn policy in major
Islamic nations is due to
American support of
Israel and tyrannical despotic Arab regimes.
Corrupt regimes, with the help of
corporate
America, are systematically
exploiting energy
resources for
profit, while imprisoning,
torturing and executing domestic
dissenters.
Tyrannical
corrupt despotic Arab regimes
exist. Just ask Imad Kabir, an Egyptian bus
driver beaten and sodomized with a broom stick.
For his crime of resisting authority and insulting a civil servant he was
sentenced to three months in jail and he was taught a lesson he will never
forget. A video of his rape was broadcast by police as a warning and as a
result his father died of a stroke.
We won! We must have won! No
attacks!
Studies of statistical competency show that
humans systematically exaggerate the
probability of vivid, high-profile
threats such as shark bites and
terrorist
bombings. Studies of statistical competency also show that
humans under estimate the
probability of being involved in a
fatal highway accident.
45,000 Americans died in car accidents in 2005.
"Reading
thestatistics on the deaths and maiming due to automobile accidents made me
really think about security. Maybe we need to realize where the true dangers
lie. Is it possible to totally protect ourselves from terrorism, and should we
live in fear because of our inability to do so? If one were to consider the
possibility of being killed or injured in a terrorism attack versus what could
possibly happen when we get into an automobile, perhaps our fears would
diminish." - Bobby Fraker
42,000 Americans die of cancer every month and
an
American dies every 36 minutes of
cardiovascular disease.
"Because the news media
is savvy about, and complicit in, our fears and fascinations, we are fed an
endless supply of death news that has
little to do with how people actually die." - Meghan Daum
A comparative
absence of terrorism supports the
conclusion that the terrorist
threat has been grossly exaggerated. Americans
may be "winning" because there are few
terrorists posing a serious threat
to America.
"Terrorists use the tools
they do because they are weak and have no others. Americans need to
remember that we are the 800-pound
gorilla: We have choices, but we need to take care when we throw our weight
around." - Francis Fukuyama
Terrorists have an incentive to
exaggerate their strength to frighten their opponents.
Government plays it safe by exaggerating the
terrorist threat,
while the
terrorists oblige by exaggerating
their power.
"Most ironically, the "war
on terror" framework has lent legitimacy to terrorist leaders such as Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed, enabling them to present themselves as warriors standing up
against a powerful - and hypocritical - American military
machine." - Rosa Brooks
"The people
who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing
better than to destroy American. But
desire is not the same thing as
capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of
harm around the Earth, it is quite different to suggest that they
can threaten the existence of the
United States." - David A. Bell
Although
the federal government claims to be doing
everything possible to prevent another
terrorist attack, the
reality is that
another
terrorist attack is going to
happen, and when it does, you, as a
private
citizen, better have a plan to help
yourself and your family, because as we have
seen how the federal government will respond
- as they did with the Katrina refugees, round 'em up and bus 'em
out.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
IS
NOT PREPARED TO PROTECT EVERY AMERICAN,
CAN NOT PROTECT EVERY AMERICAN
AND WILL NOT PROTECT MOST
AMERICANS!
(NOT LISTED FOR SPEACIL PROTECTION? IT IS REALLY A SHAME
THAT YOU ARE NOT A TITAN OF COMMERCE, AN
AMERICAN ARISTOCRAT OR A
CELEBRITY. TOO BAD, YOU COULD HAVE GOT YOUR
FOOT IN THE DOOR AS A LOBBYIST OR
CAMPAIGN
FUNDRAISER!)
AMERICA IS BIG,
AMERICA IS OPEN,
"I, for the life of
me, can not understand why the
terrorists have not attacked
our food
supply, because it is so easy to do. " Tommy G. Thompson,
former Health and Human Services Secretary for the George W. Bush administration said at a
news conference in December 2004,"We've
increased the number and the percentage of inspections, but it still is a very
small amount."(approximately 1%)
How would we
know, for example, if the
terrorists contaminated our food
with a virulent strain of escherichia
coli?
An issue that is
crucial to individual and
familial survival as well as peace of mind involves
us as individuals. What can
we do to improve our individual chances when
disaster strikes and
the government fails us?
"It is simply impossible to protect
every inviting target in a continent sized
nation of 300 million people." - Max
Boot
Disaster has now struck,
but this disaster has not
been the predicted terrorist attack.
Hurricane Katrina made land fall in New
Orleans, the levys burst and New Orleans was flooded. The Federal
Emergency Management Agency, after being folded into the
Department of Homeland Security performed miserably
in response.
The head of Federal Emergency
Management Agency, Michael D. Brown, prior experience of
disaster management consisted
of supervising International Arabian Horse Association judges. Michael D.
Brown's top aide, Patrick James Rhode, resume stated that his
experience was as a
television
news anchor/reporter. The director of
Federal Emergency Management Agency's Recovery Division, Daniel Craig, was
previously responsible for
U.S. Chamber of Commerce related legislative, political and media
initiatives. Each of these men supported George W. Bush's candidacy for president.
They were rewarded with political
appointments to the
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"I think
the Clinton administration would have done a better job in
handling Hurricane Katrina."- William Kristol
"Terrorists may have attacked
America on 9/11, but it's how we respond that
will hand them their real victory. I have never felt
unsafe in my own home, but my stepdaughter is studying abroad in Barcelona, and
we speak to her on a regular basis. Now I can't help but
wonder if my phone was tapped.
George W. Bush claims he's using his executive
privilege to protect us. But add to the secret wiretaps his
belief in torture and in holding people without
due process, and I can't help but feel
that we're starting to resemble the country we just invaded." -
Barbara Davilman
Aside: George W. Bush's
privatization of government
services began to reap what has been sown. In January of 2008 Federal
Bureau of Investigation wiretapping efforts were shut down by several
telecommunications providers for lack of payment.
"America has done wicked things in the past to
other countries but never on such a
scale and never in such an existentialist way. It's as though we are
evil. We strike first. We'll destroy you. This is
an eternal
war against
terrorism. It's like a
war against dandruff. There's no such thing as
a war against
terrorism. It's idiotic. These are
slogans. These are
lies. It's
advertising, which is the only
art form we ever invented and developed." - Gore
Vidal "George W. Bush
has become the Orwellian Big Brother. In the
name of protecting us from
terrorists,
George W. Bush has broken, bent,
circumvented or declared null and void laws that
are based upon our constitutional rights." - Doug Tennant
Terrorism is a technique, not an
opponent. In our society,
terrorism is a crime and would be
more efficiently and effectively treated as such. However, even a
false war can have casualties.
Calling it a "war on
terror" has suppressed so much
democratic discourse that we need a
truth and reconciliation commission to
reclaim the vigor of our own
democracy."
- Chris Harget
"George W. Bush terms it a
global war on
terrorism. Making war on a tactic rather
than an enemy sounds about as effective as making war on a condition or an addiction, like our
wars on poverty (1964-) or drugs (1971-)." - P.W. Singer
The truth is - America is losing the war on terror! Terrorist
attacks worldwide were 1732 in 2003, 4995 in 2005 and 6659 in 2006.
"The evils of tyranny are
rarely seen but by him who resists it." - John Hay
"Of all
tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.
S. Lewis
"The ideal tyranny
is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims.
The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly
enslave themselves." - Dresden James
"Tyranny can't be isolated to just
one person giving orders. It is an entire society that consists of the bullies and the
bullied, and hardly anything in between." - Bill Decker
"The diffusion of
power, both in the political and the economic sphere, instead of its concentration in the
hands of officials and
captains of industry, would greatly
diminish the opportunities for acquiring the habit of command, out of which the
desire for exercising tyranny is apt to spring." - Bertrand Russell
Popular
opinion of history has coasted along on the
myth that the Nazi, Soviet, Maoist, Khmer Rouge,
Baath and many other
murder sprees were organized by a single
madman. Historians
of tyranny have two
missions: to inform
readers how and why these
people ruled
and killed, and to deliver from the past.
If Adolf Hitler, Josef
Stalin, Mao Ze-Dong, Saddam Hussein, Jonas Savimbi, Charles Taylor, Pol Pot or
Idi Amen are presented as one dimensional
evil psychopaths, there is
no that a
society has stumbled into a ;
people learn
nothing about the ruling class,
nothing
about the culture that spawned them
and
fail to
understand how genocidal
nightmares occur.
If Adolf Hitler, Josef
Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Ze-Dong, Saddam Hussein, Jonas Savimbi, Charles Taylor or
Idi Amen had merely been charmless psychopaths, they
would never have risen to power, let alone
maintained it. They were simply fanatical believers in a creed that included mass
murder to make a better
Earth and they were able to convince their
followers that this was indeed the proper
path to take.
"Supporters of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin were
respected members of society; the
Nazis and the Soviets, in fact, often worked through the established
institutions of the military, the schools and
the church. Mass violence spoke less to the psychic
needs of the masses than it did to the political needs of the regime." - Corey
Robin
An American
military policeman Spc. Sean D. Baker,
a Gulf War veteran who reenlisted
after the September 11 terrorist
attacks, was assaulted in January 2003 after he volunteered to wear an orange
jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee. Sean D. Baker said fellow
American military policemen were told that he was
an unruly detainee who had assaulted an American sergeant. They proceeded to inflicted a
beating so severe that it resulted in a traumatic brain injury. The assault
left him with seizures, blackouts, headaches and
insomnia. This was a
'' exercise.
"Conventional wisdom says the
George W. Bush administration and Republican party have been hijacked by
the ' believers' - both the
Christian imperialists and the chicken hawks. But an
alternative view is that the
neo-cons and
religious zealots are "fellow travelers" to a
cabal of American aristocrats or, in the
view of the rest of the peoples of
Earth, imperial thugs.
Americans are so
confused (or in denial) that any excuse
for a messianic mission is better than
facing up to the truth.
Deep in the American
soul we
know that
without control of Middle East
oil, the American way of life, as
we now know
it, is extinct. The
neo-cons' democracy crusade provides convenient cover for the
lack of weapons of mass destruction.
Of course, one big lie leads to
another. Given all the huge
problems that American government can not or will not
solve here at home (health care, Social
Security,
education, deficits,
immigration), only a
fool would seek salvation in 'freeing' the Earth
of tyranny by force." - Tom Tomeoni
"I am a retired
military officer who served his
country for 30 years. In all that time, I never
questioned my supreme duty to support,
defend and bear true allegiance to the
Constitution. All too often
history proves that
demagogues hide behind the mantras of national
security and national interests." - Paul LaBonte
"Do we
remember after
World War II and during the
Nuremburg trials, the many discussions and legal rulings regarding
personal morality? How the excuses made
by those who were forced to perform hideous and inhuman acts in order to
save their own lives were considered invalid?
And again after Vietnam, when
details of unspeakable crimes were revealed, the discussions that followed all
agreed that no person should have to obey commands that are obviously immoral,
illegal or against his deeply held beliefs.
Now we have, in 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, an educated, intelligent, exemplary officer who has
clearly wrestled long and hard with his conscience and responsibly offered to
resign or serve elsewhere. Yet he is to be put on trial for refusing to fight
and kill in a war known to be based on
deceit." - Eleanor Jackson
"The practice of
arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all
ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of
tyranny." - Alexander Hamilton
See
Aristotle
A system of government that exercises a
dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business
leadership together with belligerent
.
"Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's comparison of
our enemies in the Middle East to fascist countries of
World War II is an
interesting stretch. Real fascist governments have the following characteristics:
domination of all branches of government and
the economy by a political party; control of news sources
via economic relationships and threats of retribution; reliance on a large
military to promote national unity and
expand global
influence;
blind
obedience to the national
leader, and dismissal of any international
laws unless they are temporarily
expedient." - Michael Roddy
"When fascism comes to
America it will be wrapped in the flag and
carrying the cross." - Sinclair Lewis
"It is no accident
that many on the radical right and their supporters have taken to
goose-stepping behind the rhetoric of
extremists like Rush Limbaugh, who first coined or
popularized the term "feminazi." It's my feeling that the lies not so much in the
epithets being flung at the left but in a real
and growing fascism
gnawing at the core of the
American national
psyche. In all the bluster and
rhetoric, our attention is being misdirected from a host of
very troubling issues."
- Tadek
Korn
"I don't care if Democratic presidential
candidate John Edwards is using fascist author Ann Coulter to raise money. John
Edwards is a politician and that's what
politicians do. Ann Coulter is using John
Edwards to gain publicity so she can sell her books and continue her shelf life
by making outrageous statements. That's what Ann Coulter does. And talk-show
host Chris Matthews and "Good Morning America" make some hay by giving Ann
Coulter all this air time when she clearly has nothing to offer except higher
ratings. The whole enterprise is about capitalism and
opportunism and it smells to high
heaven." - Barry Simon
"Max Boot and
other
neocon apologists are fond of using the
term 'Islamo-fascism.' It does have a certain ring of
truth. Who could deny the
existence of adherents? Now
Max Boot and cohorts should begin using
Christo-fascism and Judeo-fascism with the same
frequency and validity." - Gene Touchet
"If
Max Boot could get past being a fervent
apologist for the George W. Bush
administration, he might see clearly the reasons that many
Muslims in the Middle East, consider our
policies in the region to be akin to
terrorism.
Max Boot scoffs incredulously at the
idea of Paul Wolfowitz being compared to
Osama bin Laden, but is that so
farfetched?
Osama bin
Laden orchestrated a violent attack on innocent
civilians in a country he deemed to be a threat to his
belief system
and way of life. Paul
Wolfowitz and the other
architects of the illegal war in
Iraq trumped up phony evidence of
false threats to
justify the bombing and destruction of
a country killing tens of thousands of civilians
because they are a threat to the American
way of life
and belief systems.
Does
Max Boot think
that the Muslim
mother whose child is
killed by an American
bomb feels any differently than
the mother who lost her son on September
11?
Are Muslims supposed to accept
unprovoked attacks on sovereign soil
and the attendant collateral damage,
while we are not?
Max Boot's attitude
reflects the very racism and lack of
respect
that he claims
Muslims have no right to
feel." - Michele Greene
"If we send more troops, as Max Boot suggests, there will be more
fighting and the number of our soldiers killed
will go up. More than 55,000 Americans were
killed in action in
Vietnam, and then we left. The
insurgents know that if they kill enough of us we
will leave Iraq too, because we have
no justification to be there in the first place. The only reason that we are
still in Iraq is to distract the
voters from the Corrupt
politicians and their
cronies looting the treasury." -
Steve Harrington
"I think
Max Boot can get the
whole country behind this
war just by having him and his
neocon armchair general buddies and
their sons be seen on the front line and have a little skin in the game."
-
Jack Seidman
The five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council are the United
States, Russia, China, France and the
United Kingdom.
The
United States, Russia,
China, France and the United Kingdom are the
major suppliers and exporters of military hardware and are in possession
of most of the weapons on the face of the Earth.
"The only satisfactory area for
an army or a navy is the whole
planet, since no smaller area will prevent
war." - Bertrand Russell
The
administrations of Ronald Reagan and
George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of items having both military and
civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological
viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague, in an effort to arm
Iraq against the Iranian threat.
(This expalins George W. Bush's insistence of weapons of mass destruction.)
The United States and its European allies provided the regime of
Saddam Hussein with its chemical and
biological weapons. While American officials
publicly condemned Iraq's employment of mustard
gas, sarin, VX and other poisonous agents, sixty Defense Intelligence Agency
officers were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments,
tactical planning for battles, plans for airstrikes and bomb-damage assessments
for Iraq.
"War alone keys up all human
energies to their maximum tension and sets the seal of nobility on those
peoples who have the courage to face it." - Benito Mussolini The United States alone spends
what the rest of the world combined devotes to
military expenditures. It has been estimated that direct U.S. military
expenditures will cost $647 billion for
2008.
The Iraq invasion's
indirect costs, the impact on global oil prices and the long-term cost of
health care for wounded veterans increases the price tag to between 1 trillion
and $2.2 trillion.
The
United States exports more arms than any other
nation on Earth. 
Since 2001,
United States global military sales have normally
totaled between $10 and $13 billion. In
fiscal year 2006, the Pentagon broke its own recent record,
inking arms
sales agreements worth $21 billion.
Between 2001 and 2005, the United States
delivered 2,099 surface-to-air missiles to nations in the developing world, 20%
more than Russia, the next largest supplier.
During that same period,
the United States sent 10 "major surface
combatants" like frigates and destroyers to developing nations. Collectively,
the four major European weapons producers shipped thirteen. (And we were first
in the anti-ship missiles that go along with such ships, with nearly double
(338) the exports of the next largest supplier Russia (180).
The
Pentagon has agreed to train the militaries of 138 nations in 2008
at a
cost of nearly $90 million.
There are at least 126,000
private military personnel
deployed alongside uniformed military personnel in
Iraq. Of the more than sixty major
companies that supply such personnel worldwide, more than 40 are based in the
United States.
The movie "The Lord of
War" may as well have been a true story as it was based on a living
individual named Viktor Bout.
In August 2004 Viktor Bout was hired by
the George W. Bush administration to deliver 110,000 AK-47 assault rifles and
80,000 pistols from an American base in Bosnia
to Iraq security forces.
The weapons never arrived.
Viktor Bout
is known to have delivered weapons to Charles
Taylor, the Angola government and rebel forces opposing the Angola government,
the Taliban and radical Islamists in Mogadishu."The "business" of the United States Intelligence
Community is the Nation's security, and today that security is
threatened by a chaotic multiplicity of
adversaries and enemies, real and potential [and
imagined]. These
threats know no national or regional
boundaries or borders, there is no clearly defined battlefield. They are fueled
by a world beset by
competition over
resources, land, information, and
ideologies. To one degree or another, all
nations are affected by the phenomenon
known as globalization. While it has benefitted many, its
underside fierce competition for
global energy reserves and emerging markets, tremendous disparities between rich
and poor nations, criminal networks that create
and feed black markets in
drugs and even human beings, and the rapid
transmission of disease all breed potential threats to our security." - United States
Intelligence Community (USIC)
"It is foolish to
imagine we can identify all
threats and eliminate them. It is arrogant
in the extreme to feel we can attack possible threats without certainty." - Tom
Wright
"Americans
suffer the inconvience of enhanced
security daily, and one
wonders if we are
truly any safer for it. I am
sure a determined terrorist could
easily circumvent the metal detectors and minimum-wage screeners. If one of the
goals of terrorists is to instill
fear, create chaos and cause us to change
our way of life, they
are succeeding mightily." - Ed
Colmen of Venice California on security at Staples Center
and Universal Amphitheater
"While
poor kids and middle-age National Guardsmen
leave their families and risk getting blown up
in Iraq to defend
freedom and democracy, back home the
George W. Bush administration proudly
trades away those principles and
ideals at every opportunity in exchange for
small, and probably imaginary, slivers of
increased security. In this sense, even while claiming to fight them 'over
there,' George W. Bush has already
surrendered large parts of America to the
terrorists. It seems the real debate
is not about how to balance
civil liberties and security but about what kind of
nation we want to be: a nation of principles or a nation of cowards."
- John
Miller
"The people of
America have been required to give up much in
the way of privacy and personal rights in the 'war on terror', but when
it comes to interfering in a business decision, our
government is quite willing to jeopardize
national security." - Thomas W. McCarthy, comment on allowing a United Arab
Emirate state of Dubai corporation
controlled by the foreign
government of Dubai to
operate six major American
ports.
"In
George W. Bush's America, the
terrorists have won.
They attack America to destroy our
values, our laws and
our Constitution,
and the
George W. Bush administration gives them
everything they want.
George W. Bush
believes that every
American is cowering in
fear.
That is not my
America!
America stands proud, defiant in the face of
the terrorists.
Americans stand proud behind our
Constitution and our laws,
because we
know that they make
America great.
The
revelation of illegal wiretaps is only just
another example of
abandoning
America's core values to give in to the
terrorists.
I want my
America back!" - Christopher
Johnson
"There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell
swoop, for the American people
cherish their
freedoms and would not tolerate such a loss if
they could perceive it. But
the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all
out frontal assault, but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping,
cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over
by reassurances of greater security."
- Senator Robert C. Byrd
"Our growing
national debt to China is a national security
issue. Countries such as
China that own our debt will soon not only be
making our toys, our clothes and our computers, they will be making our
foreign policy." -Nancy Pelosi
Seven
weeks after the September 11 attacks, Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey
introduced the Chemical
Security Act, a bill that would
require chemical plants to reduce
toxic
chemical inventories where practical
and switch to less toxic
chemicals when it was
economically feasible. In many cases a plant
manager could store a 30 day inventory of
toxic
chemicals rather than a full six
months' worth.
"Simple, sensible economic
reforms of that category could
save a lot of lives in a catastrophic event. The
industry does what it
desires or what it
thinks it can afford - and millions of
Americans are at risk." - Senator Jon
Corzine
The bill passed the Environment
and Public Works Committee in a 19-0 vote.
After the
George W. Bush administration crushed the
Chemical
Security Act, Senator Jon
Corzine stated, "There are currently no federal
security standards for
chemical facilities. None at
all."
Daniel Zwerdling asked, Al Martinez-Fonts, Tom
Ridge's top aide on March 21, 2003, about
reluctance to mandate security
reforms in the chemical
industry, Al Martinez-Fonts said "In a
time of war the administration
is reluctant to interfere with business decisions by the
private sector."
"I was in the private sector all my
life," explained Al Martinez-Fonts. "In general,
we don't like to be told what to do. People are
concerned that a lot of regulation,
a lot of legislation might be the ultimate result!
We are trying to avoid that. I would prefer to avoid that
altogether!"
When asked whether it doesn't make
sense for the federal
government to also require
security upgrades by the
chemical
industry, Al Martinez-Fonts replied:
"September 11 happened, airplanes
rammed into buildings! Chemical
plants were not blown up!"
In July 2003, the Conference Board, a
business research group, found
that American
corporations have increased
security expenditures less than
4 percent on average since the September 11 attacks.
Terrorism
expert Rand Beers resigned in March
2003 after providing counter terrorism advice to every
president begining with Ronald Reagan, "Of course, there's no such
thing as a perfect defense, but we are remiss if we do not try to protect
our citizens. We
know for sure, from of
terrorists, that
security measures have
value, they discourage attacks. So, the
idea that we
should leave the barn door open is a dereliction of
duty."
"I do
not want to you.
No,
wait.
I do want to
you.
"You and your loved ones are in of dying horrible,
gruesome deaths at the hands of a terrorist
chemical attack,
and the
government has refused to
do anything about it.
The prospect of a
chemical attack, of course, has been
a favorite weapon of fear mongers for years. George W. Bush has insisted that, after
9/11, we could no longer ignore the potential threat of
Iraq's
weapons of mass
destruction and who should know better - after all we still have the
receipts.
George W. Bush
thought it would strike fear into our hearts
to emphasize weapons Iraq was
known to have, namely
chemical weapons. The notion that
chemical weapons pose any threat to
us is farfetched. Mustard gas is effective in trench
warfare, not in cross-hemisphere attacks.
Even if terrorists smuggled
chemical weapons into the country,
the casualties would be fairly minor. The only way to kill a number of people with
chemicals is to concentrate the
chemicals in huge quantities near a
big city.
In fact,
this country has lots of weapons like that.
They're called
chemical plants.
Attacking
one with a truck bomb, or a small plane, would disperse far more
toxins than any
chemical weapons attack. The
Congressional Research Service has found that we have 100
chemical plants that, if struck,
would each endanger more than 1 million lives.
Indeed, U.S. intelligence has
discovered that
al-Qa`ida has studied the
possibilities." - Jonathan Chait, 03-26-06
"The
possession of power over others
in inherently destructive both to the possessor of the
power and to those over whom it is
exercised."
-George Herron"Sometimes I
wonder if we,
Americans, can couch any
issue except in terms of
war. Americans have had the
war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism and, most recently, the
cultural war, which pits us against
ourselves. One Civil War was enough.
It is time that we
realized that 'war' is not the solution to any of the problems
Americans seek to redress." -Richard E. Norred
"It's impossible to inoculate a child
completely from the horrors of militarism and its misguided
ideals of
honor, its putative
duty to kill others and to
be killed in the name of American
chauvinism,
American nostalgia or
American
corporate hegemony. A child must
be taught to answer the bullies and
sadists who have somehow coerced, shamed, flattered and
lied us into believing patriotic
service means on behalf of state
power.
Speaking
Truth to power, the Quakers call it."
-Andrew
Tonkovich
"The
heart of America's problems rest with a
corporate dominated public
policy of perpetual
military and class
warfare. This has generated a gross and
growing unequal distribution of wealth and
power, growing indebtedness at all levels of
government, a regressive
tax system,
suffering caused by cuts in
funding and denial of vital public
services. Add the deaths and
wounding of thousands of
America's soldiers and more than 100,000
Iraqi
civilians. The tragic
reality is a hell on Earth
of suffering, hatred and violence even in history's richest, most technologically advanced nation, leading
to weapons of mass
destruction and suicide of
humanity. Unless
Americans stop dodging the
connection among local, domestic and
global crises and our public policy
of perpetual warfare treated as an unavoidable
necessity, there is no hope for
America." - Nicholas
Seidita
They
create fear
as a way to get information from prisoners, they create fear in
the general population of
Iraq, and they
create fear
here in America as a way to scare
Americans into looking the
other way and letting them ignore the
rules by which a
civilized nation conducts itself. If
torture of a
human being can be ignored, then
I want no part of it. Let's bring
our soldiers home. I am
tired of hearing that they are 'fighting for Americans freedom.' What
category of
freedom is this?"
-Ellen Ferguson Schenk
"When
Americans
understand that
Iraqis are not the 'other' and know in our
hearts that they too are
our sons,
daughters, brothers and sisters; when we
consider it our sacred duty
to shed tears for all victims of
violence; when Americans embrace strangers and strive to
feel connected to the Earth; when Americans are humbled by the inherent dignity of
all humans - fathers and sons
will have learned the lessons of
war." - Paul Nicoll
"America has used
force abroad more than
, it has declared war
only five times: the War of 1812, the Mexican-American and Spanish-American
Wars, and World Wars I and II." - John Yoo, University of California law
professor
Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New
Century
September 2000
"The United States is the world's only superpower,
combining preeminent military
power, global
technological
leadership, and the world's largest economy.
Preserving the desirable strategic
situation in which the United States now finds
itself requires a both
today and in the
future. The
expected in over
the next decade, however, removes any need to hold defense spending to some
preconceived low level. This report proceeds from the
belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its
position of global leadership by maintaining the preeminence of
U.S. military forces."
[To do
so America must:]
basing the U.S.
nuclear deterrent upon a
global, nuclear net assessment that weighs
the full range of current and emerging threats, not merely the U.S. - Russia
balance.
RESTORE THE PERSONNEL STRENGTH
of today's
force to roughly the levels anticipated in the "Base Force" outlined by the
Bush Administration [#1], an increase in active-duty strength from 1.4 million
to 1.6 million.
to respond to 21st century strategic realities by shifting permanently based forces to
Southeast Europe and Southeast Asia, and by changing naval deployment
patterns to reflect growing U.S.
strategic concerns in East
Asia.
MODERNIZE CURRENT U.S. FORCES
SELECTIVELY proceeding with the F-22 program while increasing
purchases of lift, electronic support and other aircraft; expanding submarine and
surface combatant fleets; purchasing Comanche helicopters and medium-weight
ground vehicles for the Army, and the V-22 Osprey "tilt-rotor" aircraft for the
Marine Corps.
(Really no need for small stuff like
body armor)
to
defend the American homeland and
American allies, and to provide a secure basis
for .
CONTROL THE NEW "INTERNATIONAL COMMONS"
OF
SPACE AND "CYBERSPACE,"
and pave the way for the creation of a
new military
service - - with the mission
of .
EXPLOIT THE "REVOLUTION IN
MILITARY AFFAIRS" to
insure the long-term superiority of U.S. conventional forces. Establish a
two-stage transformation process which
maximizes the value of current weapons
systems through the application of advanced
technologies, and, produces more
profound improvements in military
capabilities, encourages competition between single
services and joint-service
experimentation
efforts.
INCREASE DEFENSE SPENDING
gradually to a minimum level of 3.5 to 3.8 percent of gross domestic
product, adding $15
billion to $20
billion to total defense spending
annually.
This "Report of The Project for the New
American Century" goes on to say that "the process of
transformation, even if it brings
revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and
catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." perchance 911?
(YouTube: Donna Marsh O'Connor
Begs Media To Question 9/11)
Project for the New
American Century paticipants include:
William
Kristol - Chairman, William J. Bennett,
Dick Cheney,
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