It's time to stand in the road
    by jmowreader

April 9th was the tenth anniversary of my leaving Berlin. I was a soldier
assigned to US Army Berlin for six years.

Our stated mission was to defend West Berlin against invasion, to keep that
island of freedom in the sea of oppression democratic and open. To bring news
of the free and democratic United States to the oppressed people of East Germany.

None of us actually believed any of that. In most duty stations, a soldier who was
surrounded by the enemy would be at war. In Berlin, being surrounded by a couple
hundred thousand members of the Commie Hordes was all in a day's work. The Soviets
could have taken West Berlin just about any time they wanted it--and we all knew it.

We Berlin soldiers had a different task--a completely symbolic, completely political one.
Soldiery is always a political craft, but it is more so when by treaty the leader of the city
is an American major general. It was our duty to stand in the road at Checkpoint Bravo,
at Checkpoint Charlie and at hundreds of border crossing points the US forces didn't use,
and send a message to the Soviets and East Germans:

"This is as far as you go."

Today there is no more need for Americans to stand in the road in Berlin.
There are no more East Germans--just Germans--and the Soviets are now fifty
or sixty different nationalities.

Yesterday, I took the newspaper out of its bag to read a rather disconcerting
headline: FBI now allowed to conduct surveillance against Americans. It's supposedly
to catch terrorists, but a little later in this Rant I will tell you exactly what it takes to
become a terrorist in Bush's America. It's not much. The story says that the FBI wasn't
able to stop 9/11 because it didn't have the power to spy on Americans. Got news for y'all:
none of the 19 terrorists were Americans. Zacarias wasn't an American. We know that
there was sufficient evidence to suggest to Bush that telling anyone who sells airplane
tickets that if someone buys a one-way cross-country airline ticket with a fistful of twenties,
like all 19 of the terrorists did, they should call the police and let them know. That putting
some F-16 fighters on strip alert for two or three months would be a good idea.

(The Air Guard had a plane up trailing golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet six minutes after
it went off course. Two huge airplanes roll out of Boston heading for California and all
of a sudden they're heading for New York... gee, Gomer, do ya think maybe we should
send someone up to look at these guys? Naw, Barney, they're just going to get some lox
for the pilot's bagel.) That issuing Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against
known compatriots of Osama was a proper thing to do. That ordering the FBI to back
off investigating Osama like the Bush administration did was not too bright.

Okay, now let me get this straight: I spent twelve years helping to keep the
deserter George W. Bush and his chickenhawk buddy Ashcroft free so they
could turn America into a dictatorship. If that ain't a way to honor your
military service, I don't know what is.

Oh yeah. You remember the War on Terra? The one Bush started because
Osama bin Laden hates our freedom? It's over. And Osama won.

It is now time to stand in the road in front of George W. Bush and John
Ashcroft, look them in the eye, and say, "this is as far as you go."

It is time for a real investigation into 9/11, not the pathetic "only by the
intelligence committees" one Bush wants. It is time for a real investigation
into problems in the Florida vote, not just the "are there enough
interpreters at the polls" one they just announced the results of.
(Interpreters be damned. On democrats.com is a list of seventeen known
violations of federal elections law that were committed by the Bush
campaign. These aren't technical violations either--they're out and out
felonies.) It is time to look at Bush's administration's dealings with the
Taliban--not just the $43 million sent there because the Taliban was trying
to get their opium stocks down by banning poppy cultivation, but their
dealings on behalf of Unocal to get a natural gas pipeline built across
Afghanistan. We spent $70 million dollars crawling through Hillary Clinton's
panties--literally; Starr Chamber investigators searched Hillary Clinton's
underwear drawer in the White House looking for evidence she'd broken the
law--we can spend a couple of million trying to figure out who is really at
fault in the 9/11 disaster.

And it's time to impeach George Bush, Dick Cheney, the whole cabinet and the
five Supreme Court justices who put him in the White House. Charge:
Obstruction of justice for everyone except the Felonious Five, judicial
malfeasance for those guys. It is time to jail Katherine Harris for conflict
of interest.

Now what's it take to become a terrorist in Bush's America? Ask Dian
Hardison. She was a scientist at NASA. Recently, she paid her water bill.
You read what happened next, as presented on democrats.com...

"So there I was, as I usually am on a Friday night, curled up with a book
and a couple of cats, when two armed thugs bang on my door, read me a
two-page search warrant while I'm standing there barefoot, go through my
house, and haul me off to a clinic to take two vials of blood for a DNA
test. I am now accused of being a terrorist, i.e., the "Manufacture,
possession, sale, delivery, display, use, or attempted or threatened use of
a weapon of mass destruction or hoax weapon of mass destruction," because -
get this - there was apparently some foot powder in my water bill payment.

"How did foot powder get in my water bill envelope? My filing system is
rather haphazard, that is to say, every flat surface is treated as a horizontal
filing cabinet, so I do most of my paperwork, such as sorting mail and paying bills,
sitting cross-legged on the couch. There's foot powder all over the couch, and
on the cats for that matter, and spread around anything any of us has stepped on.
The better question would be: what Bush-voting MORON believes anyone besides
themselves is STUPID enough to make a threat in an envelope with a PERSONAL
IMPRINTED AND SIGNED CHECK in it? And what the #*%& are they going
to compare my blood DNA to, the %* bank account number on the check?

"They don't have to have a reason. With the illegally appointed dictator-
wanna-be throwing temper tantrums, and his thieving brother running the
state under martial law, all they have to do is decide they don't like you."

Later, she was charged with perpetuating a hoax terrorist threat and put in
jail under $5000 bond.

It's time to stand in the road.
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