Introduction: “Three Years in Hell”
Steve investigating a double murder
INTRODUCTION
During my three years serving with the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations in the Philippines we received imminent danger pay (IDP) for about half that time and nonessential military personnel and dependents were restricted to base and/or their houses for about half that time due to the terrorist threats from the New Peoples’ Army communist insurgents. As a United States citizen did you know that members of the United States military were at that level of threat and danger while serving in the Philippines in the late 1980s? No, you didn’t. It was an unadvertised war.
The period from June 1987 through August 1990 was simultaneously the best and worst time in my life. It was three years in hell that impacts my daily life to this very day in 2013. Not a single day goes by that I don’t wake up thinking about that time in the Philippines, people I served with and people who were needlessly murdered or go to bed at night without dreaming about those days and people. The fear and anger are still palpable.
Even as I try unsuccessfully to clean the memories from my mind and life something always seems to happen to resurrect them. In 2005 or 2006 I received a telephone call from an FBI agent who was trying to extradite a NPA terrorist responsible for killing American servicemen from the Philippines to the United States to put him on trial for murder, and I was the primary tactical counterintelligence collector in that case. The FBI agent wanted to know everything I knew and remembered from those days and where he could gain additional insight.
From time to time I receive emails from agents who served with me in the Philippines thanking me for this or that. Here is one recent example of those emails that I received just this year – 2013 (I removed the name and email address):
…continue reading “Introduction: “Three Years in Hell””
Is there an “Islamic Radicalization Serum?”
The post mortem assessment of the Chechen bombers in Boston is both amazing and embarrassing. Watching the Sunday morning talking head programs today makes me wonder three things; how long it will be until political correctness once again kills in America, is there some sort of radicalization serum or ray gun we don’t know about and why do we keep pushing immigration into America from highly volatile parts of the word where the more radical sects of Islam are predominant?
Listening to the various news programs this morning I heard such passive phrases as “self-radicalized,” “how he was radicalized” and the younger of the two Chechen terrorists may have been “brainwashed by his older brother,” and it all made me sick to my stomach. Using the passive voice when talking about terrorists being radicalized only serves to assuage them, and others, of their guilt by implying they were held down by someone and injected with some sort of radicalization serum and hit with a radicalization ray gun.” It passively lays the blame on whoever may have “radicalized” them. And it also sickens me to call the Boston Marathon bombing “homegrown terrorism.”
What about this scenario, a pre-planned sleeper cell? Just place yourself inside the mind of an enemy commander and envision, if you will, a scenario of how to get a few enemy terrorist cells into our country. Would you not try to get the most innocuous and seemingly benign people you could who could easily blend in and had plenty of time to build their cover stories and fold into the great melting pot? Of course you would.
Since the attacks on 9/11/01 many counterterrorism and counterintelligence analysts have worried about “sleeper cells,” people and groups of people living among us in the United States awaiting orders from someone to conduct terrorist attacks or waiting for some precipitating event around the world to signal the time for their attacks. And, it may be significant that the two Chechen terrorists came to America as kids, possibly 9 and 15-years old when they arrived because we know there are Islamic regions around the world where the children are trained from birth to hate the United States and Israel and trained to be Islamic fighters and nobody in the world is more seemingly harmless than a couple of kids. Has anyone asked how these two Chechen terrorists were raised for those years in their homelands?
The younger, and surviving, of the two Chechen terrorists is now 19-years old and arrived in the United States approximately 10 years ago when he was 9-years old, according to reports, which places his immigration here post 9/11. But it also places his date of birth right at the beginning of the first Chechen War and he still lived in Chechnya for the second Chechen war with Russia which began in 1999. And, it was during the 1990s when radical Arab/Islamic jihadists fought in Chechnya while those young men were growing up there.
So we have to ask ourselves what the possible Islamic jihad influences are in Chechnya. According to Wikipedia:
The Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya…is an international unit of Islamist Mujahideen fighting in Chechnya and other parts of the North Caucasus.
It was created by Fathi al-Jordani[2] in 1995 during the First Chechen War, where it fought against the Russian Federation in favor of Chechnya’s independence as the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. Since the outbreak of the Second Chechen War it played an important part in further Chechen resistance.
Here are some things we know in our post motem of the Second Boston Massacre:
America has been at war since at least 9/11/01 with certain sects within Islam;
There are very volatile and violent regions of the word where radical sects of Islam are prevalent;
People around the world with a belief in Islam train their children from birth to hate America and Israel and train them as jihadi suicide bombers, fighters and terrorists;
There is no such thing as a “radicalization serum” or ray gun;
We are importing and even fast-tracking emigrants from very radical parts of the world where jihadist Islam is the order of the day.
We have a right and responsibility, as a soverign nation-state, to protect ourselves first and foremost above and beyond allowing any immigration at all, much less from those countries where our enemies reside.
America needs to stop being so damn politically correct and understand that we are at war with a clearly identifiable enemy from known parts of the world and fight that war accordingly. And we need to stop allowing our governors to tell us to lay down our civil rights, civil liberties and unalienable rights, such as gun control, for a false sense of security domestically while they import international terrorists from volatile regions around the world through stupid politically correct immigration policies. Enough is enough!
Obvious Emotional Manipulation in “Gun Control” Debate
I’ve always said that liberals and progressives are the little children in American sociopolitical debate because they concentrate on emotion versus fact, logic and reason. But, they reached new lows yesterday when President Obama selected a “Sandy Hook” parent who tragically lost a child during the December 2012 tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School to deliver his Saturday address to the nation.
According to a clip I saw on the Sunday morning talking head shows the Sandy Hook parent referred to the current attempts at additional gun control as “reasonable gun responsibility measures.” Boy, talk about obvious emotional manipulation!
Progressives have a long and dangerous record of manipulating the English language in order to manipulate emotions and sociopolitical debate, such as the Associated Press recently dropping the term “illegal alien” and at least one politician attempting to force NASCAR to drop the NRA as a sponsor or change the name of a race. Then of course, there is the entire political correctness agenda we have suffered under for the past several decades.
The fact liberal and progressive politicians, pundits, media personalities and others do it is of course a problem, but a bigger problem is the millions of Americans that fall for it. I’m looking for many progressives in my Twitter feed and on my Facebook page to parrot the new emotional phrase all day and night this coming week, “reasonable gun responsibility measures.” Gee, doesn’t that sound just nifty!
Let’s get something straight; there is nothing reasonable about government overreach and the infringement of liberty. More than just the 2nd Amendment, this debate is about the 4th Amendment, the 5th, the 9th, the 10th and the 14th Amendment and probably a few others. There is nothing “reasonable” about having your mental health records submitted to the federal government for the “clearance” of your unalienable rights and liberties.
There is nothing reasonable about the federal government violating the 9th and 10th Amendments and please, don’t tell me what the Supreme Court has said. The Supreme Court is a part of our federal government and is therefore equally limited in its powers and authority just as is the rest of the federal government. The Supreme Court is also that august body that gave the habeas-okayeas to eugenics, abortion, separate but equal and so many other abominations.
Paraphrasing George Washington, the Constitution is sacred on us all until an explicit act of the whole people changes it. That folks is the amendment process. Our Constitution does not change with the simple passage of time, judicial or legislative fiat or due to one political party winning an election.
It is time for adult Americans concerned with fact, logic, reason, rights, responsibilities and liberty to speak up and question past assumptions concerning federal powers versus individual liberty. We must no longer accept things as reasonable simply because someone applies that word to their proposed despotism. There is nothing reasonable, responsible or any other soft-sounding emotionally manipulative phrase in unrestrained government power in violation of our Supreme Law of the Land.
Americans need to use the opportunity in this current “gun control” debate to assert ourselves and reclaim our birthright. Accordingly, do not let yourself get rat holed into debating just the 2nd Amendment because then you will find yourself doing nothing more than defining the word “infringed.” We need to expand the debate to cover every single issue in the entire Constitution that applies to this matter and use it to talk about the exercise of federal powers across the board.
And please realize when politicians are attempting to manipulate your emotions through bogus words and phrases – cute, cuddly sounding and seemingly benign and innocuous little terms. Refuse to be treated or spoken to like a child!
Modern Americans are so Stupid!
More than just stupid; modern Americans are slothfull and irresponsible when it comes to the issue of freedom.
Many Americans buy into the thesis espoused by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) that our rights are not absolute. They believe that our rights are subject to a court test and legislative fiat at any given time for any given purpose. Rather than black letter law they believe in transient emotions and “fairness.” Well, let’s play along.
Modern politicians and other progressives claim it is not a 2nd Amendment infringement if they outlaw guns that look like AK-47s and M-16s because you can still “keep and bear” other firearms. They hold the same belief with the so-called high capacity magazines (an ammunition magazine they have placed an arbitrary number on). Now let’s apply those same standards to the entertainment and news media.
Why does Hollywood “need” to show all the blood and gore in modern movies? They didn’t used to. It used to be that television shows and movies didn’t show the immediate effect of someone being shot. You would just see a character grab an area of his body to signify he had been shot and in the next scene you might see a little blood in that area of his or her body. Now though, they show blood and body parts flying across the screen! Why? Why do they need to do that?
As movies and television shows have changed to become far more graphic, sexually as well as violently, are American society has changed exponentially for the worse and become much harsher. So there is obviously a correlation between Hollywood violence and societal violence – more so than progressives can show with the things/rights they attack. So let’s pass laws to limit Hollywood’s ability to be so graphic.
Remember, according to progressives our rights are not absolute. And we would not be infringing Hollywood’s freedom of speech anyway because they could still make movies with the same messages, for now anyway, but just less graphically. And while we’re at it, let’s look into the issue of academic freedom for progressive and liberal teachers and professors.
I believe that liberal and progressive teachers and professors are a dangerous and subversive threat to our Constitution – domestic enemies of our Constitution, if you will – and should be subject to restrictions. It would not conflict, of course, with their perceived 1st Amendment rights because they could still teach what is actually in the textbooks but just with some “common sense” and “fair” regulation. Who among us can oppose “common sense” and “fairness?” Is that what we’re all about now?
Now, let’s talk about a woman’s alleged absolute right to an abortion, or birth control or anything else. Let’s apply some conservative “common sense” and “fairness” to an alleged right to homosexual marriage – which is not absolute. Let’s talk about someone’s alleged “right” to healthcare that cannot possibly be “absolute” if someone else has to pay for it. Let’s talk about every single thing progressives and liberals hold near and dear to their hearts.
Once you admit the premise that rights are not absolute and government power is, all hope for a free society is lost forever, and that’s stupid.
The Altar of Maybe
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” –Thomas Jefferson
Only despots and tyrants contrive ways to infringe the rights of the people.
I was debating gun control as it related to single-incident mass shooting events with an individual last night when the specific issue of the gun show loophole came up. I told the person to find me one example of a mass-murderer purchasing his gun at a gun show and then we’d talk about it. The person’s response was, “there is the potential.” To me, that equates to “maybe.”
When will Americans stop sacrificing their unalienable rights upon the Altar of Maybe? We can sit here and play “the maybe game” all day if you want.
A potential murderer may purchase a weapon at a gun show.
Someone may break into your house and steal your gun.
An attacker may take a gun from a rape victim and use it against her.
A concealed carry permit holder may hit innocent bystanders while confronting a gunman.
A veteran with PTSD may have a bad day and use a gun against innocent people.
A parent may not feed a child properly.
A parent may not educate a child properly.
You may get heart disease from too much salt.
There may be man-made global warming.
You may get into a car crash.
A teen may decide to smoke due to a television character smoking.
We may convince people to eat healthier and bring down obesity rates.
We may save one child.
We may stop a terrorist.
We may bring down drunken driving rates.
“Maybe” is only limited by the imaginations of 300 million minds in America. I’m sure you can sit around and think of all kinds of possibilities and they would all sound very serious. Are you willing to submit your unalienable rights to a never ending child’s game? I’m not. I stand with Thomas Jefferson.
