From Firecrackers in Times Square to Five Hundred Pounders in Waziristan

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WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. flatly asserted that the defendant in the Times Square bombing attempt was trained by the Taliban in Pakistan.

Sure as the sun rises in the morning firecrackers exploding in Times Square are leading to another attack on the Constitution and our basic rights. That’s correct, all it took were a few firecrackers exploding and now we do away with our Miranda rights which prohibit prosecutors from using statement evidence that was gathered prior to informing the suspect of their rights. There already exists a public safety exception to the Miranda so why this grandstanding? Well, what is grandstanding always used for? In this case one of the themes for the Democrats has been that they are better at fighting terrorists than the Republicans are and this Times Square bomb attempt says they aren’t. Ergo the tough cop approach “We’ll protect Americans if we have to kill them ourselves!” Right. A deeper truth might be that any old excuse to expand the police state is like any old port in the storm for our authoritarian leaders who obviously view the Constitution as an out of date and largely useless document, which it is, for presidents and congress have ignored it and gone around it for at least one hundred years. Recall President McKinley sending the Marines to the Boxer Rebellion in China without consulting Congress which the Constitution demands presidents do, but you know how it is and that was in 1900 well over one hundred years ago. McKinley set a precedent that is still with us today that has likely led to others equally bad.

There is another cause for worry aside from our rights which is another escalation this time in Waziristan the alleged home to all kinds of baddies from al Qaeda to the TTP and maybe even old bin Laden himself. Obama has been steadily escalating the drone attacks in Waziristan resulting in literally hundreds of civilian deaths over the past year. Recently Obama has changed the rules of engagement where now we need not bother with the identity of our victims, no time for that, now we just slaughter who we feel like when we feel like as if we hadn’t been doing that all along. They hate us for our freedoms! Right. Gotcha.

After following the Shahzad story with much trepidation I find my worst fears are realized. I believe the original story is most likely true that Shahzad was acting on his own and that the Obama administration is now using the incident to erode our civil rights even further and to start another war on the lie that Shahzad was working for the Taliban. What perhaps convinces me the most is that this is based on “intelligence” and intelligence should never, ever, be taken at its face value. It should be remembered that intelligence is used by the State to fortify their own lies in the pursuance of war. And I’m afraid this is exactly what is happening right now.