In his "State of the Union" message, Pres. Bush defended his "terrorist surveillance program" by noting that "two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. . . ." (Note: The CIA did know that two of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, attended an al Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in 2000, and then traveled to the United States. The men simply were not put on a terrorist list, and the FBI was not alerted to their presence.)
Bush defended his warrentless survelliance as a necessary action in time of war and invoked, as always, September 11 to justify his claim to special war powers.
Fair enough. I would simply like to note that prior to September 11, 2001, we in Oklahoma suffered a terrorist attack on April 19, 1995. The bombing was carried out by an American Christian named Timothy McVeigh to avenge the death of fellow Christians at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. In addition to this, McVeigh was in contact with other fellow Christians at Elohim City in Adair County, Oklahoma.
Since we are in a permanent state of war of terror in the United States, I look forward to the revelation that our president has ordered the warrantless terrorist surveillance of these right wing Christian groups. And in the name of Homeland Security, I think that other conservative Christian groups will not think unkindly of our Federal Government if they too are subjected to this kind of secret, warrentless surveillance. In fact, since our president is the darling of the evangelical Christian community, I expect that they not only applaud such actions on the part of our chief executive, but that they demand that their members submit to having all their communications monitored by our government, which, after all, has only our best interests at heart.
4 comments:
Most people seem to be willing to link the prepetrators of 9-11 to the Muslim faith. Perhaps you are not one of these. McVeigh certainly considered himself a member of the Christian faith. I simply wanted to show others what it would look like from a homegrown perspective. In your case, I guess I succeeded.
Sure, they identified themselves as Muslims, so what's the point?
McVeigh aligned himself with the Christian Identity cult here in Oklahoma. Here's what the web site "Eye on Hate" has to say about the Christian Identity movement:
"[T]his is a religious community with a difference. Its members believe that government is the enemy, that America's secular, multicultural society is a present-day Gomorrah, and that Elohim City is a bunker in a great battle between the children of darkness (the Jews) and the children of light (the Aryan race). Elohim City became the subject of scrutiny in the last year when telephone records revealed thatTimothy McVeigh made calls to the rural enclave in the weeks prior to the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. More recently, however, it has been learned that Timothy McVeigh was heavily involved with the domestic terrorists who frequent Elohim City and who practice Christian Identity. But McVeigh's involvement is just one of a host of links that connect the increasingly violent activists of the racist far right to the doctrine which helps to inspire them. Christian Identity, which elevates white supremacy and separatism to a Godly ideal, is the ideological fuel that fires much of the activity of the racist far right."
I think that that is enough reason to call for warrantless wiretaps of conservative Christian groups if we are going to have them. McVeigh certainly saw himself as advancing their religious agenda. He acted to avenge what he saw as a governemnt attack on a religious group.
http://eyeonhate.com/mcveigh/mcveigh3.html
If you are going to investigate one religion for its ties to terroism, you should investigate them all. I'm just waiting for Bush to do this.
Good, that is precisely my point. We need to realize that all religions can be abused and misused to do horrors contrary to their real intention.
Now, back to my original point. If Bush is going to claim that war powers give him the right to order surveillance, then we must realize that there is no end to where this could lead.
Therefore, we must insist that he follow the law and get a warrant. It's not like there isn't a sympathetic federal judge out there who will do it. We can't allow the executive branch to abuse its powers no matter what the pretext.
After reading your and unhypenatedconservatives "debate" comments here, I can see why my thoughts that so many wars have been started, created and fought over "religion" throughout history and "who's right and who's wrong" just might make some sense. I hope one day soon this country will slowly learn to be more tolerant and diverse of others own beliefs and not make it "theirs" to change or force people, or start a war over..whether it be political or physical. This war however to me is really only about oil and "tempting" the terrorist to go to Iraq instead of coming to our country. Iraqi civilians lives are not as important as an Amerian lives? Now terrorist are breeding like crazy and it won't change we helped spread the hate around..Yeah Sadam was a big problem but he was not the main problem we only used this country and the WOMD in order to justify "the plan"..we played into the terrorist hands..its just what they wanted really...I still don't believe that you can have war with terrorist, don't forget they have no problem with blowing themselves up its thier reward for doing it they think they will get when they meet their maker or heaven or whatever..there were and are other avenues we should have done and used through the CIA etc.in Afganistan and Pakistan, we should have stayed and focused over there instead of trying to "tempt" the terroritst to come to Iraq. We totally totally blew it and pardon the expression! Common sense was never used here from the 'warmongers'..
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