I wrote a piece called “Rant” a while back. Let me start off by quoting part of that:
“I am a Republican. I voted for Bush. I think Al Gore as a socialist idiot who was no better than Clinton.”
I still stand by those words. It is a very scary thing to think that this man was a few hanging chads away from being President. This idiot made some statements the other day that need responding to.
He said:
“Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not
honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our
allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as
"a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice,
experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of
Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or
even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.”
And exactly how many funerals did President Clinton attend?
“To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought
to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America
since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment
was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they
meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act
preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather
an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to
ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military
action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent
threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere
assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by
only one person, the President.”
The earliest days of this administration were met with an attack from a foreign enemy that was larger than the attack that brought our country into World War 2. The U.S. should ignore international law when the law turns it’s head to look elsewhere in the face of a growing threat of weapons of mass destruction..
“More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to
describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as
repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless,
naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as
dominance does.”
Ok, Al. You really shouldn’t make comments that are that close to sounding like Forrest Gump.
“There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what
Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead
of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe
because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation
against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of
our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any
person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.”
Hey Algore. That’s what war is. War is hell. War is worse that perceived peace. Are we really less safe? Were we less safe before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor or during the war? Notice my continued references to WW2. A friend of mine wrote me once, “Lets say that we were able to learn WHY the fleet left Japan when they sailed to Pearl Harbor. The US now knows of an imminent attack against us. They might not be sure what day, but they know it's coming. If the government were to make moves to declare war on Japan before the attack, it would have been met with the same resistance that we are giving the gulf situation now.” How true that is.
“He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to
a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance,
willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat
whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and
tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have
resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all
of it done in our name.”
Al, did you forget that we were attacked from that “honet’s nest” you speak of? And we were obviously targets before the war and I’ve got 2800 bodies to prove it.
“The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military
professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its
conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and
cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell
doctrine of overwhelming force.”
No, Al, that was never said. The garlands and flowers are draped around the coffins of our lost loved ones.
“Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States
would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not
the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark
rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word
- tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not
induce them to say.”
But there sure were enjoying it.
“In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by
their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so,
every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth
evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."”
Physician, heal thyself.
“We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with
more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the
war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith
and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is
especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of
Defense.”
Hmmm…let’s flashback to 1997. Should Clinton have resigned for making our country go through Lewinskygate?
“Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest
source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been
recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of
conscience wagered with history by this willful president.”
Our moral authority made it mandatory for us to neutralize a threat against us.
“President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world -
but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva
Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending
them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders.
Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and
women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of
America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about
justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with
all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an
admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold
people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge
error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration
accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and
mistakes in the history of the United States of America.”
Pardon me, but that is bullshit. Osama bin Laden owes us an apology and deserves death. So does Saddam Hussein for the crimes he committed against his own people. President Bush owes no one an apology.
“In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by
the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast
ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a
nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to
prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as
president.”
Waaaahhh! Daddy, Daddy, I want my election back! Get over it, Al. If a voter hasn’t got the good common sense it requires to cast a ballot, they should not be voting. They are obviously not intelligent enough to fill out a simple ballot.
Al, I’m personally grateful that you are not my President. My President had the guts to stand up to tyranny unlike the President you served under. You are not even in office anymore. You are a lame duck, Al. You are a has-been. Go ahead and just make your speech money, but if you want to comment like this, it’s time to put up or shut up. But please do not criticize my President when you do not even have the guts to hold a public office in four years.
Friday, May 28, 2004
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Aren't you glad this guy isn't President?
Remarks by Al Gore
May 26, 2004
George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has
brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.
He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he
has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as
the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.
Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not
honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our
allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as
"a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice,
experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of
Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or
even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.
How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper
ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we
had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all
felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.
To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought
to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America
since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment
was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they
meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act
preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather
an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to
ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military
action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent
threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere
assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by
only one person, the President.
More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to
describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as
repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless,
naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as
dominance does.
Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all.
It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger
for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens -
sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too
late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.
One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's
soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom
power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as
animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud -
the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's
pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils
perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.
Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of
news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire
policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy,
it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib
prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we
are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's
more complicated than that.
There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States
special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and
our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural
distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy
are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in
our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.
Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse
of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better
angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation -
especially the temptation to abuse power over others.
Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is
needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal
system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue
if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow
citizens.
Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist
Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph
M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him
to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The
Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love
to make a groan man piss on himself."
What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random
acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush
Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has
made war on America's checks and balances.
The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of
the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse
of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people
in the aftermath of September 11th.
There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what
Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead
of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe
because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation
against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of
our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any
person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.
He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to
a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance,
willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat
whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and
tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have
resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all
of it done in our name.
President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the
central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war
on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for
terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.]
The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made
the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat
of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International
Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has
arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers
while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said
that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000
potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is
swelling its ranks.
The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military
professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its
conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and
cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell
doctrine of overwhelming force.
There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for
nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.
Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers
even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their
mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy
discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake
sales for body armor.
And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the
Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We
are looking into the abyss."
When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word
"abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means:
more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence,
no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.
Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command
before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said
recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."
The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H.
Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United
States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are."
Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US
occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the
Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on
active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from
happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles
while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence
in our policy, we will lose strategically."
The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about
these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of
Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our
advice from active duty officers."
But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against
President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior
General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the
Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice."
Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled
to challenge their commander in chief in public.
The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior
Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush
Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the
Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they
care."
In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush
team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later
conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and
irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."
Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to
Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his
principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill,
former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his
service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based
organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern
White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy
apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the
political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the
occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because
Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that
Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then
forced out.
And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop
strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example,
young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without
training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to
"break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.
To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the
chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison
administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military
and civilian contractor authority.
The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course,
responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and
appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for
the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.
Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States
would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not
the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark
rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word
- tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not
induce them to say.
These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House.
Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the
subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel
departures from historic American standards over the objections of the
uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense
Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step
of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human
rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an
atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is
concerned."
Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the
regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and
neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit
acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the
process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and
giving assignments to private contractors
President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of
the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had
been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met
a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the
United States and our allies."
George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As
many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the
numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent
death, there were no autopsies.
How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit
in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list
of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently
culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators
as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another
by the policies of George W. Bush.
How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney
Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world
and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such
dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States
of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.
David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with
the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's
statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of
the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building
support for his policy of going to war.
Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also
"all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even
though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars
(CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union
address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million
dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing
the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors
to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.
And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future
president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army
into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control
over Saddam's secret papers.
Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has
been duping the President of the United States for all these years.
One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in
his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy
war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the
person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in
Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. ... The
testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their
religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and
then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because
of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks
later he used it again.
"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial
power in this part of the world," Zinni said.
What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees
seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders
who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible
for this kind of abuse..
Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and
ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers
started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they
ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were
forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.
In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by
their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so,
every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth
evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."
The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was
responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing
whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture
of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league
with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.
He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how
terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to
terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering
threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a
whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has
brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating
prisoners.
In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an
impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in
having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new
broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make
a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of
the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of
incompetents that created this catastrophe.
Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed
proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately,
rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's,
options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national
nightmare is over.
Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach
to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.
When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to
the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and
stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're
going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn
insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of
General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."
One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly
demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one
with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's
quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and
twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and
that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of
the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current
administration.
It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the
voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to
sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current
leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for
Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate
resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are
most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.
We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal
competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing
day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing
the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including
here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and
embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already
near the boiling point.
We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with
more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the
war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith
and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is
especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of
Defense.
Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national
security policy, should also resign immediately.
George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George
Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and
decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have
regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have
new leadership at the CIA immediately.
As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the
rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can
supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force
in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored
in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the
very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our
moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a
better life to our global neighbors.
During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was
accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the
indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where
do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United
States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name
back?
The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We
go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that
what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America
has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We,
as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the
decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights....
Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's
reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit.
It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly -
that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more
serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people
to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first
saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the
images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare
aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon
assured us, "a few bad apples."
But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was
not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of
prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread
pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'
Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of
our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and
atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in
our name, by our leaders.
These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed
directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the
dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America -
it is also an illusory goal in its own right.
Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and
any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to
fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates
enemies for the would-be dominator.
A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates
enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also
undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the
efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.
Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going
it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our
military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to
"bring it on."
Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary
Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size
of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for
traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real
coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the
occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and
interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies
of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization
has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that
require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the
United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its
moral authority to lead.
Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest
source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been
recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of
conscience wagered with history by this willful president.
Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when,
in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to
the security of its people:
"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it,
and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a
democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it
nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition
of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its
understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its
strength."
The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the
definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December
1, 1862:
"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the
occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must
disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens,
we cannot escape history...the fiery trial through which we pass will light
us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation...We shall nobly save,
or meanly lose the last best hope of earth...The way is plain, peaceful,
generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud,
and God must forever bless."
It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their
unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American
people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and,
we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of
Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the
victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.
The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in
American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to
see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they
are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal
of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel
librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to
keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also
be imprisoned.
They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right
of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have
information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the
news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.
The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent
any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power.
Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new
level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led
them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in
combat during the Vietnam War.
The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president
really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn
Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that
the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos
were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were
simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."
This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found
not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our
democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the
Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping
legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend
the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences
between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.
The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the
Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often
physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu
Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.
Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The
apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and
clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics
sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other
countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than
ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a
boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of
cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived
in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state
cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not
congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others,
although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than
ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine
more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.
But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal
about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to
note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the
policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the
instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting
attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and
fear generated by the attack of September 11th.
The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible
and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading
genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions
against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque
misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in
the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on
January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on
questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it;
it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about
torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts,
not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing.
One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC
News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling
the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am
being punished for being honest."
The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of
impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their
statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war
crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and
statements from the administration.
To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the
revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around
during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no
one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above
with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It
was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.
Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own
armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for
that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most
tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard
for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively
stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when
our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This
administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom
and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to
the world.
President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world -
but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva
Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending
them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders.
Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and
women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of
America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about
justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with
all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an
admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold
people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge
error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration
accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and
mistakes in the history of the United States of America.
He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few
low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.
In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by
the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast
ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a
nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to
prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as
president.
I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that
ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every
turn to frustrate accountability...
So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that
President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at
what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world
to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of
Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as
completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the
American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.
I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe
we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here -
hold the power, and bear the responsibility."
Remarks by Al Gore
May 26, 2004
George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has
brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.
He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, he
has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as
the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.
Honor? He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention. Just as he would not
honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our
allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as
"a decent respect for the opinion of mankind." He did not honor the advice,
experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of
Iraq. And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or
even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.
How did we get from September 12th , 2001, when a leading French newspaper
ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we
had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all
felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.
To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought
to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America
since the end of World War II. The long successful strategy of containment
was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption." And what they
meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act
preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather
an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to
ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military
action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent
threat. All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere
assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by
only one person, the President.
More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to
describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as
repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless,
naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people. Dominance is as
dominance does.
Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all.
It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger
for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain. And as always happens -
sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too
late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.
One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's
soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom
power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as
animals, and degraded. We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud -
the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's
pain. It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils
perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.
Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of
news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire
policy in Iraq. But in order understand the failure of our overall policy,
it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib
prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we
are as Americans? Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's
more complicated than that.
There is good and evil in every person. And what makes the United States
special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and
our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our natural
distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy
are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in
our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.
Our founders were insightful students of human nature. They feared the abuse
of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better
angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation -
especially the temptation to abuse power over others.
Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is
needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal
system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue
if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow
citizens.
Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist
Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph
M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower. When Darby asked him
to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The
Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love
to make a groan man piss on himself."
What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random
acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush
Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has
made war on America's checks and balances.
The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of
the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse
of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people
in the aftermath of September 11th.
There was then, there is now and there would have been regardless of what
Bush did, a threat of terrorism that we would have to deal with. But instead
of making it better, he has made it infinitely worse. We are less safe
because of his policies. He has created more anger and righteous indignation
against us as Americans than any leader of our country in the 228 years of
our existence as a nation -- because of his attitude of contempt for any
person, institution or nation who disagrees with him.
He has exposed Americans abroad and Americans in every U.S. town and city to
a greater danger of attack by terrorists because of his arrogance,
willfulness, and bungling at stirring up hornet's nests that pose no threat
whatsoever to us. And by then insulting the religion and culture and
tradition of people in other countries. And by pursuing policies that have
resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent men, women and children, all
of it done in our name.
President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the
central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war
on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for
terrorists. [Dick Cheney said, "This war may last the rest of our lives.]
The unpleasant truth is that President Bush's utter incompetence has made
the world a far more dangerous place and dramatically increased the threat
of terrorism against the United States. Just yesterday, the International
Institute of Strategic Studies reported that the Iraq conflict " has
arguable focused the energies and resources of Al Qaeda and its followers
while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition." The ISS said
that in the wake of the war in Iraq Al Qaeda now has more than 18,000
potential terrorists scattered around the world and the war in Iraq is
swelling its ranks.
The war plan was incompetent in its rejection of the advice from military
professionals and the analysis of the intelligence was incompetent in its
conclusion that our soldiers would be welcomed with garlands of flowers and
cheering crowds. Thus we would not need to respect the so-called Powell
doctrine of overwhelming force.
There was also in Rumsfeld's planning a failure to provide security for
nuclear materials, and to prevent widespread lawlessness and looting.
Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers
even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their
mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy
discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake
sales for body armor.
And the worst still lies ahead. General Joseph Hoar, the former head of the
Marine Corps, said "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We
are looking into the abyss."
When a senior, respected military leader like Joe Hoar uses the word
"abyss", then the rest of us damn well better listen. Here is what he means:
more American soldiers dying, Iraq slipping into worse chaos and violence,
no end in sight, with our influence and moral authority seriously damaged.
Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, who headed Central Command
before becoming President Bush's personal emissary to the Middle East, said
recently that our nation's current course is "headed over Niagara Falls."
The Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, Army Major General Charles H.
Swannack, Jr., asked by the Washington Post whether he believes the United
States is losing the war in Iraq, replied, "I think strategically, we are."
Army Colonel Paul Hughes, who directed strategic planning for the US
occupation authority in Baghdad, compared what he sees in Iraq to the
Vietnam War, in which he lost his brother: "I promised myself when I came on
active duty that I would do everything in my power to prevent that ... from
happening again. " Noting that Vietnam featured a pattern of winning battles
while losing the war, Hughes added "unless we ensure that we have coherence
in our policy, we will lose strategically."
The White House spokesman, Dan Bartlett was asked on live television about
these scathing condemnations by Generals involved in the highest levels of
Pentagon planning and he replied, "Well they're retired, and we take our
advice from active duty officers."
But amazingly, even active duty military officers are speaking out against
President Bush. For example, the Washington Post quoted an unnamed senior
General at the Pentagon as saying, " the current OSD (Office of the
Secretary of Defense) refused to listen or adhere to military advice."
Rarely if ever in American history have uniformed commanders felt compelled
to challenge their commander in chief in public.
The Post also quoted an unnamed general as saying, "Like a lot of senior
Army guys I'm quite angry" with Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush
Administration. He listed two reasons. "I think they are going to break the
Army," he said, adding that what really incites him is "I don't think they
care."
In his upcoming book, Zinni blames the current catastrophe on the Bush
team's incompetence early on. "In the lead-up to the Iraq war, and its later
conduct," he writes, "I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and
irresponsibility, at worst, lying, incompetence and corruption."
Zinni's book will join a growing library of volumes by former advisors to
Bush -- including his principal advisor on terrorism, Richard Clarke; his
principal economic policy advisor, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill,
former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was honored by Bush's father for his
service in Iraq, and his former Domestic Adviser on faith-based
organizations, John Dilulio, who said, "There is no precedent in any modern
White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy
apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, run by the
political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki told Congress in February that the
occupation could require "several hundred thousand troops." But because
Rumsfeld and Bush did not want to hear disagreement with their view that
Iraq could be invaded at a much lower cost, Shinseki was hushed and then
forced out.
And as a direct result of this incompetent plan and inadequate troop
strength, young soldiers were put in an untenable position. For example,
young reservists assigned to the Iraqi prisons were called up without
training or adequate supervision, and were instructed by their superiors to
"break down" prisoners in order to prepare them for interrogation.
To make matters worse, they were placed in a confusing situation where the
chain of command was criss-crossed between intelligence gathering and prison
administration, and further confused by an unprecedented mixing of military
and civilian contractor authority.
The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course,
responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and
appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for
the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.
Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States
would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not
the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark
rooms with naked prisoners to be "stressed" and even - we must use the word
- tortured - to force them to say things that legal procedures might not
induce them to say.
These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House.
Indeed, the President's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the
subject. His secretary of defense and his assistants pushed these cruel
departures from historic American standards over the objections of the
uniformed military, just as the Judge Advocates General within the Defense
Department were so upset and opposed that they took the unprecedented step
of seeking help from a private lawyer in this city who specializes in human
rights and said to him, "There is a calculated effort to create an
atmosphere of legal ambiguity" where the mistreatment of prisoners is
concerned."
Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the
regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and
neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit
acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the
process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and
giving assignments to private contractors
President Bush set the tone for our attitude for suspects in his State of
the Union address. He noted that more than 3,000 "suspected terrorists" had
been arrested in many countries and then he added, "and many others have met
a different fate. Let's put it this way: they are no longer a problem to the
United States and our allies."
George Bush promised to change the tone in Washington. And indeed he did. As
many as 37 prisoners may have been murdered while in captivity, though the
numbers are difficult to rely upon because in many cases involving violent
death, there were no autopsies.
How dare they blame their misdeeds on enlisted personnel from a Reserve unit
in upstate New York. President Bush owes more than one apology. On the list
of those he let down are the young soldiers who are themselves apparently
culpable, but who were clearly put into a moral cesspool. The perpetrators
as well as the victims were both placed in their relationship to one another
by the policies of George W. Bush.
How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney
Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world
and in the conscience of our own people. How dare they subject us to such
dishonor and disgrace. How dare they drag the good name of the United States
of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison.
David Kay concluded his search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with
the famous verdict: "we were all wrong." And for many Americans, Kay's
statement seemed to symbolize the awful collision between Reality and all of
the false and fading impressions President Bush had fostered in building
support for his policy of going to war.
Now the White House has informed the American people that they were also
"all wrong" about their decision to place their faith in Ahmed Chalabi, even
though they have paid him 340,000 dollars per month. 33 million dollars
(CHECK) and placed him adjacent to Laura Bush at the State of the Union
address. Chalabi had been convicted of fraud and embezzling 70 million
dollars in public funds from a Jordanian bank, and escaped prison by fleeing
the country. But in spite of that record, he had become one of key advisors
to the Bush Administration on planning and promoting the War against Iraq.
And they repeatedly cited him as an authority, perhaps even a future
president of Iraq. Incredibly, they even ferried him and his private army
into Baghdad in advance of anyone else, and allowed him to seize control
over Saddam's secret papers.
Now they are telling the American people that he is a spy for Iran who has
been duping the President of the United States for all these years.
One of the Generals in charge of this war policy went on a speaking tour in
his spare time to declare before evangelical groups that the US is in a holy
war as "Christian Nation battling Satan." This same General Boykin was the
person who ordered the officer who was in charge of the detainees in
Guantanamo Bay to extend his methods to Iraq detainees, prisoners. ... The
testimony from the prisoners is that they were forced to curse their
religion Bush used the word "crusade" early on in the war against Iraq, and
then commentators pointed out that it was singularly inappropriate because
of the history and sensitivity of the Muslim world and then a few weeks
later he used it again.
"We are now being viewed as the modern Crusaders, as the modern colonial
power in this part of the world," Zinni said.
What a terrible irony that our country, which was founded by refugees
seeking religious freedom - coming to America to escape domineering leaders
who tried to get them to renounce their religion - would now be responsible
for this kind of abuse..
Ameen Saeed al-Sheikh told the Washington Post that he was tortured and
ordered to denounce Islam and after his leg was broken one of his torturers
started hitting it while ordering him to curse Islam and then, " they
ordered me to thank Jesus that I'm alive." Others reported that they were
forced to eat pork and drink alcohol.
In my religious tradition, I have been taught that "ye shall know them by
their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so,
every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth
evil fruit... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."
The President convinced a majority of the country that Saddam Hussein was
responsible for attacking us on September 11th. But in truth he had nothing
whatsoever to do with it. The President convinced the country with a mixture
of forged documents and blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league
with Al Qaeda, and that he was "indistinguishable" from Osama bin Laden.
He asked the nation , in his State of the Union address, to "imagine" how
terrified we should be that Saddam was about to give nuclear weapons to
terrorists and stated repeatedly that Iraq posed a grave and gathering
threat to our nation. He planted the seeds of war, and harvested a
whirlwind. And now, the "corrupt tree" of a war waged on false premises has
brought us the "evil fruit" of Americans torturing and humiliating
prisoners.
In my opinion, John Kerry is dealing with this unfolding tragedy in an
impressive and extremely responsible way. Our nation's best interest lies in
having a new president who can turn a new page, sweep clean with a new
broom, and take office on January 20th of next year with the ability to make
a fresh assessment of exactly what our nation's strategic position is as of
the time the reigns of power are finally wrested from the group of
incompetents that created this catastrophe.
Kerry should not tie his own hands by offering overly specific, detailed
proposals concerning a situation that is rapidly changing and unfortunately,
rapidly deteriorating, but should rather preserve his, and our country's,
options, to retrieve our national honor as soon as this long national
nightmare is over.
Eisenhower did not propose a five-point plan for changing America's approach
to the Korean War when he was running for president in 1952.
When a business enterprise finds itself in deep trouble that is linked to
the failed policies of the current CEO the board of directors and
stockholders usually say to the failed CEO, "Thank you very much, but we're
going to replace you now with a new CEO -- one less vested in a stubborn
insistence on staying the course, even if that course is, in the words of
General Zinni, "Headed over Niagara Falls."
One of the strengths of democracy is the ability of the people to regularly
demand changes in leadership and to fire a failing leader and hire a new one
with the promise of hopeful change. That is the real solution to America's
quagmire in Iraq. But, I am keenly aware that we have seven months and
twenty five days remaining in this president's current term of office and
that represents a time of dangerous vulnerability for our country because of
the demonstrated incompetence and recklessness of the current
administration.
It is therefore essential that even as we focus on the fateful choice, the
voters must make this November that we simultaneously search for ways to
sharply reduce the extraordinary danger that we face with the current
leadership team in place. It is for that reason that I am calling today for
Republicans as well as Democrats to join me in asking for the immediate
resignations of those immediately below George Bush and Dick Cheney who are
most responsible for creating the catastrophe that we are facing in Iraq.
We desperately need a national security team with at least minimal
competence because the current team is making things worse with each passing
day. They are endangering the lives of our soldiers, and sharply increasing
the danger faced by American citizens everywhere in the world, including
here at home. They are enraging hundreds of millions of people and
embittering an entire generation of anti-Americans whose rage is already
near the boiling point.
We simply cannot afford to further increase the risk to our country with
more blunders by this team. Donald Rumsfeld, as the chief architect of the
war plan, should resign today. His deputies Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith
and his intelligence chief Stephen Cambone should also resign. The nation is
especially at risk every single day that Rumsfeld remains as Secretary of
Defense.
Condoleeza Rice, who has badly mishandled the coordination of national
security policy, should also resign immediately.
George Tenet should also resign. I want to offer a special word about George
Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and
decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have
regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have
new leadership at the CIA immediately.
As a nation, our greatest export has always been hope: hope that through the
rule of law people can be free to pursue their dreams, that democracy can
supplant repression and that justice, not power, will be the guiding force
in society. Our moral authority in the world derived from the hope anchored
in the rule of law. With this blatant failure of the rule of law from the
very agents of our government, we face a great challenge in restoring our
moral authority in the world and demonstrating our commitment to bringing a
better life to our global neighbors.
During Ronald Reagan's Presidency, Secretary of Labor Ray Donovan was
accused of corruption, but eventually, after a lot of publicity, the
indictment was thrown out by the Judge. Donovan asked the question, "Where
do I go to get my reputation back?" President Bush has now placed the United
States of America in the same situation. Where do we go to get our good name
back?
The answer is, we go where we always go when a dramatic change is needed. We
go to the ballot box, and we make it clear to the rest of the world that
what's been happening in America for the last four years, and what America
has been doing in Iraq for the last two years, really is not who we are. We,
as a people, at least the overwhelming majority of us, do not endorse the
decision to dishonor the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights....
Make no mistake, the damage done at Abu Ghraib is not only to America's
reputation and America's strategic interests, but also to America's spirit.
It is also crucial for our nation to recognize - and to recognize quickly -
that the damage our nation has suffered in the world is far, far more
serious than President Bush's belated and tepid response would lead people
to believe. Remember how shocked each of us, individually, was when we first
saw those hideous images. The natural tendency was to first recoil from the
images, and then to assume that they represented a strange and rare
aberration that resulted from a few twisted minds or, as the Pentagon
assured us, "a few bad apples."
But as today's shocking news reaffirms yet again, this was not rare. It was
not an aberration. Today's New York Times reports that an Army survey of
prisoner deaths and mistreatment in Iraq and Afghanisatan "show a widespread
pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.'
Nor did these abuses spring from a few twisted minds at the lowest ranks of
our military enlisted personnel. No, it came from twisted values and
atrocious policies at the highest levels of our government. This was done in
our name, by our leaders.
These horrors were the predictable consequence of policy choices that flowed
directly from this administration's contempt for the rule of law. And the
dominance they have been seeking is truly not simply unworthy of America -
it is also an illusory goal in its own right.
Our world is unconquerable because the human spirit is unconquerable, and
any national strategy based on pursuing the goal of domination is doomed to
fail because it generates its own opposition, and in the process, creates
enemies for the would-be dominator.
A policy based on domination of the rest of the world not only creates
enemies for the United States and creates recruits for Al Qaeda, it also
undermines the international cooperation that is essential to defeating the
efforts of terrorists who wish harm and intimidate Americans.
Unilateralism, as we have painfully seen in Iraq, is its own reward. Going
it alone may satisfy a political instinct but it is dangerous to our
military, even without their Commander in Chief taunting terrorists to
"bring it on."
Our troops are stretched thin and exhausted not only because Secretary
Rumsfeld contemptuously dismissed the advice of military leaders on the size
of the needed force - but also because President Bush's contempt for
traditional allies and international opinion left us without a real
coalition to share the military and financial burden of the war and the
occupation. Our future is dependent upon increasing cooperation and
interdependence in a world tied ever more closely together by technologies
of communications and travel. The emergence of a truly global civilization
has been accompanied by the recognition of truly global challenges that
require global responses that, as often as not, can only be led by the
United States - and only if the United States restores and maintains its
moral authority to lead.
Make no mistake, it is precisely our moral authority that is our greatest
source of strength, and it is precisely our moral authority that has been
recklessly put at risk by the cheap calculations and mean compromises of
conscience wagered with history by this willful president.
Listen to the way Israel's highest court dealt with a similar question when,
in 1999, it was asked to balance due process rights against dire threats to
the security of its people:
"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it,
and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a
democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it
nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition
of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its
understanding of security. At the end of the day they (add to) its
strength."
The last and best description of America's meaning in the world is still the
definitive formulation of Lincoln's annual message to Congress on December
1, 1862:
"The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise - with the
occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must
disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens,
we cannot escape history...the fiery trial through which we pass will light
us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation...We shall nobly save,
or meanly lose the last best hope of earth...The way is plain, peaceful,
generous, just - a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud,
and God must forever bless."
It is now clear that their obscene abuses of the truth and their
unforgivable abuse of the trust placed in them after 9/11 by the American
people led directly to the abuses of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison and,
we are now learning, in many other similar facilities constructed as part of
Bush's Gulag, in which, according to the Red Cross, 70 to 90 percent of the
victims are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.
The same dark spirit of domination has led them to - for the first time in
American history - imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to
see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they
are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal
of any sort. The Bush Admistration has even acquired the power to compel
librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to
keep silent about the request - or else the librarians themselves can also
be imprisoned.
They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right
of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have
information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the
news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.
The same pattern characterizes virtually all of their policies. They resent
any constraint as an insult to their will to dominate and exercise power.
Their appetite for power is astonishing. It has led them to introduce a new
level of viciousness in partisan politics. It is that viciousness that led
them to attack as unpatriotic, Senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in
combat during the Vietnam War.
The president episodically poses as a healer and "uniter". If he president
really has any desire to play that role, then I call upon him to condemn
Rush Limbaugh - perhaps his strongest political supporter - who said that
the torture in Abu Ghraib was a "brilliant maneuver" and that the photos
were "good old American pornography," and that the actions portrayed were
simply those of "people having a good time and needing to blow off steam."
This new political viciousness by the President and his supporters is found
not only on the campaign trail, but in the daily operations of our
democracy. They have insisted that the leaders of their party in the
Congress deny Democrats any meaningful role whatsoever in shaping
legislation, debating the choices before us as a people, or even to attend
the all-important conference committees that reconcile the differences
between actions by the Senate and House of Representatives.
The same meanness of spirit shows up in domestic policies as well. Under the
Patriot Act, Muslims, innocent of any crime, were picked up, often
physically abused, and held incommunicado indefinitely. What happened in Abu
Ghraib was difference not of kind, but of degree.
Differences of degree are important when the subject is torture. The
apologists for what has happened do have points that should be heard and
clearly understood. It is a fact that every culture and every politics
sometimes expresses itself in cruelty. It is also undeniably true that other
countries have and do torture more routinely, and far more brutally, than
ours has. George Orwell once characterized life in Stalin's Russia as "a
boot stamping on a human face forever." That was the ultimate culture of
cruelty, so ingrained, so organic, so systematic that everyone in it lived
in terror, even the terrorizers. And that was the nature and degree of state
cruelty in Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
We all know these things, and we need not reassure ourselves and should not
congratulate ourselves that our society is less cruel than some others,
although it is worth noting that there are many that are less cruel than
ours. And this searing revelation at Abu Ghraib should lead us to examine
more thoroughly the routine horrors in our domestic prison system.
But what we do now, in reaction to Abu Ghraib will determine a great deal
about who we are at the beginning of the 21st century. It is important to
note that just as the abuses of the prisoners flowed directly from the
policies of the Bush White House, those policies flowed not only from the
instincts of the president and his advisors, but found support in shifting
attitudes on the part of some in our country in response to the outrage and
fear generated by the attack of September 11th.
The president exploited and fanned those fears, but some otherwise sensible
and levelheaded Americans fed them as well. I remember reading
genteel-sounding essays asking publicly whether or not the prohibitions
against torture were any longer relevant or desirable. The same grotesque
misunderstanding of what is really involved was responsible for the tone in
the memo from the president's legal advisor, Alberto Gonzalez, who wrote on
January 25, 2002, that 9/11 "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on
questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
We have seen the pictures. We have learned the news. We cannot unlearn it;
it is part of us. The important question now is, what will we do now about
torture. Stop it? Yes, of course. But that means demanding all of the facts,
not covering them up, as some now charge the administration is now doing.
One of the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib, Sergeant Samuel Provance, told ABC
News a few days ago that he was being intimidated and punished for telling
the truth. "There is definitely a coverup," Provance said. "I feel like I am
being punished for being honest."
The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of
impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their
statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war
crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and
statements from the administration.
To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the
revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around
during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no
one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above
with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It
was the kind of policy we see - and criticize in places like China and Cuba.
Moreover, the administration has also set up the men and women of our own
armed forces for payback the next time they are held as prisoners. And for
that, this administration should pay a very high price. One of the most
tragic consequences of these official crimes is that it will be very hard
for any of us as Americans - at least for a very long time - to effectively
stand up for human rights elsewhere and criticize other governments, when
our policies have resulted in our soldiers behaving so monstrously. This
administration has shamed America and deeply damaged the cause of freedom
and human rights everywhere, thus undermining the core message of America to
the world.
President Bush offered a brief and half-hearted apology to the Arab world -
but he should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva
Conventions. He also owes an apology to the U.S. Army for cavalierly sending
them into harm's way while ignoring the best advice of their commanders.
Perhaps most importantly of all, he should apologize to all those men and
women throughout our world who have held the ideal of the United States of
America as a shining goal, to inspire their hopeful efforts to bring about
justice under a rule of law in their own lands. Of course, the problem with
all these legitimate requests is that a sincere apology requires an
admission of error, a willingness to accept responsibility and to hold
people accountable. And President Bush is not only unwilling to acknowledge
error. He has thus far been unwilling to hold anyone in his administration
accountable for the worst strategic and military miscalculations and
mistakes in the history of the United States of America.
He is willing only to apologize for the alleged erratic behavior of a few
low-ranking enlisted people, who he is scapegoating for his policy fiasco.
In December of 2000, even though I strongly disagreed with the decision by
the U.S. Supreme Court to order a halt to the counting of legally cast
ballots, I saw it as my duty to reaffirm my own strong belief that we are a
nation of laws and not only accept the decision, but do what I could to
prevent efforts to delegitimize George Bush as he took the oath of office as
president.
I did not at that moment imagine that Bush would, in the presidency that
ensued, demonstrate utter contempt for the rule of law and work at every
turn to frustrate accountability...
So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that
President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at
what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world
to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of
Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as
completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the
American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands.
I believe we have a duty to hold President Bush accountable - and I believe
we will. As Lincoln said at our time of greatest trial, "We - even we here -
hold the power, and bear the responsibility."
Monday, May 24, 2004
For the past few months, I have been struggling with something that the Lord has continued to lay on my heart. I love theology. I love studying it and quoting it and thinking about it. I love to sink my teeth into a new passage of Scripture or thoughts from men of God in the past and the present. I cut my teeth on the writings of Charles Stanley and Max Lucado and have sinced moved on to heavier works by Louis Berkhof, Charles Hodge, Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and some of the great theologians like John Calvin. I honestly believe that I could spend the rest of my life just studying theology and be happy. My struggle has been that in my love for theology, I have often studied it and used it for the wrong reasons. I’ve used it to appear superior to others. I’ve used it to win arguments with my wife. And unfortunately, I’ve used it to excuse sin and to brow beat non-Christians.
My church is going through the book The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren. I will admit that I have been less than faithful in the readings. I often feel that they are so table-top for me that I wonder if they are really doing anything for me. However, one of the things that it has done is to make me continually aware of my ministry. I have been challenged by God to make my life and my ministry more practical. I have struggled off and on with what this meant and what God was really trying to tell me.
Yesterday, my pastor preached a fantastic sermon on ministry. He was very transparent in that he often feels unqualified and unable to lead our church. There are nights, he says, that he lays his head on his pillow and prays to God saying that He pulled one off today, but he did not know how to do it again. He was honest that he struggled in the ministry and direction of the church. As he spoke, my eyes filled with tears because I very much related to his struggle. I will finish my BA degree in December and I am struggling with my future. I feel very much called to teach. Beyond that, I do not know. I have considered seminary, but I often wonder if that is for me either. My pastor made a very good point yesterday. He often looks at ads in Christian leadership magazines for what churches are looking for in a pastor. They want Masters of Divinity degrees and multiple years experience leading whatever part of ministry in a church the size of 1200 or more. The bottom line is that Jesus himself would not have qualified to be the pastor of most churches.
My struggle has been that I want to be lead of God to go to seminary. I do not want to go just because there is nothing better to do. I do not want to go because I feel like I need to justify myself in front of others. I do not want to go because I simply want to add letters to the end or the front of my name. My pastor made a great point that he was not ordained of any man, but was ordained of God to do ministry. I have come to an interesting conclusion.
Ministry is about people. Jesus was about people. Christianity is about people. It’s not pedigree, programs, paychecks, promotions, or prominence. It’s people. Can I serve God and people by going to seminary? Perhaps. But not because I’m going for my own benefit or pride, but because I love God and I love people.
At the moment, I am involved in an ordination process with a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization. I began it because I felt the need to be ordained in order to fulfill God’s purposes for my life. But now I question it. I wonder if I am doing it for the wrong reasons.
There are many questions about this that I cannot answer. One of hardest thing about Christianity is when God seems to be silent. The reality is that He’s not really being silent. He’s whispering very quietly for us to trust Him.
My church is going through the book The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren. I will admit that I have been less than faithful in the readings. I often feel that they are so table-top for me that I wonder if they are really doing anything for me. However, one of the things that it has done is to make me continually aware of my ministry. I have been challenged by God to make my life and my ministry more practical. I have struggled off and on with what this meant and what God was really trying to tell me.
Yesterday, my pastor preached a fantastic sermon on ministry. He was very transparent in that he often feels unqualified and unable to lead our church. There are nights, he says, that he lays his head on his pillow and prays to God saying that He pulled one off today, but he did not know how to do it again. He was honest that he struggled in the ministry and direction of the church. As he spoke, my eyes filled with tears because I very much related to his struggle. I will finish my BA degree in December and I am struggling with my future. I feel very much called to teach. Beyond that, I do not know. I have considered seminary, but I often wonder if that is for me either. My pastor made a very good point yesterday. He often looks at ads in Christian leadership magazines for what churches are looking for in a pastor. They want Masters of Divinity degrees and multiple years experience leading whatever part of ministry in a church the size of 1200 or more. The bottom line is that Jesus himself would not have qualified to be the pastor of most churches.
My struggle has been that I want to be lead of God to go to seminary. I do not want to go just because there is nothing better to do. I do not want to go because I feel like I need to justify myself in front of others. I do not want to go because I simply want to add letters to the end or the front of my name. My pastor made a great point that he was not ordained of any man, but was ordained of God to do ministry. I have come to an interesting conclusion.
Ministry is about people. Jesus was about people. Christianity is about people. It’s not pedigree, programs, paychecks, promotions, or prominence. It’s people. Can I serve God and people by going to seminary? Perhaps. But not because I’m going for my own benefit or pride, but because I love God and I love people.
At the moment, I am involved in an ordination process with a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization. I began it because I felt the need to be ordained in order to fulfill God’s purposes for my life. But now I question it. I wonder if I am doing it for the wrong reasons.
There are many questions about this that I cannot answer. One of hardest thing about Christianity is when God seems to be silent. The reality is that He’s not really being silent. He’s whispering very quietly for us to trust Him.
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Who Is God?
There is only one God. This may seem to answer the question “how many” rather than “who,” but I believe the fact that there is only one God to be important to Christianity for it stands in stark contrast to religions who have more than one God. Because God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4), he is more than the pagan version of gods who reign over one specific area of nature. God reigns over all (Acts 17:24).
God is perfect. God is the epitome of perfection (Job 11:7). Because He is perfect, He rewards those who seek after Him (Hebrews 11:6) Also, because He is perfect, He hates sin (Psalm 5:5). Because He hates sin and is a just God, he is most severe in His judgments (Nahum 1:2). He is immutable (James 1:17). God is eternal (Psalm 90:2). God is not only a loving God, he IS love (I John 4:8). He is “gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin” (Westminster Confession, Exodus 34:6).
All things good are found in God (John 5:26, Acts 7:2, Psalm 119:68, 1 Timothy 6:15, Romans 11:36). God is sovereign (Revelation 4:11). He is omniscient (Hebrews 4:13, Romans 11:33). Mankind and all creation owes God our worship and obedience (Revelation 5:12).
There is only one God. This may seem to answer the question “how many” rather than “who,” but I believe the fact that there is only one God to be important to Christianity for it stands in stark contrast to religions who have more than one God. Because God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4), he is more than the pagan version of gods who reign over one specific area of nature. God reigns over all (Acts 17:24).
God is perfect. God is the epitome of perfection (Job 11:7). Because He is perfect, He rewards those who seek after Him (Hebrews 11:6) Also, because He is perfect, He hates sin (Psalm 5:5). Because He hates sin and is a just God, he is most severe in His judgments (Nahum 1:2). He is immutable (James 1:17). God is eternal (Psalm 90:2). God is not only a loving God, he IS love (I John 4:8). He is “gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin” (Westminster Confession, Exodus 34:6).
All things good are found in God (John 5:26, Acts 7:2, Psalm 119:68, 1 Timothy 6:15, Romans 11:36). God is sovereign (Revelation 4:11). He is omniscient (Hebrews 4:13, Romans 11:33). Mankind and all creation owes God our worship and obedience (Revelation 5:12).
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Somebody sent this to me. I thought it was great.
Dave M.
I live in the United States of AmericaŠthe best country on the face of the
Earth. There is none better. We can vote. We decide our own fate. We
have the opportunity to make as much or as little of ourselves as possible.
There is unlimited potential for Americans. We have the freedom to make
choices every single day of our lives‹choices that are denied so many in
other countries. You decide who to date, who to marry. You have the
freedom to travel, to express your opinion, to have a job, to not have a
job, to have children, to be educated to the highest level you wish. We as
Americans are not forced to join military service, not forced to speak one
language, not forced to worship the same religion.
Yesterday, I received an e-mail about the execution, the beheading, the
murder of American contractor Nick Berg in Iraq. The e-mail offered up a
website where the video could be seen with the invitation ³if you have the
stomach² to view the video to witness exactly what America, our citizens and
our troops are up against in the war in Iraq. I had seen the still pictures
taken from the video all over the news this week; I had heard that an
American civilian was beheaded because these Iraqis were angered by the
³abuse² of Iraqi prisoners by American troops.
I went to my computer 8 different times with the intention of watching this
video. My interest in what happened, what these men said, what they did,
took over. But 8 times my stomach turned me away. I did watch the video, I
cried before it was over, I sobbed when it was over. Anger followed,
wishing that these men would be slaughtered, but no, that is too easy. The
knowledge that this is the present, not a long-past visual of the tragedies
of war, this happened within the last week, a week in which I¹ve lived free,
working on a radio show, going out to dinner, sleeping peacefully, watching
TV, spending time with friends, wishing my Mom a happy Mother¹s Day, talking
to my Dad with enthusiasm about his upcoming trip here to visit me.
Then my thoughts turned to the tens of thousands of Iraqis who were raped,
humiliated, abused, mistreated and killed under Iraqi rule. These were not
only grown men, these were women and children. Women and children! I
remember now what our troops are doing in Iraq. The Iraqi regime did this
to people in their own country and desired to do it to others in the world.
That¹s why the US, peacemaker, world power, babysitter of the world is
there. We can¹t allow this to continue and we cannot accept the threat of
destruction to other parts of the world.
The beheading (which is not a fair description, this was a brutal drawn-out
slaughter) was a glimpse into what has happened over and over again and it
must be stopped. This made me realize more than ever what we¹re facing and
what we¹re up against‹more specifically, what our troops and American
workers are up against.
Last night, I saw Nick Berg¹s father putting up a sign in their front yard
that said ³War Is Not The Answer². Mr. Berg has a point and entitled to his
opinion, but war is the option to stop the spread of violence to more
innocent Iraqis, Americans and everyone else around the globe who is not an
ally of Iraq. War may not be the answer, but there is no real ³answer².
There are only options. Solitude is not an option. Diplomacy is no longer
an option. There is war.
American and coalition soldiers are fighting every day to protect the
freedom we all enjoy. They are also working selflessly in an effort to
offer up a glimpse of that freedom to people who have been terrorized and
tortured for their entire lives. Every one of these men and women deserve
so much respect that I¹m struggling to put it into words. They made a
conscious decision to sign up to protect our country, to serve our country,
to serve you and me. They are the first line of defense to protect MY
freedom!
It¹s a shame that to those of us living our daily lives, most of them are
nameless and faceless. Hundreds of thousands of troops that we don¹t know,
men and women that don¹t know us, but they will fight and DIE for us. I
can¹t think of how to give them enough gratitude, a pat on the back, a
prayer, a sincere thank-you? I don¹t know how to express it. But I saw
with my own eyes yesterday the type of soul-less, maniacal murderers that
they are facing. I only personally know one soldier fighting for us right
now, his name is Lance Baughman and right now he is in Fallujah. I went to
school with him, he¹s a year younger than me, and he has a family. I know
his story, I think of him fighting every day. There are hundreds of
thousands of others, I wish I knew them, I wish I knew their story as well.
Several weeks ago, we saw news stories and features dedicated to Pat
Tillman, a former NFL player who gave up his contract to enlist in the
military. He fought and died in Afghanistan. There was so much coverage of
his death, how he gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country, how he is a
true American hero. I don¹t dispute any of this, but why is it that we
don¹t see and hear the stories of every other troop who has given that
³ultimate sacrifice². We SHOULD hear of each man and woman who has left
behind a spouse, children, a career, parents, siblings, friends. While I
wish there were no war casualties, that¹s not a reality.
Every American troop should be proud. Every American troop should be
thanked. And wouldn¹t it be a change to see the faces and hear the stories
of every American who has given the ultimate sacrifice be honored with a
moment of silence on a pre-game show, at a sports arena and just in general
be lifted up and highlighted like those who are famous or those who are
killed on videotape? That may never happen, but in the meantime, I hope
that everyone will remember a few things.
Remember that the US is the greatest country in the world and it provides us
with more opportunity than anyplace else ever could or ever will.
Remember that beyond a shadow of a doubt, our troops are facing nothing but
pure evil every day. What they¹re fighting is soul-less, destructive,
blood-thirsty, barbaric, powerful EVIL!
Remember to think of our troops every day, keep them in your thoughts and
prayers, remember that every soldier that you hear of that¹s murdered has a
name and a face. We may not know what that name is, but we know that they
have family and friends who are grieving.
Remember that Memorial Day is coming at the end of this month. Fly a flag,
attend a service, listen to a bugler play Taps, remember those who have died
in service, thank a veteran, think of those who serve.
I am grateful for every man and woman that is currently in or ever has been
in United States Military Service, whether at home or abroad. Thank you for
the decision you made to serve, thank you for giving me the opportunity to
live free. I¹ve never said it and I don¹t know whyŠDad, Thank You. I love
you.
Pete Herrick
Dave M.
I live in the United States of AmericaŠthe best country on the face of the
Earth. There is none better. We can vote. We decide our own fate. We
have the opportunity to make as much or as little of ourselves as possible.
There is unlimited potential for Americans. We have the freedom to make
choices every single day of our lives‹choices that are denied so many in
other countries. You decide who to date, who to marry. You have the
freedom to travel, to express your opinion, to have a job, to not have a
job, to have children, to be educated to the highest level you wish. We as
Americans are not forced to join military service, not forced to speak one
language, not forced to worship the same religion.
Yesterday, I received an e-mail about the execution, the beheading, the
murder of American contractor Nick Berg in Iraq. The e-mail offered up a
website where the video could be seen with the invitation ³if you have the
stomach² to view the video to witness exactly what America, our citizens and
our troops are up against in the war in Iraq. I had seen the still pictures
taken from the video all over the news this week; I had heard that an
American civilian was beheaded because these Iraqis were angered by the
³abuse² of Iraqi prisoners by American troops.
I went to my computer 8 different times with the intention of watching this
video. My interest in what happened, what these men said, what they did,
took over. But 8 times my stomach turned me away. I did watch the video, I
cried before it was over, I sobbed when it was over. Anger followed,
wishing that these men would be slaughtered, but no, that is too easy. The
knowledge that this is the present, not a long-past visual of the tragedies
of war, this happened within the last week, a week in which I¹ve lived free,
working on a radio show, going out to dinner, sleeping peacefully, watching
TV, spending time with friends, wishing my Mom a happy Mother¹s Day, talking
to my Dad with enthusiasm about his upcoming trip here to visit me.
Then my thoughts turned to the tens of thousands of Iraqis who were raped,
humiliated, abused, mistreated and killed under Iraqi rule. These were not
only grown men, these were women and children. Women and children! I
remember now what our troops are doing in Iraq. The Iraqi regime did this
to people in their own country and desired to do it to others in the world.
That¹s why the US, peacemaker, world power, babysitter of the world is
there. We can¹t allow this to continue and we cannot accept the threat of
destruction to other parts of the world.
The beheading (which is not a fair description, this was a brutal drawn-out
slaughter) was a glimpse into what has happened over and over again and it
must be stopped. This made me realize more than ever what we¹re facing and
what we¹re up against‹more specifically, what our troops and American
workers are up against.
Last night, I saw Nick Berg¹s father putting up a sign in their front yard
that said ³War Is Not The Answer². Mr. Berg has a point and entitled to his
opinion, but war is the option to stop the spread of violence to more
innocent Iraqis, Americans and everyone else around the globe who is not an
ally of Iraq. War may not be the answer, but there is no real ³answer².
There are only options. Solitude is not an option. Diplomacy is no longer
an option. There is war.
American and coalition soldiers are fighting every day to protect the
freedom we all enjoy. They are also working selflessly in an effort to
offer up a glimpse of that freedom to people who have been terrorized and
tortured for their entire lives. Every one of these men and women deserve
so much respect that I¹m struggling to put it into words. They made a
conscious decision to sign up to protect our country, to serve our country,
to serve you and me. They are the first line of defense to protect MY
freedom!
It¹s a shame that to those of us living our daily lives, most of them are
nameless and faceless. Hundreds of thousands of troops that we don¹t know,
men and women that don¹t know us, but they will fight and DIE for us. I
can¹t think of how to give them enough gratitude, a pat on the back, a
prayer, a sincere thank-you? I don¹t know how to express it. But I saw
with my own eyes yesterday the type of soul-less, maniacal murderers that
they are facing. I only personally know one soldier fighting for us right
now, his name is Lance Baughman and right now he is in Fallujah. I went to
school with him, he¹s a year younger than me, and he has a family. I know
his story, I think of him fighting every day. There are hundreds of
thousands of others, I wish I knew them, I wish I knew their story as well.
Several weeks ago, we saw news stories and features dedicated to Pat
Tillman, a former NFL player who gave up his contract to enlist in the
military. He fought and died in Afghanistan. There was so much coverage of
his death, how he gave the ultimate sacrifice for our country, how he is a
true American hero. I don¹t dispute any of this, but why is it that we
don¹t see and hear the stories of every other troop who has given that
³ultimate sacrifice². We SHOULD hear of each man and woman who has left
behind a spouse, children, a career, parents, siblings, friends. While I
wish there were no war casualties, that¹s not a reality.
Every American troop should be proud. Every American troop should be
thanked. And wouldn¹t it be a change to see the faces and hear the stories
of every American who has given the ultimate sacrifice be honored with a
moment of silence on a pre-game show, at a sports arena and just in general
be lifted up and highlighted like those who are famous or those who are
killed on videotape? That may never happen, but in the meantime, I hope
that everyone will remember a few things.
Remember that the US is the greatest country in the world and it provides us
with more opportunity than anyplace else ever could or ever will.
Remember that beyond a shadow of a doubt, our troops are facing nothing but
pure evil every day. What they¹re fighting is soul-less, destructive,
blood-thirsty, barbaric, powerful EVIL!
Remember to think of our troops every day, keep them in your thoughts and
prayers, remember that every soldier that you hear of that¹s murdered has a
name and a face. We may not know what that name is, but we know that they
have family and friends who are grieving.
Remember that Memorial Day is coming at the end of this month. Fly a flag,
attend a service, listen to a bugler play Taps, remember those who have died
in service, thank a veteran, think of those who serve.
I am grateful for every man and woman that is currently in or ever has been
in United States Military Service, whether at home or abroad. Thank you for
the decision you made to serve, thank you for giving me the opportunity to
live free. I¹ve never said it and I don¹t know whyŠDad, Thank You. I love
you.
Pete Herrick
Thursday, May 13, 2004
I'm writing a series of short stories called "Immortal Blood." Here is the first of the series:
Immortal Blood: My Wanderings In The South
Like most boys my ripe age of 24, I joined with my state of North Carolina when Sumter was attacked and went off to fight the war of Northern Aggression. I was trained quickly and marched the treacherous route from Fort Anderson all the way north to Dare County to Fort Huger on Roanoke Island. Our mission was very simple. We must guard the fort and aid the Confederate Naval forces while trying to break through the Northern blockade.
I was placed under the command of one Colonel H. M. Shaw. He was a hard-nosed brute, but he taught our unit what it meant to be a soldier. He would polish us up nice when Brigadier General Wise would come around and show us off. I arrived at Fort Huger in June of 1861. I quickly learned my duties and fell into a routine. By the time fall came around, I was homesick. I missed my family. By the time Christmas came around, I was almost mad with disillusionment. Don’t let anyone fool you. Despite being the south, the fort could get quite cold in the winter. Not cold enough to freeze mind you, but cold enough to make you miss your mama’s quilts.
1862 dawned with reinforcements. The new blood lifted morale, not to mention the food that arrived. I was longing for my mama’s biscuits, but the bread that the new troops brought was certainly fine enough.
Early morning on the 7th of February, a general alarm was raised. The infamous General Burnside had landed troops on the southwestern side of the island. They had launched from Fort Monroe. Evidently, our position stuck in Burnside’s craw and he wanted to own us. We donned out battle position bracing for what might come at any time. Around four the next morning I awoke with a start. I heard a whistling over my head and the air behind me exploded. I was thrown to the ground, but quickly rose and grabbed my rifle. As I appeared over the wall, I could see the North’s gunboats and the soldiers as they assaulted the hill. I fired my rifle, but with little confidence. There had to be at least 5,000 of them and I knew there were only 2,500 of us. As I reloaded my rifle, another explosion hit at the right of me. I felt a burning pain in my chest and I fell to my knees. I looked down and saw a seven inch piece of a cannon protruding from my torso. I fell on my back. I was going to die.
I looked up to the ceiling and it was if I was just drifting away. The fort became smaller, as if I was looking at through a tube. I was ready to give up hope and accepted that I was going to die. Suddenly, a figure appeared in my sight. I saw his head disappear as if he was leaning on my torso. I felt a pain, dimly at first, but it grew stronger. I began to drift back to the fort. All of a sudden the pain grew intense. I was back in the fort, although I heard nothing of the battle raging around me. All I saw was him, standing before me with the piece of cannon shrapnel between his teeth and my blood running down his chin. He spit the metal out of his mouth and looked at me with madness in his eyes. He opened his mouth and his eye teeth were as long as my smallest finger. He leaped at me, wrenching my neck around and sinking his fangs into my neck. His teeth felt cold and my body began to grow cold. “Please,” I managed to mutter weakly, “Don’t take my life.” The beast removed it’s teeth from my neck. “Do you want to live, my child?” he asked me.
“Yes, please,” I said. “Let me live.”
Immediately I felt lifted from the ground. The air was cold and I felt even colder. I was conscious enough to look down and see below me the battle as it raged. Then, I passed out.
When I came to, I was lying in a bed. I looked over and saw my attacker. I began to leap up, but my pain pushed me back down. “Relax, my child,” the man said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Marcosus.”
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You are in my underground home. You are safe from the war.”
The war. It seemed like I had been sleeping for days. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A few hours.”
“What happened?”
“You were hit with cannon shrapnel and I saved you and brought you here.”
“I know,” I said. “I mean. what happened in the battle?”
Marcosus looked at me like a loving father. “It seems that your side was almost overrun by the attackers. Your General made a decision befitting his name. He surrendered.”
“No,” I muttered. “We lost?”
“It could be looked at as a victory. It appears that a hundred or so of your countrymen died. I believe General Wise wanted to save the rest. He ordered your commander to surrender. He did surrender reluctantly.”
I remembered again the fangs. “Who are you?” I said.
“I’ve already told you. My name is Marcosus.”
“I know that. I mean…” I gulped. “What are you?”
Marcosus laughed. “Some say I am a man. Others say I am evil. I am, by all accounts, a creature of the night.”
I must have looked confused. “I am, what mortals call, a vampire.”
Now it was my turn to laugh, but I could not because of my wounds. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing.”
“On the contrary,” Marcosus retorted, “We very much exist.”
“So if you’re a vampire, what were you doing out there?” I asked.
“I live here, beneath the fort.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why not?” he replied.
“I mean, it seems a stupid thing to do, or even be. You live in a place where there are battles.”
“When I arrived here, there were no battles. At least, not yet.”
“Nonsense,” I said, “You look barely thirty years old. There’s been talk of this war for at least that long.”
“I am not thirty years old. I am 121 years old,” Marcosus said.
I thought he was kidding. “You joke,” I said.
“No, I do not joke. I arrived in Boston in the spring of 1770. I was an officer in the British Navy. I became immortal just before the revolution and I ended up here just after the war of 1812. It was quiet then. The rumblings of war did not begin for some twenty or so years.”
As crazy as it sounds, I was beginning to believe him. “Marcosus doesn’t sound like a very British name.”
“It isn’t. It is the name my mentor gave me when he made me immortal. My original name was John Williams, but I have not been him for some hundred years.”
“What is it like? What’s it like being a vampire?”
“It is, in a way, beautiful, and in other ways, quite tragic. The life of the night promises only one thing, immortality, and then only if you maintain your diet.”
“You were going to kill me, weren’t you?” I asked. He paused.
“I was, child. But I have walked this earth alone for thirty years and I am lonely. When you asked me to spare your life, I saw a longing in your eyes. You want more, don’t you?”
“My first battle and I’m already tired of war,” I said.
“I saved your life, and would love to give you immortality. But for now, you must sleep. We will talk in the morning.”
As I awoke, Marcosus was standing over me. “You spoke in your sleep. You miss your family?”
“Yes,” I said, “But the more I think about it, I have nothing to go back to. As much as I hate this war, it was my way of making a mark on this world.”
“There are other ways, child,” Marcosus said. “Are you ready to die again to live eternal?”
“I am,” I replied.
Marcosus drew a knife from his belt and quickly slit his left wrist. The blood flowed freely. “Open your mouth,” he commanded. I did and he let just a few drops of his blood fall into my mouth. “Drink my immortal blood, child.” His blood was cold, initially invigorating, but suddenly I felt immense pain.
“You are going to die, child, but you will die this time to live forever.”
I saw the tunnel again and Marcosus drifted farther and farther away until he was gone and there was only darkness. I do not know how long I had been gone, but I finally saw light, just a pin prick in the distance and it began to grow larger. Marcosus was again standing before as I began to see him for the first time with vampire eyes. I was suddenly conscious and aware that I had once felt immense pain, but now all was gone. I was shirtless, in the same bed that I had been in for days. I looked at my chest where the scars of war had once been. They were now gone. Immortality had entered me and I was a glorious creature of the night. “Your old name is gone. You are renamed Malakar, child of Marcosus.”
I was anxious to leave the house and Marcosus made the suggestion that we travel south. I immediately realized that travel during the day was impossible. I had suddenly developed a disdain for sunlight. As we walked at night, we often talked about practical things that a vampire needed to know such as what is the best type of blood to survive on. We arrived in Craven County around the beginning of March and decided to settle in the town of New Bern for a short time.
New Bern’s night life was quite active. There were many Confederate fortifications in that area and many soldiers. At first, I was hesitant to kill a human for blood, but Marcosus showed me how to pick out the weak soldiers that would most likely die anyway and prey on them. News was abuzz in New Bern about the battle that had happened north of there, the one I had been wounded in. I posed as a brother of myself and found out that I had been reported Missing In Action and presumed dead. Some of the soldiers were quite nervous. Most of them had not seen any action yet and the rumors of Burnside’s army coming that way were abundant.
We were there only two weeks or so when we were awaken by distant cannon fire. Burnside’s army had arrived. We were not anxious to be in the middle of a battle so we stole two horses and headed further south. We found out later that New Bern fell to the Union Army later that morning.
We rode hard until we reached the town of White Hall where we decided to stay for a few weeks. Marcosus taught me that a child of the night could not stay long in one place, five years at the most, in order to avoid being caught. After a few weeks in White Hall, we decided we liked it so much that we would stay through winter. In the spring, we would embark and go further south, but until then, White Hall was our home.
Marcosus’ family was very wealthy. Ironically, they made their money in the 17th century from tobacco harvested in the colonies. Marcosus believed his family virtually raped the Americans and he despised them for it. Upon his new birth shortly before the revolution, he hired a thief to return to England, steal as much of his family’s money as he could, and return to America, where Marcosus promised the thief a percentage of his take. The thief was quite successful and managed to hire a ship and bring most of Marcosus’ family belongings to Boston. Once he had secured the belongings and the thief demanded his money, Marcosus feasted on his blood. Marcosus sold his family’s belongings for a hefty sum and now traveled freely with no worries of money. Because of this, there were no need for us to find work in White Hall. We slept in the local hotel in the day, stalked the bars at night and feasted whenever we needed to. Often a company of soldiers would stay over the night and we would often find fresh blood among the troops.
As Christmas approached, we were quite satisfied with our lot in this town and likely would have stayed past the upcoming spring, but the life of the night had it’s own set of rules and we must continue on. A week or so before Christmas, rumors of approaching Union troops were rampant. Apparently, the troops were trying to take the north bank of the Neuse River. If the Confederates could hold it, the town would be safe. If they failed, White Hall would most likely fall, too. I remember asking Marcosus, “Should we leave?”
“No,” he said, “I’m tired of running from this bloody war.” We could hear the battle from the town and it subsided toward evening. A Confederate messenger came and told the town that the troops had held the bank and the Union army had withdrawn and moved on. They were asking for volunteers to help with the dead and wounded. I was going to volunteer until Marcosus reminded me, “Dead men’s blood is rank. Do not taste it. It reeks of death and could destroy your immortality.”
When spring came around, Marcosus said to me, “I have been thinking that Charleston would be a wonderful place to go for awhile. What do you think?”
“I agree,” I said. “If we went on horseback, we could be there in just a few days.” We arrived in late March of 1863 and trouble was already brewing. The rumors were that the Union forces were preparing a bombardment of Fort Sumter. Because of this, we found a nice place on the western part of the city in order to avoid any trouble. A week into April and we were again awaken by cannon fire, but by the evening it had ceased. Marcosus and I went to the other side of the city to hear what had happened. The fort had withstood the bombardment and had even badly damaged a Union ironclad ship. The ship sank the next day. Throughout the year of 1863, we endured the bombardment of Morris Island, the Battle of Grimball’s Landing, the assault of Fort Wagner, and a second and a third attack on Fort Sumter. By spring of 1864, Marcosus finally admitted to me, “I’m so sick of fighting. We are leaving the coast and going to Atlanta.”
Atlanta was brimming with excitement and mayhem. It was easy to hide in the city and to feed off the homeless and the alcoholics. But nothing was as precious and exciting as feeding off of blue blood. We chose a place in the eastern part of the city and settled there. One early evening, I noticed a young lady across the street. She was quite beautiful and it had been a long time since I had enjoyed the company of a lady without wanting to suck the life out of her. I asked her, against the wishes of Marcosus, to join us for the evening. By morning, I was quite thirsty for blood because I had avoided drinking in front of the lady. As we dismissed her, Marcosus turned on me throwing me against the wall. It was the first time he had ever flashed his fangs at me. “Love is for the weak children. Do not fall for it!” He jumped on a nearby bum and feasted on his life. After a brief moment, my lust for blood overcame my fear of Marcosus and I joined him. We made it home just as the sun came up.
Despite Marcosus’ objections, I continued to see the lady whose name was Belle. Within just a few weeks, I had fallen for her. I knew that I had to bring it up with Marcosus, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right time. The city was abuzz because of Sherman and his march starting in Chattanooga. Everyone else was thinking of how to get out of the city. I was trying to figure out how to stay. I had not told Belle of my dark life, but I was convinced she would understand. I could even make her my child. In June, I finally approached Marcosus with the subject.
“Marcosus, I’m in love.” He again showed his fangs.
“I told you, love is for the weak. Don’t fall for it!”
“Well, I’m weak. And I’m love with Belle.”
“You fool!” he screamed. “She is not one of us!”
“But we can make her one of us!”
“We cannot! If you do that, she will be your child, not your lover! If I do it, she will be your sister! The children of the night do not marry!”
“Isn’t there someone else? Another child that can—“
“NO!” he screamed. “The children live in strict secrecy! I know of no others!”
“What about your father?” I asked.
Marcosus lunged at me, “Pharagon is dead!” He sank from his angry demeanor. “Pharagon is dead.”
“Was Pharagon your father?” I asked.
“Yes. He drank the tainted blood of the dead and it destroyed him. As I said in the beginning, we are only immortal as long as we keep our diet.” He looked directly at me. “There are no others, Malakar. None that I know of. Child, we live by a strict code of ethics. And breaking those rules is grounds for other children to destroy you. You must break it off with Belle. She cannot be an immortal and you cannot be with a mortal.”
As hard as I tried, I could not leave Belle. We continued to secretly see each other. The news of Sherman’s advancing army was grave. Atlanta was tense. On July 20th, the Union Army attempted to cross Peach Tree Creek north of Atlanta. Alarms were raised. We were told to leave Atlanta or be prepared to die. I looked to Marcosus for guidance. “We stay. If we leave, we will run straight into the Union army to the west. We must stay and fight if necessary for our lives.”
Union artillery was coming into the city. Confederate troops moved quickly forming a counterattack. I watched from our window as some houses went untouched and other burned to the ground. A young boy, a messenger, approached our home. “Master Malakar, I have urgent news for you.”
“What is it?” I asked. The messenger pulled out a paper and handed it to me. I read it with shock and disbelief.. “What is it?” Marcosus asked.
“It’s Belle,” I said. “She’s dead.” The messenger silently left. “She was killed by a cannon ball that struck her carriage.” I started my immortal life hating this war and I still did. It was time for it to be over. I did not want to wait any longer to leave Atlanta. The South was gone.
The next evening, as we left, we watched for the first time Union troops in the city of Atlanta. For me, it was a death knoll. I knew that the South that I had grew up in would never be the same. But what difference did it make? I was not the same either. I was a vampire, a child of the night.
Immortal Blood: My Wanderings In The South
Like most boys my ripe age of 24, I joined with my state of North Carolina when Sumter was attacked and went off to fight the war of Northern Aggression. I was trained quickly and marched the treacherous route from Fort Anderson all the way north to Dare County to Fort Huger on Roanoke Island. Our mission was very simple. We must guard the fort and aid the Confederate Naval forces while trying to break through the Northern blockade.
I was placed under the command of one Colonel H. M. Shaw. He was a hard-nosed brute, but he taught our unit what it meant to be a soldier. He would polish us up nice when Brigadier General Wise would come around and show us off. I arrived at Fort Huger in June of 1861. I quickly learned my duties and fell into a routine. By the time fall came around, I was homesick. I missed my family. By the time Christmas came around, I was almost mad with disillusionment. Don’t let anyone fool you. Despite being the south, the fort could get quite cold in the winter. Not cold enough to freeze mind you, but cold enough to make you miss your mama’s quilts.
1862 dawned with reinforcements. The new blood lifted morale, not to mention the food that arrived. I was longing for my mama’s biscuits, but the bread that the new troops brought was certainly fine enough.
Early morning on the 7th of February, a general alarm was raised. The infamous General Burnside had landed troops on the southwestern side of the island. They had launched from Fort Monroe. Evidently, our position stuck in Burnside’s craw and he wanted to own us. We donned out battle position bracing for what might come at any time. Around four the next morning I awoke with a start. I heard a whistling over my head and the air behind me exploded. I was thrown to the ground, but quickly rose and grabbed my rifle. As I appeared over the wall, I could see the North’s gunboats and the soldiers as they assaulted the hill. I fired my rifle, but with little confidence. There had to be at least 5,000 of them and I knew there were only 2,500 of us. As I reloaded my rifle, another explosion hit at the right of me. I felt a burning pain in my chest and I fell to my knees. I looked down and saw a seven inch piece of a cannon protruding from my torso. I fell on my back. I was going to die.
I looked up to the ceiling and it was if I was just drifting away. The fort became smaller, as if I was looking at through a tube. I was ready to give up hope and accepted that I was going to die. Suddenly, a figure appeared in my sight. I saw his head disappear as if he was leaning on my torso. I felt a pain, dimly at first, but it grew stronger. I began to drift back to the fort. All of a sudden the pain grew intense. I was back in the fort, although I heard nothing of the battle raging around me. All I saw was him, standing before me with the piece of cannon shrapnel between his teeth and my blood running down his chin. He spit the metal out of his mouth and looked at me with madness in his eyes. He opened his mouth and his eye teeth were as long as my smallest finger. He leaped at me, wrenching my neck around and sinking his fangs into my neck. His teeth felt cold and my body began to grow cold. “Please,” I managed to mutter weakly, “Don’t take my life.” The beast removed it’s teeth from my neck. “Do you want to live, my child?” he asked me.
“Yes, please,” I said. “Let me live.”
Immediately I felt lifted from the ground. The air was cold and I felt even colder. I was conscious enough to look down and see below me the battle as it raged. Then, I passed out.
When I came to, I was lying in a bed. I looked over and saw my attacker. I began to leap up, but my pain pushed me back down. “Relax, my child,” the man said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Marcosus.”
“Where am I?” I asked.
“You are in my underground home. You are safe from the war.”
The war. It seemed like I had been sleeping for days. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A few hours.”
“What happened?”
“You were hit with cannon shrapnel and I saved you and brought you here.”
“I know,” I said. “I mean. what happened in the battle?”
Marcosus looked at me like a loving father. “It seems that your side was almost overrun by the attackers. Your General made a decision befitting his name. He surrendered.”
“No,” I muttered. “We lost?”
“It could be looked at as a victory. It appears that a hundred or so of your countrymen died. I believe General Wise wanted to save the rest. He ordered your commander to surrender. He did surrender reluctantly.”
I remembered again the fangs. “Who are you?” I said.
“I’ve already told you. My name is Marcosus.”
“I know that. I mean…” I gulped. “What are you?”
Marcosus laughed. “Some say I am a man. Others say I am evil. I am, by all accounts, a creature of the night.”
I must have looked confused. “I am, what mortals call, a vampire.”
Now it was my turn to laugh, but I could not because of my wounds. “That’s ridiculous. There’s no such thing.”
“On the contrary,” Marcosus retorted, “We very much exist.”
“So if you’re a vampire, what were you doing out there?” I asked.
“I live here, beneath the fort.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why not?” he replied.
“I mean, it seems a stupid thing to do, or even be. You live in a place where there are battles.”
“When I arrived here, there were no battles. At least, not yet.”
“Nonsense,” I said, “You look barely thirty years old. There’s been talk of this war for at least that long.”
“I am not thirty years old. I am 121 years old,” Marcosus said.
I thought he was kidding. “You joke,” I said.
“No, I do not joke. I arrived in Boston in the spring of 1770. I was an officer in the British Navy. I became immortal just before the revolution and I ended up here just after the war of 1812. It was quiet then. The rumblings of war did not begin for some twenty or so years.”
As crazy as it sounds, I was beginning to believe him. “Marcosus doesn’t sound like a very British name.”
“It isn’t. It is the name my mentor gave me when he made me immortal. My original name was John Williams, but I have not been him for some hundred years.”
“What is it like? What’s it like being a vampire?”
“It is, in a way, beautiful, and in other ways, quite tragic. The life of the night promises only one thing, immortality, and then only if you maintain your diet.”
“You were going to kill me, weren’t you?” I asked. He paused.
“I was, child. But I have walked this earth alone for thirty years and I am lonely. When you asked me to spare your life, I saw a longing in your eyes. You want more, don’t you?”
“My first battle and I’m already tired of war,” I said.
“I saved your life, and would love to give you immortality. But for now, you must sleep. We will talk in the morning.”
As I awoke, Marcosus was standing over me. “You spoke in your sleep. You miss your family?”
“Yes,” I said, “But the more I think about it, I have nothing to go back to. As much as I hate this war, it was my way of making a mark on this world.”
“There are other ways, child,” Marcosus said. “Are you ready to die again to live eternal?”
“I am,” I replied.
Marcosus drew a knife from his belt and quickly slit his left wrist. The blood flowed freely. “Open your mouth,” he commanded. I did and he let just a few drops of his blood fall into my mouth. “Drink my immortal blood, child.” His blood was cold, initially invigorating, but suddenly I felt immense pain.
“You are going to die, child, but you will die this time to live forever.”
I saw the tunnel again and Marcosus drifted farther and farther away until he was gone and there was only darkness. I do not know how long I had been gone, but I finally saw light, just a pin prick in the distance and it began to grow larger. Marcosus was again standing before as I began to see him for the first time with vampire eyes. I was suddenly conscious and aware that I had once felt immense pain, but now all was gone. I was shirtless, in the same bed that I had been in for days. I looked at my chest where the scars of war had once been. They were now gone. Immortality had entered me and I was a glorious creature of the night. “Your old name is gone. You are renamed Malakar, child of Marcosus.”
I was anxious to leave the house and Marcosus made the suggestion that we travel south. I immediately realized that travel during the day was impossible. I had suddenly developed a disdain for sunlight. As we walked at night, we often talked about practical things that a vampire needed to know such as what is the best type of blood to survive on. We arrived in Craven County around the beginning of March and decided to settle in the town of New Bern for a short time.
New Bern’s night life was quite active. There were many Confederate fortifications in that area and many soldiers. At first, I was hesitant to kill a human for blood, but Marcosus showed me how to pick out the weak soldiers that would most likely die anyway and prey on them. News was abuzz in New Bern about the battle that had happened north of there, the one I had been wounded in. I posed as a brother of myself and found out that I had been reported Missing In Action and presumed dead. Some of the soldiers were quite nervous. Most of them had not seen any action yet and the rumors of Burnside’s army coming that way were abundant.
We were there only two weeks or so when we were awaken by distant cannon fire. Burnside’s army had arrived. We were not anxious to be in the middle of a battle so we stole two horses and headed further south. We found out later that New Bern fell to the Union Army later that morning.
We rode hard until we reached the town of White Hall where we decided to stay for a few weeks. Marcosus taught me that a child of the night could not stay long in one place, five years at the most, in order to avoid being caught. After a few weeks in White Hall, we decided we liked it so much that we would stay through winter. In the spring, we would embark and go further south, but until then, White Hall was our home.
Marcosus’ family was very wealthy. Ironically, they made their money in the 17th century from tobacco harvested in the colonies. Marcosus believed his family virtually raped the Americans and he despised them for it. Upon his new birth shortly before the revolution, he hired a thief to return to England, steal as much of his family’s money as he could, and return to America, where Marcosus promised the thief a percentage of his take. The thief was quite successful and managed to hire a ship and bring most of Marcosus’ family belongings to Boston. Once he had secured the belongings and the thief demanded his money, Marcosus feasted on his blood. Marcosus sold his family’s belongings for a hefty sum and now traveled freely with no worries of money. Because of this, there were no need for us to find work in White Hall. We slept in the local hotel in the day, stalked the bars at night and feasted whenever we needed to. Often a company of soldiers would stay over the night and we would often find fresh blood among the troops.
As Christmas approached, we were quite satisfied with our lot in this town and likely would have stayed past the upcoming spring, but the life of the night had it’s own set of rules and we must continue on. A week or so before Christmas, rumors of approaching Union troops were rampant. Apparently, the troops were trying to take the north bank of the Neuse River. If the Confederates could hold it, the town would be safe. If they failed, White Hall would most likely fall, too. I remember asking Marcosus, “Should we leave?”
“No,” he said, “I’m tired of running from this bloody war.” We could hear the battle from the town and it subsided toward evening. A Confederate messenger came and told the town that the troops had held the bank and the Union army had withdrawn and moved on. They were asking for volunteers to help with the dead and wounded. I was going to volunteer until Marcosus reminded me, “Dead men’s blood is rank. Do not taste it. It reeks of death and could destroy your immortality.”
When spring came around, Marcosus said to me, “I have been thinking that Charleston would be a wonderful place to go for awhile. What do you think?”
“I agree,” I said. “If we went on horseback, we could be there in just a few days.” We arrived in late March of 1863 and trouble was already brewing. The rumors were that the Union forces were preparing a bombardment of Fort Sumter. Because of this, we found a nice place on the western part of the city in order to avoid any trouble. A week into April and we were again awaken by cannon fire, but by the evening it had ceased. Marcosus and I went to the other side of the city to hear what had happened. The fort had withstood the bombardment and had even badly damaged a Union ironclad ship. The ship sank the next day. Throughout the year of 1863, we endured the bombardment of Morris Island, the Battle of Grimball’s Landing, the assault of Fort Wagner, and a second and a third attack on Fort Sumter. By spring of 1864, Marcosus finally admitted to me, “I’m so sick of fighting. We are leaving the coast and going to Atlanta.”
Atlanta was brimming with excitement and mayhem. It was easy to hide in the city and to feed off the homeless and the alcoholics. But nothing was as precious and exciting as feeding off of blue blood. We chose a place in the eastern part of the city and settled there. One early evening, I noticed a young lady across the street. She was quite beautiful and it had been a long time since I had enjoyed the company of a lady without wanting to suck the life out of her. I asked her, against the wishes of Marcosus, to join us for the evening. By morning, I was quite thirsty for blood because I had avoided drinking in front of the lady. As we dismissed her, Marcosus turned on me throwing me against the wall. It was the first time he had ever flashed his fangs at me. “Love is for the weak children. Do not fall for it!” He jumped on a nearby bum and feasted on his life. After a brief moment, my lust for blood overcame my fear of Marcosus and I joined him. We made it home just as the sun came up.
Despite Marcosus’ objections, I continued to see the lady whose name was Belle. Within just a few weeks, I had fallen for her. I knew that I had to bring it up with Marcosus, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right time. The city was abuzz because of Sherman and his march starting in Chattanooga. Everyone else was thinking of how to get out of the city. I was trying to figure out how to stay. I had not told Belle of my dark life, but I was convinced she would understand. I could even make her my child. In June, I finally approached Marcosus with the subject.
“Marcosus, I’m in love.” He again showed his fangs.
“I told you, love is for the weak. Don’t fall for it!”
“Well, I’m weak. And I’m love with Belle.”
“You fool!” he screamed. “She is not one of us!”
“But we can make her one of us!”
“We cannot! If you do that, she will be your child, not your lover! If I do it, she will be your sister! The children of the night do not marry!”
“Isn’t there someone else? Another child that can—“
“NO!” he screamed. “The children live in strict secrecy! I know of no others!”
“What about your father?” I asked.
Marcosus lunged at me, “Pharagon is dead!” He sank from his angry demeanor. “Pharagon is dead.”
“Was Pharagon your father?” I asked.
“Yes. He drank the tainted blood of the dead and it destroyed him. As I said in the beginning, we are only immortal as long as we keep our diet.” He looked directly at me. “There are no others, Malakar. None that I know of. Child, we live by a strict code of ethics. And breaking those rules is grounds for other children to destroy you. You must break it off with Belle. She cannot be an immortal and you cannot be with a mortal.”
As hard as I tried, I could not leave Belle. We continued to secretly see each other. The news of Sherman’s advancing army was grave. Atlanta was tense. On July 20th, the Union Army attempted to cross Peach Tree Creek north of Atlanta. Alarms were raised. We were told to leave Atlanta or be prepared to die. I looked to Marcosus for guidance. “We stay. If we leave, we will run straight into the Union army to the west. We must stay and fight if necessary for our lives.”
Union artillery was coming into the city. Confederate troops moved quickly forming a counterattack. I watched from our window as some houses went untouched and other burned to the ground. A young boy, a messenger, approached our home. “Master Malakar, I have urgent news for you.”
“What is it?” I asked. The messenger pulled out a paper and handed it to me. I read it with shock and disbelief.. “What is it?” Marcosus asked.
“It’s Belle,” I said. “She’s dead.” The messenger silently left. “She was killed by a cannon ball that struck her carriage.” I started my immortal life hating this war and I still did. It was time for it to be over. I did not want to wait any longer to leave Atlanta. The South was gone.
The next evening, as we left, we watched for the first time Union troops in the city of Atlanta. For me, it was a death knoll. I knew that the South that I had grew up in would never be the same. But what difference did it make? I was not the same either. I was a vampire, a child of the night.
A short story I just found... Hope you like.
On January 30, 2005, Fidel Castro, long-time leader of the country of Cuba, passed away. His brother, Miguel Castro, assumed the dictatorship. Miguel was much more ruthless than his brother, and, after building a military for a year, launched an invasion at the beginning of 2006 of the Florida Keys. The United States still had large amounts of military personel in Afganistan and Iraq. The year before, Osama bin Laden had been finally captured and things were settling down a bit. However, the use of force would stretch the forces thin. The United States did declare war on Cuba, however. Unfortunately, China, long-time allies with Cuba, began to send aid. The amount of aid reached the point to a pace that the U. S. also declared war on China. At the end of April, 2006, all of the Florida Keys had fallen to the Cubans.
On June 1, 2006, the Cubans and Chinese launched an invasion of Miami. A massive amount of troops were sent to the area, but not before Miami had fallen. Subsequently, Great Britain and France, sensing danger, came to the aid of the United States and declared war on Cuba and the Chinese. The United Nations condemned Cuba and China for their actions and pledged support for the Allies. World War III had begun.
June 6, 2006—The mayor of Miami surrenders the city to Cuba.
June 8, 2006—The Anti-Cuban Front, a militant anti-Cuban paramilitary organization, reorganizes and changes their names to the Americans For Liberty. This is seen as a positive move by the Department of Homeland Security and by the CIA. The AFL subsequently goes underground.
June 30—A CIA safehouse is contacted by a member of the AFL calling himself Silencer. The are looking to establish a relationship based upon the common goal of the liberation of Miami. The CIA agree to the relationship and offer to feed them info in exchange of info.
July 4—The CIA feeds info to to the AFL regarding the confiscation of motorcycles because of a perceived threat to the Cuban government. By September 1, all motorcycles that are owned and operated will only be operated by a government official.
July 6—Jose Castro, son of Miguel Castro, is appointed governor of the new Cuban State of Florida.
July 13—The mayor of Miami signs an agreement to convert the Miami Police Department to government officials. In response to this, the CIA encourages the AFL to recruit discouraged MPD members.
July 15—Announcement is made of the new alert level system.
Level 1: Police Warrants Issued
Level 2: Active Police Search
Level 3: MPD Helicopter Force Activated
Level 4: SWAT activated
Level 5: Cuban Bureau of Investigations activated
Level 6: Military is alerted
July 18—Enforcement of the new motorcycle policy begins.
July 20—The AFL is contacted by a representative of a group of discouraged MPD officers. They offer to leave, but insist they cannot do so voluntarily. A mission is planned to extract the group of officers during a motorcade and disguise it an assassination attempt.
July 31—
Mission Debriefing
30 July 2006—1330 hours—AFL members were posted on top of several buildings with rocket launchers, assault rifles, grenades, sniper rifles, and other elite weapons. As the motorcade approached ground zero, the first car was taken out by a rocket. This stopped the motorcade from moving. While the car containing the dictator went around the burning car, a distraction team chased it while approximately 20 members of the AFL scaled down the buildings. They subsequently isolated the 20 discouraged members and took the remaining force into custody which numbered about 10 men. The distraction team withdrew from the chase and returned to a back-up operations base. Under heavy anti-aircraft fire, five blackhawk helicopters landed and extracted the ten prisoners as well as the 20 discouraged members and the 20 AFL members. The ten prisoners were taken into the U.S. portion of Florida and the 40 others were dispatched at a backup operations center to “disappear.”
Mission Objective: Accomplished
August 31—After one month of intense training, the twenty new members of the AFL are fully trained and ready to be assimilated into the force which now totals almost 100 members.
September 1—Twenty AFL snipers take out twenty high-ranking targets on motorcycles simultaneously. The symbolism is noted by the Cubans.
September 3—Training begins for as massive mission aimed to take out a large division of the Miami PD, SWAT, Cuban Intelligence, and the Cuban and Chinese military.
October 4—
Mission Debriefing
03 October 2006—0903 hours—Three snipers stationed on top of the Malibu Night club, a club known for its Cuban allegiance, took out MPD officers patrolling outside prompting a Level 1 Alert. Other officers were also taken out prompting a Level 2 Alert. As police officers arrive, their cars were taken out by rockets. This prompts a Level 3 Alert. MPD Helicopters were activated and quickly located the snipers, but not before several helicopters were destroyed. Level 4 is activated and SWAT moved in. As their trucks arrive, they were taken out also by rocket launchers. The CBI is activated and despite their great tactical moves, the vehicles were destroyed by rockets and the remaining officers destroyed by sniper and assault rifle fire. Level 6 is activated and the full weight of the Cuban and Chinese military begin to bear down on the club. Radio communication is intercepted from Cuban military officials for all the officers that are inside the Malibu to stay put for their safety. Appropriate amounts of C4 were set on the roof and the three snipers scaled the wall to go to extraction point Alpha. Sniper Alpha and Bravo were severely wounded during the extraction and captured by the Cubans. Sniper Charlie was killed. However, before he died, he was able to detonate the C4. It was enough to level the Malibu Club and half a city block around it.
Meanwhile, the distraction of the Malibu Club attack was a large enough distraction for the Allied Forces to mount a strong attack on a large weapons supply post at the docks. Several ships containing a large amount of troop supplies were destroyed as they were waiting to be unloaded.
Mission Objective: Accomplished
Casualties: Allies--
KIA— Sniper Charlie
POW— Sniper Alpha
Sniper Bravo
Cuba—
KIA—Unknown, but estimates are at 350 with 500 wounded.
POW—None
October 6—Sniper Charlie’s name is released.
Richard Miguel Santoz
Born: December 7, 1980
Died: October 3, 2006
Occupation: Worked as a member of the Anti-Cuban Front and then for the AFL.
Background: Born and raised in Miami. Joined the Marines in 1998. Dispatched for Tour of Duty in Afganistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2002. Honorably discharged in June 2003. Joined the Anti-Cuban Front in August 2004. Leaves behind a wife and two kids.
Sniper Alpha and Sniper Bravo are executed on live Cuban television. The President addresses the nation saying, “The Cubans are limping toward destruction.”
November 8 2203 hours—Operation Final Blow begins. A squad of Navy Seals HALO in to the middle of Miami and set up a small perimeter near a Cuban communication station. After knocking out communications, an AFL agent detonates a large amount of C4 in a power station knocking out power for almost all of Miami. A massive air raid begins with selected targets.
November 9—At dawn, the invasion begins with large amounts of troops landing on Miami Beach. Before sunset, the southern part of the city is completely in Allied hands.
November 10—At dawn the Northern Front that has remained still since June and begins to put the squeeze on the Cuban and Chinese troops. The Navy has blocked several Cuban and Chinese ships from entering Floridian waters, thus blocking reinforcements. and soon the casualties begin to mount up. Just before sunset, the Cuban and Chinese army surrender in the streets of Miami.
November 11—Miguel Castro sends his general to Miami to negotiate a cease-fire.
November 12—Talks of surrender of the Cubans are going well and the President grants a temporary cease-fire.
November 14—Talks begin to break down when the general refuses to remove his troops form the Florida Keys.
November 15—Talks end abruptly and the cease-fire is broken when U.S. ships fire on strongholds on the Keys’ coast.
November 22—0602 hours—Simultaneous invasion of each of the Florida Keys begins and ends the same day with barely a shot being fired.
November 23—Miguel Castro asks for another cease-fire.
November 24—The President grants another cease-fire.
November 25—Castro’s general arrives in Miami for another round of talks.
November 26—Talks begin to break down when the President demands that Castro step down as dictator and allow a democracy to be put into place.
November 27—Talks again end abruptly and the President announces the cease-fire is over. On national television he announces that he will seek to invade Cuba.
November 28—In a startling move, China announces that they will no longer send aid to Cuba and will move all ships and troops out of the area.
November 30—The Allies and the Chinese sign a permanent peace agreement
December 1—Dubbed “The Christmas Campaign”, Cuba is invaded by Allied Forces and falls within one week.
December 9—Cuba unconditionally surrenders to the Allied Forces.
On January 30, 2005, Fidel Castro, long-time leader of the country of Cuba, passed away. His brother, Miguel Castro, assumed the dictatorship. Miguel was much more ruthless than his brother, and, after building a military for a year, launched an invasion at the beginning of 2006 of the Florida Keys. The United States still had large amounts of military personel in Afganistan and Iraq. The year before, Osama bin Laden had been finally captured and things were settling down a bit. However, the use of force would stretch the forces thin. The United States did declare war on Cuba, however. Unfortunately, China, long-time allies with Cuba, began to send aid. The amount of aid reached the point to a pace that the U. S. also declared war on China. At the end of April, 2006, all of the Florida Keys had fallen to the Cubans.
On June 1, 2006, the Cubans and Chinese launched an invasion of Miami. A massive amount of troops were sent to the area, but not before Miami had fallen. Subsequently, Great Britain and France, sensing danger, came to the aid of the United States and declared war on Cuba and the Chinese. The United Nations condemned Cuba and China for their actions and pledged support for the Allies. World War III had begun.
June 6, 2006—The mayor of Miami surrenders the city to Cuba.
June 8, 2006—The Anti-Cuban Front, a militant anti-Cuban paramilitary organization, reorganizes and changes their names to the Americans For Liberty. This is seen as a positive move by the Department of Homeland Security and by the CIA. The AFL subsequently goes underground.
June 30—A CIA safehouse is contacted by a member of the AFL calling himself Silencer. The are looking to establish a relationship based upon the common goal of the liberation of Miami. The CIA agree to the relationship and offer to feed them info in exchange of info.
July 4—The CIA feeds info to to the AFL regarding the confiscation of motorcycles because of a perceived threat to the Cuban government. By September 1, all motorcycles that are owned and operated will only be operated by a government official.
July 6—Jose Castro, son of Miguel Castro, is appointed governor of the new Cuban State of Florida.
July 13—The mayor of Miami signs an agreement to convert the Miami Police Department to government officials. In response to this, the CIA encourages the AFL to recruit discouraged MPD members.
July 15—Announcement is made of the new alert level system.
Level 1: Police Warrants Issued
Level 2: Active Police Search
Level 3: MPD Helicopter Force Activated
Level 4: SWAT activated
Level 5: Cuban Bureau of Investigations activated
Level 6: Military is alerted
July 18—Enforcement of the new motorcycle policy begins.
July 20—The AFL is contacted by a representative of a group of discouraged MPD officers. They offer to leave, but insist they cannot do so voluntarily. A mission is planned to extract the group of officers during a motorcade and disguise it an assassination attempt.
July 31—
Mission Debriefing
30 July 2006—1330 hours—AFL members were posted on top of several buildings with rocket launchers, assault rifles, grenades, sniper rifles, and other elite weapons. As the motorcade approached ground zero, the first car was taken out by a rocket. This stopped the motorcade from moving. While the car containing the dictator went around the burning car, a distraction team chased it while approximately 20 members of the AFL scaled down the buildings. They subsequently isolated the 20 discouraged members and took the remaining force into custody which numbered about 10 men. The distraction team withdrew from the chase and returned to a back-up operations base. Under heavy anti-aircraft fire, five blackhawk helicopters landed and extracted the ten prisoners as well as the 20 discouraged members and the 20 AFL members. The ten prisoners were taken into the U.S. portion of Florida and the 40 others were dispatched at a backup operations center to “disappear.”
Mission Objective: Accomplished
August 31—After one month of intense training, the twenty new members of the AFL are fully trained and ready to be assimilated into the force which now totals almost 100 members.
September 1—Twenty AFL snipers take out twenty high-ranking targets on motorcycles simultaneously. The symbolism is noted by the Cubans.
September 3—Training begins for as massive mission aimed to take out a large division of the Miami PD, SWAT, Cuban Intelligence, and the Cuban and Chinese military.
October 4—
Mission Debriefing
03 October 2006—0903 hours—Three snipers stationed on top of the Malibu Night club, a club known for its Cuban allegiance, took out MPD officers patrolling outside prompting a Level 1 Alert. Other officers were also taken out prompting a Level 2 Alert. As police officers arrive, their cars were taken out by rockets. This prompts a Level 3 Alert. MPD Helicopters were activated and quickly located the snipers, but not before several helicopters were destroyed. Level 4 is activated and SWAT moved in. As their trucks arrive, they were taken out also by rocket launchers. The CBI is activated and despite their great tactical moves, the vehicles were destroyed by rockets and the remaining officers destroyed by sniper and assault rifle fire. Level 6 is activated and the full weight of the Cuban and Chinese military begin to bear down on the club. Radio communication is intercepted from Cuban military officials for all the officers that are inside the Malibu to stay put for their safety. Appropriate amounts of C4 were set on the roof and the three snipers scaled the wall to go to extraction point Alpha. Sniper Alpha and Bravo were severely wounded during the extraction and captured by the Cubans. Sniper Charlie was killed. However, before he died, he was able to detonate the C4. It was enough to level the Malibu Club and half a city block around it.
Meanwhile, the distraction of the Malibu Club attack was a large enough distraction for the Allied Forces to mount a strong attack on a large weapons supply post at the docks. Several ships containing a large amount of troop supplies were destroyed as they were waiting to be unloaded.
Mission Objective: Accomplished
Casualties: Allies--
KIA— Sniper Charlie
POW— Sniper Alpha
Sniper Bravo
Cuba—
KIA—Unknown, but estimates are at 350 with 500 wounded.
POW—None
October 6—Sniper Charlie’s name is released.
Richard Miguel Santoz
Born: December 7, 1980
Died: October 3, 2006
Occupation: Worked as a member of the Anti-Cuban Front and then for the AFL.
Background: Born and raised in Miami. Joined the Marines in 1998. Dispatched for Tour of Duty in Afganistan in 2001 and then in Iraq in 2002. Honorably discharged in June 2003. Joined the Anti-Cuban Front in August 2004. Leaves behind a wife and two kids.
Sniper Alpha and Sniper Bravo are executed on live Cuban television. The President addresses the nation saying, “The Cubans are limping toward destruction.”
November 8 2203 hours—Operation Final Blow begins. A squad of Navy Seals HALO in to the middle of Miami and set up a small perimeter near a Cuban communication station. After knocking out communications, an AFL agent detonates a large amount of C4 in a power station knocking out power for almost all of Miami. A massive air raid begins with selected targets.
November 9—At dawn, the invasion begins with large amounts of troops landing on Miami Beach. Before sunset, the southern part of the city is completely in Allied hands.
November 10—At dawn the Northern Front that has remained still since June and begins to put the squeeze on the Cuban and Chinese troops. The Navy has blocked several Cuban and Chinese ships from entering Floridian waters, thus blocking reinforcements. and soon the casualties begin to mount up. Just before sunset, the Cuban and Chinese army surrender in the streets of Miami.
November 11—Miguel Castro sends his general to Miami to negotiate a cease-fire.
November 12—Talks of surrender of the Cubans are going well and the President grants a temporary cease-fire.
November 14—Talks begin to break down when the general refuses to remove his troops form the Florida Keys.
November 15—Talks end abruptly and the cease-fire is broken when U.S. ships fire on strongholds on the Keys’ coast.
November 22—0602 hours—Simultaneous invasion of each of the Florida Keys begins and ends the same day with barely a shot being fired.
November 23—Miguel Castro asks for another cease-fire.
November 24—The President grants another cease-fire.
November 25—Castro’s general arrives in Miami for another round of talks.
November 26—Talks begin to break down when the President demands that Castro step down as dictator and allow a democracy to be put into place.
November 27—Talks again end abruptly and the President announces the cease-fire is over. On national television he announces that he will seek to invade Cuba.
November 28—In a startling move, China announces that they will no longer send aid to Cuba and will move all ships and troops out of the area.
November 30—The Allies and the Chinese sign a permanent peace agreement
December 1—Dubbed “The Christmas Campaign”, Cuba is invaded by Allied Forces and falls within one week.
December 9—Cuba unconditionally surrenders to the Allied Forces.
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