[kentuckyrosesinmay]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

I can't belive how badly they treated those two Americans. That was awful. You want to know what Jose Padilla did? He didn't do anything bad, he only was planning on detonating a "dirty bomb" in a major US city to try to kill a few-hundred thousand people. I can't believe they put him in jail for a few years. That's really harsh. This is a guy who is a member of Al Qaeda who went to a terrorist training-camp in Afghanistan to learn bomb-making so he could bomb a US city.

To answer your question, I have no problem with them holding Jose Padilla for 3 1/2 years. That's a lot better than he deserves. He should hae been put to death a long time ago.

That guy who wrote the article is an idiot. He said that everyone in government thinks that the reason that terrorists hate us is because of Israel. If he doesn't lose credibility with that statement, then I give up. He worked at the State Department. That is actually the mindset at the State Department. It's scary that they actually have some power and help make foreign policy. The State Department is completely incompetent and has been for many years. I'm glad that guy's article was published. It shows what the mindset is like over there.

With regard to the two women being strip-searched, I'm sure the author is telling us the whole story. Everyting else he said was so credible, I'm sure he's not trying to mislead us with a half-truth.

You are correct that you can't believe everything the government tells us. That author worked in the government and he is totally full of it. There actually is a lot of b.s. that comes from both parties. They will often only tell you one side of the story. With most of these things, you really do need to research things on your own or at least get both sides of the argument.

With regard to your question of whether I'm a 100% republican, the answer is no. I don't like either party. I disagree with both parties on many issues. In general, I think the republicans are the lesser of two evils.

With regard to protesting the war, you can protest all you want. Nothing will happen. There are protests all over the country. Nobody gets arrested as long as they obey the law.

Wow, so you do think that Americans like Jose Padilla should be stripped of their Constitutional rights! Well, I believe in doing the right thing. And I believe the right thing is the U.S. Constitution. It is supposed to be the supreme law of this land. We must stay within its boundaries.

Amendment Six

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very glad that they caught Jose Padilla before he was able to execute his evil plot (THANK GOD), but I just believe that he should have had a right to a trial as the U.S. Constitution states.

Also, to not be a Republican, you sure are very derogatory towards leftists.

Also, people are arrested all the time even if they do obey the laws. Just ask the guy on death row that they found to be innocent due to a DNA analysis two hours before his execution!!!

The author of the article was very biased. However, you only acknowledged his biases and opinions. You did not even bother to acknowledge the clear-cut facts that he presented which are known to be true. Therefore, I am going to point them out…

Fact (reworded)
“Five years after 9/11, it's clear that the Bush administration's costly War on Terror has failed on one count. It has undermined our civil liberties. The world has always been dangerous. The direct cost of the war in Iraq, according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economist, has already exceeded $1 trillion, including long-term veterans' care and similar costs. Along with the war has come enormous destruction and loss of life, and major damage to our international standing.”

Fact
“In the aftermath of 9/11, the administration succeeded in passing a version of an internal security law, called the USA Patriot Act. It permits secret arrests, sneak and peek searches, and obtaining bank, credit, library and Internet records, all without a warrant. The administration also instituted wiretaps and intercepts on millions of Americans' e-mail messages and phone calls without warrants, a program recently ruled unconstitutional by a federal court.”

Fact
“In 2005, Bush quietly created the National Clandestine Service, which authorizes the CIA to operate within the United States -- despite past abuses such as Operation Chaos -- and reinstituted domestic spying by the military through the Counter Intelligence Field Activity (CIFA), in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. He also created the National Security Service, putting elements of the FBI under his direct control, the closest we have had to a secret police agency in our 200-year history. The FBI now sends out 30,000 National Security Letters per year, demanding personal information without benefit of a warrant. It has imposed gag orders on every aspect of NSLs, making it illegal to reveal that one has been received.”

“Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show that the government conducted surveillance on as many as 150 peaceful protest or social groups, including Greenpeace, Catholic Workers, and Quakers in Florida. The Bush administration has used the threat of terrorism to silence peaceful protest at public events. It has happened all over the country, including to two women in Cedar Rapids who were handcuffed, led off to jail and strip-searched for "disrupting" a Bush rally.”
I’m sure that these are facts, but I would like more information about them. What kind of surveillance was the government conducting? In what other instances has the Bush administration used the threat of terrorism to silence peaceful protest at public events? Was this the only reason those two women were led off to jail? The article didn't actually say that the two women were arrested or charged. If they did get charged, common sense tells me that it was some BS charge that they were disturbing the peace which would have probably not held up in a court of law.

Fact
“than the arrest of two American citizens, Jose Padilla and Yasir Hamdi, who were held for 3½ years in solitary confinement with no charges, no court appearance and no lawyer. The Bush administration declared them "enemy combatants" -- Enemies of the State -- and threw them in prison indefinitely.”

Fact
“For more than a decade, they have advocated attacking Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and even Saudi Arabia. The principal reason they wanted to invade Iraq was to eliminate any clandestine weapons-of-mass-destruction program.”

Fact (reworded)
“Their next target is Iran. The pretext is Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.”

This may be a fact (I don’t know) (reworded)
“The terrorists hate us because of our blind support for Israel, not because they "hate our freedom."
I know that terrorists don’t hate us because of our freedom. A political scientist told me that they hate us because of our wealth and power which is why they attacked the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. The World Trade Center is a significant symbol of our wealth, and the Pentagon is a significant symbol of our power. I have no idea if they also hate us because of our blind support of Israel.

Fact
“Such a wider war would further inflame the Middle East and provoke an even greater terrorist threat in response, with higher costs than we can now imagine -- including domestic costs.”

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0911-32.htm

There may be some other facts in this article, but I don’t have enough knowledge in those areas to have a clear opinion about it.