Twin Towers - The Bush Legacy

While I am greatly appalled at the destruction of the Twin Towers, I am also astounded by the circumvention of our system of justice, a cornerstone of the American way, as it is presented to the world by the Bush Administration. We are no better than the President of Zimbabwe if we are to allow this sort of injustice to prevail.

I include this excerpt from an article written by Mr. Horton of Harper’s Magazine which conveys my interest in the outcome of the political travesty that is the imprisonment of a group of men at Guantanamo under such bizarre circumstances.

Sabotage at Gitmo

By Scott Horton, Harper’s Magazine – December 9, 2008

“They warn that if the trials move to federal court, defendants might actually be acquitted (an outcome which they apparently believe can be foreclosed entirely in a military commissions process, which notoriously was the view of Goldsmith’s erstwhile boss, Jim Haynes) or get short sentences. The pair disclose a distinctly low level of confidence in the federal criminal justice system.”

Americans ought to be outraged that the Bush administration did not locate and bring to justice the one person that is deeply responsible for September 11 – Osama Bin Laden. America should be profoundly concerned that the man lodged in the White House, in this case – George W. Bush, having recited the following oath, in accordance with Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" has failed to even come close to upholding the Constitution of the United States".

Mr. Bush, as President promised to pursue Bin Laden to the gates of hell if necessary to avenge an American tragedy – he didn’t! He should have tried harder over the eight year period that he was in office to keep his promise to you and me. His promise to get Bin Laden is just another reminder of just how inept he and his administration have been when it comes to the welfare of America. During the Bush-Kerry presidential election, Osama Bin Laden challenged America “saying that the safety of America is not in Bush’s hands, but in the hand of America”. This tape was carried on Al-Jezeera and broadcasted to the free world four days before the election. Many wonder if this was not by design to ensure that Bush gained another four years in office! Surely we can say that we were not protected.

Of late, Mr. Bush has been saying in interview after interview that the intelligence that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq was faulty, and as such, should be considered when historians are writing entries into the history books concerning his presidency. Mr. Bush reminds us that Congress voted overwhelmingly to support his decision to invade Iraq. I remember it differently. I remember the skewed and clumsy attempts to present evidence that an educated public could see readily through. I remember the lies that were pressed into the hands of Congress that persuaded them to give carte blanche permission to the ‘Commander-in-Chief to invade another country – contrary to any precedent in American history. With some degree of authenticity we can say that Mr. Bush abused the Constitution.

President-elect Obama is inheriting all of the problems that have been caused by the Bush Administration. Obama is being urged to disregard the Constitution and assume more control of the economy, of the situation in Iraq, of all the things that should be addressed daily by Mr. Bush. There are those that say that Obama is not moving fast enough with his cabinet selections – untrue; he is moving faster than any President- elect before him. Many say that Obama is not keeping promises made during the run up to elections – he is; he continues to adjust to the changing situations in our economy and the many other things that will confront him on DAY ONE.

Mr. Bush is attempting to rush to completion the task of punishing the prisoners at Guantanamo and that will be part of his legacy. All of us should keep in mind that each President has the legal right to readdress anything that his predecessor did. Mr. Obama can pardon, commute, or rescind any part of anything that Mr. Bush has done. In my opinion, the individuals incarcerated at Guantanamo have not been given due process. If they are guilty as charged, then try them, convict them, and send them to prison, but by all means get rid of Guantanamo and the constant reminder of American injustice represented there.

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