A round of Introductions

I finally caved on my prohibition to be yet another person on the web venting my opinions. So many people I know (and don't know) have started their own blogs, it began to seem positively passe. With all the blogging out there already, I couldn't imagine I'd have anything new or interesting to add to the global conversation. Besides, I used to do this for a living. Before blogs even existed, I was writing electronic columns that were emailed to a subscriber list of roughly 7,500 people - not bad in 1999.

So, what's changed my mind? It's probable that I still don't have anything original to add to the new global conversation. There are others much better educated and much more gifted than I doing this very thing. What motivated me to put my thoughts out there for the whole world to see (or at least a handful of people with nothing better to do but read my rants)?

John Murtha.

This longtime Congressman from Pennsylvania proved himself a jackass over and over again during the presidential campaign. Still, I cannot comprehend how someone who has spent so much time in Washington, who has been re-elected time after time, who has access to so much information and so many experts that we do not on a daily basis, can be so colossally stupid. I am infuriated by his idiocy. I cannot abide his obtuse perspectives. And I am equally appalled by the fact that we do not seem to have any Republican leaders on the national stage willing to call him out for the dimwit that he is.

So here I am. Again.

I know there are others who think the same things I will write. There are plenty of others who will communicate much better than I can. I simply cannot contain myself anymore; hence the blog.

I wanted to give this new administration a fair chance. In spite of my misgivings and my fundamental disagreements with our new President, I wanted to think that he was shrewd enough to play even-handedly, at least at the beginning. Boy, was I wrong.

It took less than 48 hours for President Obama to declare that he was going to shut down the Guantanamo Bay military prison installation that currently houses some of the most lethal and most capable sociopaths in the world. Some of them have planned, financed or executed the most heinous acts of violence against innocent people that we have ever seen. Some of them are connected to the biggest players in the international terror industry. Yet, the President who only 72 hours ago (give or take, depending on which oath you use for timing) swore to faithfully execute the duties of his office and protect the American people, showed with a flourish of his pen that he cares more about appeasing terrorists and their sponsors than he cares about protecting Americans. But the icing on that cake was John Murtha's flippant comment that he would happily take those displaced sociopaths and house them in a minimum security federal facility in his district while they await trials designed to protect their phantom Consititutional rights saying, "Sure, I'd take 'em. They're no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo."

What?

Did I really just witness a United States Congressman say that housing some of the most lethal international sociopaths in the world at a Club Fed facility in the middle of America's heartland is no more dangerous than keeping them locked down in a maximum security military installation off U.S. soil separated from U.S. citizens?

I don't know how Murtha has managed thus far in his life. He obviously has absolutely no understanding of how the prison system works, how military installations work, who these people are or what they are capable of accomplishing in a minimum security facility. Let's set aside the obvious security gaps for a moment that would make it so much easier for the Gitmo prisoners to plan and successfully execute an escape plan of their own. U.S. citizens who are serving time in U.S. prisons do have Constitutional rights (unlike the foreign terrorist prisoners, who don't even properly fall under the Geneva Convention). At a minimum security federal prison, inmates have significant access to the outside world through visiting policies, computer use, mail and phone privileges - and that's just the legal, above board portion of their communication. Then there's the black market system that trades dollars and goods for favors, along with intimidation, coersion, or old-fashioned corruption. How long would it take the terrorists, who have been trained in manipulation and intimidation tactics and who know there is an outside network of money and resources waiting for them if they can just make contact with it, to convince other American prisoners to carry messages for them, use their computer and internet time and their visitors to rebuild networks of communications that will allow them to resume their anti-American terrorist activities? Anyone want to to take odds on "immediately"?

This is just one example of what we're in for during the next four years. A new President who begins his administration of "change" by blowing off the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball honoring our Medal of Honor recipients but wastes no time in finding ways to release Islamic terrorists who have wounded and killed our most dedicated service members and innocent Americans, and a U.S. Congressman who invites those terrorists to live in his district among his constituents as casually as if he were inviting friends for a barbeque.

Perhaps he'd like to host that barbeque in the crater left by Flight 93.