Good luck getting the draft re-started.
The past two presidents successfully avoided it.
Posted on 06/21/2002 8:06:26 AM PDT by Pistol
Earlier this week Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO) and members of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus formally called upon President Bush to place U.S. troops on the borders with Mexico and Canada to protect us from illegal aliens, foreign terrorists and drug smugglers. The vast majority of American citizens want this action to be taken.
Our latest poll results reveal that 77% of citizens want troops stationed on the border. A recent Zogby poll shows that 68% of Americans favor the military on the border.
Congressman Tancredo is urging all citizens to petition Congress and the White House.
Please visit his website at http://www.house.gov/tancredo to read his latest press releases and to access his petition.
To view our latest poll results and on-line petitions, click to http://www.citizenslobby.com
The past two presidents successfully avoided it.
Bush, on the other hand, wants more illegals here from Mexico so that we can do life-saving dialysis on them.
It is time for us all to re-read the Declaration of Independence, the part where all the transgressions of the Crown are enumerated.
As far as I can tell, we are just about there again.
"We have Nicaragua, soon we will have El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Mexico. One day, tomorrow or five years or fifteen years from now, we're going to take 5 to 10 million Mexicans and they are going into Dallas, into El Paso, into Houston, into New Mexico, into San Diego, and each one will have embedded in his mind the idea of killing ten Americans."
--Thomas Borge, Nicaragua Interior Minister as quoted in the Washington Times, March 27, 1985
There is a fairly simple solution and doesn't require troops 24/7 and to restart the draft. All that it requires is a QRF (Quick Reaction Forces) scattered along the border at reliable intervals which would come from active army units especially CAVALRY forces and helicopter assets from say, Fort Hood.
What I am proposing is to train and equip landowners on the border with military radios. Whenever they detect illegal movement, they simply call in a gunship recon or strike and the QRF can come out to reinforce or clean up the mess. QRF forces can rotate as part of a normal training schedule.
There can be TAX relief for ranchers who wish to hire "special staff" to recon for intrusion and call in the troops, but are to take action only in self defense.
Just think, Soldier of Fortune magazine can become a clearing house for potential employees.....
True. So did Pat Buchanan. In fact, he campaigned on that theme, and was ridiculed here on FreeRepublic for it. It's promising to see that the American public at large is still capable of rational free thought, even if it took 9/11 to wake them up.
If the Military is put on the border, what we will have in effect is a designated area, from San Diego to Brownsville Texas that would be under martial law, this would include the towns on the U.S. side of the border. No hunting or other recreational activities would be allowed, there would be no weapons allowed in the area. Business requires me to be in some of the border towns regularly, if the military were put on the border, I would have to disarm myself any time I crossed into the area, maybe there is a reason I carry when I go into those towns.
Wouldn't it make more sense to expand the Border Patrol, and terminate the government handouts that make it so appealing to break into our country. The Congress is stealing money from You, and I, and handing it out to anyone who might be underpriveleged, where is the outcry to to stop this outrage.
Good question. There are those who wondered if he was involved in the fingering of Pablo Escobar, killed before he could be taken prisoner again to finger any of the governmental figures, including those in this country, who had helped make him one of the world's richest men. And accordingly, there are certainly those on both sides of the drug running business who'd like to see Borge silenced as well, and he's certainly aware of that.
Panama or Costa Rica might not be bad bets, though depending on how the political winds blow in Nicaragua, he might well return or remain there, though right now, his presence is not needed to offer the Sabndinistas any embarassment. And, of course, Mexico is a definite possibility as well.
***** ***** *****
"Congress investigating Barry Seal's activities"
By John Semien
THE BATON ROUGE SUNDAY ADVOCATE
April 10, 1988
Allegations that slain drug smuggler Adler "Barry" Seal also was involved in weapons smuggling have attracted the attention of a congressional subcommittee that dispatched an investigator to Baton Rouge last week to talk with Louisiana State Police officials.
The House Subcommittee on Crime probe is one of several focusing on mercenary activities in the wake of last year's revelation of Lt. Col. Oliver North's secret Contra supply network. State Police Capt. Mark Oxley on Friday said the investigator questioned troopers on Thursday concerning their investigations of Seal's smuggling activities.
"They went over the background of the state police involvement with Barry Seal," Oxley said. "We shared information relative to our investigations, over a period of time, that touched on Seal. We are very supportive of their mission."
In a statement released in March, state police Col. Donald Brisolera said the new congressional interest in Seal "centers around guns, drugs and money-laundering violations by Barry Seal and his associates in the Louisiana area."
Reached by the Morning Advocate in Washington Friday, congressional General Counsel Haydon Gregorie acknowledged that an investigator had visited state police in Baton Rouge but would not comment on Seal's involvement in the probe.
In March, Gregorie said the investigation focuses on "a number of matters touching on criminal narcotic laws and laws governing money-laundering and firearms possession."
Baton Rouge was the second stop for congressional investigators gathering information on Seal.
In December 1987, investigators interviewed Arkansas law enforcement officials and former associates of Seal in Mena, Ark., concerning the convicted smuggler's alleged ties to an airplane repair firm there, according to Arkansas news reports.
Their questions concerned Seal's involvement with Rich Mountain Aviation from early 1984 until his death in February 1986, according to Arkansas news reports.
Their list of contacts included former Polk County sheriff A.L. Hadaway, who told the "Mena Star" that investigators were specifically interested in "Rich Mountain Aviation and Seal's involvement in Rich Mountain Aviation, and in the actions and activities of federal agencies and officers and their relations with Barry Seal."
Hadaway said investigators also asked if he had knowledge of weapons dealing.
At various times, Seal stored a C-123 transport plane, a Convair C131 Constellation and a twin-engine Grumman Albatros in facilities owned by Rich Mountain Aviation, which is located near Mena's Intermountain Regional Airport.
He also steered other business to the company in his dealings as an airplane "broker," buying and selling aircraft for customers around the world.
The congressional probe may answer nagging questions concerning these business dealings and the government's recruitment of Seal as an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Court testimony from state drug enforcement agents indicates that Seal was allowed to retain a fleet of planes and boats and a small army of couriers as part of his "cover" for government operations in his deal for cooperation with federal agents.
Many questions about his dealings with the government center on the C-123 military transport plane, which Seal flew into and out of Nicaragua in June 1984.
Federal officials have claimed that the plane was loaded with cocaine allegedly exported by a partnership of powerful Colombian cocaine czars and corrupt Sandinistan government officials.
Equipped with a camera installed by the CIA, and working undercover for federal drug agents, Seal was able to photograph men loading cocaine into the aircraft.
President Ronald Reagan later identified one of those men as a Sandinistan official during a nationally televised plea for Contra support.
Seal's photos gave Reagan badly needed evidence against the Sandinistas in his efforts to secure funding for the Contras.
The photographs taken by Seal show the smuggler receiving canvas bags of cocaine from reputed Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar and a man identified as Federico Vaughan, allegedly an aide to Sandinistan Interior Minister Thomas Borge. Escobar is still a fugitive in his native Colombia and Vaughan disappeared in the summer of 1984 after his indictment in Miami on drug charges. Sandinistan officials have denied that Vaughan was ever a high-ranking aide to Borge.
But in 1987, reporters for the Associated Press located Vaughan's brother, Barney Vaughan, who has worked for Miami banks associated with Contra supporters.
Vaughan worked for Popular Bank of Hialeah until the end of 1986 and was working for BAC International Credit Corp. of Miami and the Cayman Islands in 1987, according to the AP.
Popular Bank is one of several Florida banks the General Accounting Office has identified as holding Contra accounts. The AP story identified BAC International as part of a CIA-run money-laundering operation that has shuttled federal funds to the Contras in violation of congressional restrictions.
Seal's C-123, after a change of ownership, was shot down in 1986 while on a weapons supply run to the Contras.
Eugene Hasenfus, the only survivor of the downed plane, has said he was part of a secret transportation network supervised by the CIA from clandestine air strips in El Salvador.
A November 1987 Miami Herald story disclosed private memos written by National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Oliver North that indicated North kept close tabs on Seal's 1984 Nicaragua flight.
At the time, North was supervising the Reagan administration's secret aid pipeline to Contra rebels fighting to overthrow the Nicaraguan government.
The report stated that on June 27, 1984, one day after Seal arrived in the United States with 1,500 pounds of cocaine from Nicaragua, North made a notation of suspects in Seal's operations, including "Freddy Vaughan" and "Pablo Escobar _ Colombian drug tzar."
A memo dated June 28, 1984, reads "C-123 acquired by DEA source. Installed two cameras _ plane to Miami.
"Freddy Vaughan works for Thomas Borge. Photos show," the Herald report states.
A July 5, 1984, memo written by North contains the reminder:
"check on DEA project re Freddy Vaughan. Substantial narcotics through," according to the Herald.
Several "Contragate" investigations have produced statements from pilots that allege Seal was involved in the clandestine smuggling of arms to Contra rebels.
They include pilot and convicted drug smuggler Michael Tolliver, who was arrested in Florida on drug charges in 1987.
In an April 1987 interview, Tolliver told the Morning Advocate that he was recruited by Seal to fly arms in a secret weapons supply network for Nicaraguan rebels.
Tolliver described Seal as a business acquaintance and member of a small community of pilots who worked both sides of the law under government protection.
Tolliver said Seal used a "federal umbrella" to shelter his own, illegal drug dealings.
"He was either doing a trip for DEA or working for the CIA in their arms deal," Tolliver said. "Or really what he was doing was using his cover under the federal umbrella to work trips himself... Everybody knew Barry worked for the government."
Tolliver said a side business he (Tolliver) was able to establish allowed him to land more than 12 tons of marijuana at Homestead Air Force Base near Miami on one return supply mission.
While Seal was most famous for his drug-smuggling escapades, he first came to the attention of federal law enforcement officials in a thwarted plot to overthrow the communist government of Fidel Castro in 1972.
Then a pilot for Trans World Airline, Seal was arrested along with five other men when federal agents seized almost seven tons of plastic C-4 explosives in a DC-6 transport plane parked at the Shreveport Regional Airport.
Charges against Seal were dismissed after a 1974 mistrial in the case.
Seal lost his TWA job in the process and drifted into smuggling marijuana, according to his testimony in various drug trials.
During the next decade, Seal's skill as a pilot and knack for logistics took him to the top ranks of air smugglers.
Serious drug charges in Florida and Louisiana forced Seal to seek federal protection in 1983.
He was turned down by federal prosecutors in Louisiana and Florida before he was able to become an informant for federal drug agents through Vice President George Bush's anti-drug task force.
Seal has testified in court that he met with representatives of the vice president in Washington in 1984 and offered information on powerful leaders of Colombia's Medellin cocaine cartel and their alliance with Sandinistan officials for smuggling cocaine to the United States.
Seal was a trusted courier for cartel leader Jorge Ochoa-Vasquez, who Seal said was pioneering a new cocaine distribution route through Nicaragua with the help of the Sandinistas.
The resulting sting operation made drug enforcement history and blew Seal's cover as an undercover informant.
A $500,000 contract on Seal's life soon followed.
On Feb. 19, 1986, Seal was getting out of his white Cadillac in the parking lot of the Salvation Army Community Treatment Center in Baton Rouge when he was shot to death by a Colombian wielding a small machine-gun.
Seal was murdered shortly before he was expected to testify about the Nicaraguan sting operation against powerful Colombian drug czars under indictment in Miami.
Among his personal effects was a Honduran passport bearing Seal's photograph and the name Joseph C. Warren.
At the trial of three Colombian nationals who were convicted of Seal's murder, federal officials could not explain the passport or connect it to any cases Seal worked on for the DEA.
Later in the trial, attorneys for one of the convicted murderers accused federal officials of withholding evidence in the case that suggested Seal was still alive.
The attorney proposed that a man named Joseph C. Warren was killed on Feb. 19, 1986.
***************** ********************* *********************
D. DEA Headquarters' Review of Allegations of Contra Drug Trafficking In early February 1987, Douglas Everett, Chief of Program and Policy in DEA's Intelligence Section, went to Central America to evaluate allegations linking various Nicaraguan political organizations to the drug trade. Everett reported to DEA management, for inclusion in a DEA response to a Congressional inquiry, that after meeting with personnel from the DEA, the Department of State, and the United States military, as well as various confidential informants in Central America, he could find no evidence to support allegations that either the Sandinistas or the Contras as entities were involved in drug trafficking to support their activities. He reported that although some individuals associated with these movements may have been involved in drug trafficking, there was no credible information indicating that the traffickers represented any political organization or were conducting their criminal activities on behalf of these groups.
Everett wrote in this report that the DEA's Guatemala office had recently closed an investigation based in El Salvador in which there had been allegations of Contra involvement -- an apparent reference to the Grasheim case. Everett reported that, according to initial informant information, individuals believed to be associated with the Contra movement at the Ilopango Airport were also engaged in cocaine and weapons smuggling. He reported that at no time, however, did any informant or Salvadoran official either see or seize drugs. Everett noted that the DEA Guatemala office believed that the informants had exaggerated their accounts of activities at Ilopango. He related that some of the informant reports appeared to have been based on the fact that, on occasion, people arriving at the airport would leave their plane carrying a briefcase and run to the military side of the airport before clearing customs. The informants assumed that the briefcases contained cocaine. Everett noted that, although the informants had reported drug activity in hangars four and five, those hangars were accessible only to military personnel and views from the outside were quite limited. Everett suggested that any smuggling activity at Ilopango was probably being conducted by Francisco Guirola-Beeche, who was connected to extreme right-wing political groups in El Salvador, not to any Nicaraguan political factions.
Everett reported that an anti-Sandinista informant had told him that Eden Pastora, the former leader of the ARDE, was involved in drug trafficking. The informant had complained that Pastora was making huge profits, but that none of the money was going to the Contra movement. The informant had related that Pastora, once a member of the Sandinista government, was now allied with Nicaraguan Minister of Interior Thomas Borge in drug trafficking activities, and was using cocaine laboratories in Nicaragua. The informant had claimed that, although Pastora and his associates had been totally corrupted by the drug trade, the Contras based in Honduras had not yet been.
Everett concluded by noting that allegations concerning Contra links to drug trafficking, although unsupported by any evidence he could find, would continue to surface because traffickers who had been arrested would try to avoid prosecution with claims of CIA authorization.
We are talking about the cook at Denny's. I don't think gunships are required.
I taught technical classes to young technicians in Mexico some years back. A large percentage of them had lived and worked in the US. It was almost like a rite of passage; you go spend a year in the US after high school. Most of them had kinfolk who are US citizens.
Most of them were quite proud of what they had had accomplished in the US, some of them had held rather responsible positions. But, when work was available back home, they left the US and went home. Why? Because, even earning a fraction of what they earned in the US, they wanted to live and work among their own people. Also, most of these guys had technical training, and knew they would never work in their chosen field up north; a trained electrician would not be happy forever working as a cook.
Mexico has begun to develop, industrially, in the most dramatic way in recent years. Japanese, Korean, and US firms are building plants all over the country. There is competition, perhaps for the first time, for trained technicians. NAFTA, which we put in place in order to compete with the Koreans and Japanese who are investing heavily in Mexico, is bearing fruit on both sides of the border.
These folks are not the enemy. Gunships are overkill. But there is nothing wrong with National Guardsmen patrolling the Arizona border, or the Texas border, both for border security as well as to prevent people from dying in the desert. The state governor doesn't need permission from Washington to do it. Most of the Guardsmen are hispanic; they will be protecting the country, eliminating a lawless no-mans-land, and protecting their cousins from across the border from a very dangerous enterprise.
Good luck getting the draft re-started.
The past two presidents successfully avoided it.
People naively think this, but stopping assorted unarmed Mexicans sneaking over the border has NOTHING to do with fighting an Iraqi Republican Guard division, or a million North Koreans coming over the DMV. Every second devoted to border patrol is a step towards destroying the combat effectiveness of any military force doing it. They need to be training for combat.
This is TAANSTAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.) There aren't all these troops lying around to do this at no additional cost. You're looking at either an entirely new Government Agency/Military Force, specialized for Border Patrol, or a massive expansion of the existing Border Patrol. Both will cost obscene amounts of money. The current Border Patrol is losing agents by the bucketload as it is.
Somebody gets it. We are in the precarious situation right now of needing to make homeland defense THE number 1 priority of this country. All other arguments and political goals are meaningless without the context of a safe AND free America. It is just plain common sense that the absolute first measure toward achieving that goal is to regulate the borders and to actively root out aliens in this country illegally, whether it is because they have overstayed a VISA or illegally penetrated our borders. NO VISA's should be issued to foreign nationals coming from ANY country known to sponsor terrorism and ALL currently existing ones should be revoked.
There is NO excuse whatsoever for us to still be training pilots from Arab countries in American flight schools. There is no excuse for anti-American protests by non-Americans to go unchallenged. These are 2 specific settings in which the offenders could EASILY be discovered and removed. I am so tired of the excuses about how hard it is and how we don't have the resources. How about we eliminate some of the more useless government sponsored organizations and bureaus and redistribute THEIR resources? Or is that just too logical?
And although I have no fondness for China, they didn't have to go through months and years of political calisthenics to figure out that the first thing you do to protect yourself and the skies from mideastern fanatics is you don't sell them airline tickets. That took China all of, what, a few hours to figure out, after it was known that America was attacked by mideastern fanatics on 9/11?
Don't those in power even see that the America we know and love is fast reaching the point of no return leaving us nothing to defend beyond a pathetic existence of slavery at the mercy of a tyrannical government and of the whims of terrorists.
And while we're at it, it might be a good idea to stop tolerating the proselytizing for Islam in American schools and prisons. Bush and others need to get their heads out of the sand when it comes to the "religion" of Islam. These are not, by and large, God-fearing peace-lovers. They are murderous barbarians whose god demands the shedding of innocent blood, and more specifically these days, the blood of Americans, and while many may not practice these acts themselves, they are certainly not vocal in condemning them. If they can indoctrinate and brainwash children in our own schools at the expense of American taxpayers that Islam is good and Christianity is evil (and you know what I am talking about here), and if they can go into American prisons and incite already angry criminals to act on their rage in the name of a "cause", then we are doing worse than turning a blind eye to the problem. We are aiding and abetting it, doing their work for them as well as providing the financial backing for their evil designs.
And by all means, arm the pilots. What are they afraid of? Somebody getting killed? And just how many people to they expect to survive if a pilot doesn't have that option when a terrorist takes over a plane or the military shoots a commercial airliner out of the sky. Do they really think that these monsters wouldn't think twice before attempting to take over an aircraft knowing that the pilot was ready to blow them away if they gained access to the cockpit?
It's time we start doing what will work instead what is politically correct. Political correctness is every bit as much the enemy as terrorism and I would suggest that the proponents of both are of the same ilk. If we are unwilling to take a no nonsense approach to a real war against truly evil people, then we can't claim to be preserving America because our America no longer exists. < /rant >
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