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Originally Posted by willravel
I can list things like this for a long time, but it boils down to a few big things.
1: Our freedoms: The Bill of Rights gives Americans the fundamental rights that we enjoy every day. Everything from freedom of press and freedom of speech to freedom of religion and freedom to assemble. Those are some damn good rights.
2: When America is united, we are almost invincible: When some ideal or mission manages to unite all the people in our nation, we will succede in that mission. We might be divided most of the time, but every once in a while we all rally behind something. That's when our potential can be seen.
3: We have the O.C.
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Correction.....the only one of the three that the tratiors that some of you refuse to examine in the hashest light, in view of their crimes against our constitution...and against our reputation in the eyes of every individual on the rest of the planet who used to think of this place as signifying something special.....something that was a beacon of hope......is <a href="http://www.fox.com/oc/">The O.C.</a>
Pretty pathetic, wouldn't you agree? Look how we set an example of "freedom of the press", and equal protection, under the law, especially for the Iraqi people!
We have much more in common with Padilla than many of us realize. He is not the one who has done the most damage to our individual sense of freedom, and of individual, constittuional protections against intrusive or oppressive government.. I am not your enemy for pointing this out to you. You are your own enemy, and a threat to <b>the rights that we all held from</b> our government, until you voted for, and supported what we are suffering under the weight of, now.
Where do you suppose what tattered remnants of our "freedom of the press", would remain today, if not for the internet? Because of these "thugs", I have to spend so much fucking more time than should be necessary, sorting out the talking points that some of you even parrot in your posts, funneled through shills like Armstrong Williams, Judith Miller, or Sinclair Broadcasting.
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http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1132653917855
Padilla's Indictment Ends Years of Detention Without Charge
Carl Jones
Daily Business Review
11-23-2005
......Padilla and four others were charged with various terrorist-related activities in the 11-count indictment. On Sunday, the president issued the order transferring Padilla out of military custody and into the hands of the Justice Department.
<b>"I hereby determine that it is in the interest of the United States that Jose Padilla be released from detention by the Secretary of Defense and transferred to the control of the Attorney General for the purpose of criminal proceedings against him" the presidential order declared.</b>
<b>"Legally it's unprecedented; it's never happened,”</b> terrorism expert William Banks said of Padilla's change in status.
Banks is the director of the Institute for National Security and Terrorism at Syracuse University.
Experts say the government may have moved to indict Padilla and change his status to avoid losing before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"[The government] saw this case moving to the Supreme Court and, in my view, they came to the conclusion that the Supreme Court was going to reject this theory and say that these powers the president was asserting are illegal and violate the bill of rights," said Lynch of the Cato Institute.
Banks voiced a similar characterization of the president's order.
"I think it was the government not wanting to have to endure a Supreme Court battle over what due process rights [Padilla] would have been entitled to or whether they had the authority to detain him in a military setting at all," Banks said. "They were looking at a loss in the Supreme Court, so they cut losses and now are looking to obtain a criminal conviction."
Experts also wondered why the government waited so long to indict Padilla if it was in a position to make a case against him.
"I am cynical, frankly, as to whether this government has all of a sudden found religion or whether it is an accommodation to political reality," said Lawrence Goldman, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
He criticized the Bush administration for holding Padilla on "hearsay, secret, unprovable evidence, with out charges, without access to lawyers, [and] without access to courts. <b>He may be a very unpopular person -- certainly that's his image -- but it shouldn't happen to any of us."</b>
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Quote:
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13295806.htm
Posted on Wed, Nov. 30, 2005
U.S. military pays Iraqis for positive news stories on war
By Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- U.S. Army officers have been secretly paying Iraqi journalists to produce upbeat newspaper, radio and television reports about American military operations and the conduct of the war in Iraq.
U.S. officials in Washington said the payments were made through the Baghdad Press Club, an organization they said was created more than a year ago by U.S. Army officers. They are part of an extensive American military-run information campaign -- including psychological warfare experts -- intended to build popular support for U.S.-led stabilization efforts and erode support for Sunni Muslim insurgents.
Members of the Press Club are paid as much as $ 200 a month, depending on how many positive pieces they produce.
Under military rules, information operations are restricted to influencing the attitudes and behavior of foreign governments and people. One form of information operations -- psychological warfare -- can use doctored or false information to deceive or damage the enemy or to bolster support for American efforts.
Many military officials, however, said they were concerned that the payments to Iraqi journalists and other covert information operations in Iraq had become so extensive that they were corroding the effort to build democracy and undermining U.S. credibility in Iraq. They also worry that information in the Iraqi press that's been planted or paid for by the U.S. military could "blow back" to the American public......
........Moreover, the defense and military officials said, the U.S. public is at risk of being influenced by the information operations because what's planted in the Iraqi media can be picked up by international news organizations and Internet bloggers.
"There is no 'local' media anymore. All media is potentially international. The Web makes it all public. We need to ... eliminate the idea that psychological operations and information operations can issue any kind of information to the media ever. Period," said a senior military official in Baghdad who has knowledge of American psychological operations in Iraq.........
.......On at least one occasion, psychological warfare specialists have taken a group of international journalists on a tour of Iraq's border with Syria, a route used by Islamic terrorists and arms smugglers, one of the officials said.
Usually, these duties are the responsibility of military public-affairs officers.
In Iraq, public affairs staff at the American-run multinational headquarters in Baghdad have been combined with information operations experts in an organization known as the Information Operations Task Force.........
....."The Iraqi population doesn't realize that some of the information" they receive from their news media "is bought and paid for by the United States," said the senior defense official in Washington......
...."The Iraqis learned that if they reported stuff we liked, they'd get paid, and our guys learned that if they paid the Iraqis, they'd report stuff we liked," the former senior defense official said......
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/po...ropaganda.html
U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers
By JEFF GERTH and SCOTT SHANE
Published: December 1, 2005
......Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism........
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Our enemy is not in Iraq, and it is not Padilla. Our enemy is the traitor who attempts to act in the name of a government that is exercising authority that we, the people, have not expressly granted to the traitor who says that he is acting with government authority. The traitors and their supporters have twisted our perogative against us. How many more "Padillas" will you stand by and passively observe before you take back our perogative to hold all rights, except for those expressly ceded to our government, as outlined in our constitution?
That perogative is the thing that set our people apart from the rest of the world, it made each of us special, collectively on a footing above our government once upon a time. It is un-American to accept that the president can determine which citizen has a right to exercise his rights, yet some or you support that very thing. If your support of that is not treason, what do you call it?