The Defense of our Nation

December 14, 2009 By

In the defense of our nation, a pres­i­dent must be a clear-eyed real­ist. There are lim­its to the smiles and scowls of diplo­macy. Armies and mis­siles are not stopped by stiff notes of con­dem­na­tion. They are held in check by strength and pur­pose and the promise of swift punishment.

George W. Bush

Unfor­tu­nately, I don’t think our cur­rent pres­i­dent real­izes this.  He is nei­ther clear-eyed, nor a real­ist.  He con­tin­ues to use diplo­macy as though it’s the be-all, end-all of all argu­ments.  He wants to reduce our nuclear deter­rent, while other nations strive to increase theirs.  He wants to essen­tially cut our defense appro­pri­a­tions.  He is con­sis­tently weak­en­ing us, and he has obfus­cated our pur­pose as a nation — not only in for­eign pol­icy, but in domes­tic issues as well.

We The Peo­ple need to wake up and real­ize what is hap­pen­ing to our coun­try.  Every day we see the vit­riol and hatred increase, not only from the left, but from the fringes of the polit­i­cal right also.   And now it seems as though the fringe left and fringe right are turn­ing on them­selves as well.  What will it take for this coun­try to come together, as we did after 9/11?  Will it take another ter­ror­ist attack, or will it take some­thing worse (i.e., rev­o­lu­tion)?  I pray to God not.

I just con­tinue to see the moral decline of this coun­try, and it sad­dens me.  This is not the coun­try I remem­ber from my child­hood, and it’s cer­tainly not the one from Sep­tem­ber 2001.  We were united.  We all suf­fered — even those of us who didn’t have any imme­di­ate fam­ily or friends to die in the ter­ri­ble attacks of that day.  I saw a patri­o­tism and a love for God and coun­try like I had never seen before.  What happened?

If things do not improve soon, I truly see a rev­o­lu­tion or civil out­burst hap­pen­ing soon — cer­tainly not as wide­spread and dev­as­tat­ing as our Civil War, but still dra­matic in its own right.  We’ve already seen what hap­pens when peo­ple are upset with tuition increases.  What do you think will hap­pen when the peo­ple of this coun­try finally get tired of the con­tin­u­ous “tax and spend” com­ing from Wash­ing­ton?  I fore­see it being far, far worse.

Filed Under: 9/11, Politics Tagged With: , , , ,

Eric’s Word of the Day v 1.0: Obfuscate

November 19, 2009 By

I used to include a word of the day on my old blog, but it kind of fell by the way­side.  I have decided to start it back up; but this time, it will be polit­i­cally– and current-event-oriented.   And coin­ci­den­tally, Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day fits right in with what I was thinking.

Obfus­cate \OB-fuh-skayt\ , tran­si­tive verb;

  1. To darken or ren­der indis­tinct or dim.
  2. To make obscure or dif­fi­cult to under­stand or make sense of.

  3. To con­fuse or bewilder.

Eric Holder, Dear Leader O-bow-ma’s illus­tri­ous Attor­ney Gen­eral, has man­aged to define this word recently using all three def­i­n­i­tions.  I’ll give you some examples:

1.  Holder obfus­cated the future of the War on Ter­ror by allow­ing the 9/11 mas­ter­mind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his cohorts to have a “fair trial” in civil­ian courts, even though Holder admit­ted we’re at war and these guys were caught on a bat­tle­field in a for­eign coun­try by our troops.

2.  Holder man­aged to obfus­cate his deci­sion by giv­ing dodgy answers in the Con­gres­sional hear­ing yesterday.

When he was asked what would hap­pen if the ter­ror­ists were acquit­ted, he replied:  “Fail­ure is not an option.  These are cases that have to be won.  I don’t expect we’ll have a con­trary result.”   Wait…what??  I thought the whole rea­son for our court sys­tem — a civil­ian jus­tice sys­tem — was to pro­vide those on trial with a fair one, where they are inno­cent until proven guilty?!  And yet both he and Dear Leader Obama have already given the ver­dict of guilty to these ter­ror­ists even before the trial has started!  If that is the case, then these guys can never receive a fair trial in a civil­ian court — which leaves only one con­clu­sion:  This will be a show trial (i.e. cir­cus) in which our inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods, the CIA, and our national secu­rity will be judged and not these ter­ror­ists.  This will directly result in a weaker national defense, and we’ll be less safe than we were before 9/11, if we’re not already.

3.  And with his deci­sion, Holder has man­aged to obfus­cate the pub­lic and no doubt the fam­i­lies of all the 9/11 vic­tims.  All we can ask is, “Why?”

Filed Under: 9/11, Politics, Terrorism Tagged With: , ,

Why Did We Forget?

November 9, 2009 By

Today is Novem­ber 9, 2009.  I’m sit­ting here try­ing to fig­ure out how our coun­try has got­ten to this point.  The tragedies on Thurs­day at Fort Hood, Texas, should remind all Amer­i­cans what we’re up against.

There are peo­ple out there that want all of us dead.  Make no mis­take about it.  Let me just refresh your memory:

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Filed Under: 9/11, Terrorism

Flashback: September 10, 2001

September 10, 2009 By

Here’s a few tid­bits to remind every­one what we were all think­ing about on the day before the worst ter­ror­ist attack against the United States.

Michael Jordan’s pend­ing return to pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball is per­haps the hottest news story in Amer­ica on Sep­tem­ber 10.

XM Radio read­ies 100 chan­nels for debut.

Barry Bonds hits three home­runs, mak­ing it 63 — just seven shy of Mark McGwire.

Michael Jackson’s Fri­day Night per­for­mance at Madi­son Square Gar­den was the buzz.

Israel suf­fers its first sui­cide bomb­ing by an Arab citizen.

Pres­i­dent Bush makes his fourth Florida visit in eight months to dis­cuss literacy.

Iran denies US charges that it is seek­ing to develop a nuclear arse­nal, point­ing out that Iran itself was a vic­tim of weapons of mass destruc­tion dur­ing the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

A con­fer­ence of deputy Cab­i­net sec­re­taries agrees on a three-step strat­egy to force the Tal­iban to deport bin Laden. The plan is expected to take up to three years.

The Con­gres­sional Research Ser­vice releases the report ‘Ter­ror­ism: Near East­ern Groups and State Spon­sors.’  The paper describes al-Qaeda as a “global threat” and rates its ter­ror­ist activ­ity level as ‘Extremely High,’ the high­est of any ter­ror­ist group on the list.

John O’Neill enjoys an evening at Elaine’s Restau­rant in New York City.  For­merly the FBI’s lead­ing coun­tert­er­ror­ism expert, O’Neill was recently forced out by bureau­cratic infight­ing, and began his new job as head of secu­rity for the World Trade Cen­ter on August 23.  At Elaine’s he dis­cusses the pos­si­bil­ity of a ter­ror­ist attack: “We’re due. And we’re due for some­thing big. Some things have hap­pened in Afghanistan (evi­dently refer­ring to the al-Qaeda assas­si­na­tion of Mas­soud the day before).  I don’t like the way things are lin­ing up in Afghanistan… I just — I sense a shift, and I think things are going to hap­pen.” When asked when, he says, “I don’t know, but soon.”  Next morn­ing, O’Neill is in the South Tower when it collapses.

Addi­tional  Source:  http://cnparm.home.texas.net/911/Backg/Backg4b.htm

Filed Under: 9/11 Tagged With: , ,

Never Forget — A Hero’s Profile: Welles Crowther

September 1, 2009 By
gallery.welles.headshot

Sep­tem­ber 1, 2009.  We’re ten days from the eighth “anniver­sary” (I hate using that word) of 9/11.  I don’t know why, but lately I’ve been fix­ated by some of the accounts and lives of some of the vic­tims from that awful, awful day.  So I fig­ured that I’d do some­thing to remind every­one of what hap­pened that day, and why we should never become blasé about what happened.

I recently dis­cov­ered a link to the evi­dence from the trial of ter­ror­ist Zacarias Mous­saoui.  I urge you to visit the site.  Click on every link.  Look at every pic­ture, and lis­ten to every audio file — espe­cially if you’re one of those kook “con­spir­acy the­o­rists” who believe our gov­ern­ment was behind the attack.  I must warn you — it’s grue­some.  It’s hor­ri­ble.  But I believe that those of us who were not directly affected by the tragedy that hap­pened eight years ago need to see this.  We as a coun­try need to make it fresh in our minds again and real­ize that there are those out there who are hell-bent on our destruc­tion as a nation and as a way of life.  And guess what?  They’re win­ning. 

If you don’t believe that, you haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion.  Look at the politi­cians and what they’re doing.  They keep try­ing to drive that wedge between the peo­ple of this coun­try.  The cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion is oper­at­ing from a pre-September 11 atti­tude that ter­ror­ism is not an act of war, but a “law enforce­ment” issue.  I’m sorry, but that’s just not the case.  These fanat­ics will stop at noth­ing to kill inno­cents.  They don’t care about polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, diplo­macy, or the Geneva Con­ven­tion.  Just ask the fam­ily of Daniel Pearl.  Just ask the fam­i­lies of all the peo­ple on the planes that were crashed into the World Trade Cen­ter, the Pen­ta­gon, and the field in Shanksville, Penn­syl­va­nia.  The only thing they care about is the mur­der of “infi­dels”.  It is a war.  It’s a war of ide­olo­gies and beliefs — between Sharia law and the law that every­one is born free and deserves free­dom.  But for now, enough of politics.

Let’s take a look at the real heroes of 9/11.

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Filed Under: 9/11 Tagged With: , ,

How will we win?

August 3, 2009 By
twin towers

twin towersLast night I was going through the numer­ous DVDs that I own.  I came across the CNN Spe­cial DVD, “CNN Trib­ute:  Amer­ica Remem­bers — The Events of Sep­tem­ber 11 and America’s Response”.  So I decided to pop it in and watch it.  As hor­ri­fy­ing as it was on the day it hap­pened, and as hor­ri­fy­ing it was to relive that day by watch­ing the DVD, I think it was impor­tant to do.  And I think every Amer­i­can should watch this over and over just so they can remem­ber what the “zealot ter­ror­ist thugs” did to us — and what we as a Nation vowed to do to them.

The DVD has Pres­i­dent Bush’s “State of the Union” address from Sep­tem­ber 20, 2001 also.  I watched the speech and imme­di­ately received chill­bumps and a lump in my throat.  It was a pow­er­ful speech, and it was from his heart.  It was what every Amer­i­can across the nation was say­ing in their heart.  It was what we wanted our Pres­i­dent to say.  Now where are we as a Nation almost eight years later?  Amer­ica — what have we done to our­selves?  What hap­pened to our vow to “Never For­get”?  What hap­pened to our promise to do what­ever it takes to defeat terrorism? 

Unfor­tu­nately it wasn’t but a few months after that fate­ful day that we as a Nation dis­solved into par­ti­san pol­i­tics, rhetoric, and hatred.  Every Demo­c­rat decided to hate Bush sim­ply because we didn’t fin­ish the War or Ter­ror in four days like we did the Gulf War in 1991.  Nutjobs climbed out of their hid­ing holes to say that 9/11 was an “inside job”.  They began say­ing that (as in the case of one Rosie O’Donnell) that the Twin Tow­ers fell because of a “con­trolled demo­li­tion” by the Bush Administration…that steel couldn’t melt.  Well, I chal­lenge them to go and watch this DVD and see if they could say that after­wards with hon­esty.  (Of course they can’t — they don’t have an hon­est bone in their body).  America — I beg you to remem­ber this:

Amer­i­cans are ask­ing: How will we fight and win this war?

We will direct every resource at our com­mand — every means of diplo­macy, every tool of intel­li­gence, every instru­ment of law enforce­ment, every finan­cial influ­ence, and every nec­es­sary weapon of war — to the dis­rup­tion and defeat of the global ter­ror network.

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with its deci­sive lib­er­a­tion of ter­ri­tory and its swift con­clu­sion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a sin­gle Amer­i­can was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retal­i­a­tion and iso­lated strikes.  Amer­i­cans should not expect one bat­tle, but a lengthy cam­paign, unlike any other we have seen. It may include dra­matic strikes, vis­i­ble on tele­vi­sion, and covert oper­a­tions, secret even in suc­cess. We will starve ter­ror­ists of fund­ing, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or rest. And we will pur­sue nations that pro­vide aid or safe haven to ter­ror­ism. Every nation, in every region, now has a deci­sion to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the ter­ror­ists. From this day for­ward, any nation that con­tin­ues to har­bor or sup­port ter­ror­ism will be regarded by the United States as a hos­tile régime.

Go read the rest of the speech.  Try to remem­ber what it felt like on that day.  Then try and look at our cur­rent Pres­i­dent and Gov­ern­ment and ask your­self:  Is this what Amer­ica needs right now?  Is this the lead­er­ship we deserve?  How can we fight and win this war with this government?

Then I ask you to do this…pray for our Coun­try.  Pray for our troops.  And yes, pray — pray for our cur­rent lead­er­ship.  Pray that they will turn from their cur­rent path and back to a Post-9/11 men­tal­ity and approach to defeat­ing ter­ror­ism and keep­ing Amer­ica safe.  Pray that they will stop spend­ing our money and putting us on a road to social­ism.  Pray that they will real­ize that what we need right now is a fis­cally and socially con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment, one that has the peo­ple at the heart…Not big­ger gov­ern­ment, but smaller.

In all that lies before us, may God grant us wis­dom, and may He watch over the United States of America.

Filed Under: 9/11, Politics Tagged With: , , ,

Photo-op Frightens New Yorkers

April 28, 2009 By
Air Force One over Ground Zero

This has got to be one of the biggest bone-headed moves ever by a Pres­i­den­tial nomination:

Just before the work­day began on Mon­day, an air­liner and super­sonic fighter jet zoomed past the lower Man­hat­tan sky­line. Within min­utes, star­tled finan­cial work­ers streamed out of their offices, fear­ing a night­mar­ish replay of Sept. 11.

For a half-hour, the Boe­ing 747 and F-16 jet cir­cled the Statue of Lib­erty and the Finan­cial Dis­trict near the World Trade Cen­ter site. Offices evac­u­ated. Dis­patch­ers were inun­dated with calls. Wit­nesses thought the planes were fly­ing dan­ger­ously low.

Air Force One over Ground Zero

Air Force One over Ground Zero

What in the world was White House mil­i­tary office direc­tor Louis Caldera think­ing??  Did they not real­ize that a 747 — fly­ing very low over the city being chased by an air force jet — would scare the liv­ing day­lights out of peo­ple?  Did they not real­ize that peo­ple who suf­fered through the largest tragedy our nation has ever seen could go into shellshock?

Also, appar­ently even the Dear Leader didn’t even know that it was going to hap­pen.   Accord­ing to the arti­cle, Obama was “furi­ous” when he learned of the fly-by.  I don’t know which is worse — him not know­ing some­thing his own admin­is­tra­tion was doing or know­ing about it and approv­ing it.  I agree with floor trader John Leit­ner — heads should roll.  I had been under the impres­sion that Ground Zero was now a no-fly zone.  Heck, I thought all national land­marks were no-fly zones…Apparently not to Caldera. 

This on top of other things that have been hap­pen­ing in the past 98 days just con­firms that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is one of the most inept admin­is­tra­tions in the his­tory of our country.

Source:  The Asso­ci­ated Press

Filed Under: 9/11 Tagged With: , ,

9/11 — May We Never Forget

September 11, 2008 By
The World Trade Center as it used to be.
The World Trade Center as it used to be.

The World Trade Cen­ter as it used to be.

I think in the past few years, most Amer­i­cans have for­got­ten what hap­pened to this Coun­try and our Coun­try­men on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001.  I — for one — have not.  I never will.  I’ll never for­get the feel­ing of being told, “A plane just flew into the World Trade Cen­ter!”  At first, I thought they were telling a bad joke…Then I real­ized they were seri­ous.  I imme­di­ately thought, as prob­a­bly most Amer­i­cans did, that it was just an acci­dent.  But when some­one in our office yelled, “Another plane just flew into the Trade Cen­ter!”  I — prob­a­bly like you did — real­ized it was a hor­ri­ble attack on our country.

I tried my best to work, to get my mind off of what happened…You see, I had just started in June at the com­pany I was work­ing for.  I wanted to show every­one that I was a hard worker, that I could do my job with­out being dis­tracted by idle con­ver­sa­tion.  But when some­one told me they had the TV in an adja­cent office on, I ran to it.  I had to see for my own eyes what was happening.

Big mis­take.  About 15 of us stood in that office and watched both of the Twin Tow­ers fall.  It was hor­rific.  I was think­ing, “This is just a bad, bad movie…It’s not real.  It can’t be real…”  But it was…way too real.

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Filed Under: 9/11, Patriot Day, Terrorism Tagged With: , , , , , ,