|
This first poem, (I Know...), was written almost
immediately after the death of my Grandfather. I was house sitting. That was one of my jobs in high school.
I had found out that he had died, yet had to return to the house, alone. It was there that I wrote, 'I Know...'. We
were very close to one another and this poem, written in a severe depression, is like many of my future writings in that through
the darkest gloom I manage to show the slightest glimmer of hope at the end. Also, this poem showed my belief in an afterlife,
that I had not fully believed until my Grandfather passed away, and very soon after came to disbelieve again.
I Know...
It seems to me that you've never left me.
I am consoled by your memory.
I cry selfishly, not realizing that
your pain and
suffering are through.
I know you are happy now.
I know you are at peace.
I know you love me.
I know I love you, too.
I know it will be a lifetime
before I see you again.
I know you are my strength.
I know that you will help
me to persevere.
I know my pain will never deplete, only lessen.
I
know that you will wait for me.
I know that you will show me the way.
I know you will catch me when I fall
into the life you now lead.
I know I will see you again.
My First Editorial For The Times Record News
With all rhetoric aside, what
have we learned this week. George Bush ran for President as a self professed
outsider to Washington. I dont know if I would be proud of that moniker, knowing that my own father had been
a President, Vice-President, director of the CIA, ambassador to Beijing, permanent
U.S. representative to the U.N., a member of the U.S.
house of representatives and had actually served in the armed forces. And that
my grandfather had been a senator. Despite those ties to Washington,
it was a claim he made, and a lot of the voters fell for it. This is because it was fashionable in the late 1990s to assign
the same venom to "them Washington types" that we once held in reserve for "them
Commie reds". The intelligence gaffe, the unwillingness to utilize any diplomacy,
the laughable, (if you can keep from crying), relaxations on environmental policies, the assault on the bill of rights perpetrated
by an ingeniously named USA Patriot Act, and a tax scheme with ramifications we wont fully realize until he is not elected,
again. I guess we have learned that
maybe it is O.K. to be one of "them Washington types". I may not like the fact that my mechanic is going to charge me $900 to fix my A/C in my car, but Im sure
as hell not going to ask my dry cleaner to give it a shot.
So, what about the slip up in intelligence? direct
translation: LIE Well, at least I hope it is a lie. Not for the politicization of the matter, but so that I might retain some confidence in an intelligence
community that could let September 11th happen. If the President didnt
lie, then we are at square one. We have intelligence agencies that have none. However, if he lied, as all evidence is suggesting, then perhaps they are capable
of learning from past mistakes and they were working to keep us safe. If he lied,
he has led us, unnecessarily, into a war and subsequent period of rebuilding that has destabilized the region and put the
sons and daughters of our nation in harms way. If he lied, then there are 150+
U.S. soldiers and countless Iraqi citizens lives on his head. If he lied, he is guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.
"But what evidence is suggesting he lied", Im
sure you are asking, right? Well, the lap dog journalistic community has decided
it doesnt like the bones being handed it by this administration. They are, for
the first time since September 11th, doing their jobs. Political speeches
are being taken apart word by word. Though Bushs' handlers are stating that the
uranium quote was a single component in our rush to war, we now know that the U.N. Inspections teams and the IAEA led by Hans
Blix and Dr. Mohamed El Baradai, respectively, effectively debunked all of our other components, prior to our attack. On Wednesday of this past week, the FBI made public an investigation into this matter. With any luck, well soon be able to ask Bush where his buck stops.
My Jose Padilla Rant
Ok...the following is a presentation that I am actually giving tomorrow morning in my Poli Sci Class. If this doesn't
anger you and frighten you at the same time, nothing will. Well here goes.
(oh, and I wrote it as though I would be speaking, so that is the reason for the very relaxed opening)
Good Morning. How is everyone, today? I don't have too much time, so I'd like to begin my presentation with
a little pop quiz. It's true/false. If you believe any of the questions that I ask to be false, I want you to
raise your hand. Ok? Here goes.
1) There are currently 52 states in our union.
2) George W. Bush is our 49th President.
3) As a United States citizen, you can be taken into custody without evidence of a crime being committed, held
for an indefinite period of time, denied access to a lawyer, court or any other legal recourse.
Jose Padilla would beg to differ with you. Well, he would if he could have contact with you, or his lawyer, or
a judge, or his mother. See, on 8 May 2002, Jose Padilla was taken into custody at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport,
upon his return from Pakistan. Jose Padilla, of Puerto Rican descent, was born in New York and was raised in Chicago,
Illinois. His native birth, then, obviously affords him his U.S. citizenship and all the rights and liberties
inherent in that citizenship. Some of you might recall the very public announcements of his apprehension, (more than
a month after the fact) by the members of the Bush administration. Jose Padilla might better be known to you as the
'dirty bomb' suspect.
At an early age, Padilla became involved in a youth gang and at 14 was involved in the robbery and, indirectly, fatal
stabbing of a man. He spent the next four years in a juvenile detention facility. Upon moving to South Florida,
he was involved in a few other altercations, most serious being the discharge of a gun in a road rage incident.
Again, he was to spend time in a correctional facility. So, it would be fair to say that I am not painting Jose Padilla
as a saint, by any means. Should that allow President Bush and John Ashcroft and Donald Rumsfeld, or anyone, for that
matter, to suspend his civil liberties indefinitely, if at all? This nation was built upon the fundamentals of due process
and the ideology that no branch of government could act without the supervision of any other. These methods were put
in place to protect against tyranny and to avoid the dissolution of the government into a dictatorship or a fascist state.
Initially, Jose Padilla was represented by court appointed attorney, Donna R. Newman, esq. She was enroute to court
on 11 June 2002, when she learned that her client had been taken, by the military, from civil custody at 12:00am. Had
she learned this, as millions of Americans had when Attorney General John Aschroft broke into morning television with a stern
and harried news conference from Moscow, Russia, detailing how her client was now an 'enemy combatant'? Or
had she received a legal brief and a writ of transfer for her client? In fact, she was contacted on her cell phone by
an Assistant United States Attorney who informed her that she was no longer counsel for Mr. Padilla, because, as an 'enemy
combatant', Padilla was no longer afforded that right.
Ms. Newman refused to accept this. Thanks wholly to her zeal and tenacity, what has transpired in the over 8 months
since is the filing of motions and briefs in courts that aren't even sure of their jurisdiction in the matter, in her attempt
to meet with her client.
The government, (i.e. George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Cmdr. M. A. Marr - Warden of the Consolidated Naval Brig, Charleston,
SC) contends that should Ms. Newman be allowed to meet with her client, it will undermine the DIA's (Defense Intelligence
Agency) interrogation of Mr. Padilla, according to a declaration filed by Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the DIA.
*It was noticed by more than a few people that Padilla's reclassification to 'enemy combatant', occured on the
very same day that Colleen Rowley was to testify before congress about the lack of competence in the FBI that caused them
to miss the clues that pointed to the events of September 11. Colleen Rowley was the Minnesota agent that actually wrote
a report stating that perhaps the observation of flight schools would be necessary, as there was much activity occuring nationwide.
Her report was suppressed by superiors. So, the irony was too much for some that every press conference regarding Padilla
stressed the sharing of communication between the different intelligence agencies. The flurry of activity by the Bush
administration managed to push Colleen Rowley and her testimony off of the front page. Donna Newman has stated that
the reason the government has tucked him away, then, is not because of the overwhelming amount of evidence against her client,
but rather the opposite. Perhaps he served his purpose that June morning and the government no longer needed him.
It was time to make him disappear rather than put egg onto their own face.* (this section added 3 February)
According to Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, Washington,
D.C., "With the detention of Jose Padilla, the Bush administration has made an extraordinary assertion of power. It
is sweeping and unnerving." He goes on to say, also, that, "Civil Libertarians are justifiably alarmed at such an ominous
shadow over the constitutional rights of all Americans." His article examined the suspension of certain civil liberties
in past wars. While that, in and of itself, is alarming and tragic, (eg the internment of Japanese and German U.S. citizens
in WWII), it is moreso for this current conflict because, unlike previous wars, there is absolutely no way for a war on terrorism
to ever be declared complete and victorious. For that reason, whichever constitutional rights are taken away from us,
or we choose to relinquish, will not be restored in a few years. In all likelihood, they will be gone forever.
Mr. Carpenter concludes, "We therefore need to ask whether we want to give not only the current president, but also his unknown
successors in the decades to come, the awesome power that President Bush has claimed. It is chilling to realize that
the president is insisting that all he must do is invoke the magical incantation, 'enemy combatant', and an
American citizen can be stripped of his most fundamental constitutional rights without any meaningful scrutiny by the judicial
branch. A place where that is possible is not an America we have known. It is not an America we should want to
know."
Jose Padilla, a United States citizen, has been in the custody of the United States military, without charges having
been brought against him, for 272 days. (as of 4 February 2003)
Hitt, Jack. 2003. "Act One: Until the End of the War." 10 January. WBEZ-Chicago (Public Radio
International)
Ripley, Amanda. 2002. "The Case of the Dirty Bomber." 16 June. TIME.
|
