Posted on 01/24/2007 5:51:23 AM PST by NapkinUser
Calls State of the Union speech 'total sellout of the United States of America to Mexico'
Monica Ramos, the wife of one of two U.S. Border Patrol agents imprisoned last week for wounding an escaping drug smuggler, attended the State of the Union speech in person last night – and was sharply critical of President Bush, calling him a hypocrite and worse.
Ramos, wife of Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos, attended the event as a guest of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean began prison sentences last week, of 11 and 12 years respectively, for their actions in the shooting and wounding of a Mexican drug smuggler who was granted full immunity to testify against them.
At the conclusion of the speech, Ramos, emotional and in tears, told WND in an exclusive interview, that she considered President Bush's speech compete hypocrisy.
"How could President Bush say that he wanted to secure our borders and that he would double the size of the Border Patrol when my husband is in prison," she asked WND. "Ignacio was trying to secure our border from drug smugglers. And what do we get? I have to show my children their father in prison in chains and I have to explain to them that the president of the United States is a liar."
WND waited nearly an hour after the speech was concluded to be able to speak with a clearly emotionally upset Monica Ramos.
"President Bush can say all he wants that the solution to border security is new infrastructure and technology," Ramos told WND, "but as long as my husband is in jail the American people should know that President Bush doesn't mean a word he says."
"What I sat in the gallery and heard tonight," she said, "was a total sell-out of the United States of America to Mexico. I heard President Bush's message loud and clear. All the president has to offer is electronic gadgets. Meanwhile, our borders are wide open to illegal immigrants, criminals and drug smugglers. God help the honest men and women of the Border Patrol who want to do their duty. It's a losing battle – just ask my husband, he'll tell you the truth."
"The American people only need to ask me," Ramos pleaded to WND. "Tell America that President Bush doesn't mean a word of what he says about border security. My husband is in jail for trying to capture a drug smuggler and President Bush wants electronics? My husband is a hero and President Bush is a traitor as far as I'm concerned. Let him tell my children that he wants new 'infrastructure' or 'comprehensive immigration reform' when their dad who wore the Border Patrol badge for years is shackled and in chains for doing his job."
Rohrabacher agreed with Ramos, emphasizing to WND that "the Bush administration has a hidden agenda with Mexico and that agenda is to keep our border with Mexico wide open, even to drug smugglers."
Asked what message he wanted to send by inviting Ramos' wife to attend the speech in person, Rohrabacher explained: "I wanted to give Mrs. Ramos the opportunity to be in the room and look President Bush right in the face, knowing that this was the man who was destroying her life by his decision to prosecute her husband to the hilt."
Rohrabacher described the injustice he perceived in emotional terms: "By prosecuting these two Border Patrol agents while the drug smuggler is given immunity, President Bush has brutalized the lives of agents Ramos and Compean with a decision that threatens to destroy their families. The wives and the young children of these two Border Patrol agents are now being driven into poverty. The families have no health insurance, they are now losing their homes, and they face a mountain of debt to lawyers. This is a travesty of justice and a personal tragedy that should make President Bush ashamed.
Asked if he had achieved his purpose in inviting Monica Ramos to attend the speech, Rohrabacher told WND:
My purpose after hearing the State of the Union tonight is doubly resolved. President Bush needs to know that we will not rest until Border Patrol [officers] Ramos and Compean are set free.
In history there are cases where heroic people were brutalized and sacrificed by political powers in order to achieve a certain agenda. In this case, I think that's what's happening.
We have an administration that has a hidden agenda with Mexico such that George Bush wants an open border, even though an open border is not in the interests of the American people.
These Border Patrol agents are caught in the middle. They're Americans and they know what their job is supposed to be. They are being persecuted and prosecuted for our sake because they are getting in the way of a power play that has yet been disclosed to the public.
It brutalizes the lives and destroys the families of men who have been willing to sacrifice their lives for us for the last five and 10 years. This is both a tragedy and a travesty.
The continued insistence of the administration to prosecute these Border Patrol agents and to put them in jail and to shackle them and see the families of these men being driven into destitution – this indicates that there has been a decision right at the top that's based on arrogance and cruelty that I think unfortunately reflects our president. It's a side of the president that is now coming out.
We get calls back from the underlings, the assistant congressional liaison officers. This president doesn't return phone calls and he is arrogant and nasty and doesn't treat people very well, not even members of Congress.
The statement we're trying to make is that the president's policy along the border is responsible for murders, drug dealers and terrorists entering the country, millions of illegals. His policy has resulted in the undermining of those law enforcement officers guarding the border, he has totally demoralized the Border Patrol, and in the process of him trying to send a message to the Border Patrol he's destroying the lives of two families. … This person looking right into the face of the president in the same room, this mother of three, her life is being destroyed by President Bush's decision to fully prosecute to the hilt her husband.
American citizens need to rally around these two Border Patrol agents and should call the White House directly to register their protest to this travesty of justice.
President Bush made no reference to the Border Patrol case in a 50-minute speech that focused on domestic issues in the first half and international issues in the second half.
Monica Ramos told WND she was in Washington, D.C., to attend a meeting yesterday afternoon with concerned congressmen.
At least 70 members of the House have signed on to a resolution ordering a congressional pardon that would toss out the convictions and immediately free the former agents.
Monica Ramos described her first meeting with her husband in prison as "heart breaking."
Ramos confirmed the account provided WND by her father, Joe Loya. She acknowledged her husband is being held in solitary confinement in a 6-by-12 foot cell, without windows. Ignacio Ramos is not being allowed any exercise time, and he is shackled every time he leaves his cell.
"This may be for his protection from other inmates," Monica Ramos acknowledged to WND, "but this is abusive. They are treating my husband like the worst hardened criminal imaginable."
She said one of her three young children is so disturbed by the imprisonment that the family has decided to seek counseling for the child.
"My children are planning to visit their father for the first time this Friday," she said, expressing concern. "This will be the first time they see their dad shackled in chains, when they are used to seeing me send him off in his badge and uniform."
The couple's youngest child is 7 years old, the others are aged 9 and 13.
"My youngest child wanted to know if we could order pizza for dad in prison," Monic Ramos said. "No, I told him. Let's wait and have pizza night when daddy gets home."
I could not agree with you more. FDR, for all of his faults, managed to rally the people of the United States and keep them rallied while Americans were dying by the thousands in far away lands fighting over real estate that was at best of questionable strategic value.
Bush could have sold the whole Iraq war as part and parcel to the war on Terror, but he didn't. He backtracked from it and then when it actually became the primary battleground for the war on terror he could not then claim that it was.
Additionally he did not have the good sense to realize that when there is a Civil uprising, like there is in Iraq, that the proper rules of engagement are shoot first and ask questions later. In Bhagdad the rules of engagement should be that if a soldier percieves a threat, he should eliminate that threat. History has shown that ruthlessness is the only method of quelling unbridled civil unrest. Bush is too concerned about image and if you are too concerned about image, if you are not willing to do whatever it takes to win a war, including sending in the nukes, then you should not get involved in a war in the first place.
It is imperative that we prevail in this war. Surrender is not an option. But tying the hands of our soldiers is tantamount to surrender. We would not have lost 1/3 the soldiers that we have lost to date if our soldiers had been allowed to act as if we were at war. This is not a police action, it is a war. The stops must be pulled. But quite frankly I do not believe that Bush has the political will to pull out the stops. And the enemy knows it. And the enemy has a lot more patience than the American people.
The most egregious mistake in the war has been the failure to include the general public in the war effort. It's hard to fight a war when the nation thinks it's bread and circus as usual. And if you tell me that that was the media's fault, then go to my first criticism above about information warfare.
Everyone was involved in WWII. Everyone had a job to do to support the troops, whether it was in saving animal lard for explosives, walking in order to conserve gasoline, volunteering as a Civil Defense worker, building bombers or tanks, growing food to ship to the troops, or sending packages of goodies and letters to the troops.
In this war we all sit and watch TV and go on as if there was no threat to our existence. But the threat is there. Bush has not communicated that threat, nor has he called upon all Americans to join in the fight and do whatever we can as civilians to ensure victory for our troops and our nation.
Bush has two years to pull it off. If the last two years are any indication, then it isn't going to happen.
BTW did you know it was against the law to broadcast weather reports during WWII?
The problem was that they shot the man without knowing ANYTHING about him. For all they knew, he was a legal citizen who just got spooked when they stopped him. He could have thought that they were folks dressed like cops to try to hurt him.
The officers shot first, and asked questions later, then apparently tried to cover up what they did. I'm assuming the jury convicted them for that, and didn't let the man's legal or illegal status sway them in any way, as they should have done.
"granted the sentence was harsh"-- the mandatory minimum sentence for the obstruction of justice charge is 10 years. There was nothing harsh about the sentence and it was at the low end of federal sentencing guidelines.
a very good point
Ever see the movie "Black Like Me" with that leftist James Whitmore?
Using a tagname like ZULU when I'm a white guy gives me a picture about what it must be like to be black when dealing with some people.
The two guards should have received some kind of employer disciplinary action for trying to cover up what they did - not a jail sentence.
Then they should have been sent back to the range to learn more effective shooting the next time they caught some border sneak trying to invade our country.
SIC DEINDE ALIUS QUISCUMQUE TRANSILIET MOENIA MEA
You are either lying or you did not read the thread. Thsi fact was posted earlier in this thread. You have even responded to it.
And how do you KNOW it's a fact? Whatever Johnny Sutton says is the gospel-truth, right?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53873
The U.S. Army doctor who removed the bullet testified at the trial that the drug smuggler was not shot from behind, but that he removed the bullet from the side, with the bullet piercing the left side of his left buttock and traveled to his right groin. The doctor stated that Aldrete-Davila was in a running position when he was shot, consistent with pointing back toward the agents with his left arm and hand when the bullet hit him in the rear end. This is consistent with the testimony of the agents that they saw Aldrete-Davila pointing something back at them which they believed to be a gun.
There is also plenty of other good stuff there. Even if choose not to believe any of it, go read it.
One may reasonably assume from her comments that she has been made aware that the President is no longer considering a pardon, and that his prior statement was just a smokescreen.
They shot him in the ASS, actually. And officers may indeed shoot at fleeing suspects. This one ran from nearly 800 pounds of marijuana in his truck.
Clearly she found out that Bush had no intention of helping her at all, otherwise she would likely have kept her mouth closed.
Do not waste your time. There are traitors amongst us. The financial windfall of illegal immigration has corrupted thousands of Americans, including, sadly, many right here on FR.
In this case he was fleeing the evidence he left in his truck that the agents had discovered--800 pounds of pot on its way to American cities and schoolyards. They shot him in the ASS. He then received total immunity from your government to testify against the agents. The only criminals here are U.S. government officials.
"None dare call it treason"
Yeah, because it's not like there are crooked cops or criminals posing as cops. If someone with a gun drawn says he's a police officer, and that he won't shoot you if you surrender, why not take his word for it?
that would make the jobs of law enforcement much easier.
And if they could arrest people without probable cause, search without warrants and beat confessions out of suspects, that would make their jobs a lot easier, too. The overriding concern of the rule of law is not to make law enforcement's jobs easier.
Armed or not. I am not saying shoot to kill, but at least shoot with the intent to capacitate after a verbal warning, like multiple rounds in the legs.
You've seen too many movies. Hopped up on adrenaline, with a suspect and an officer who are both running, is not the time to try to hit a fast-moving, narrow part of a moving target. I'm a good shot (though out of practice,) but I don't think I could reliably hit a stationary target in the leg under controlled range conditions from more than a dozen yards out.
For good reason, cops (except specialized sharpshooters in relatively controlled situations) are trained to fire center of mass. Their goal is to stop the suspect -- to quickly and decisively remove the threat, not necessarily kill, but fire with the knowledge that's possible. Even when firing center of mass, the largest possible target, cops in the heat of the moment miss most of the time. And keep in mind that every miss is a stray round in flight; the priority isn't just to hit the suspect, but not to hit anyone or anything else.
If you want cops to shoot to incapacitate, give them weapons suited to the task. A sidearm is not one. Nor has a great one yet been developed -- Tasers are probably the best for most uses, and bean-bag guns and pepper balls are promising, but they have limited range and are uncertain to be effective.
You whiners need to read the facts of the case before you go off on everybody. This isnt the one to hang your hat on.
Twelve years is too long for sure. W cant let LEOs use deadly force whenever they want. They already screw up too often.
On that I think we can all agree.
It is the verdict of a court of competent jurisdiction. Ramos and Compean were afforded the presumption of innocence, the assistance of counsel, and all the rules of evidence and restrictions on the state that the Constitution affords -- restrictions that most FReepers most of the time believe are slanted toward defendants.
Yes, the perp was running, but he did turn and point an object at the Border Patrol agents.... Bear in mind that he is a KNOWN drug smuggler and they are normally considered armed.
The "fact" that he turned and pointed an object is drawn from the officers' testimony, The "KNOWN" drug smuggler was not known as such to the officers at the time. And it's amazing to me that so many people are willing to accept that a suspect fleeing from the cops is evidence of mens rea -- a guilty mind -- but don't feel the same way about officers who cover up evidence and lie in their reports.
The entie scenario has a stench to it....
Yes. It's the whiff of folks who want to shoehorn this case into their favorite agenda, regardless of the facts of the case. Folks who want to see one side as St. George and the other side as the dragon, whether the facts support their conclusions or not.
From the available facts, it appears that the agents were involved in egregious failures to do their jobs properly. To fall back on one of my favorite adages, never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Do they deserve the long sentences they received? Probably not. Will they serve all of those sentences? Probably not. Do they deserve to be celebrated as heroes? Probably not.
I stand by my post....shoot the illegal immigrant-drug runners...drop them in their tracks...leave them for the coyotes...after all...coyotes need to eat too.
I'm currently reading Shaara's new book on the N.Africa and Sicily campaigns of WWII.
Lots of media incidents that raise one's eyebrows. Eisenhower walked a tightrope with the media, and they were none too kind.
They were, however, on our side and the side of victory. That would be refreshing, wouldn't it?
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