Posted on 04/02/2005 10:11:31 AM PST by pickrell
In a perfect storm of exposure, several pieces of evidence are hitting the kitchen table at the same time. One is the report of an unimpeachable panel assigned to the task, that the Bush Administration and it's advisors did not, in spite of the unrelenting and hysterical chants of the liberals, conspire to pressure intelligence officials to lie about, or inflate, the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction.
Unfortunately this conspiracy had become the last remaining hope of the liberals to emerge unscathed from their lockstep obstruction of U.S. response to attack on our home soil. Those liberals will never again be able to look in the eyes of persons who have fought to offer at least the chance to the Middle East to avoid war of biblical proportions, and to the rest of the world to avoid being swept up in that religious warfare.
Those who watched their neighbor's house burn down, did nothing under the theory that "the wind is blowing the flames away from my house for now... so why should I care?". Those who then realized with horror the changing wind, and realized that only those who risked their lives extinguishing the burning house so saved the rest of the neighborhood, are forever doomed to either accept how wrong they were, or permanently deny that the fire even existed.
The report of the panel instead found that we were "...ill prepared to penetrate adversarial nations..." and that "...these are their deepest secrets, and unlocking them must be our highest priority."
To understand why we were so unprepared is rendered easier by watching one of the "penetration agents" of the Clinton Administration recently explaining in front of the cameras, (no doubt as part of a plea agreement in order to avoid felony jail time), exactly how he stole and destroyed classified documents from our national archives. It is astonishing in it's impact, and the full court press news embargo that will likely be attempted.
For eight years in the 1990's, the Clinton Administration passionately chose to implement a policy of intimidation of those who would represent a threat to.. Bill Clinton. For eight years in the 1990's, the Clinton Administration focused on a policy of assigning penetration agents to ferret out, steal, and destroy evidence which could expose... Bill Clinton.
Distractions from this holy task, such as acts of war against our embassies, ships and personnel, were not allowed to divert the "most ethical administration in history" from dealing with the true enemies of the State- those women claiming to be raped and misused by the "commander in chief". Minor side issues, such as the plundering of national security secrets, under the stewardship of Hazel O'Leary, (arguably the most incompetent and monomaniacal energy secretary ever misassigned to a task), were not allowed to leach precious effort from the Jihad against travel office personnel, and any other civil servants who stood in the way of Hillary rewarding her friends, and punishing her enemies.
This was an administration which knew how to focus. It knew what result it wanted in each case, and was not about to be impeded by the "evidence". How like their supporters to ascribe this same motive, which drives their actions, to the actions of their opposition.
Every check that is written, however, will sooner or later have to be cashed. The price of this astonishing self-absorption... was a very large hole in Manhattan, and thousands of dead there, and in the Pentagon and on an obscure field in Pennsylvania.
But the price is worse yet. A significant percentage of the population voted to return him to office for the second four years. This "check" still looms.
A characteristic of human nature is either to defend one's past actions in direct proportion to the severity of the consequences or benefits issuing from those actions, or else to simply refuse to revisit those actions, and the reasoning behind them. Ever.
When we as a nation watched certain California Congresswomen denounce the CIA in the early 1990's as a craven cabal of drug pushers and violators of the rights of leftists to bomb South American power plants, we responded with a shrug. The Cold War was over, and like the fate of soldiers everywhere... once we figured that we didn't need them any longer, we paid scant attention as the Left began the dismemberment of our few human intelligence assets, and our combat-ready divisions.
The Left carefully watched the national reaction to these opening gambits, and gleefully concluded that the time was ripe to remove the "testosterone" from our military and our intelligence services.
The calculated destruction of morale and frustration of purpose of our first line defenders may have been even more punishing than the actual defunding of those forces.
No one joins the military or the intelligence services for the money. Only a child or a Democratic Senator would believe that. The reason that our country possesses the most competent and professional service personnel on the planet is that by our good fortune, we have always found men who would put the welfare of other Americans before their own. They have trained and equipped themselves to bring violence to the enemies of our nation; to spare that violence from the streets of New Jersey and California.
Mistake not, though- that dedication can wither away if the nation long enough casts a blind eye to their dedication. When we permit the most outrageous slanders to be broadcast round the world against these men, we can and should expect that even if they stay, on the hopes that things may eventually change, that their performance will unavoidably suffer.
When we further slapped them in the face with huge and real funding cuts, to reinforce that they have somehow by their service "dishonored or soiled the nation", as we certainly allowed the Clinton Administration and it's Leftist congresspersons to do during the 1990's, it would be the height of stupidity to be surprised that a price would be paid later.
Many people had warned that the antiseptic ideas of bombing the Balkans from 20,000 feet would confirm to the world how terrified we had become of ever taking a casualty; at the same time as we pointedly chose to refrain from bombing at all, in those cases where actual acts of war were perpetrated against us! Our enemies digested this "evidence" and made their plans.
And as all of the evidence of the consequences of the election which put the Clintons back in 1996 piles up, a certain hardening has occurred in the country.
We are split between those persons who by their philosphy of life automatically review their prior actions and resolve to learn from this ongoing history... and those persons who now will simply close their eyes, deny and ignore.
The difference between the conservative philosophy and the liberal philosophy has never been more starkly apparent. Where we may uneasily fret over actions we took in good faith, and which may later be found to have been based, at least partly, on bad information, they on the other hand will categorically deny that yesterday even happened, if it turns against them.
This liberal neurosis has been remarked upon before, but no one knows to what extremes it may eventually be taken. Mind control is infinitely easier if the subject of the mind control is eager, nay- even fervent, to be controlled and told what to think on any given day.
Only the evidence, if protected from the Sandy Bergers of the world, will be there to settle the disputes. The mainstream media may ignore, deny or twist the meaning of the evidence, but at least the total embargo they once controlled is no longer extant.
Now we as conservatives only have the problem of not falling into the poisonous mindset of that part of our citizenry who refuse to examine the evidence, or even recognize that it exists.
It will do us no good to call each other names, and impugn our worth as individual conservatives, as the evidence slowly emerges in the Terri Schiavo affair.
Either the autopsy will reveal that Terri's brain was so devastated that 80 percent is found to be the "shattered goo" so prominently offered as the reason to strip from her her right to life... or it won't.
Honest contenders have argued either side.. but have based their views on what evidence they assigned credibility to. What other option is there in life? We all try to find the most reliable sources for the judgements we are forced to make every day. When we inevitably find that certain sources have mislead us, our wrath becomes palpable. That is a strength, not a weakness.
To label those who disagreed, based on what "evidence" was available to the time, as proof of trying to "lie or embellish the truth", as the Bush Administration had been accused of in the Iraq affair, is to seize the right to make moral judgements about persons who honestly had faith in what evidence they based their opinions and decisions on.
Far more important for us, after what evidence may come to light has done so, will be to examine why this person was adjudged by the courts to be in a permanent vegetative state. Was it done through the best efforts of what technology exists short of autopsy, or does the evidence rather show a clear imperative to "find the results desired" by bias on the part of the courts.
It will be more important for us all to honestly look at the evidence, and try to ascribe honorable motives to each other as we do to ourselves, than to begin to justify... or deny.
Even autopsy evidence is subject to interpretation, but it will afford a bit more light on the subject.
No one will probably ever be able to prove or disprove the motives of Michael Schaivo. We still hear today arguments about Alger Hiss, after 60 years, in spite of recent new evidence which came to light due to the fall of the Soviet Union.
What may be more important than justifying why we felt so passionately about whatever side we were on in this tragedy, will be to attempt to construct mechanisms that more perfectly protect the rights of the helpless. We will always be at the mercy of contradictory "spin" and "truth" as provided by those proponents passionately involved in their cause. Misstatements of fact are unavoidable from persons who accept what is "known" and elect to act upon it. It is the natural tendency of both sides to de-emphasise in their minds those "facts" which can muddy the waters, and those "facts" which more clearly demonstrate the rightness of our cause.
Passion for a cause, as Barry Goldwater pointed out so presciently, is "no vice", and anything written here should not be misunderstood as an indictment of the efforts of those who fervently did their best on behalf of which side they stood. And recriminations must follow matters of life and death where collisions of conscience and philosophy have occurred.
But even if we do unavoidably beat each other up a bit over the outcome... it is in my humble view far more preferable than the alternative.
If we turn away from and pointedly ignore whatever evidence may emerge, because it goes against what side we stood on, we will be inching along that road to joining our self-blinded liberal neighbors. Because we have had amply demonstrated in the past just exactly how much attention they will pay to "evidence"... if it goes against them, and indicates that an unjustified killing has occurred.
Those persons who argued about the preeminence of the Right to Life must try to understand and at least accept the honorable motives of those well-reasoned arguments against further weakening the right of States to decide those cases where "issues and powers not specifically allotted to the Federal Government are thereby reserved to the States, and to the people".
Throwing out the baby with the bath can occur when there is insufficient time to have a full and faithful discussion of intense and far-reaching issues. And when it comes to the rights of any State to reserve the right to prevent the abortion of it's citizens, ( a highly related issue ), we must accept that the passionate arguments made by the other side, in the teeth of Freerepublic majority opinion about Terri Schiavo were necessary to hear on this forum, whatever side the reader falls on.
Good men tried their best to divine a way through this mess with too little time to do so. The outcome will not diminish this forum, but rather emphasizes the critical need to keep alive this method to talk to each other, rather than past each other. It certainly won't happen in the New York Times.
And if the evidence shows that the courts acted properly, that fact must be accepted. It is one thing to feel no shame in a fervent attempt to err on the side of life. For once it is taken, the later "evidence" cannot restore it. It is yet another to deny the evidence completely and forever castigate those who saw the evidence differently from us. To do so would weaken our resolve to improve gathering and verification of evidence, while at the same time removing cause-serving "embellishment" from national debates.
That would add tragedy on top of tragedy.
The Federal Court including the Supreme Court interfere in STATE matters ALL the time, most recently striking down a law in one of the states requiring that children under 18 have parental notification prior to an abottion. It's a BOGUS argument.
That's exactly how I felt about all the anger about states rights. Has "of the people, by the people and for the people" been changed to "of the state, by the state and for the state" while I wasn't looking? It's like everyone forgot about the part of the clause that said "and to the people". What redress does an individual have, even a severely brain damaged one, if the federal government can't protect them from the tyranny of the state?
The hue and cry was each state should decide this issue for themselves. That means the value of a human life, a citizen of this country, can be worth more in Wisconsin than Florida or in South Dakota than Maine. That's just absurd. The notion that Floridians, whatever their condition, can be legally be starved and dehydrated to death is appalling. Ted Bundy was given a more humane death. Anyone that buys into the nonsense that Terri couldn't feel any pain, needs to watch the video where she's being poked on her back and visibly flinches away and cries out in pain. Other videos might be open to interpretation, but this one is clear.
At the very least there needs to be standards in place that protect the rights of the individual from the arbitrary whims of state judges and legislators. In the case of the Florida they literally allowed a panel of "experts" not elected by the people of the state, most of whom were proponets of "the right to die", MAKE the law that was put on the books. Imagine the 9/11 commission given carte blanche to make their recommendations into the law of the land. But, because this was done by a state, that's supposed to make it okay.
Forget guardianship issues, Terri wasn't even given the battery of tests that are considered standard in the field of neurology to determine whether she was PVS and assess the severity of her brain damage. We have standards of proof and protections from the state to the federal government that insure the rights of murderers given the death penalty because we want to insure they've been treated fairly and that all legal remedies have been exhausted. In Terri's case only half the tests (and the most superficial ones at that) were performed. Expert medical testimony was clearly agenda-driven and the "tie-breaker" had no experience with this kind of case. We can't even say with any certainty what her wishes were since there was conflicting testimony (even from her husband). Nevertheless, the judge was compelled to rule on what she *most likely* would want. In the hands of a corrupt judge this could kill you.
She was given no separate legal representation, instead her husband was allowed to use money specifically and LEGALLY stipulated for her care to argue on behalf of killing her. Were she a criminal, her sentence (because she WAS sentenced to death) would have been commuted to life in prison because she didn't have the mental capacity to aid in her own defense. The Guardians ad Litum who were to look after her best interests, however well-intentioned, had no experience working with the handicapped and could only issue a report with recommendations and walk away. For Terri, due process didn't even exist. In the entire legal system, not once was her rights as a citizen given even cursory consideration.
Sugar coat it all you want with words like "quality of life" and "right to die", it's state sanctioned killing no different than the death penalty (except that we allow our criminals to die a more humane death). This woman with no legal representation of her own, who surely would have divorced an adulterous husband were she able, instead was given over to him to do with as he wished. Yep, we've come a long way, baby! The only 2 people assigned to look after her interests, her guardians ad litem, were both concerned about her husband being given guardianship (in essence the power of life or death) over her because of this conflict of interest. However, without legal representation, without standard diagnostic tests, without continued therapy (if for no other reason than because she's a human being who deserves whatever treatment we are able to provide) our legal system regarded her with no more consideration than if she were a china hutch in an estate dispute. I wouldn't want that for any citizen. If part of a state's rights are going to include the power to kill innocent citizens then I damn well want the feds involved protecting those INDIVIDUAL rights guaranteed everyone. Either the constitution applies to every US citizen or it applies to none
Cindie
To support what you say I offer the following information.
Both my husband and my mother died of cancer. My husband was bedridden for two months (was a Rear Admiral - then after retirement, was a senior Gov attorney). The support care was entirely paid for by insurance to Hospice. We were swamped with aids and equipment. My mother, bless her soul, was 90 and in the "must use Medicare B" category despite the fact that she had insurance to back it up. Clearly Hospice would not make as much. My husband lingered for 2 and a half months. My mother was in care for a week because I very stupidly continued to give her pain medication at their direction even though she said she did not want it. I felt should follow their directions as they knew better. As I look back and I realize how little Hospice did on her behalf other than provide pain medication and someone to verify her death, she was expendable because she would cost them money. She entered Hospice on a Friday and died the following Tuesday. I know she was terminal, but until she entered Hospice she was walking around and talking and eating (not much, but eating). I will live with this burden forever, but I will never forgive Hospice. They knew what they were doing; I did not, yet I gave the fatal doses. You are right, anyone who is ill is in danger. The fact that you are terminal does not mean we have to "hurry it along."
Do not be hard on yourself -- they set you up and kept you in the dark. You only followed advice from people you thought you could trust. After the Schlinder Family -- thank G-d -- what is going on is now very clear.
I, too, was interested in the subject matter but I quit about 60% through after consistently having to reread paragraphs because I realized I hadn't paid attention to what they said. To much of a fight to read, for me.
However, I am sure the fault is mine and I appreciate the efforts of bright freepers.
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