Give me your maniacs, your moochers, your huddled terrorist cells yearning to kill and destroy…
Have you ever heard of Michael J. Maxwell?
Chances are you haven’t.
Maxwell is the former director of the Office of Security and Investigations, part of Citizenship and Immigration Services. In April, he testified before a House subcommittee about fraud and corruption in his department. The national security breaches in our own Department of Homeland Security are alarming, but Maxwell’s testimony received minimal coverage. I suppose it’s up to mere bloggers to get the word out: The trouble with U.S. immigration policy. (Part I and Part II)
Why do the media beat some stories to death but barely touch others? I don’t have the energy to try to answer the question. I’ll leave it up to you because I’m in shock…over the lack of media coverage or follow-up…over the absence of outrage about Maxwell’s findings.
Heads should roll over this, beginning with one in particular in the White House.
Testimony:
- Checking Terrorism at the Border (PDF) — Maxwell’s testimony
- Full transcript (HTML)
- Full transcript (PDF)
- Webcast
News coverage:
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I guess it’s too much to ask to have the NEW YORK “LEAKER” TIMES publish some real news like this.
You know what drives me nuts? When we were entering the Iraq war, all these dems and the media were screaming about our borders. “why aren’t we enforcing the borders, look at our borders, we need the troops to cover the borders because the borders don’t have enough coverage..” yadda yadda yadda.
Now (a certain percentage of) Republicans and conservatives want to deal with the borders and – once again- the media/ dems have done a complete turn around.
To dream the impossible dream: A formal declaration of war on terrorists/terrorism by the Congress of the United States.
If the President had true wartime powers, he could by-pass the freedom of information act, put the screws to the press, get tough on immigration, plug thousands of loopholes and have true “czars” operating the important branches of the Office of Homeland Security.
Congress is chock-a-block full of White House wannabes who would love that power for themselves, but would vigorously deny it to anyone else.
We are caught in a trap of our own making. We laud a “transparent” government to the point that it is nearly impossible to operate in secret even in the best interests of our own national security.
Maxwell’s assertions are met with Congressional wariness over the possibility that some constituent ox may be gored in the process.
In reality, war and politics do not mix. Our present concerns over illegal immigration/illegal aliens, border security, terrorism, homeland security, etc. are all being measured and filtered through the lens of politics in the run up to the Congressional elections and posturing for the Presidential nominations in 2008.
We should be focused on the national security first with politics being a distant second. But our security concerns have become so overwhelmed by opposition politics that we have reached a level of idiocy I could never have imagined. I fully expect to hear that stem cell research could have led to the capture of Osama, but the Bush oil interests stopped it to keep Ken Lay out of prison.
In the meanwhile, it is up to the blogs to keep pistol whipping the main stream media which is fascinated with the examination of its own navel lint and skewing what news it does deem important enough to publish.
Man Charged After Series Of Armed Road Rage Incidents
http://www.wral.com/news/9555345/detail.html
“Ortiz was involved in another high-profile incident back in April. Police said he shot a man outside a McDonald’s on Capital Boulevard. According to court documents, he received one-year of probation in a plea deal.”
Yesterday on the local news, it was reported that this man was an illegal alien and faces possible deportation. Possible deportation? This kind of thing just makes my blood boil…
The problem is the very nature of the DHS. It’s completely contradictory. The people on the top are corrupt and questionable in many cases (as with all political entities) and the bottom is often undertrained, underqualified and on a power trip (anyone gone to the airport lately?) In addition we’re faced with a mission of stopping terrorism without being allowed to find it.
I’m not sure there IS any solution to this complete disconnect between the PEOPLE of this country and their elected political hacks and the mainstream media. I’m not even sure that another outrage like 9/11 would awaken these idiots to the danger we ALL face. Islam doesn’t want to just kill those non-Muslims who are fighting them – they want to kill or ENSLAVE all non-Muslims in a sharia-based culture worldwide and unless and until this simple fact is digested by one and all (or at least sufficient people in ALL the countries threatened to actually make some worthwhile efforts to defeat the Islamfascists) the threat will continue and it will grow until we are all engulfed, conservative, libertarian and liberal alike. And then these lily-livered cretins will learn that their own stupidity has put them in this mess. Unfortunately, we’ll be suffering the consequences of their stupidity as well.
Remember the book 1984, LaShawn? Ever since the immigration act of 1965, print and television media employees have become gutless cogs in the “Ministry of Truth” aparatus, manipulating fact and wheeling-and-dealing for “control of our past, present, and future”.
Newsweek, New York Times, NBC!? Try Newspeak, thoughtcrime, and doublethink.
I know I must be stupid because I just can’t see the logic in our war on terror. We’ve known since shortly after 9/11 that 15 of 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens in the U.S. on visas obtained in Saudi Arabia. In 2003 former CIA agent Robert Baer said in his book, Sleeping With the Devil, that under the law, none of the 15 should have been given a visa but got their visas because of the lax process of obtaining U.S. visas in Saudi Arabia. Now, in April 2006, Maxwell and others are saying that process is still not fixed.
Saudi Arabia is a repressive theocracy that does not educate its women, doesn’t allow them to drive and publicly beheads them if they commit adultery. Osama Bin Laden is Saudi, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, many of the terror attacks in the 90’s were committed by Saudis, BUT we are not mad at Saudi Arabia. We are not trying to force democracy on them. I don’t get it.
We know that Hezbollah was founded and supported by Iran. The 9/11 Commission Reports says that Al Qaeda members received advice and assistance from Hezbollah. But we haven’t done much other than bark at Iran. And they appear to be much closer to obtaining nuclear weapons than Iraq.
We have killed nearly 10,000 Afghan troops, wounded over 25,000. We’ve killed/wounded up to 6,000 civilians, but we haven’t found Bin Laden yet and we haven’t rooted out the terrorists there.
In Iraq, as many as 100,000 civilians have been killed, civil war is breaking out and everyday, more Iraqis are turning against the U.S.
Logically, we had more reason to go into Saudi Arabia because of 9/11 than Iraq. Iraq was one of the most secular Muslim countries in the middle east and its women were gaining more liberties daily. And, we never found the wmd’s the war is in the 4th year with no end in sight and we have spent $300 billion dollars. $300 billion dollars. We probably could have bought Saddam Hussein for less than $300 billion. I don’t get it.
And judging from the lack of comments to this thread, many others don’t get it either or don’t care. Or, maybe the readers of this blog are only titillated by domestic liberal/racial issues as if liberals and blacks were the biggest threat to their way of life.
I care, and agree with all of your points Leon.
Politics and foreign affairs is of great interest to me. I am completely confused with our elected officials plans for our involvement in the middle east. Discussing reparations, and the Duke case is easier to deal with?
JUNA
Maxwell’s testimony sounds like he is describing some third world country. Why no outrage in Congress or the White House? I also find it unbelievable that anyone could seriously think that immigration is a right and not a privilege. To find it the attitude of the folks hired to weed out the wrong people is incredible.
I’m too stunned to blog.
I can’t understand why this blog isn’t devoted to global warming. I mean, it’s sizzling outside don’t ya think? ;-/ (How do you make a smiley with a tongue in cheek?)
No, I hadn’t heard of Maxwell; however, my question is, why haven’t our legislators done something about what he revealed? Is our Homeland Security Department so beyond repair that they don’t know how to fix it? I’m beginning to think it is. Scarey. As for the mainstream media, well we know they are biased and rarely report anything about illegal immigration that’s anti-illegal immigrant.
JUNA, you may be right on: discussing reparations and the Duke case is easier, I think, because they are not serious threats to us as individuals. But the Homeland Security mess is less familiar territory, scary and threatening to us as individuals.
On the other hand, La Shawn, it’s not really that bad. You can bet that the traditional alphabet groups (CIA, FBI, NSA, etc.,) are still doing their thing to the best of their ability. After all, we know several plots have been foiled since 9/11. So blog on lady, you’re doing a great job.
One of the findings that came out of the 9/11 aftermath was that there was a lack of communication among the alphabet groups that resulted in information regarding suspected terrorists known to one group like the CIA was not passed on to other groups like the FBI or even from FBI field agents to FBI higher ups. So the idea was to fix that by creating the DHS which should have resulted in better coordination of information and resources among the various groups. It looks like all that happened, however, was the adding of one or more layers of more bureaucratic crap. And if I’m understanding what Maxwell is saying, he’s complaining that an investigatory and enforcement arm was created at DHS, he was put in charge and then the rug was cut out from under him by denying him the resources to adequately carry out his job. I believe that is the result of the politics of it all. You can bet that the folks at the State dept., FBI, CIA, etc., did not want to see yet another group meddling in areas otherwise reserved for them and the creation of yet another investigatory arm was unnecessary.
The bottom line is that we need to keep their feet to the fire so our way of life remains sacred. So, La Shawn must continue to blog and all of us must continue reading and sharing our comments. Together, we will all persevere.
At least the MSM is no longer in total control–we get to read news via such blogs as this. Basically, newspapers aren’t my editors anymore–correct-thinking bloggers and a few sites are.
#8 Leon expresses a lot of frustration about the war on terror and that “(l)ogically, we had more reason to go into Saudi Arabia because of 9/11 than Iraq.”
We certainly could have stayed out of Iraq. It was just peacefully ignoring the United Nations and playing shill games with France, Germany and Russia. It was paying $25,000 to the families of Palestinian suicide “martyrs” which it could easily afford out of the “oil for food program” revenues. It was a safe house for terrorists. I am unaware of the growing liberties of women under the benevolent eye of Saddam Hussein. Certainly, his sons kept a careful eye on the girls.
We have not caught Osama. No argument there. We could take our total forces and barge into the roughest terrain in the world and try to root him out without regard to cost in blood and treasure. We have chosen to be circumspect in our hunt while keeping him under a rock and pinned down.
If we were to blitz the Osama territory we would have the concomitant pleasure of poking a stick in every Pashtun hive in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The civil war that would result against Mussarif would be CNN entertainment for years. And the increased rebellion against the Karzai government would be extreme. Sorry about the reality, but reality doesn’t go away with wishful thinking.
Right or wrong, Bush decided on a military foothold in the Middle East where we could control the game plan. In the world of Geneva Conventions and United Nations it is not really possible to act unilaterally in a preemptive fashion without raising a terrible stink. The United Nations is totally useless. Look to Bosnia, Dafur, Rwanda, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma and Yemen as examples of how the UN whistles its way past every graveyard in the making.
Bush got us into Iraq by using the United Nations and Saddam’s continued defiance of its many ultimatums. Bush met resistance from Germany, France and Russia precisely because Iraq was a cash cow for them and because each of those countries have large, restive, criminal Muslim populations. (No, not all of them are criminals, just a disproportionate number.)
So! We are in Iraq: on the Northern border of Saudi Arabia; on the Western border of Iran; on the Eastern border of Syria. And we are in Afghanistan which is on the Eastern border of Iran, thus hemming that horrid case in on both sides. In terms of geopolitics and military strategy, it would seem that we have picked a pretty good location. And the Islamofascist nut cases have gone to Iraq to try to stop our military machine. We have drawn them out, haven’t we? Are we creating more of them? You bet. But they are over there fighting out professional military rather than over here causing power outages on hot summer nights which would be a real disaster for the liberals.
LaShawn blogs regularly about the dumb stuff people pull like not protecting the borders, hiring the enemy to watch our security programs, the blabbing about “right and wrong” by people with no moral compass, strippers playing the race card and crying “rape”, blacks sitting tight on their “victim” status while demanding a bigger check, etc.
It is a great blog. The best. But it sure does drive the PC crowd around the bend.
>>Leon expresses a lot of frustration about the war on terror and that “(l)ogically, we had more reason to go into Saudi Arabia because of 9/11 than Iraq.â€>>
Don’t forget also that OBL has been banned from SA. That has to count for something. He’s also been disowned by his family. That’s a _very_ big thing in that part of the world.
Watched “Laurence of Arabia” a couple of weeks ago…there was an interesting scene about the meeting of the founder of Wahhabism and the progenitor of the royal Saud family…there was an alliance formed between them “you run the politics, I’ll form my religious sect. You support me, and I’ll support you” This was a couple of hundred years ago, but apparently it’s still a deal, binding the descendants of both. The wahabbis apparently control dissent within the kingdom, and send their trouble makers out to do damage in other places. The Royals allow them freedom to do their thing, as long as they don’t threaten the Kingdom. OBL started making trouble in the Kingdom, trying to overthrow the government. He was banned. Officially, the Royals are against terrorism – even though it’s born and bred within the Kindgom – and although there may be individuals within the Royal family that are secretly supporting terrorism. If the official Royals, discover someone plotting against them, we’ll never hear about it – said person will just disappear. They have vast deserts.
At least, that’s how I understand it, and that’s my impression of why we’re still on good terms with SA. It may come back to them eventually, but it’ll be a while, I think.
I gave you all the scoop on this a couple of months back.
That’s fine though… I don’t care who gets credited for it… I am just glad that Ms. Barber is now covering it on her main page. Now more people will know about it.
The Mainstream media ignored the story.
Thanks LaShawn
The Angry Independent
http://mirroronamerica.blogspot.com/
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