Death and Taxes

I was lying in bed playing a game on my iPod when my wife came to the door and said "Somebody just posted a message on Facebook that Bin Laden was dead!"  I leaped from bed and immediately flew to my computer to see what news there was on this longest of overdue headlines - sure enough, CBS Up-To-The-Minute was reporting that Osama Bin Laden was dead!


To be honest... I thought Bin Laden was already dead.  It had been reported that he suffered from a kidney ailment and needed the close proximity of a dialysis machine.  I reasoned that he could not be hiding in the mountainous regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan because of medical reasons, but I never would have thought that he would be inside of a populated area.  And then, there is the video of a British correspondent talking with Bhutto three months before she was assassinated - during the course of an interview, she mentions that Bin Laden had been killed !


I am one of the few that believe only half of what I see and even less of what I hear.  I am not going to go out on a limb and say that the President is misinformed, that our troops are misinformed, nor will I dismiss the possibly that its totally true.  What bothers me is the dumping of the body at sea... why would you do that?  I am sure that tissue samples, pictures and fingerprints were taken, but why would you dump the body at sea?  Were we trying to adhere to Muslim custom of burial within twenty-four hours of death?


Bin Laden's body could have been sent to his family in Saudi Arabia.  I am sure that his relatives, who have secretly returned to the United States, would accept delivery to them of his remains.  Did we want to make sure that he would never rise from the dead - why would you dump the body at sea?  I don't get it!  More than likely though the answer is... no one wanted the 'martyred' body of a terrorist interned on their country's soil - it would be a magnet for terrorist and devoted followers!


Most assuredly, I am indeed proud and grateful to the NAVY SEALS for their dedicated professionalism in bring this terrorist to justice!  Bravo Zulu shipmates!

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

Guantanamo Bay - The Al Qaida Issue

Oh! What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. Who decided to take captives from a warfront and house them in another country? What was the purpose for housing those prisoners at Guantanamo? Those are the questions that were never asked of President Bush. I believe that in the hasty confusion to exact a punishment against those imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay the President, and all of his men, lost track of the big picture and were caught up in a quagmire of their own doings.

The Bush administration has maintained that these individuals are extremely dangerous and must be isolated in such a manner that they can never do us harm again. The Bush administration notes that previously released Guantanamo prisoners have gone back and joined the fight against American troops. They cite at least sixty-one incidents wherein prisoners that were released have become suicide bombers, have been recaptured, or have shown up on video tapes recruiting for the jihadist.

I believe that there is some truth to what is being reported by the troop commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan with regard to the return of released prisoners to combat, but I question if any of this would have been the case if these prisoners had been incarcerated in-country rather than at Guantanamo Bay. I wonder what would have been the outcome had we not been exposed at Al Ghraib? What if we had expeditiously carried out the military tribunals? Obviously the decisions were made by someone positioned to formulate a policy, but the policy, we are seeing now was very flawed.

Al Qaida uses Guantanamo as a badge of honor, a recruitment tool. Those having been there for any length of time are looked upon as having been in the den of the infidels and lived to tell the tale – an exaggerated tale, I am sure. But, why give the enemy additional ammunition to be used against you in the psychological warfare that is always associated with armed conflict. We have created a two-headed monster that will not die no matter what we do from this day forward.

Had the United States proceed with military tribunals against these individuals as originally stated, the matter would have been over… instead, it has drawn on with disastrous propaganda permeating everywhere. In defense of the President, I submit that he had every right to remove the prisoners from the warfront, incarcerate them at Guantanamo Bay, and send them to a military tribunal. The President’s rights can be reviewed from similar incidents, the first being the incarceration and military trial of Germans caught after they had entered the United States during WWII…

The Court first carefully traced the President's power to issue the July 2 order back to the Congressional "war powers" provided in Article I, section 8 of the Constitution, and the President's executive powers under Article II. It held that the Articles of War were an appropriate constitutional exercise of power by Congress, and fully provided for the trial of enemy spies by miltary tribunal. As a final step, the Court affirmed that the July 2 order was a valid implementation of the Articles of War.

The Court stressed that the procedure being followed was a well-accepted implementation of the universally accepted laws of war:
By universal agreement and practice the law of war draws a distinction between..... those who are lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful.
According to the court, unlawful acts of war include "an enemy combatant who without uniform comes secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war by destruction of life or property". It noted that the Hague Convention, adopted by the United States in 1909, adopted the pre-existing distinction between lawful and unlawful belligerents, protecting only the former.

Notwithstanding this lawful position, the Bush administration delayed the execution of the Military Tribunals, creating a situation that is to be decided by another President who is either unaware of these statues, or simply does not want to entertain the matter further.

The other example involving the German prisoners of war is put forth in the article Ex Parte Quirin and it details how, with reason, the prisoners were denied Habeas Corpus…

The President, as President and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, by Order of July 2, 1942, appointed a Military Commission and directed it to try petitioners for offenses against the law of war and the Articles of War, and prescribed regulations for the procedure on the trial and for review of the record of the trial and of any judgment or sentence of the Commission. On the same day, by Proclamation, the President declared that 'all persons who are subjects, citizens or residents of any nation at war with the United States or who give obedience to or act under the direction of any such nation, and who during time of war enter or attempt to enter the United States ... through coastal or boundary defenses, and are charged with committing or attempting or preparing to commit sabotage, espionage, hostile or warlike acts, or violations of the law of war, shall be subject to the law of war and to the jurisdiction of military tribunals'.

It is obvious that the United States was, and is, within its rights to expose the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to military Tribunal. There is a choice… we can free these individuals and reap the havoc as a result of their being used to recruit others to Jihad, or we can just as easily commence the Tribunals and sentence them as would be the discretion of a Military Judge. 

There is another way if we free them; we must extract a solemn oath from them to never again pursue jihad against any government again – to be sworn to in the name of with Allah. No self-respecting Muslim will commit a violation of an oath sworn to in the name of Allah.

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control - Rodney A. Davis

Iraq - How We Got Ourselves Into This Mess

You can listen to a thousand people and each will give you his biased opinion of how we are at ‘war’ with Islam and the Islamic Fundamentalist, and there are two separate entities, only one of which we are confronting in a hostile manner.

Before we went into Iraq the second time there were no al Qaeda, Islamic Fundamentalist, or any other groups hell-bent on destroying the United States embedded in Iraq. Saddam’s iron-clad rule for thirty-five years saw to that.

Before 9/11, the Twin Towers withstood an attack by a group of Islamic Fundamentalist who failed in their attempt to destroy that noble building. The date was February 26, 1993 when four Fundamentalist, led by Mohammed Salameh, drove a vehicle loaded with explosives into the basement of that site and detonated those explosives. Those individuals had no affiliation with what we know today as al Qaeda, in fact, al Qaeda did not exist until much later.

I can state, with strong conviction, the following:

1. If we had not invaded Iraq, we would have routed the Taliban in Afghanistan (al Qaeda) by now and our soldiers would be home.
2. There were no WMDs in Iraq and I can safely tell you why – enriched Uranium leaves a very distinct by-product – gamma rays, which have a half-life of fifty thousand years.
a. Gamma Rays - Gamma rays from spontaneous nuclear decay are emitted with a rate and energy
b. (color) spectrum that is unique to the nuclear species that is decaying. This uniqueness
c. provides the basis for most gamma-ray assay techniques: by counting the number of
d. gamma rays emitted with a specific energy, it is possible to determine the number of
e. nuclei that emit that characteristic radiation.
3. The Bush Administration, in conjunction with an Intelligence group headed by Vice-President Cheney, directed IAEA inspectors to 250 separate sites within Iraq that were supposed to be areas where Nuclear, Biological, or Chemical weapons were being manufactured – those inspectors found no signs to substantiate the claim of the production of WMDs.
4. Secretary of State Powell lied when he claimed, with manufactured evidence, that mobile trailer labs were producing biological weapons. One day, before he dies, he will tell you that in his memoirs.
5. Saddam was routed in the first war under Bush’s father. The forces placed against him taught him a lesson that he would never willing want to see repeated on Iraq soil.

North Korea claims to have detonated a nuclear device beneath surface somewhere inside of North Korea. That is a lie and before long you will know the reason why. I can tell you this… no emissions commonly associated with the detonation of a nuclear device were ever detected after that explosion.

You all remember Chernobyl… On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:44 a.m. (UTC+3) reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant located in the Soviet Union near Pripyat in Ukraine exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Nearly thirty to forty times more fallout was released than Hiroshima. The plume drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. According to official post-Soviet data,[1] about 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.

The radiation from that ‘one’ reactor plant was detected far and wide outside of Ukraine. Why didn’t we detect the radiation from a ‘nuclear’ device that was detonated below the surface of the Earth that should have sent up plumes of radioactive dust? There is a simple reason – it never was nuclear!

I, too, served under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush senior. I can remember the good and bad times of each President. I remember Clinton for placing us in the position to do all that we have been able to do in these latest conflicts. Were it not for the update Armed Forces that Clinton preserved, Bush junior would not have been able to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq simultaneously!

The problem, as I see it, is that we have forgotten the basic principles that have governed our use of armed force… prior to Reagan (excluding Viet Nam), we had never used armed force unless we had been attacked! Granada changed all of that and it has been the makings of our undoing.

This country possesses the ability to destroy any country on the globe and do with authority. Each time that we have ever gone to ‘war’ in retaliation for having been attacked, we have demonstrated a superior capability to destroy our enemies. That is the only deterrent we need to others attacking us. When we went into Kuwait to push Saddam’s out of that country, Russia predicted that we would not win against the forces that she, Russia, had trained. When we routed the Iraqis in a little over a week everyone that had doubts about our ability to conduct a ground forces war came away impressed. Kaddafi was so impressed, he immediately gave up any notion of pursuing nuclear weapons.

President Bush destroyed the image by his zealous wish to go to war with ‘somebody’, he didn’t care who or where. Our greatest feats of war were reduced to ‘paper tiger’ status by his actions.

The biggest mistake President Bush has ever made has been to use force when diplomacy would, after Gulf War I, have brought all to the bargaining table. Afghanistan does not, in my opinion, come under the same umbrella. Had we captured Bin Laden when we had him trapped at Tora Bora, the back of al Qaeda would have been broken. Instead, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and the CIA, who were in charge of the operation that had Bin Laden trapped, argued as to who would be able to bring back Bin Laden’s head. While they argued, Bin Laden slid through the mountains past other ‘Muslims’ into the safety of Pakistan.

At a billion dollars every other day for a war that is based on lies, do you really want four more years of Republican shenanigans? A Democratic majority in Congress with a Democratic President is needed. The Republicans had it and wasted a golden opportunity to do the right thing – they didn’t. The Republicans gave away 1.3 trillion dollars in tax cuts to the rich – money that could have buoyed this country and probably prevented a recession. Drunk with power, they did the equivalent of using all the credit that was available to them, spend all the money that they had coming to them (taxes), and then gave all of the cash away! It is no wonder that the United States is broke and about to go under.

Finally, war is not the answer to every situation. People die when a war ensues, many of them innocent. It should be used only as a last result. Diplomacy built upon trust can reach amicable solutions far more easily. The world is too small, and with enough countries forming a blockade against a rogue nation, we can effectively isolate those who go against the grain of being a good and productive neighbor. We should not be afraid to try diplomacy first and we should not let others use the ‘fear’ card to create an atmosphere of confusion as to what is the right direction to take in forming a safe and pollution-free Earth!

Thank you for your time…


Rod Davis
Cozumel, MX 77601