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Only In America
By Al
Ruechel
Gotta love this country. It's the
only nation to ever exist that can get itself kicked right between
the legs by terrorist then turn around criticize the military for
not treating the suicidal assailants being held with more tender
loving care. Are we that forgiving or do we have some screws loose?
Maybe a little of both!
Let's review. Suicidal terrorists
trained under Osama Bin Ladin lived in the United States, some
legally some illegally for at least two years or longer. Their
entire purpose for living was to inflect a deadly blowing against
America, taking out, KILLING, as many Americans as they could along
the way, in the name of Allah! They succeeded in ending the lives of
over 3-thousand innocent people in the most horrific and graphic
fashion since Pearl Harbor. Thousands of people were crushed or
burned to death or propelled into the soil at over 300 miles per
hour. Their last few moments of life were filled with unimaginable
pain both physically and emotionally. Some of the firefighters
killed at the World Trade Center may have lived for as long as seven
to eight hours buried beneath rubble, in small air pockets, waiting
for their lungs to collapse or choking to death on their own vomit.
Some were subjected to heat so intense it literally peeled their
flesh from their bodies while they were still alive. Some choose to
leap over one thousand feet to their deaths. No one was there
looking after their civil rights. No one was asking them if they
felt uncomfortable or if the minded being cremated alive. No one
asked them if it was okay to fly their plane into the Pentagon. No
one asked the flight attendants if they felt a little uncomfortable
having their throats slit with box cutters. Remember these images
and don't forget what happened on September 11th.
I bring this up because like many
Americans I find myself greatly disturbed at all the fuss being
raised over the detainees being held at the Guantanamo Naval Base in
Cuba. And now, Ramsey Clark, a former attorney general and avowed
civil rights activist is suing the military asking a Los Angeles
judge to demand the detainees be treated in a more humane fashion.
Since when does a LA judge have jurisdiction over the United States
military?
Yes, I saw the pictures of the men
dressed in orange jump suits, some with masks over their heads,
shackled at the ankles and the wrists. They are kept in tiny wire
cells living on a cement slab covered from the elements with only a
tiny roof. Some of the detainees had to be dragged out of the plane
with soldiers under each arm, feet dragging on the ground in
defiance. In one picture it appeared that some of the soldiers were
screaming at the detainees trying to get them to obey their
commands. But is that torture? The military says "no". The
detainees are being feed, clothed, housed, given medical treatment,
exercised, and questioned about their activities. That's the rub.
Clark says the detainees shouldn't be required to say anything more
than their name, rank and serial number and should be allowed to be
represented by attorneys. The government says as detainees they are
not entitled to those privileges and the information they obtain
from these avowed suicidal nut cases could help prevent the lose of
other innocent lives. These are not Japanese-Americans being
illegally held during the Second World War. These are men captured
in Afghanistan in the act of terrorizing their own people and
fighting in the name of Western genocide.
Then there are the British. The media
claims in its headlines that the detainees are being abused and
there's a huge rift developing between the US and Prime Minister
Tony Blair. But on what facts do they make their claims? Of course
this is the same media that runs stories on Elvis sights and
Princess Diana conspiracy theories and the Pope fathering
illegitimate children with several nuns as if they were absolute
fact. The stories so angered Prime Minister Blair he sent a
representative to talk directly with three of those detainees being
held at a naval base in Cuba, who are also British citizens. None of
those detainees complained about anything unusual, according to
Blair. He says he stands by the US detainee policy 100 percent. Much
a do about nothing!
This is knee-jerk at it's worst. The
International Red Cross is on the scene at the camps and will issue
a full report. If some changes should be made they will be, says
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But if you think these Al-Quaeda
members and Taliban leaders should be put in some county jail and
treated like DUI defendants who check in on the weekends to walk the
area's roadway picking up trash you've got a screw lose. These are
men who have vowed to kill as many of their marine captors as
possible by sacrificing their own lives. These are men who believe
in order to achieve immortality they must destroy the Great Satan by
any means… period. For security reasons alone they must be treated
differently and are.
Come to think of it, here's a better
solution. Let's take Ramsey Clark and all the other ACLU lawyers and
civil rights activists and members of the British press who want
these detainees treated with kid gloves and put them on their own
little island with the detainees. We'll supply all the food and beds
and water and cable TV and evening movies and set up a bunch of
remote cameras so we can watch. It's not that I actually want to see
what would happen, but it would be nice to have a record for other
generations to watch and learn as these poor, ill-treated,
misunderstood, Al-Quaeda members doing what they do best; murder
innocent Americans and other westerners who are too soft for their
own good and have too quickly forgotten the horrors of September
11th.
Al Ruechel, copyright 2001, all
rights reserved
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