Tuesday, September 26, 2006

How many times will the American people witness their government taking the
easy way out to dealing with terror? President Bush pushes and advocates
that we must be on the offense to dealing with our enemies. But our Senate,
and other government agencies are not operating that way. They are too
mired in politics, in the proper rules of engagement. The Path to 911,
ABC's docudrama which aired Sept. 10th and 11th recently, exposed serious
flaws in our government to quickly act upon important leads that would take
down our enemy. Now, we are busy playing catch up...or are we? It seems as
if everything is the same. Both administrations, Clinton and George W.
Bush, were at fault for not acting quickly to take down terror suspects that
loudly proclaimed to be a danger to America. America had even the help of
the Minister of Defense of the Northern Alliance, Ahmed Shah Massoud (as The
Path to 911 program revealed) who worked with the U.S., giving specific
intelligence that would have taken out Osama Bin Laden. But we failed to
take him out. Ahmed Shah Massoud died in a suicide attack by Arabs who
posed as journalists, claiming to be from Morocco. He died September 9,
2001, two days before America was attacked on 911. Before he died, Massoud
warned the U.S. that Osama Bin Laden was planning something huge inside
America.

I consider him to be a friend of America who had the guts to risk his safety
to save the lives of others. We don't honor his memory and those who have
died fighting terror in whatever form if we do not act as bravely and take
risks as they did.

It was recently reported that an unmanned but armed Predator drone used by
the Army for reconnaissance missions, shot photos of senior level Taliban
fighters, apparently gathered for a funeral. The order was not given to
fire, and many people like me, are wondering why we made such a disastrous
decision. The decision was a no-go due to the military rules of engagement,
which do not allow any strikes on a cemetery or religious sites. The
Taliban was clearly in the open, and the chance to attack was a perfect one.

We are fighting a new kind of enemy. We must adapt and allow the full
strength of our military forces to defeat them. Taliban activity has
increased this summer, and our response should be to take action to
eliminate a threat before we suffer from it later on.

Terrorists do not care where they attack. Weddings, funerals, mosques...it
does not matter, just as long as the "infidel" is crushed.

Just three days after the U.S. observed the 5th anniversary of September 11,
2001, the argument over how we interrogate terrorists in U.S. custody broke.
A few Republican Senators on the Senate Armed Services Committee expressed
their opposition to President Bush over current interrogation methods.