> Homeland Security To Confiscate Bank Safe Deposit Box Contents
27 March 2006, 03:38
Hi:
I am one of those "liberals" and I am proud to say that I still am. I am a retired army master sergeant who served for 31 years reserve and active army combined starting in the Vietnam war. Remember that war where 56,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese lost there lives and hundreds of thousands more were maimed. I was on a medivac . I picked up wounded soldiers, some without arms or legs. I lost friends and I learned that politicians and presidents have no monopoly on either brains or good public policy. I have lived through several wars as a US soldier ready to go anywhere in the world on a moments notice. I have been in deserts, jungles and in fridgid cold with a rifle in my hands and a prayer than no other president would be a dumb as Lyndon Johnson. Then along came George Bush. Now we have Americans turning on IRAQ and Americans turning on Americans and everyone it seems is afraid of encroachments on our constitution and our freedoms, and they should be. I am one of those "liberals" who swore to uphold the very constitution Goerge Bush is dismantling. Invasion on privacy with secret spying on Americans, loss of due process with the Patriot Act whom, with a "memorandum of understanding" issued immediately after Bush signed the renewed act into law stated the president was not obliged to report seizure of property or private information if he alone determined that national security interests were at stake or that it would interfere in any way with the conduct of his job as president. The memorandum went on to state more loopholes so that the president could ignore the new safeguards in the revised law including congressional oversite.
Many of us have seen tyrrany and suffering in other countries - even our own during the civil rights movement at least on TV. Do we want our great nation to descend to the level where our citizens have no rights or protections? Do we want to be an El Salvador or former Yugoslavic state where people disappeared in the night, raped and tortured? I agree with Ben Franklin who stated that he who exchanges freedom for security deserves neither.
So before you get up on your pedestal next time answer this: How would you like to be the man on the medivac in Iraq today picking up the pieces? What would you tell the screeming soldier with no intact arms or legs about why he or she is in Iraq? WPM? Terrorist link? Or the old stand by: "We’re going to give them democracy even if it has to be at the point of a gun mentality"? Recall that all world democracies were born from a movement within. All that had been attempted with force failed.
Whatever your answer ask yourself this: Who will pay for the care of tens of thousands of disabled veterans like me when they return home? You? Taxpayers? George Bush?
So I’ll get off my soap box now, but I still can’t forget the dead, the wounded, the sceaming. My heart goes out to the families shipped home dead or in less than one piece.
Hi:
I am one of those "liberals" and I am proud to say that I still am. I am a retired army master sergeant who served for 31 years reserve and active army combined starting in the Vietnam war. Remember that war where 56,000 Americans and over a million Vietnamese lost there lives and hundreds of thousands more were maimed. I was on a medivac . I picked up wounded soldiers, some without arms or legs. I lost friends and I learned that politicians and presidents have no monopoly on either brains or good public policy. I have lived through several wars as a US soldier ready to go anywhere in the world on a moments notice. I have been in deserts, jungles and in fridgid cold with a rifle in my hands and a prayer than no other president would be a dumb as Lyndon Johnson. Then along came George Bush. Now we have Americans turning on IRAQ and Americans turning on Americans and everyone it seems is afraid of encroachments on our constitution and our freedoms, and they should be. I am one of those "liberals" who swore to uphold the very constitution Goerge Bush is dismantling. Invasion on privacy with secret spying on Americans, loss of due process with the Patriot Act whom, with a "memorandum of understanding" issued immediately after Bush signed the renewed act into law stated the president was not obliged to report seizure of property or private information if he alone determined that national security interests were at stake or that it would interfere in any way with the conduct of his job as president. The memorandum went on to state more loopholes so that the president could ignore the new safeguards in the revised law including congressional oversite.
Many of us have seen tyrrany and suffering in other countries - even our own during the civil rights movement at least on TV. Do we want our great nation to descend to the level where our citizens have no rights or protections? Do we want to be an El Salvador or former Yugoslavic state where people disappeared in the night, raped and tortured? I agree with Ben Franklin who stated that he who exchanges freedom for security deserves neither.
So before you get up on your pedestal next time answer this: How would you like to be the man on the medivac in Iraq today picking up the pieces? What would you tell the screeming soldier with no intact arms or legs about why he or she is in Iraq? WPM? Terrorist link? Or the old stand by: "We’re going to give them democracy even if it has to be at the point of a gun mentality"? Recall that all world democracies were born from a movement within. All that had been attempted with force failed.
Whatever your answer ask yourself this: Who will pay for the care of tens of thousands of disabled veterans like me when they return home? You? Taxpayers? George Bush?
So I’ll get off my soap box now, but I still can’t forget the dead, the wounded, the sceaming. My heart goes out to the families shipped home dead or in less than one piece.
SDW