“federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more then
400 suspects, and more than half of those have been convicted”

That is a line used routinely by President Bush in speeches urging for the
support to renew the Patriot Act. Read it a couple times and feel how bone
chilling it is. It gives you a sense of security in this otherwise scary, harsh
post 9/11 world. After all he is the President and his job is to make Americans
feel more secure.

Now what I am about to explain to you is something called spin, and if you do
not yet know what spin is then please stop right there and read my Idiot’s Guide
to Spin from yesterday.

What if the President reworded that sentence just a bit, in fact only adding
one of his favorite “buzz words”. “federal terrorism investigations have
resulted in charges against more than 400 suspected terrorists and more than
half of those have been convicted”. See how I added the word terrorist in there.
It is no secret George Bush likes using that word to get his message across, so
why in a speech that is delicately written by a staff of speech writers did they
miss the opportunity to use that word again? Well it is simple. Adding that one
word would have taken his statement and turned it into a flat out lie.

On Sunday of this week, the Washington Post ran an interesting article
discussing the number of terrorists we have captured since 9/11. Their analysis
actually shows that only 39 people convicted were done so on terrorism charges.
The rest have ranged from immigration charges, to lying on a loan application.

Only one of those 39 were actually connected to 9/11, Zacarias Moussauoi who
was a mastermind behind 9/11. In actuality only one in nine had a connection to
Al Qaeda. 14 people were convicted of actual terrorism crimes.

I am not going to go through and give you all the numbers. If you want to
read further into it, and I suggest you do, then please read the Washington Post
article located
here.

What I do want to do is take the time to raise a very important question or
two. Why is it that if we are bringing down all these suspected terrorists, the
Department Of Justice does not have a big web page with all this information
published? We know every little detail involving the trial’s of Michael Jackson,
Henry Blake, and OJ Simpson, yet the people who conspire to do mass harm to the
country we hear nothing about. I think I can answer that question very simply.
If this data was readily available it would prove that the Patriot Act was less
than effective.

Another simple, but pertinent question would be: How has the Patriot Act
contributed to the arrest of these individuals? It’s bad enough that they don’t
publicize the arrests, but even worse is the fact that they do not give us the
proof to back up their important platform. I think if American’s would see
actual information tying the use of the Patriot Act to thwarting off an intimate
danger to the American people then we would be more acceptant of it.

Instead what we do know about the Patriot Act is simple: It takes away a
large amount of rights that protect us from big government. It allows the
government to search our homes without a judge issuing a warrant, and it allows
officials to look into every detail of your life and hold you on what they think
is suspicious with out you even getting a trial or a lawyer. Now think about how
most of the convictions Bush talks about are actually related to immigration
laws. If you are being held by the feds and given the chance to either say
something or be put into one of our secret jails for life, wouldn’t you be more
compelled to tell them anything? Let’s see, either I can get kicked out of
America or be held prisoner for life without a trial and without my family ever
knowing my whereabouts. Any sane person would choose the first option.

No the Patriot Act is about letting the government control us. Something that
our founding fathers and numerous politicians there after, have fought
tirelessly to prevent. The scary part is that this has all transpired in only 4
short years. The scarier part; this is something that was being planned before
George Bush was ever elected President!

The Project for a New American Century, in a report released in September of
2000 saw that America needed to become the world power, but was afraid the
American people would not support this empire. It goes as far as to say they
needed a new “Perl Harbor Style Attack” in order to rally support for its policy
shift.

Now I am sure you have read many conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, and
many are very compelling but they also leave you with some doubt. This report
however was released by a group which was founded by people such as; Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Jeb Bush. The report that saw the need for the
attack was co-authored by none other than John Bolton.

Now there has been government sponsored investigations into why the
intelligence community failed so miserably that dark September morning. They
have even proven that Bush knew that there was a possibility of this attack, yet
nothing was ever done! There is a report out there; undeniably tied to our
administration, that shows 9/11 was actually the blessing they wanted. That’s
right, September 11, 2001, a day of horror and pain for all America, was
actually a day of a new hope for the Administration. They saw the chance to go
forth with their plan and they have thus far done it.

So when you here George Bush making his speeches, listen closer to what he
actually says. 99% of what he does say is spin in one sense or another. Truth be
known he is actually lying to you, but doing so in such a magically crafter way
that you can not stick him to it.

I have said time and time again that we as Americans need to fight back and
retake our Country from these power hungry, greedy few. With that I want to
leave you with a quote I found on Crooks And Liars website yesterday. This is
truly an insight to what was going to happen. The quote was given by President
Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954 and makes you wonder if he had a magical crystal
ball.

“Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment
insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of
that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of
course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are (xxx)..a few Texas
oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas.
Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”