CLINTON KILLS AGAIN
mark chan
>
> Peter McWilliams; Backed Medical Use of Marijuana
>
> By DAVID ROSENZWEIG, Times Staff Writer
>
>
> Peter McWilliams, a best-selling author who
>advocated the medicinal use of marijuana, died
> Wednesday at his Laurel Canyon home after a long
>battle with AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
> At his death, the 50-year-old McWilliams was
>awaiting sentencing in federal court on a charge of
> conspiring to possess, manufacture and sell marijuana.
>
> McWilliams and co-defendant Todd McCormick were
>arrested in 1997 after law enforcement
> officers raided a Bel-Air estate where the two men
>were allegedly growing more than 4,000 marijuana
> plants.
> They pleaded guilty to the charge last year after
>U.S. District Judge George H. King ruled that they
> could not rely on California's medical marijuana
>initiative as a defense.
> Federal courts have refused to recognize the
>initiative, which was approved by California's voters
> in 1996.
["What -- let the people meddle in their own affairs? Not
under our Tsarist Occupation Government!"--
Damned Old Crank]
> Accused of bankrolling the operation, McWilliams
>contended that he was growing the marijuana
> for cooperatives that supply the drug to medical
>patients in California. Government prosecutors argued
> that he wanted to make money.
> "They're making me out to be some kind of drug
>kingpin and I'm not," he once told a reporter.
> McWilliams, who was scheduled to be sentenced in
>August, remained free on $250,000 bail on
> condition that he refrain from using marijuana.
> He said that being denied marijuana left him
>nauseated most of the time and sapped his strength. At
> his last court appearance, he sat slumped in his
>wheelchair.
[Peter died of choking on his own vomit. Marijuana
prevented all nausea, but when they took that away
he spent most of his days upchucking.
--Damned Old Crank]
> He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in
>1996. He said that he hadn't smoked
> marijuana for years but that he found it eased the
>side effects of chemotherapy.
> McWilliams was the author of several popular
>books, including "Ain't Nobody's Business if You
> Do," a wry treatise on the absurdity of consensual
>crimes. He also wrote "How to Survive the Loss of
> a Love" and "The Personal Computer Book."
> His death was reported Friday by Mark Hinkle,
>state chairman of the California Libertarian Party.
> McWilliams was a party member.
> Assistant U.S. Attys. Jackie Chooljian and Mary
>Fulginiti, who prosecuted McWilliams, said in a
> statement: "We are very saddened by Mr. McWilliams'
>death."
[Yeah, sure. Like Clinton, they "feel" our pain. They just
want to cage us in the gulag, if we find a medicine
that relieves the pain but isn't monopolized by
Pharm-Chem. Have we ever had an administration
more stuffed to the roof with BULLSHIT than this one????
--Damned Old Crank]
> McWilliams is survived by his mother, Mary, and a
>brother, Michael. Funeral arrangements were
> pending.
> Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
>
hooresi®
"mark chan" <ma...@cruzio.com> schreef in bericht
news:394C1EDF...@cruzio.com...
> Saturday, June 17, 2000
> >
> > Peter McWilliams; Backed Medical Use of Marijuana
> >
> > By DAVID ROSENZWEIG, Times Staff Writer
> >
> >
> > Peter McWilliams, a best-selling author who
> >advocated the medicinal use of marijuana, died
> > Wednesday at his Laurel Canyon home after a long
> >battle with AIDS and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
> > At his death, the 50-year-old McWilliams was
> >awaiting sentencing in federal court on a charge of
> > conspiring to possess, manufacture and sell marijuana.
Yeah, and look what the pharmaceutical industry is giving to people.
look at the possible side effects.
I`m glad that I live in holland, where may blaze up, without getting
paranoid, because the police may come knocking on my door.
The real question is, why is this substance illegal?
I think it`s more about a prestige question, and people like
to get down on certain people.
> > McWilliams and co-defendant Todd McCormick were
> >arrested in 1997 after law enforcement
> > officers raided a Bel-Air estate where the two men
> >were allegedly growing more than 4,000 marijuana
> > plants.
> > They pleaded guilty to the charge last year after
> >U.S. District Judge George H. King ruled that they
> > could not rely on California's medical marijuana
> >initiative as a defense.
> > Federal courts have refused to recognize the
> >initiative, which was approved by California's voters
> > in 1996.
plants that are illegal to grow.They are out on a genocide of a plant. :o)
> ["What -- let the people meddle in their own affairs? Not
> under our Tsarist Occupation Government!"--
> Damned Old Crank]
>
> > Accused of bankrolling the operation, McWilliams
> >contended that he was growing the marijuana
> > for cooperatives that supply the drug to medical
> >patients in California. Government prosecutors argued
> > that he wanted to make money.
well, the darn capitalist.
well, and that for a sixties guy.
I mean, the hippies have come a long way.From freedom loving
people, to money grabbers.I piss on them.
The sixties was such a good time to live in, self endulged assholes,
thats all they were.And now they turned in mom and dad , themselves.
mark chan
> NEWS FROM THE LIBERTARIAN PARTY
> 2600 Virginia Avenue, NW, Suite 100
> Washington DC 20037
> World Wide Web: http://www.LP.org
> ===============================
> For release: June 17, 2000
> ===============================
> For additional information:
> George Getz, Press Secretary
> Phone: (202) 333-0008 Ext. 222
> E-Mail: 76214...@Compuserve.com
> ===============================
>
>
> Bestselling author Peter McWilliams
> is "murdered by the War on Drugs"
>
> WASHINGTON, DC -- Peter McWilliams, the #1 bestselling author
> and medical marijuana activist who was found dead in California on June
> 14, was murdered by the War on Drugs, the Libertarian Party charged
> today.
>
> "Peter McWilliams would not be dead today if not for the
> heartless, lethal War on Drugs," said Steve Dasbach, the party's
> national director. "The federal government killed Peter McWilliams by
> denying him the medical marijuana he needed to stay alive as surely as
> if its drug warriors had put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
>
> "Peter McWilliams may be dead, but the causes he so bravely
> fought for -- access to life-saving medicine, an end to the War on
> Drugs, and greater freedom for all Americans -- will live on."
>
> On Wednesday, McWilliams was found dead in the bathroom of his
> Los Angeles home. According to sources, he had choked on his vomit.
>
> McWilliams, 50, had suffered from AIDS and non-Hodgkin's
> lymphoma since 1996, and had used medical marijuana to suppress the
> nausea that was a common side-effect to the potent medications needed
> to keep him alive.
>
> The marijuana was completely legal, thanks to California's
> Proposition 215, which passed in 1996 and legalized the use of
> marijuana for treatment of illness. However, in late 1997, McWilliams
> was arrested by federal drug agents and charged with conspiracy to sell
> marijuana.
>
> After a federal judge ruled that McWilliams could not mention
> his illnesses at his trial -- or introduce as evidence any of the
> documented benefits of medical marijuana -- he pled guilty to avoid a
> 10-year mandatory-minimum prison sentence.
>
> While out on bail awaiting sentencing, McWilliams was
> prohibited from using medical marijuana -- and being denied access to
> the drug's anti-nausea properties almost certainly caused his death,
> said Dasbach.
>
> "First, the federal government arrested McWilliams for doing
> something that is 100% legal in California," he said. "Then, they put
> him on trial and wouldn't allow him to introduce the one piece of
> evidence that could have explained his actions. Finally, they let him
> out of jail on the condition that he couldn't use the one medicine that
> kept him alive.
>
> "What the federal government did to Peter McWilliams is nothing
> less that cold-blooded, premeditated murder. A good, decent, talented
> man is dead because of the bipartisan public policy disaster known as
> the War on Drugs."
>
> Ironically, on June 9, McWilliams appeared on the "Give Me A
> Break!" segment of ABC Television's 20/20, where host John Stossel
> noted, "[McWilliams] is out of prison on the condition that he not
> smoke marijuana, but it was the marijuana that kept him from vomiting
> up his medication. I can understand that the federal drug police don't
> agree with what some states have decided to do about medical marijuana,
> but does that give them the right to just end run those laws and lock
> people up?
>
> "Give me a break! [It] seems this War on Drugs often does more
> harm than the drugs themselves."
>
> Five days later, McWilliams was dead.
>
> McWilliams, the owner of Prelude Press, was a multi-million-
> copy-selling author of How to Survive the Loss of a Love, The
> Personal Computer Book, and DO IT! Let's Get Off Our Buts (with co-
> author John-Roger), a #1 New York Times bestseller. He also wrote what
> is widely considered to be the definitive book against "consensual"
> crimes, Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do.
>
> He joined the Libertarian Party in 1998 following a nationally
> televised speech at the Libertarian National Convention in Washington,
> DC.
>
> In that speech, McWilliams said, "Marijuana is the finest anti-
> nausea medication known to science, and our leaders have lied about
> this consistently. [Arresting people for] medical marijuana is the most
> hideous example of government interference in the private lives of
> individuals. It's an outrage within an outrage within an outrage."
>
> McWilliams' death was also noted by Libertarians in his home
> state.
>
> "Peter McWilliams was a true hero who fought and ultimately
> gave his life for what he believed in: The right to heal oneself
> without government interference," said Mark Hinkle, state chair of the
> California Libertarian Party.
>
> "His loss opens a gaping hole in the fabric of liberty, but his
> memory will live on not only in the hearts of grateful Libertarians but
> also in the lives of the countless patients who will take up the
> crusade for health freedom."
Mark S. Bilk
Doug Berry <grid...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com>, in a burst of mad inspiration, sat
>down on Sat, 17 Jun 2000 16:59:11 -0800 to write:
>
>>> Peter McWilliams; Backed Medical Use of Marijuana
>
>blame the death of a cancer victim on Clinton. NHLs are
>extremely nasty, and do tend to kill you. I'm "lucky" enough to
>have HL, and even that has drastically shortened my lifespan.
>
>Blame Clinton for the laws? Sorry, but he wasn't even born when
>the ban on marijuana came down, and it was Reagan and Bush who
>raised even casual use to the level of life-sentence felonies.
>Until the courts rule, or Congress changes the laws, the Justice
>Department has to enforce the laws.
Sorry to have to disagree with you on this one, Doug, but
Clinton must bear at least the same amount of blame as all
the others who have made marijuana illegal. Under him,
the DOJ has been prosecuting people who use it for medical
reasons even in states that passed laws allowing such use.
While Clinton is certainly better than any Republican about
almost anything, his worst shortcoming is his unwillingness
to take a principled stand on unpopular issues; he almost
always makes decisions in the direction that he thinks will
get him and his party the most approval. While that does
constitute a simple form of democracy, the fact is that most
people don't have the time to investigate issues carefully
and make an informed decision, which is why they elect
people they trust into the government to do it for them,
under their ultimate supervision.
In many areas, although Clinton surely knows that the public
has been propagandized into believing something that is not
the best policy, he is unwilling to get out there and *educate*
the public about better policies -- in other words to *lead* --
for fear of losing votes.
His signing of the "Defense of Marriage Act", and his firing
of Joycelyn Elders, are additional examples of his actually
selling out the people in order to get their votes on issues
they're deluded about, instead of telling them the truth and
fighting the propaganda they've been fed.
The end result is that the public's beliefs are slowly drift-
ing toward Right-wing (anti-human) policies, because the Right
*does* spend huge amounts of effort and money "educating"
people in *their* self-serving lies.
Voting Democratic is still almost always the best choice, but
we have to pressure the Democrats to get up on their hind legs
and fight for what's good for people, instead of just blindly
seeking popularity and votes.
As to the cause of McWilliams death, it was due to nausea,
which caused vomiting, which caused suffocation. The nausea
had been controlled by marijuana, until he was forbidden its
use by the court. The direct cause of death was the appli-
cation of the laws against marijuana, not his non-Hodgkins
lymphoma.
Nixon was the one most responsible for passing laws against
marijuana, and I believe he did it because he knew that its
use had helped people to see past the propaganda and realize
that the Vietnam war was evil (this was widely talked about
in the "underground" -- but widely circulated -- publications
of the time). He and the wealthy parasites that the Repub-
licans serve were shocked that the anti-war protests had
actually been able to affect U.S. military policy, and their
military-industrial profits. He took steps to make sure that
this consciousness-raising plant would not be available to
most people anymore.
Keep up the good work, Doug, and best of luck in staying
healthy!
Hail Eris!
>If you want to blame someone for the insanity surrounding
>marijuana/hemp in the United States, blame William Randolph
>Hearst. In the late twenties, a new method was developed to make
>paper quickly and efficiently from hemp plants. This new method
>would have saved a ton of money, not to mention allow logging for
>pulp wood to cease (hemp is a weed, you can get three harvests a
>year with almost no effort.)
>
>Since Hearst owned vast tracts of logging woods, and several
>paper mills, he went to war against the hemp plant. There are
>several interesting books on the subject, the best being "The
>Emperor Wears No Clothes", by Jack Herer.
>
>Hearst, by the way, was a life-long Republican.
>
>I find it amusing that people are now complaining that the
>Clinton administration is enforcing the laws. Isn't it usually
>that he isn't doing his job?
>
>Unless, of course, this is all hypocritical whinging from people
>who either are blinded by their hatred of the man, or only want
>the laws *they* like enforced.
>--
>
>Rev. Douglas Berry grid...@mindspring.com
>http://gridlore.home.mindspring.com/
>
>First Church of DB Cooper, Descended
>All Hail Eris )+( All Hail Discordia
Gordon Fisher
Anti-Proliferation Act (H.R. 2987). According to the Asheville Tribune,
"In effect, what the provision does is empower the Federal Government,
State Government and local law enforcement agencies, to enter private
property homes, businesses, automobiles, etc. - for any "criminal
searches" without a warrant and without any legal obligation to inform
the private property owner that a search and seizure was conducted until
months later, if at all. "
This has passed the Senate and is up in the House soon.
Read more about it at
http://www.ashevilletribune.com/nowarrants.htm
http://thomas.loc.gov/ search on H.R. 2987 or
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.2987:
In addition to its broadside of the 4th amendment, it also has two
darling provisos designed to squealch 1st amendment rights. A note like
this could get you up to 10 years in prison.
So, please talk or write to your Congressperson and urge them to vote NO
on the Methamphetamine Anti-Proliferation Act of 1999 (H.R. 2987). The
companion Senate bill (S. 486) has already passed. This is the most
frightening legislation I've heard about in America since the Alien and
Sedition Acts.
Then write your Representative. It's fast and easy at
http://www.house.gov/writerep/.
According to Chris McKay, legislative director, "Anything we can do to
win the war on drugs is worth doing." Do the ends ALWAYS justify the
means? Just say NO!
mark chan
vomit. He had no vomit/nausea problems when allowed
to use marijuana. When California voted to legalize
marijuana and Clinton cancelled the election and
announced that the voters had
no right to meddle in their own affairs, the Constitution
died and Peter was sentenced to death. They even
tested Peter's urine once a week to ensure that he
wd/ get no relief from the vomiting.
If you wanna believe Billl is really a nice guy who
only bombs places and kills people when he really really
has to, well, go ahead; most people need to believe
in something. I'd sooner believe in the tooth fairy.
BTW, more people have been sent to the gulag for pot
in Clinton''s 7 years so far than in all 12 years
of Reagan/Bush. And the "law" forces him to be
more cruel than those vicious bastards? Well, why didn't
he ever notice that the law [Constitution] does not
empower him to negate the will of the voters?
Trotsky describes Tsarism as "midway between
European monarchism and Oriental despotism."
Can you think of a better description of the
system Bill and his Tsar have created to replace
the Constitution?
Doug Berry wrote:
> mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com>, in a burst of mad inspiration, sat
> down on Sat, 17 Jun 2000 16:59:11 -0800 to write:
>
> >> Peter McWilliams; Backed Medical Use of Marijuana
>
> OK, explain to me, a cancer patient myself, how you can possibly
> blame the death of a cancer victim on Clinton. NHLs are
> extremely nasty, and do tend to kill you. I'm "lucky" enough to
> have HL, and even that has drastically shortened my lifespan.
>
> Blame Clinton for the laws? Sorry, but he wasn't even born when
> the ban on marijuana came down, and it was Reagan and Bush who
> raised even casual use to the level of life-sentence felonies.
> Until the courts rule, or Congress changes the laws, the Justice
> Department has to enforce the laws.
>
Rhonda
"Doug Berry" <grid...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> I find it amusing that people are now complaining that the
> Clinton administration is enforcing the laws. Isn't it usually
> that he isn't doing his job?
>
> Unless, of course, this is all hypocritical whinging from people
> who either are blinded by their hatred of the man, or only want
> the laws *they* like enforced.
> --
Party's web sight. They have consistantly called for an end to the insane
war on drugs.
Why is it that if you criticize Bill Clinton, people assume that you are a
Republicrat?
mark chan
Doug Berry wrote:
> mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com>, in a burst of mad inspiration, sat
> down on Sun, 18 Jun 2000 21:15:00 -0800 to write:
Not in a burst of inspiration, mad or otherwise, but in a burst
of grief for a beloved friend Clinton murdered.
>
>
> >I blame Clinton because Peter choked to death on his own
> >vomit. He had no vomit/nausea problems when allowed
> >to use marijuana. When California voted to legalize
> >marijuana and Clinton cancelled the election and
> >announced that the voters had
> >no right to meddle in their own affairs, the Constitution
> >died and Peter was sentenced to death.
>
> Sorry, but are you seriously expecting me to believe that you now
> *want* Clinton to pick and choose which laws he enforces?
No, I just want him to accept the votes of the majority in 8
states now. That's what the Constitution wants, too.
>
>
> > They even
> >tested Peter's urine once a week to ensure that he
> >wd/ get no relief from the vomiting.
>
> And where did this happen? I'm a cancer patient in California,
> and used pot during my chemotherapy. I've never heard of this
> case. In fact, I've never heard of anything like it at all.
It happened in Los Angeles. For all the hideous details,
see http://www....@mcwilliams.com
>
>
> >BTW, more people have been sent to the gulag for pot
> >in Clinton''s 7 years so far than in all 12 years
> >of Reagan/Bush. And the "law" forces him to be
> >more cruel than those vicious bastards?
>
> *sigh* Presidents don't get to pick and choose which laws they
> enforce. The laws in question were in place before Clinton ever
> took office.
And he just decided to enforce them more viciously than
any previous administration. BTW, look up the Todd
McCormack case. He's another cancer patient dying in
prison because of the Clinton/Reno machine,
>
>
> > Well, why didn't
> >he ever notice that the law [Constitution] does not
> >empower him to negate the will of the voters?
>
> What the hell do you think the courts are for? Alabama could
> vote to reinstate slavery, but it won't survive a court
> challenge.
I think the courts are for deciding such issues. What article
of the Constittion gives the president the authority to junk
all laws he disliked WITHOUT a court hearing,
>
>
> >Trotsky describes Tsarism as "midway between
> >European monarchism and Oriental despotism."
> >Can you think of a better description of the
> >system Bill and his Tsar have created to replace
> >the Constitution?
>
> You have no concept of what the Tsarist state was like, do you?
Well, I think I do, It's like America today, since our own TSar
took over and the Constitution was discarded.
>
>
> --
mark chan
people -- not all --- assume you must want to replace him
with a lying bastard from the Republican side. That's
because some people are stuck in the age of medieval
aristotelian logic.
Thus, some people think we must chose between the
lyinng bastard with the coke history [Gush]and the lying bastard
with the pot history [Bore]....
Rhonda wrote:
> "Doug Berry" <grid...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> > I find it amusing that people are now complaining that the
> > Clinton administration is enforcing the laws. Isn't it usually
> > that he isn't doing his job?
> >
> > Unless, of course, this is all hypocritical whinging from people
> > who either are blinded by their hatred of the man, or only want
> > the laws *they* like enforced.
> > --
> In case you did not notice, this article originated from the Libertarian
> Party's web sight. They have consistantly called for an end to the insane
> war on drugs.
> Why is it that if you criticize Bill Clinton, people assume that you are a
> Republicrat?
>
> >
mark chan
of man for the job....
15 May 2000. Thanks to Seymour Hersh and The New Yorker.
>Source: Hardcopy The New Yorker, May 22, 2000, pp. 49-82.
>
>
>
>ANNALS OF WAR
>
>OVERWHELMING FORCE
>
>
>
>What happened in the final days of the Gulf War?
>
>BY SEYMOUR HERSH
>
>
>
>___________________
>
>
>
>
>I -- THE WAR
>
>
>
>ACCOLADES
>
>
>
>Barry McCaffrey has the best resume of any retired combat general in the
United States Army. The son of a distinguished general, he attended Phillips
Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, and West Point, and in 1966 was assigned
to South Vietnam as a platoon leader. He served two combat tours, winning
two Distinguished Service Crosses, two Silver Stars, and three Purple Hearts.
He returned from Vietnam with a shattered left arm, which was saved only
after two years of operations and rehabilitation. McCaffrey's career
continued to be exemplary: he earned a master's degree, taught at West Point,
and, as he moved up through the ranks, became an outspoken leader within the
Army for women's rights and the rights of minorities. He had, as the
journalist Rick Atkinson has noted, "the chiseled good looks of a recruiting
poster warrior: hooded eyes; dark, dense brows; a clean, strong jawline; hair
thick and gun-metal gray." He radiated command presence.
>
>In June of 1990, as a two-star major general, McCaffrey was put in charge of
the 24th Infantry Division (Mechanized), at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He was
then forty-seven, and the Army's youngest division commander. Two months
later, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, and McCaffrey took the 24th's tanks,
guns, and more than eighteen thousand soldiers (eventually, there were
twenty-six thousand) from its home base to Saudi Arabia in preparation for
the Persian Gulf War. The 24th's mission was to drive more than two hundred
miles into Iraq -- the famed "left hook" maneuver -- and block the retreat of
Iraqi forces >from the war zone in Kuwait. In an account written after the
war, U.S. News & World Report praised McCaffrey for leading what one officer
called "the greatest cavalry charge in history." More promotions came
McCaffrey's way, and he eventually earned four stars, the Army's highest
peacetime rank.
>
>McCaffrey announced his retirement from the Army in January of 1996, when
President Clinton brought him into the Cabinet as the director of the White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy. In that position, McCaffrey
serves as the architect of and main spokesman for the Clinton
Administration's $1.6-billion plan to provide, among other things, more
training and weapons for the Colombian Army in an effort to cut drug
production and export.
>
>The Iraqis offered only disorganized and ragged opposition to the American
invasion, in February of 1991, and the much feared ground war quickly turned
into a bloody rout, with many of the retreating Iraqi units, including the
elite Republican Guard, being pounded by American aircraft, artillery, and
tanks as they fled north in panic along a six-lane road from Kuwait City to
Basra, the major military stronghold in southern Iraq. The road became
littered with blackened tanks, trucks, and bodies; the news media called it
the "highway of death." The devastation, which was televised around the
world, became a symbol of the extent of the Iraqi defeat -- and of American
military superiority -- and it was publicly cited as a factor in President
George Bush's decision, on February 28th, to declare a cessation of
hostilities, ending the killing, and to call for peace talks. That decision,
which is still controversial today, enabled Saddam's Army to survive the war
with many units intact, and helped keep the regime in power. In "The
Generals' War," by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Bush explained
that he and his advisers were concerned about two aspects of the situation:
"If we continued the fighting another day, until the ring was completely
closed, would we be accused of a slaughter of Iraqis who were simply trying
to escape, not fight? In addition, the coalition was agreed on driving the
Iraqis from Kuwait, not on carrying the conflict into Iraq or on destroying
Iraqi forces."
>
>The ground war had lasted one hundred hours, and there had been a total of
seventy-nine American deaths, eight of them in McCaffrey's 24th Division. On
the morning of March 2nd, a day before the Iraqis and the Allied coalition
were scheduled to begin formal peace talks, McCaffrey reported that, despite
the ceasefire, his division had suddenly come under attack from a retreating
Republican Guard tank division off Highway 8 west of Basra, near the Rumaila
oil field. The Iraqis were driving toward a causeway over Lake Hammar, one of
five exit routes from the Euphrates River Valley to the safety of Baghdad.
Overriding a warning from the division operations officer, McCaffrey ordered
an assault in force -- an all-out attack. His decision stunned some officers
in the Allied command structure in Saudi Arabia, and provoked unease in
Washington. Apache attack helicopters, Bradley fighting vehicles, and
artillery units from the 24th Division pummelled the five-mile-long Iraqi
column for hours, destroying some seven hundred Iraqi tanks, armored cars,
and trucks, and killing not only Iraqi soldiers but civilians and children as
well. Many of the dead were buried soon after the engagement, and no accurate
count of the victims could be made. McCaffrey later described the carnage as
"one of the most astounding scenes of destruction I have ever participated
in." There were no serious American combat casualties.
>
>McCaffrey's assault was one of the biggest and most one-sided-of the Gulf
War, but no journalists appear to have been in the area at the time, and,
unlike the "highway of death," it did not produce pictures and descriptions
that immediately appeared on international television and in the world press.
Under Defense Department rules that had been accepted, under protest, by the
major media, reporters were not permitted on the Gulf War battlefields
without military escorts. The day after the assault, a few journalists were
flown by helicopter to McCaffrey's headquarters. When McCaffrey met with
them, he speculated that the retreating Iraqi units that had mounted the
seemingly suicidal attack were unaware of the ceasefire, then in its second
day. "Some might not even know we are here," McCaffrey told a reporter for
United Press International. "But perhaps there are some out there just
looking for a fight." Most of the journalists shared McCaffrey's enthusiasm.
"Not having been there and seen with my own eyes," Joe Galloway, of U.S. News
& World Report, told me, "I think it was a righteous shoot. The Iraqis
shouldn't have opened fire. They should have walked out."
>
>Two months later, in public testimony before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, which had invited him to discuss the lessons the military had
learned >from the war, McCaffrey gave a graphic account of the battle. It was
a time of national pride in America's performance in the conflict, and
McCaffrey was praised effusively by the senators. He told them that the days
just after the ceasefire were confused, as Iraqi tanks, trucks, and soldiers
abandoned Kuwait and fled toward Baghdad along Highway 8. The area west of
Basra -- a vast tract of wadis and unoccupied desert -- was especially
chaotic in the predawn hours of March 2nd. "There were lots of people moving
in the dark," he said. "They engaged us with R.P.G. rockets" -- antitank
grenades.
>
>McCaffrey did not give the senators any details about the strength of the
initial Iraqi attack, but he depicted the enemy soldiers' performance during
the war as, for the most part, aggressive and eager. "They tried to fight,"
he said. "They fired hundreds of artillery rounds at us. Most of my tracks"
-- armored vehicles -- "were hit by small-arms fire. They fired tanks,
Saggers, et cetera." Saggers are antitank missiles. Referring to the
situation on March 2nd, he told the senators, "I elected to destroy the force
that was in this area.... Then we attacked. And between six-thirty in the
morning and about noon, one brigade, three tank task forces conducted a
classic attack with five artillery battalions in support." Of the Iraqis, he
said,"We destroyed all of them. Most of them, in my judgment, only fought for
fifteen minutes to thirty minutes. Most of them fled." He continued, "Once we
had them bottled up, up here at the causeway, there was no way out." The
senators were deferential and asked McCaffrey no critical questions about any
aspects of the March 2nd engagement, which has come to be known as the Battle
of the Causeway, the Battle of Rumaila, and, because of the number of
destroyed Iraqi vehicles strewn about, the Battle of the Junkyard.
>
>McCaffrey refused to be interviewed for this article, but he did agree,
through his legal counsel, to respond to written questions. Asked about the
battle, he wrote, "I believe that my actions at Rumaila were completely
appropriate and warranted in order to defend my troops against unknown and
largely unknowable enemy forces and intentions. If I had not proceeded as I
did and had American soldiers of the 24th ID [Infantry Division] suffered
substantial casualties, postwar analysts would not be asking if I acted too
aggressively, but would rightly condemn me for sitting still in the face of a
possible major enemy attack."
>
>McCaffrey's insistence that the Iraqis attacked first was disputed in
interviews for this article by some of his subordinates in the wartime
headquarters of the 24th Division, and also by soldiers and officers who were
at the scene on March 2nd. The accounts of these men, taken together, suggest
that McCaffrey's offensive, two days into a ceasefire, was not so much a
counterattack provoked by enemy fire as a systematic destruction of Iraqis
who were generally fulfilling the requirements of the retreat; most of the
Iraqi tanks travelled from the battlefield with their cannons reversed and
secured, in a position known as travel-lock. According to these witnesses,
the 24th faced little determined Iraqi resistance at any point during the war
or its aftermath; they also said that McCaffrey and other senior officers
exaggerated the extent of Iraqi resistance throughout the war.
>
>A few months after the division returned home, an anonymous letter accusing
McCaffrey of a series of war crimes arrived at the Pentagon. It startled the
Army's top leadership and led to an official investigation into McCaffrey's
conduct of the war. The letter directly accused McCaffrey's division of
having launched the March 2nd assault without Iraqi provocation. A 24th
Division combat unit was said to have "slaughtered" Iraqi prisoners of war
after a battle. The letter was filled with information, including portions of
what were said to be recorded communications between McCaffrey and his field
commanders, that could have come only from the inner circle. The anonymous
letter writer alleged that McCaffrey had covered up the extent of "friendly
fire" casualties within his division, and claimed that he had chosen to award
a combat badge to a close aide who had not served in a combat unit.
>
>By midsummer of 1991, the 24th Division's 1st Brigade had quietly
investigated two earlier complaints at Fort Stewart about alleged atrocities,
and determined that neither complaint had merit. The most serious allegation
involved the shooting of prisoners by soldiers in the 1st Brigade. In one
case, a soldier attached to a Scout platoon reported that more than three
hundred and fifty captured and disarmed Iraqi soldiers, including Iraqi
wounded who had been evacuated from a clearly marked hospital bus, were fired
upon by a platoon of Bradley fighting vehicles. It was not known how many of
the Iraqis survived, if any. The second accusation came from a group of
soldiers assigned to the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion, whose senior
sergeant claimed that on March 1st, the day after the ceasefire, he saw an
American combat team open fire with machine guns upon a group of Iraqis in
civilian clothes who were waving a white sheet of surrender. The precise
number killed was not known, but eyewitnesses estimated that there were at
least fifteen or twenty in the group, perhaps more. Neither alleged incident
was reported by the 24th Division to the appropriate higher authorities, as
was mandated by the Army's operations order for the Gulf War.
>
>The allegations couldn't have come at a more inopportune time. General H.
Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the Allied forces, and General Colin L.
Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were national heroes. And
their success in Kuwait was seen as validation for the "Powell doctrine" --
the use of overwhelming force at the outset of a war in order to minimize
casualties and avoid the incremental buildup that had cost so dearly in
Vietnam.
>
>McCaffrey's harshest critics are fellow Army generals who served as division
commanders in the Gulf War. McCaffrey was widely believed to be Schwarzkopf's
favorite general (Schwarzkopf had previously served as commander of the 24th)
and was viewed as being indifferent to the wishes of Lieutenant General Gary
Luck, the commander of XVIII Airborne Corps. (XVIII Corps included three
divisions: the 24th, the 82nd Airborne, and the 101st Airborne.) Other
commanders in the Corps were occasionally involved in bitter disputes with
McCaffrey over what they perceived as the 24th's hoarding of precious tank
and truck fuel. These officers, with some exceptions, castigated the March
2nd assault and expressed dismay over McCaffrey's subsequent promotion to
full general. "There was no need to be shooting at anybody," Lieutenant
General James H. Johnson, Jr. (Ret.), of Sarasota, Florida, said. "They
couldn't surrender fast enough. The war was over." Johnson commanded the 82nd
Airborne, and his initial assignment was essentially the same as McCaffrey's
-- to protect the western flank of the war zone. "I saw no need to continue
any further attacks," Johnson told me, adding that his troops processed
hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and displaced persons on March 2nd, with no
incidents or casualties on either side. McCaffrey, he said, "does what he
wants to do."
>
>The officer in charge of enforcing the ceasefire was Lieutenant General John
J. Yeosock (Ret.), who recalled that General Schwarzkopf "was explicit about
the cessation of offensive operations" after President Bush's declaration of
a unilateral ceasefire, on February 28th. A day or two later, Yeosock flew
>from the main Allied command post, in Saudi Arabia, to Kuwait City and then
took a helicopter tour of the war zone, south of Basra, where he saw
abandoned equipment and Iraqi prisoners being evacuated on the roads to
Baghdad but no organized Iraqi units. "What Barry ended up doing was fighting
sand dunes and moving rapidly," Yeosock said. He was "looking for a battle."
>
>Lieutenant General Ronald Griffith, who commanded the 1st Armored Division
of VII Corps, told me it was well known that many of the Iraqi tanks
destroyed by the 24th Division on March 2nd were being transported by trailer
truck to Baghdad, with their cannons facing backward. "It was just a bunch of
tanks in a train, and he made it a battle," Griffith said of McCaffrey. "He
made it a battle when it was never one. That's the thing that bothered me the
most."
>
>Many of the generals interviewed for this account believe that McCaffrey's
attack went too far, and violated one of the most fundamental military
doctrines: that a commander must respond in proportion to the threat. "That's
the way we're trained," one major general said. "A single shot does not signal
a battle to the death. Commanders just don't willy-nilly launch on something
like that. A disciplined commander is going to figure out who fired it, and
where it came from. Especially if your mission is to enforce a ceasefire. Who
should have been better able to instill fire discipline than McCaffrey?"
>
>Although McCaffrey refused repeated requests for an interview to discuss
these accusations, more than three hundred interviews in the past six months
with Gulf War veterans and Army investigators have produced evidence that the
Army's inquiries into the 24th Division failed to uncover many important
elements of the story.
>
>
>MORE THAN A COMMANDER
>
>
>
>By all accounts, McCaffrey was one of the Army's most knowledgeable
commanders, a confident and savvy leader who understood in detail the
workings of every phase of a combat infantry division. Like most generals, he
wanted things done his way, and, as the colonels and lieutenant colonels in
his command quickly learned, he gave no middle ground. Lieutenant Colonel
Edward J. (Butch) Brennan (Ret.) was a staff officer in the
tactical-operations center, traditionally a division's most important
administrative unit. "A guy like McCaffrey can be intimidating," Brennan told
me. "He believes that what's good for him is good for the country." Brennan
went on, "The No. 1 thing to McCaffrey is loyalty. If you don't have
three-hundred-percent loyalty, you're not part of the game."
>
>One of McCaffrey's favorites was John Le Moyne, a colonel who shortly before
the Gulf War was promoted from a division staff job to be commander of the
1st Brigade, one of three front-line fighting brigades in the division. There
was an immediate affinity between the General and the Colonel. "I like John,"
one senior division officer recalled McCaffrey saying before the war. "I'm
going to make this guy a general." Le Moyne and other officers who prospered
under McCaffrey depict him in glowing terms. Le Moyne told me during a
telephone interview that McCaffrey was, "without doubt, the most dramatic and
charismatic leader I've served." Le Moyne, now a major general and the
commander of the Army's Infantry Training Center, at Fort Benning, Georgia,
said that McCaffrey scorned the easy way and always did things "for the right
reason. He's earned our undying love and respect."
>
>Another admirer is Lieutenant General James Terry Scott (Ret.), who is now
the director of the national-security program at Harvard University's John F.
Kennedy School of Government; he served in the war as a one-star assistant
division commander. "He's a guy of high character and high standards, who
doesn't make things up and doesn't cover up," Scott said. "Anyone who stands
out in the Army draws fire. A lot of generals were jealous and feared him.
They saw him as a guy who would break rice bowls and change things." During
the war, Scott said, McCaffrey was "the best division-level tactician I've
ever seen. He was very bold -- and he never ran out of gas."
>
>With the Gulf War unfolding, the 24th Division headquarters became
increasingly tense, as some of McCaffrey's subordinates felt that they were
forced to choose between doing the right thing, as they saw it, or doing what
their commanding officer ordered. Four senior officers -- three colonels and
a lieutenant colonel, all of whom had expectations of becoming generals --
found it impossible to go along with McCaffrey's directives, his management
style, and his battlefield decisions, and openly questioned him. They did so
knowing that they were jeopardizing their careers.
>
>In December of 1990, McCaffrey chose Colonel Ronald E.Townsend to be
artillery commander of the 24th Division, a job that put Townsend in charge
of six field groups of long-range cannons. Townsend recalled that when he
arrived McCaffrey told him, "My job is to make you a brigadier general."
Sometimes such enticements were communicated indirectly The wife of Colonel
Theodore Reid, the commander of the division's 197th Brigade, recalled that,
at a social gathering at Fort Stewart, McCaffrey whispered to her, "I have
great plans for Ted." But Townsend and Reid found themselves in chronic
dispute with McCaffrey, mainly because, in their view, he didn't delegate,
interfering in the jobs of his commanders and making all the key military
decisions himself. "McCaffrey and I had our differences," Reid told me. "Do I
respect him? Hell, no." By the war's end, Townsend had defied a direct order
from McCaffrey concerning the reassignment of a valued senior officer; Reid,
during a meeting with the General, had ordered his staff to clear the room
and "had it out" with him for twenty minutes. "I blew off my career, and I
knew it," Reid told me.
>
>The commander of the division's aviation brigade, Colonel Burt Tackaberry,
said to me, "You couldn't tell McCaffrey anything, or disagree with him."
Tackaberry had been around generals all his life -- his father was a
lieutenant general -- and he felt that McCaffrey wasn't letting him do his
job. His interactions with the division commander were professional, he
added. McCaffrey always maintained his poise -- unlike Schwarzkopf, who was
known throughout the Gulf as "the Screamer" -- and yet, Tackaberry said, he
"knew how to hurt you without raising his voice." After the war, Tackaberry
said, he told McCaffrey, "If you don't have trust in me, you ought to find
another commander."
>
>Two months before the ground war, McCaffrey abruptly relieved Lieutenant
Colonel Arnold J. Canada as commander of the 2-7 Battalion in Le Moyne's 1st
Brigade, and replaced him with Lieutenant Colonel Charles C. Ware, who had
been serving as the division's Inspector General -- a headquarters job.
Canada was stunned; he had commanded the battalion for two years, he told me,
and was fully prepared to lead it into war -- a view echoed by many of his
soldiers in interviews with me. "It would be like taking a conductor out of
an orchestra just before a big concert," one battalion soldier said. "Yes,
the orchestra can still play the music, but there's less understanding of the
skills and abilities of the people in the orchestra-less perfect music."
Changing the command, many soldiers feared, would inevitably diminish the
battalion's ability to function in combat; Ware had little time to gain its
confidence.
>
>The 24th's lieutenants knew nothing of the tensions at the top. They were
far too involved in the day-to-day operations of their platoons. It's always
difficult for outsiders to get an accurate picture of life at the platoon
level of an Army combat unit; in the case of the Gulf War, where journalists
were effectively prohibited from the front lines, it is almost impossibly
difficult, but two compelling accounts have been published. "Tuskers"
(Darlington; 1997) was written by Major David S. Pierson, who served as a
task-force intelligence captain in the 24th's 1st Brigade. (The title refers
to the battalion's nickname.) "The Eyes of Orion" (Kent State; 1999) is a
collection of remembrances by five 2nd Brigade platoon leaders, with an
eloquent introduction by McCaffrey. ("This is a story of courage, dedication,
and agonizing self-doubts as these young officers faced the gut-wrenching
responsibility of leading platoons through the enormous confusion, fear, and
physical fatigue of high-intensity combat operations.") The books revolve
around the life of the combat soldier-the rigors of training, the harsh
conditions of the desert, and the constant fear of death.
>
>As portrayed in these books, McCaffrey is an autocratic father figure who
exhorts his young officers, "You are going to kick their ass and be home in
time for supper!" Before the war began, McCaffrey made a series of
morale-boosting visits to his combat battalions, introducing a
kill-or-be-killed theme. Pierson reproduces one of these talks in "Tuskers":
"This won't be a walk in the woods," McCaffrey says. "These boys have the
fourth largest army in the world. They're not going to just roll over. I
fully expect we will have ten percent casualties in the first week.... You're
going to have to prepare yourself for that."
>
>As McCaffrey spoke, Pierson writes, he found himself looking at the
General's wounded arm. McCaffrey "became larger than life and his persona
took on mythical proportions. He was more than a commander, he was a legend."
McCaffrey concluded the pep talk by urging the young officers "to protect
yourselves out there," and issued what amounted to a standing order -- a sort
of foxhole version of the Powell doctrine. "If you're driving through a
village and someone throws a rock at you, shoot them! If they shoot at you,
turn the tank main gun on them. If they use anything larger than small arms,
call for artillery. It's as simple as that. Obey the rules of war but protect
yourself." Pierson and his fellow-soldiers were inspired: "He had fanned the
embers of the warrior spirit into a flame."
>
>
>THE ENEMY
>
>
>
>The ground war began for the 24th Division on the afternoon of February
24th. >From that moment, McCaffrey was always on the move, driving in a
specially equipped assault vehicle or flying in a helicopter to stay near the
action. His headquarters was situated in the division's tactical command
post, a collection of perhaps fifty tanks and armored carriers that moved
forward with the troops. These troops were superbly trained and highly
motivated. Tanks, armored cars, and trucks, including more than four hundred
huge fuel tankers, drove relentlessly, day and night, covering nearly two
hundred miles in two days and reaching their objective, the Euphrates River
Valley, more than a full day ahead of schedule.
>
>After the war, according to "Tuskers," McCaffrey told Pierson's battalion
that the 24th Division had accomplished "absolutely one of the most
astounding goddamned operations ever seen in the history of military
science.... We were not fighting the Danish Armed Forces up here. There were
a half million of these assholes that were extremely well armed and
equipped." At an Army infantry conference at Fort Benning, in April,
McCaffrey went further. According to the official talking points of the
conference, he said that there was "heavy resistance" for parts of two days,
as the 24th was confronted by three Iraqi infantry divisions and a commando
brigade.
>
>There were American casualties, of course, but there seems to have been
little or no organized resistance in the 24th's area of operations -- only
the remnants of a military force that was in retreat. It may be the case that
no soldier from the 24th Division died at the hands of the Iraqis. Scrutiny
of the available records reveals that at least four of the division's eight
officially reported deaths were the result of friendly fire, and, on March
3rd, the day McCaffrey briefed the American press corps on his victory at
Rumaila, a U.P.I. dispatch reported that the division said that there had
been no combat deaths in the ground war. By the war's end, many soldiers told
me, fear of being shot by friendly fire far outweighed fear of the Iraqis.
>
>"We met the enemy," 1st Lieutenant Greg Downey, one of the 2nd Brigade's
"Eyes of Orion" diarists, recalled on the second day of the ground war. "My
gunner reported targets. We moved closer, discovering the Iraqi soldiers to
be young boys and old men. They were a sad sight, with absolutely no fight
left in them. Their leaders had cut their Achilles' tendons so they couldn't
run away and then left them. What weapons they had were in bad repair and
little ammunition was on hand. They were hungry, cold, and scared. The hate I
had for any Iraqi dissipated. These people had no business being on a
battlefield."
>
>One of his fellow platoon leaders and diarists, 2nd Lieutenant Rob Holmes, a
1989 West Point graduate, spotted a small building and a water trailer in the
distance, and his superior officer ordered him to open fire with a machine
gun. "I figured why not -- this is combat," he wrote in "Orion." He missed
but then fired an antitank rocket into the building, caving in a wall.
"Immediately dozens of Iraqi infantry appeared and scattered.... We cut loose
with machine guns from all of our tanks at the Iraqi infantry in front of
us." Holmes ordered a second volley of fire into the building. It burst into
flames. "A few Iraqis ran out a door," and one of Holmes's gunners "cut them
down, riddling them with machine gun bullets." The America soldiers stopped
firing when the Iraqis threw up their hands, and the survivors were rounded
up. Now Holmes, too, was appalled at the condition of his enemy. "Our new
prisoners barely qualified as soldiers. They were poorly clothed and hardly
equipped. They looked gaunt and undisciplined. They were very old and very
young. They looked pathetic. Quite a contrast with us."
>
>The 24th Division veterans interviewed for this article consistently
described the Iraqi opposition as far less daunting than expected. A few
Iraqi stragglers brandished weapons, after being fired upon by machine guns
>from the fast-moving American tanks, but they quickly surrendered or were
cut down. Most veterans saw no firefights, and no attempts to attack directly
any of the American tanks as they rolled over the sand dunes. The 2nd
Brigade's most dramatic moment came early on the morning of February 27th,
when a large tank group from the brigade, after firing an intensive artillery
barrage, crashed through the chain-link fences surrounding Jalibah Airfield,
near Highway 8, and stormed down the runway, destroying Iraqi tanks and
aircraft. Iraqi soldiers guarding the base were overrun and isolated. Some
fought bravely, if foolishly, firing rifles and automatic weapons at the
tanks. One American soldier was wounded in the arm. The Iraqi soldiers"tried
to hide in shallow bunkers and some tried to surrender," according to another
"Orion" diarist, 2nd Lieutenant Neal Creighton, also a 1989 graduate of West
Point. "Most that moved were quickly cut down under a swath of machine gun
fire. The burning helicopters, jets and dead soldiers seemed almost
unreal.... My soldiers were alive. It was the happiest moment of my life."
>
>But suddenly, after the airport was secured, three American Bradleys were
hit by a barrage of rockets. According to Rob Holmes in "Orion," the rockets
had been fired not by Iraqis but by "another unit of American tanks, nearly
two miles away."Two men were killed -- victims of friendly fire -- and eight
or nine more were injured. "Americans had been killed by Americans," Holmes
wrote. "I saw the horrible sight of full body bags for the first time.... I
just wanted to finish this job and get back to Georgia."
>
>In the official Desert Storm chronology for XVIII Corps, as posted on the
Internet by the Army, the 24th Division reports only that it overcame light
resistance in seizing the airfield and that ten soldiers were wounded in
action when an armored vehicle was "struck by an artillery round." The
division's authorized history, published after its return to Fort Stewart,
describes the Jalibah Airfield attack as "brilliantly executed," and notes
that McCaffrey flew to the area to congratulate the brigade commander of the
mission on his "superb victory." There is no mention of friendly-fire
casualties.
>
>Like the soldiers in the 2nd Brigade, those in the 1st Brigade were
astonished by the enemy's reluctance to fight. Pierson eventually began to
feel guilty: "guilty that we had slaughtered them so; guilty that we had
performed so well and they so poorly; guilty that we were running up the
score.... They were like children fleeing before us, unorganized, scared,
wishing it all would end. We continued to pour it on."
>
>Private First Class Charles Sheehan-Miles, a tanker in the 1st Brigade who
served as a gun loader, was, by all accounts, a competent soldier, a "squared
away" type. A native of Georgia, he enjoyed his work and was eager for an
Army career. That changed on the third day of the war. "I'd been up for two
days and was totally exhausted," Sheehan-Miles told me. There was a radio
report >from the company commander about Iraqi trucks ahead. As Sheehan-Miles
watched, one of the vehicles, carrying fuel, was struck by an American shell
and burst into flames. Gasoline splashed into a nearby truck crammed with
Iraqis. "Twenty or thirty people came out of the truck," Sheehan-Miles
recalled. "They were in flames. We opened fire."
>
>When I asked Sheehan-Miles why he fired, he replied, "At that point, we were
shooting everything. Guys in the company told me later that some were
civilians. It wasn't like they came at us m with a gun. It was that they were
there -- "in the wrong place at the wrong time."
>
>Although Sheehan-Miles is unsure whether he and his fellow-tankers were ever
actually fired upon during the war, he is sure that there was no significant
enemy fire. "We took some incoming once, but it was friendly fire," he said.
"The folks we fought never had a chance." He came away from Iraq convinced
that he and his fellow-soldiers were, as another tanker put it, part of "the
biggest firing squad in history."
>
>[Full-page organization table omitted showing "XVIII Airborne Corps
Organization and Ranks During the Ground War, 1991]
>
>
>THE HOSPITAL BUS
>
>
>
>Scouts had the war's most dangerous duty, and the job enthralled
twenty-one-year-old Specialist 4 James Manchester, who was the son, grandson,
and great-grandson of U.S. Army officers. Manchester was assigned to the
Scout platoon in the 2-7 Battalion of the 1st Brigade -- the battalion
commanded by the newly assigned Charles Ware. The platoon had six Humvees and
two Bradley fighting vehicles, which operated as many as ten kilometres in
advance of the main force, seeking out the enemy and serving as a screen in
case of attack. It was a glamorous, high-risk assignment. In a major attack,
the Scouts understood that they were to fight to the last man, if necessary,
to buy time for the main force.
>
>Manchester had excellent qualifications for the job. After enlisting, in
1988, he had gone through Airborne training and the Ranger program, and was
offered an appointment to West Point, an honor accorded to only several dozen
enlisted men each year. As the drive across the desert continued, Manchester
told me, he and his fellow-Scouts began to fear friendly fire more than they
did the Iraqis. He recalled that, in the first days of the war, his
thirty-man platoon had been involved in only a few dustups, including one
that began when the driver of an Iraqi truck fired at the American position.
The truck was quickly destroyed, and Manchester and Edward R. Walker, a
fellow-Scout who had emergency-medical training, attended to the wounded
driver.
>
>On February 27th, the fourth day of the war, Manchester's platoon was
ordered to block traffic on a road near Highway 8 while the battalion's five
companies of Bradleys and tanks were refuelled by tanker trucks. The
battalion was at its most vulnerable for those few hours, and nothing was to
get by the Scouts' roadblock. The operation was proceeding routinely, with
vehicles beginning to line up along the road. Then, Manchester said, "this
person comes walking toward us, wearing red running pants." It was an
English-speaking Egyptian, who was serving in the Iraqi Army. He wanted to
surrender, as did several other Iraqi soldiers who were with him. The
American soldiers were soon inundated with Iraqis, who streamed out of the
desert in a caravan of automobiles and trucks, most of them apparently stolen
in Kuwait. The Iraqis were "scared and crying," Manchester remembered. "A
Buick comes up, with the commander, and he surrenders his battalion to us."
The Scout platoon, confronted by a large number of hungry and thirsty Iraqis,
maintained its composure. One of the Iraqi trucks came barrelling toward the
group from the desert, and its driver seemed to have no intention of
stopping. He was not shot at, Manchester said. Instead, one of the Scouts
fired a volley of bullets into the air. The truck stopped, and its unharmed
driver joined the other prisoners. All the Iraqis were searched for weapons
and, once cleared, were seated in a large circle. "We were doing it by the
book," Manchester told me. "We told them that everything was going to be
fine."
>
>In the confusion, Manchester, who was assigned to the lead vehicle, with
Lieutenant Kirk Allen, the platoon commander, got separated from his
teammates. Allen's driver, Specialist 4 John Brasfield, a wiry
twenty-four-year-old Kansan, joined Edward Walker and a few other soldiers
who were stopping the traffic along the road. One of the first vehicles to
pull up, Brasfield recalled, was an Iraqi hospital bus, marked with a
crescent -- the Iraqi equivalent of a Red Cross sign. Four Scouts recalled
that the bus was filled with wounded Iraqi veterans, many of them bandaged.
Another Scout recalled that the wounded were piled in the back of a truck
that trailed behind. Doctors and male nurses were among the prisoners. "There
was a doctor on the bus who could speak English and was real friendly,"
Brasfield told me. Brasfield had served as a legal specialist in the Reserves
before the war and understood that the rules of international law were very
clear: "If it had a crescent on it, you couldn't engage it." Brasfield
approached the bus after its military passengers, many in bandages, had been
helped off and searched for weapons. The Iraqi doctor proved to be extremely
helpful as a translator, and directed the prisoners who had been collected by
Manchester and his colleagues to a central site along the highway, alongside
the now empty bus. "He had studied medicine in Chicago," Brasfield recalled,
"and had family there."
>
>Vehicles kept arriving, and more Iraqi soldiers surrendered. Edward Walker,
who was thirty-one and, because of his medical training, known as Doc, was
ordered to keep a head count. "It kept building," Walker told me. "It started
with probably thirty, thirty-five. As each vehicle pulled up, it kept adding
up and adding up. We got to somewhere between three hundred and sixty or
three hundred and eighty." (A few moments later in the interview, he recalled
a precise number -- three hundred and eighty-two prisoners.) Each prisoner
was quickly searched and stripped of weapons. "We were clearing weapons as
soon as they were coming out of the vehicles," Walker said. "They were coming
in so fast that we had no time but to grab what weapons they had and throw
them into a pile."
>
>The Americans were badly outnumbered by the Iraqis, but John Brasfield had
no doubts about the enemy's state of mind: "I guarantee you that everybody in
that war would have surrendered if they could. We knew that." He and his
colleagues gave the frightened prisoners water and food and reassured them.
"One of the first guys who came in was bawling -- so happy that he was safe,"
Brasfield recalled. "I told him, 'You've surrendered. You're safe. Nothing is
going to happen to you.'" Another man, who had lost an eye, asked if he was
now a prisoner. He was told yes. "Thank Allah," the man said.
>
>Sergeant James Testerman, one of Allen's section leaders, told me that to
insure the prisoners' safety "we gave each one of them a white piece of
paper, if they didn't have anything white." Testerman was referring to
American-designed surrender leaflets, printed in Arabic, that had been
dropped throughout the war zone. The leaflet promised that those who gave up
would live to see their families again.
>
>Brasfield handled the radios for Lieutenant Allen, and Allen made it a point
to keep the battalion headquarters in the loop. Allen told the battalion
operations center that he had captured a large number of prisoners; he also
reported the precise position of the Iraqi hospital bus. The Scout platoon had
a G.P.S. platform on the lead Humvee, and could fix the bus's location within
a hundred yards. "We called in spot reports as the group got bigger,"
Brasfield recalled.
>
>According to Walker, someone in Ware's headquarters ordered the Scouts to
blow up the confiscated weapons. Walker was the platoon's demolition expert
as well as a medical specialist, and he took charge. He was an engineer by
training, and had taught an advanced course for the 5th Engineer Battalion at
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, his home unit. He had been assigned to the
Scouts only a few days before the war began. The Iraqi weapons were flung
into a truck, which was moved a safe distance away. Two captured Iraqi trucks
and the hospital bus were also moved, to create what amounted to a
three-sided box, or holding pen, and the prisoners were sitting in rows
inside. The open end of the box faced west, Walker recalled, in the direction
of the main battalion force. "We told them, 'Don't move. Don't go nowhere.'
"Walker then busied himself with his demolition assignment, with the help of
Specialist 4 David A. Collatt. It would take three charges of a plastic
explosive, known as C4, to destroy the truck holding the weapons.
>
>"Suddenly, we're told on our battalion frequency that it's time to move on,"
James Manchester recalled. Intelligence reported that an Iraqi missile truck
had been spotted a few miles up the road, and Lieutenant Allen was ordered to
engage it. The platoon took off. In Manchester's recollection, the prisoners
were simply assembled near the hospital bus; he doesn't remember the holding
pen. "We're boogying out," Manchester recalled. "And we have these people
gathered, and we've given them all our M.R.E.s" -- ready-to-eat meals. Then
word came that the battalion'.s main battle force had finished
refuelling."The task force was fixing to move," another Scout, Sergeant
Steven L. Mulig, said, "and we had to get out of there, because they shoot at
everything."
>
>Walker and Collatt set the delayed fuse for the plastic explosives on the
truck and, with seconds to spare, jumped into a Humvee and began speeding
away. The explosion was spectacular, Walker told me. "A lot of little stuff"
began hitting the ground -- truck parts, shrapnel, and hundreds of unexploded
Iraqi bullet rounds. At that moment, Walker said, a platoon or two of
Bradleys came into view from the west and began rolling toward the clutch of
prisoners. Mulig, who is still on active duty, at Fort Carson, Colorado,
recalled, "They were all in line -- moving abreast of each other." The
Bradleys' machine guns opened up. "I saw rounds impact in front of the
vehicle," Mulig said. "I could tell that they were hitting close to the
prisoners, because there were people running. There were some who could have
survived, but a lot of them wouldn't have, from where I saw the rounds hit."
The Bradleys were armed with chain-driven machine guns, capable of firing up
to a thousand rounds a minute. "I couldn't see the prisoners themselves,"
Walker said. "You can't hear screaming. All you hear is the boom-boom-boom.
You could hear rounds hitting the bus and vehicles. I could see the bullets
were going where they were. We're yelling" -- on the radio -- " 'They're
firing at the prisoners! They're firing at the prisoners!' And about that
time I look up and that Bradley turns and they start firing at us. We're in a
marked Humvee. They hit the ground right behind our vehicle." He meant the
bullets. "I turn around and start screaming. So is Collatt: 'They're firing
at us! They're firing at us!' We started taking off and they continued to
fire at us." Walker, speaking to me at his home, in rural Missouri, said that
he is convinced that all the prisoners "got hit." They were seated in rows,
and the high-intensity machine guns on the Bradleys were capable of deep
penetration. "I'm telling you that when a Bradley hits something it's going
to take it out," he said. "And a human body ain't going to slow a
twenty-five-calibre round down. And they were in rows. There was a row and
another row in front of them and another row in front of them. If they shot
one guy in the front row, it's going to go through everybody in that row.
It's not going to slow down. The human body will not slow down that round."
>
>Collatt shared Walker's shock as the gun turrets of the Bradleys turned and
started firing at the prisoners. "The main thing you could see was the
mikemike" -- rounds -- "kicking up dirt right around the general area," he
said. Collatt, who left the Army in 1993, believes that some escaped the
firing by fleeing behind the vehicles: "You could see the prisoners start
running." He said that he remains baffled, because "we knew it was a hospital
bus and we'd talked about it" -- on the radio. "We told everybody where it
was. They didn't get the word or they were trigger-happy.
>
>Walker said, "They knew there were prisoners there. They knew they were
unarmed. They knew the hospital bus was there, and they knew we were blowing
the truck up." The Bradleys were in no danger from the exploding truck, which
had been moved a safe distance away. Moreover, Walker said, the attacking
soldiers "were all buttoned down in their vehicles, so they really had
nothing to worry about."
>
>James Manchester and his colleagues on Lieutenant ALlen's Humvee, a few
hundred yards farther east, initially thought they were being fired upon.
"Shit hits the fan," Manchester recalled. "Bullets are flying." He looked
back and realized that the unarmed Iraqis were being targeted. "I did not see
people's heads exploding," he told me. "But I definitely saw shooting. I saw
a crowd of people who were being fired upon." He recalled thinking, This is
fucked up, but the Humvee just kept on moving, scooting away from the
shooting at high speed.
>
>John Brasfield had brought a small, inexpensive tape recorder to the Gulf
and, while handling the radios on Lieutenant ALlen's Humvee, routinely taped
transmissions. He would ship some of the tapes home, he thought, and give his
wife a glimpse of war. His tape recorder was running as Allen's Humvee sped
away >from the prisoners, and from the bullets from the Bradleys' machine
guns. The recording, made available by Brasfield for this account, documents
the young soldiers' horror, anger, and, ultimately, resignation as the
shooting went on. It's not always clear who is speaking on the tape, amid the
background noise of engines, radio squeals, and the crosscutting of situation
reports, but James Manchester, after carefully listening to the tape, was
able to distinguish his own voice in some of the exchanges, along with Kirk
Allen's and Brasfield's. He also isolated the voice and call signs of
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Ware, the battalion commander.
>
>"The lead company behind us is tearing up all those vehicles," someone tells
battalion headquarters as the recording begins. "I hope they understand what
a Humvee looks Like," he adds, referring to the indiscriminate firing in the
direction of the Scouts.
>
>A moment later, a Scout reports on the platoon radio net, "Twenty-five
mikemike blowing approximately five hundred metres behind me with my ass end
showing." He's telling Lieutenant Allen that machine-gun fire is trailing his
Humvee. "You're not supposed to be in that area," Alien responds.
>
>"There's no one shooting at them," another Scout says on the platoon net,
referring to the Bradleys. "Why'd they have to shoot?"
>
>Allen reports on Ware's battalion net, "There's shooting, but there's no one
there" -- no combatants -- "to shoot at." Ware answers, "I understand," and
then asks a series of operational questions about maps.
>
>Later, Manchester asks Allen, "Sir, what element is firing behind us?"
>
>Allen: "I have no fucking idea."
>
>An unidentified Scout asks, "Why are we shooting at these people when they
are not shooting at us?"
>
>Brasfield: "They want to surrender.... Fucking armored vehicles [the
Bradleys]. They don't have to blow them apart."
>
>Sporadic firing continues. Someone asks Allen, "Why don't you tell them,
sir, that they are willing to surrender. Tell 'em that." Someone else says,
amid the noise,"It's murder."
>
>Ware is on the radio when someone says, "We shot the guys we had gathered
up." Another voice interjects, "They didn't have no weapons." Ware calls for
all firing to stop and then asks another question about routine battalion
procedures.
>
>"He heard it; he knew it," Sergeant Mulig told me later, speaking of Ware.
"But it didn't register."
>
>James Testerman felt shame as he and his fellow-Scouts left the prisoners
and fled. "I had fed these guys and got them to trust me," he said. "The
first two who came in were scared to death -- afraid we were going to shoot
them. We set them down and fed them M.R.E.s." One of the Iraqis played the
tough-guy role, Testerman went on. "He wouldn't eat it -- afraid we were
going to poison him. So I took a bite of it, and gave it to him. The tough
guy broke down, crying. I can only imagine what he thought" when the Bradleys
"started shooting -- that we were sending him to the slaughter."
>
>"You think about it," he said. "All those people."
>
>
>THE WHITE FLAG
>
>
>
>The war ended abruptly On February 28th, when the ceasefire was announced,
McCaffrey's men had not proved themselves in a major engagement, despite
months of training and anticipation. The complicated feelings that some of
them had about the "one-sided victory," over Iraqis with no will to fight,
are perceptively expressed by David Pierson in "Tuskers":
>
>My only reservation was illogical; I somehow wished that they had proved a
more worthy opponent. They hadn't lost the battle, they had forfeited it.
We were achieving a great victory but without great sacrifice. Sacrifice,
the lifeblood of freedom, the price of all glory, the nature of soldiering.
It was an expectation and a curse.
>
>
>
>McCaffrey's tankers had driven more than two hundred miles across the sand
dunes and wadis of southern Iraq with little sleep and almost no action. Many
of the men were frustrated, on edge, and eager to do what they had been
trained to do -- fire their weapons. The senior officers of the 2-4 Cavalry
Squadron, a unit assigned directly to McCaffrey's headquarters, found a way
to relieve tension and to prevent civilian abuse. "The worst thing that could
happen was if some kid thought he'd ridden four or five days and never shot
his weapon," Lieutenant Colonel Joseph C. Barto III (Ret.), then the
executive officer, told me. "We called all the commanders and said,'Make sure
these guys get to shoot their weapons."' Targets of opportunity were found --
abandoned buildings and the like -- and the tanks lined up and fired away
with machine guns, rockets, and shells.
>
>In some cases, the end of the war led to an erosion of discipline. Many
soldiers in the 24th Division's tank companies and Scout platoons began to
collect battlefield souvenirs -- especially Soviet AK-47 assault rifles
carried by the Iraqi military. The scavenger hunting caused casualties,
especially after the ceasefire, as soldiers triggered land mines and other
munitions in their search for souvenirs. In one instance, an elaborate Iraqi
Defense Ministry compound was broken into by the 2-4 Cavalry, and, under the
eyes of its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Leney, soldiers loaded
glassware, trays, sterling silver, gun collections, oversized rugs, and a
huge photograph of Saddam Hussein onto tanks and armored cars to take back to
America. Leney, who is now retired, told me that his action in authorizing
the break-in may have been "bad judgment." The items were to be used, he
said, for a Cavalry Ball, to be held after the war, at Fort Stewart.
(Soldiers are allowed to confiscate certain kinds of equipment, and in the
Gulf War, as in most others, looting was widespread; there was no
investigation of the 2-4 Cavalry's actions.) The looting took place in front
of officers and men from the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion, whose
specialists -- interpreters, radar operators, and counter-intelligence
officers -- were assigned to every brigade in the 24th Division. "Our guys
watched them fill up five tanks," 1st Sergeant Jason Claar, of the 124th,
told me. "We knew of whole companies loading stuff in their tanks."
>
>One of the 124th's primary missions was to supply forward radar teams to the
Scout platoons of each battalion. The three-man units, known as
ground-surveillance-radar, or G.S.R., teams, carried high-resolution
equipment in their Humvees that could isolate enemy formations and spot
vehicle movements thousands of yards away and in the dark The G.S.R. team
assigned to the 3-7 Battalion of the 1st Brigade was headed by a sergeant
named Steven Larimore, who had joined the Army, in 1987, at the advanced age
of thirty-one. Larimore was widely admired by his fellow-soldiers for his
calm under pressure, his competence, and his integrity, and for his ability
to throw passes in touch-football games.
>
>On March 1st, the day after the ceasefire went into effect, Larimore's men
and the platoon to which they were attached, the Scouts from the 3-7
Battalion, were ordered to continue patrols in the Euphrates Valley
battlefield. In the late afternoon, Larimore recalled, there was a report
that some Army troops had discovered a cache of Iraqi weapons at a deserted
schoolhouse in a small village near Highway 8. The radar team joined the 3-7
Scouts in clearing the village and searching the schoolhouse. The weapons
were covered with waxed paper and protective grease; they had never been
fired. After taking souvenirs, Larimore told me, he and his men left the
destruction of the weapons to others and moved out, to the east, still
accompanied by six or so Humvees and Bradleys of the 3-7 Scouts. Larimore and
his men noticed a group of villagers walking in the area. "One guy had a
white bedsheet on a stick," Larimore said. Then, he recounted, "out of the
blue sky, some guy from where we're sitting" -- in the Scout platoon --
"begins shooting" into the villagers. Other machine guns joined in. "There
was a lot of screaming and hollering going on. We were screaming, 'Cease
fire!' People hit the ground. The firing went on." Larimore estimated that he
saw at least fifteen, and perhaps twenty or more, Iraqis fall. He had never
been in a firefight before, he said, and he was stunned by the noise and the
carnage. He estimated that the firing lasted no more than thirty seconds. "I
did not see anything that looked like return fire," he said. The vehicles in
the Scout unit, he said, had opened up on a group of unarmed civilians.
>
>A second eyewitness, Sergeant Wayne P. Irwin, who was in charge of another
G.S.R. team, said the Iraqis were "just passing through" the area when the
Scouts suddenly began firing their machine guns. "I yelled for them to cease
fire," he said. "I couldn't understand why they were firing." Of the Iraqis,
he said, "To me, they posed no threat to us -- they were all in civilian
clothes." Irwin was the senior man from the 124th on the scene, and the
Scouts subsequently explained to him that the Iraqis were carrying"grenade
launchers and stuff like that." Irwin, a seventeen-year Army veteran who is
now on an intelligence assignment in South Korea, told me that he did not
find that account credible. He had seen the Iraqis. "To me, they had
nothing."
>
>Michael Sangiorge, a nineteen-year-old soldier from Brooklyn, was one of
Larimore's crew members. (He is now a nursing student in Pembroke, Georgia.)
He thought the firing lasted a long time. "It seemed like an eternity," he
told me. "Three or four minutes. The Bradleys were shooting all their guns.
They were firing into a cluster of people." A few of the victims "were
wearing dark robes" -- clothing that did not rule out the possibility that
they were in the military. There was no doubt, however, that "they were
basically surrendering," Sangiorge recalled "We heard screaming, and we're
screaming -- a whole lot of yelling is going on." He didn't take a body
count, but he estimated that about twenty people were fired upon.
>
>When the firing ended, Sangiorge said, Sergeant Larimore -- who was known
for being unflappable -- "lost his cool," and jumped off his vehicle to get a
better look at the scene. "He was pissed." Moments later, the G.S.R. unit was
ordered back to the schoolyard, along with the 3-7 Scout platoon. "I went to
the platoon leader" -- Lieutenant John J. Grisillo, a 1987 graduate of West
Point -- "and asked him what he was doing," Larimore told me. "He said they
were fired on and we returned fire." Grisillo was equally angry at him,
Larimore said, because "I was questioning his authority. I told him we had a
responsibility to go make sure that there weren't any wounded" among the
slain Iraqis on the field. The G.S.R. teams carried medical kits in their
vehicles. "He said, 'Go ahead,' " Larimore recounted. "I said, 'I'm not going
anywhere in front of you.' "
>
>Sangiorge and the other crew members were not even in their twenties,
Larimore recalled. " 'Sarge,' they said to me. 'That wasn't right what
happened. What do we have to do?' I told them I didn't know, but I'd find
out. I was still very mad."
>
>Lieutenant Grisillo confirmed Larimore's description of the shootings -- up
to a point. Larimore, he said, had failed to realize that the men were
responding to a threat. Grisillo explained that his platoon, made up of two
armored vehicles and six Humvees, all armed with machine guns, had cleared a
village, with the help of Larimore's G.S.R. team, and afterward someone
looked back and noticed a small group of Iraqis in civilian clothes. "They
raised a white flag," Grisillo said, but he and his men could see through
binoculars that "they were carrying weapons. We fired warning shots, but they
didn't stop" and continued to move toward a building -- the schoolhouse --
that was known to contain weapons. In so doing, Grisillo insisted, the Iraqis
posed a threat. His Scout platoon opened fire with machine guns, and some
Iraqis, perhaps five or six, were shot. No formal written report of the
shootings was ever made.
>
>Grisillo told me that after the war he met with his brigade commander, John
Le Moyne. "He let me know that he thought the G.S.R. guys didn't understand
the situation at the time," Grisillo said. "Calls had to be made. It's not
nice, but prudent. If I had that situation again, I'd do it again. I've never
lost a minute's sleep about it." Grisillo left the Army, as a captain, in
1992. He now runs a job-recruiting firm for retired military personnel.
>
>
>According to Major Brennan, McCaffrey's staff officer, during the war the
General repeatedly asked his staff to survey the battlefield and determine if
Iraqi trophies -- such as enemy tanks and artillery pieces -- could be
salvaged for display at the Fort Stewart museum, back in Georgia. No one had
done anything about it. At the morning staff meeting on March 1st, the first
full day of the ceasefire, Brennan said, McCaffrey suddenly turned to him and
appointed him the division's war-souvenir officer. Brennan commandeered a
Humvee and a driver, loaded up with water and food, and took off for the war
zone. "I just went out and looked around to the east and to the north" --
along the line of retreat from Kuwait to Baghdad, Brennan told me. "I wasn't
worried. What I saw was an army that had given up." He and his driver ran
into perhaps ten Iraqi soldiers during the morning. "All they wanted out of
me was water and food," he recalled. "None of them attempted to fire at me. I
felt there was no danger. There was a ceasefire. I was more worried about Le
Moyne's brigade" -- the 1st Brigade's heavily armed command post was nearby
-- "than about the Iraqi Army."
>
>It was an eerie scene, he recalled. Dozens of tanks, trucks, and other
vehicles lay scattered over the battlefield. In some, the engines were still
running. Bombs, shells, and other ammunition lay about as well, much of it
near smoldering wreckage and in danger of "cooking off" -- exploding in the
heat. Brennan marked many sites on a map. He planned to return the next
morning, March 2nd, with more men and three forklift trucks to begin the
process of gathering McCaffrey's war trophies.
>
>
>
>
>II -- THE CAUSEWAY
>
>
>
>IMMINENT ATTACK
>
>
>
>While other American soldiers and their commanders stopped and cheered the
ceasefire, McCaffrey quietly continued to move his combat forces. On the
morning of the ceasefire, February 28th, they were approximately twenty-five
miles west of the Lake Hammar causeway; by the eve of the Battle of Rumaila,
two days later, he had expanded his area of operations. The 24th Division was
now within striking distance of a seventeen-mile access road connecting the
highway to the causeway, one of the few known pathways out of the marshes and
desert in southern Iraq. "I knew I did not want to go into Basra and fight in
Basra," McCaffrey explained to Army investigators six months after the war,
"but I was prepared to continue the attack to the east." His plan was to be
ready, as any prudent commander would be, to lead an invasion into Baghdad,
should one be ordered. "Was I eager to go north toward Baghdad?" McCaffrey
asked the investigators rhetorically."Personally, I think it would have been
militarily an easy option."
>
>With the ceasefire, the rules of engagement were revised by XVIII Corps
headquarters. Rather than aggressively seek out and destroy the enemy forces,
the commanders were to protect their troops and hold their positions.
McCaffrey was no longer authorized to initiate offensive military actions on
his own; he had to get prior approval from the Corps commander, General Luck.
He could still wage war, but only if he was faced with "imminent attack." The
new rules also stated, "If an enemy vehicle approaches with its turret turned
opposite the direction of travel, the enemy vehicle will be considered
indicating a non-hostile intent. "The rules went on to say, "If these
conditions are not present, the vehicle will be considered having a hostile
intent. In either case, all attempts will be made to allow the occupants of
the vehicle to surrender before U.S. Forces will take hostile measures." The
unilateral ceasefire gave all Iraqi combat units, including the most elite
tank brigades, the right to unencumbered retreat, provided they moved with
cannons reversed.
>
>The Iraqi withdrawal through the Euphrates Valley had been carefully
choreographed by the Third Army headquarters. The goal was to speed up the
exit of the Iraqis from Kuwait, and on March 1st thousands of soldiers -- in
tanks, trucks, and stolen cars -- continued their retreat toward Baghdad,
streaming northwest day and night toward the Lake Hammar causeway.
>
>McCaffrey had moved his forces toward the access road without informing all
the senior officers who needed to know -- inside his own division operations
center, at XVIII Corps, and at Third Army headquarters. Lieutenant Colonel
Patrick Lamar, McCaffrey's operations officer, told Army investigators in the
summer of 1991 that he did not know at the time that John Le Moyne's 1st
Brigade, which included the most forward units, had moved to the north and
east. Frank H. Akers, a young colonel who was the operations officer at XVIII
Corps headquarters, also told me that he did not know that McCaffrey had
moved two brigades forward after the ceasefire. Neither did Lieutenant
General John Yeosock, commander of the Third Army. The retreating Iraqis, who
had been assured of safe passage, were now in harm's way -- and so were
McCaffrey's soldiers.
>
>McCaffrey's forces were at risk, Akers told me, because division commanders
invariably need "higher headquarters to have an accurate read of their
location in case they have to call in support." Careful reporting, Akers
added, avoids friendly-fire incidents and enables help to reach a unit in
trouble more quickly.
>
>General McCaffrey, in a letter to The New Yorker, firmly denied that his
division had ever purposely failed to inform the appropriate commands of the
troop deployments prior to the March 2nd engagement. In a separate letter he
noted, "It is simply not credible that a division in combat, employing
artillery and air power, and widely equipped with GPS, could or would falsify
unit locations."
>
>However, General Yeosock told me, "Too many people have the imaginary notion
that we can track everything from space." What was important, he said, was
that the operations officers at the Third Army "get a lot of confirmatory
information >from the people on the ground. At the end of the day, it's what
comes in through the human channels."
>
>Shortly after dawn on March 2nd, a unit reported to McCaffrey's command post
that it was being fired upon by the retreating Iraqis and that it had
returned fire in self-defense. These were the opening shots of the Battle of
Rumaila.
>
>Over the past nine years, McCaffrey has consistently defended his March 2nd
offensive by emphasizing, as he did in his letters, that his actions were
designed to protect American soldiers -- and were thus fully compliant with
the revised rules of engagement. "My troops on the ground were under
attack," McCaffrey wrote. "My sole focus was the safety of my soldiers."
>
>The early-morning; Iraqi attack that McCaffrey and others speak of was said
to be targeted on units in Charles Ware's 2-7 Battalion that were at the
forward edge of the American advance. The 2-7 Scouts were attacked by
R.P.G.s, Sagger missiles, and "direct fire from T-72 tanks," McCaffrey wrote.
The rocketing continued later that morning, as one Sagger missile was fired
at the American positions and others were prepared for launch. A muzzle flash
was observed, McCaffrey wrote, and an artillery cannon under tow was moved
off the road, disconnected, and pointed at the division. (The Army inquiry
into Rumaila concluded that two weapons were fired, but did not report any
injuries or damage.)
>
>"In sum," McCaffrey wrote, "we acted appropriately at the time the Rumaila
battle occurred. My troops routed a large enemy force that not only
threatened my soldiers but also opened fire on . . . our position."
>
>"They came rolling in there," John Le Moyne told an Army oral historian a
few days after the March 2nd engagement, "and I'll be damned if they didn't
start shooting at us." In a separate interview, his operations officer, Major
Benjamin Freakley, told an Army oral historian that the first reports of
enemy contact -- the firing of an R.P.G. -- came from Charlie Company in
Ware's battalion. Moments later, Charlie Company again received fire -- this
time, Sagger missiles >from Iraqi B.M.P.s (Russian-built armored vehicles
known to the soldiers as Bimps). The Americans immediately counterattacked,
Freakley said, and destroyed six Iraqi B.M.P.s and four T-72 tanks.
Meanwhile, a group of helicopters that had been scrambled to reconnoitre the
situation told of seeing "hundreds" of Iraqi vehicles moving to the north.
McCaffrey"realized this force could move to the west now that they knew we
were here" -- and threaten his forces. "So we decided to go ahead and fight
them, since they had engaged us first."
>
>Freakley was saying, in essence, that McCaffrey chose to turn all his guns
on the Iraqis because of the possibility that the defeated Army might decide
to stop its withdrawal and, in a move that amounted to suicide, attack the
far superior American forces. If Freakley's recollection is right, McCaffrey
waited half an hour or so to gather his forces and create an attack plan. The
precise length of McCaffrey's delay could not be conclusively fixed from the
available documents. The division log entries suggest that the delay between
the two attacks was less than forty minutes. But in his sworn testimony
Patrick Lamar, the division operations officer, told Army investigators that
there "was a period of about two hours between the time the firing first was
reported before any action was ever taken." All the authorities agree,
however, on one essential point -- there were no further confirmed reports of
Iraqi shootings between the first and second attacks.
>
>John Le Moyne told me that"there was absolutely no doubt in my mind" that
the resumption of firing was justified. He said he now believes that the
Iraqis had not planned their early-morning attack. "After ten years, I think
they just didn't have the discipline and training." He theorized, "The first
guy who fired was part of a guard post. He woke up, saw American combat
vehicles, and said, 'Oh, shit! Oh, dear,' reacted out of panic, and fired."
>
>The authorized history of the 24th Division in the Gulf War, written by
Major Jason Kamiya, a division operations officer, closely echoes the Le
Moyne and Freakley accounts.
>
>
>THESE GUYS ARE GOING HOME
>
>
>
>Interviews for this article, and the 24th Division's daily log for March
2nd, fail to support many aspects of the official account. The Iraqis were
driving anything that moved, and by early morning on March 2nd hundreds of
retreating trucks, tanks, and other vehicles had come into radar view of the
1st Brigade. At 4:45 A.M., reports came from Sergeant Larimore's G.S.R. unit
and from Lieutenant Grisillo's 3-7 Scouts, and as they became increasingly
vivid they got everyone's attention.
>
>James Manchester, in the 2-7 Scout platoon commanded by Lieutenant Allen,
did not see any Iraqi firing, any Iraqi prisoners, or any Iraqi panic that
morning. His platoon had been travelling in front of the main attack force,
as usual, and he was cheerfully watching the Iraqis retreat in an orderly
fashion along the road leading to the Lake Hammar causeway. He and his
fellow-Scouts had been told "to make sure that these guys are retreating." He
recalled, "I remember thinking, It's over, it's over. These guys are going
home. It was just a line of vehicles on the road."
>
>John Brasfield also remembers that morning. He had been troubled by his own
brigade's continuing movement to the east, toward Basra. "On the day of the
ceasefire, we got an order to move out," Brasfield recalled. "I'm a 'Why?'
guy, and I asked Allen why. I didn't want to die after the ceasefire. He
said, 'This is what we're instructed to do.' "
>
>Early on the morning of March 2nd, Brasfield continued, his platoon had
moved east, with no Iraqi opposition. Some soldiers who were farther east
reported that an Iraqi tank "came up on them, but it never fired. We sat
there all morning watching movement on the road about six kilometres away." A
steady stream of retreating tanks moved along the road. "There's no hostile
action toward us, but they don't see us," Brasfield said. Edward Walker also
recalled the tableau as non-threatening. "Many of the Iraqi tanks were on
flatbed trucks and had their turrets tucked backward" -- that is, their
cannons were facing away from the American combat forces.
>
>When word of the Iraqi column first reached Le Moyne's 1st Brigade command
post, his intelligence officer, Captain Linda Suttlehan, informed him that
"the only unit it could belong to was the Hammurabi Republican Guard tank
division, one of the most battle-hardened units in the Iraqi Army, which was
scrambling to get back, intact, to Baghdad. There was a growing sense of
excitement both in the brigade and in the division headquarters, Suttlehan
recalled. Some of the senior officers "wanted action," and said as much.
>
>A far less threatening observation was officially reported sometime around 6
or 7 A.M. by the 1st Brigade to the 24th Division tactical-operations center.
Item 47 in the division log for March 2nd noted, "Col Le Moyne is observing
vehicles, which consist of 200 trucks (flatbeds with some mil[itary] vans)."
A tank or any other vehicle riding on a flatbed posed no threat, as every
armored officer knew. However, that reassuring report was contradicted by Le
Moyne in the very next log item, which said that Le Moyne "reports that
vehicles' report is 'erroneous and bullshit.' " Le Moyne then ordered an
attack-helicopter reinforcement for his brigade -- a major escalation.
>
>The radio suddenly came to life, James Manchester recalled. He listened as
Captain Richard B. Averna, the commander of Ware's Charlie Company, told Ware
that the retreating Iraqis were preparing to fire antitank missiles at the
American forces. Manchester said his platoon was astonished at the message.
"We are sitting right on top of these people," he told me, referring to the
Iraqis, "and there are no vehicles pulled off." Captain Averna, he said, was
behind him and could not see the line of vehicles.
>
>Brasfield recalled a different but equally overwrought report. "One of the
companies sees one or two dismounts" -- Iraqi soldiers who have climbed off a
tank or armored vehicle -- "with an R.P.G. pointed in its direction. They ask
permission to engage, and finally get it. There's some boom, boom, boom -- a
very short engagement. This was early, before the big battle." Brasfield said
he was later told, "Somebody panicked and thought they saw something they
didn't see." Another factor in the Scout platoon's skepticism over the
report, Brasfield said, was a lack of confidence in Ware's leadership.
>
>Sergeant Stuart Hirstein, of the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion, was
clearing an Iraqi bunker with a company in the 2-7 Battalion when his unit
monitored the early reports about Iraqi fire. One of the combat companies in
Ware's battalion had issued an urgent call for help, asking every available
unit to come to its rescue: it was taking fire from oncoming Iraqi tanks.
Hirstein and his team rushed to the site in their armored vehicles. When they
arrived, he said, there was no attack and no imminent threat from the
retreating Iraqi tanks. "Some of the tanks were in travel formation, and
their guns were not in any engaged position."The Iraqi crew members "were
sitting on the outside of their vehicles, catching rays," he said. "Nobody
was on the machine guns." And yet the Americans "wanted to fire them up." At
that point, he added, their commanders said no.
>
>There was a barrage of messages. "The radio was blasting," Linda Suttlehan
told me. One message stood out: a Scout claimed that an Iraqi R.P.G. had been
fired at him. Other soldiers reported that an Iraqi tank had fired at their
positions. "We plotted grids, but the timing didn't make sense," Suttlehan
said. "The timing was too close. Was it one or two different tanks? Or was it
the same guy shooting?" In any case, Suttlehan recalled, "I needed to know
which way the tubes are pointing" -- the cannons on the Iraqi tanks. "Are
they in front or back?" After some time had passed, she said, she and the
other analysts were "still trying to figure it out."
>
>There was similar confusion in the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion.
Major James P. Kump, the 124th's senior intelligence officer forward in the
field during the attack, had been monitoring what he assumed was a routine
retreat early that morning when the fighting started. Kump, who spent
twenty-two years on active duty and is now retired, told me, "I thought, I
can't believe what I'm hearing! There's nothing going on. These guys are
retreating. "The skies above the battlefield were crammed with
state-of-the-art intelligence devices, Kump said, and much of the
intelligence was being passed to his Humvee. "I had links to several
intelligence systems -- more than I can talk about. And I'd have known if
troops were moving toward us." Kump went on, "I knew of no justification for
the counterattack. I always felt it was a violation of the ceasefire. From an
integrity standpoint, I was very troubled." Before all previous operations,
he said, planners at division headquarters had routinely sought his
intelligence assessments. This time, he said, "no one asked me for an
assessment."
>
>
>COMMAND DECISION
>
>
>
>McCaffrey's official headquarters was the division's mobile tactical command
post, but he directed the war from what is known as an assault command post,
a unit of four tanks and three or so tracked vehicles which stays in the
front lines with the advancing troops. At intervals, the vehicles would stop
together, and McCaffrey's staff would pull out canvas extensions to provide
shade, and set up cots for quick naps. Fresh coffee was brewed, and the area
neatly served as a mobile headquarters where McCaffrey could get up-to-date
briefings and hold small staff meetings.
>
>The men in the assault command post worked intimately with McCaffrey and
were the most knowledgeable about what was going on. They included Captain
Michael Bell, Captain Michael Bell, an armor officer who was McCaffrey's
personal aide -- the man who arranged his schedule, screened his
appointments, and monitored his telephone. Bell, a West Point graduate, was
married to a fellow West Point graduate, whose father was a two-star general
on active duty at the Pentagon. Bell considered it his responsibility to let
his boss know what he thought, in essence confronting McCaffrey with
observations he sometimes did not want to hear. Whatever the cause, Bell fell
out of favor. "One day, he was the greatest thing since sliced bread,"
Patrick Lamar, the division's operations officer, said. And then, he said,
"Bell got blitzed."
>
>Lamar ran the assault command post, and thus was responsible, in war, for
relaying McCaffrey's orders to the field units. The son of an abandoned
Second World War French war bride, he had worked his way through Kent State
University, and to an Army commission, on an R.O.T.C. scholarship.
>
>According to Lamar, the interval after the first skirmishing by Ware's
battalion provoked a debate inside McCaffrey's assault command post. "There
was no incoming," Lamar told me. "I know that for a fact." He described the
battle as "a giant hoax. The Iraqis were doing absolutely nothing. I told
McCaffrey I was having trouble confirming the incoming." It didn't matter,
Lamar added. McCaffrey wanted to attack.
>
>Colonel Townsend, the division artillery commander, remains skeptical today
of some of the early-morning radio discussions between McCaffrey and Le
Moyne. "There was not point-blank fire," Townsend told me. "The excitement on
the command net was not there."Townsend thought that at least one antitank
round had been fired. but there was also "some indication" in the radio
traffic that "something wasn't right."
>
>"There was a lot of confusion," Captain Jim Morris, a West Point graduate
who worked in the command post, told me, and also "some huddling" among
Lamar, McCaffrey, and General Terry Scott, the deputy division commander. "I
remember Lamar outside, smoking a cigarette and shaking his head." Major
Thomas Matyok, another junior officer in the command post, had the
impression, as he told me, that there was not "a lot of enthusiasm" on
Lamar's part for a renewed attack on the Iraqi forces. He added that he and
Captain Morris had a running joke about the lack of Iraqi aggression: Iraq
was a surprisingly patriotic country "because everybody was always waving
their national flag-all white."
>
>As one officer recalled the discussion, "General Scott was all for the
attack" -- even to the point of suggesting ways to provoke an Iraqi
retaliation. "He was asking a lot of questions about 'Can we get the Scout
[helicopter] out and kick some dirt up and see what happens?"' Log Item 53,
filed shortly after 7:30 A.M., states that Scott "requests PSYOPS
Helicopter."
>
>"Scott was sitting there saying, 'Let's go get these guys,'" Lamar told me.
Lamar said his own view was "We didn't need to kill more people -- we'd
proved our point." But, he said, "McCaffrey had to have his armor battle."
Scott, when he was asked about his actions that morning, told me he was
"emphatic that the enemy had to start it. Eventually, we became convinced
that it was a real, no-shit attack by the Iraqis."
>
>In the course of the discussions, Lamar reminded McCaffrey of XVIII Corps's
newly revised rules of engagement, and urged him to obtain higher authority.
At that point, McCaffrey made a telephone call to General Luck, or so Lamar
assumed, at XVIII Corps headquarters. (Luck later told me that he did not
provide any guidance to McCaffrey, or have any conversation with him,
immediately before the March 2nd counterattack.) And then, Lamar said, the
discussion was over.
>
>After the phone call, McCaffrey in effect pushed Lamar aside and assumed
operational command of the division himself. "He just took me out of the
picture," Lamar said.
>
>McCaffrey abruptly left the meeting and moved his command post, without
Lamar, to Colonel Ware's battalion. "He left the operations center in the
cold," Lamar said. "Nobody knew what the hell was going on." (The division
log suggested that the time of the shift in command post was 8:27 A.M.)
>
>"I'll kill somebody if I have to," Lamar told me. "But if you're going to
violate a truce you'd better have permission to do so. McCaffrey put people
at risk at the peace table." Lamar was referring to General Schwarzkopf's
formal ceasefire talks with the Iraqi leadership, scheduled to begin the next
morning.
>
>Captain Bell, who had been present during the discussions before the
counterattack, came to believe that McCaffrey's decision to move his brigades
to the east of the original ceasefire line was designed to provoke the
Iraqis. Referring to the deployment in force, he said, "The entire regiment
moves forward. He's pulled the whole division in line. You have an army that
comes forward in the dark after a ceasefire in a confined battlefield, and of
course somebody's going to shoot at you." There is a serious distinction,
nonetheless, Bell added, between a round or two fired in panic or
self-defense and McCaffrey's insistence that the Iraqis were "attacking us."
That "is pure fabrication," he said.
>
>
>BATTLE ORDER
>
>
>
>Colonel Burt Tackaberry, the division's chief aviation officer, had been the
first pilot in the air early on the morning of March 2nd, and had flown at
very low altitudes over the column of retreating Iraqis. His helicopter had
been an easy target, but no one had taken a shot. He had noticed Iraqi tanks
with their tubes in travel-lock position and pointed away from a forward
target. "My first order was to go up and make sure the causeway was cut," he
recalled. It was still open, and he could see that about a hundred vehicles
had already crossed over it. He was then ordered to make sure that no further
vehicles got away. ("I never say no to McCaffrey," he told me.) In an effort
to get the vehicles to stop, he fired a few rounds over them. When they
didn't stop, he fired a TOW missile at the first vehicle, which turned out to
be an ammunition truck. ("It exploded for hours.") Once that vehicle was hit,
none of the others could get around it. There was a panic. "All the people
took off to the marshes and squatted down, "Tackaberry said. "They were
scared to death." There was still no opposition. Later that morning,
McCaffrey, running the division from Ware's Bradley, got on the radio and
ordered the division's missile-firing Apache helicopters -- Tackaberry's
helicopters -- to begin a full assault.
>
>The division log placed the time of McCaffrey's first known battle order at
five minutes after nine o'clock. According to Log Item 74, McCaffrey directed
that the causeway "be targeted" -- thus blocking the basic escape route for
the retreating forces. The division's Apache helicopters were to"engage from
south with intent of terminating engagement." Within moments, the assault was
all-out. One company reported that it had engaged a force of between a
hundred and two hundred Iraqi "dismounts." By ten o'clock, division
headquarters had begun receiving reports of extensive damage to the Iraqi
forces. One group of Apache helicopters reported in mid-morning, "Enemy not
firing back, they are jumping in ditches to hide." Forty minutes later,
according to another log item, McCaffrey ordered artillery to be "used in
conjunction with personnel sweep to 'pound these guys' and end the
engagement."
>
>The Iraqis, unable to continue driving to the north, because of the
bombed-out causeway, were easy targets. In "Lucky War," an appraisal of the
Gulf War published in 1994, the Army historian Colonel Richard M. Swain
(Ret.) noted, "One can continue to be troubled, however, with the fact that
most of the Iraqis killed seem to have been headed north or simply milling
around -- and not into the defender's lines, notwithstanding that some of
their number quite clearly seem to have initiated the combat by opening fire
when U.S. forces approached their position. "Two other facts remain somewhat
disturbing," Swain added: that "only a small number of Iraqis seem to have
acted with hostility that morning," and that the Iraqis, when fired upon, had
been many miles beyond the 24th Division's front lines, as they existed on
the morning of the ceasefire.
>
>Some soldiers who found themselves ordered into the battle remained dubious.
Stuart Hirstein, the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion sergeant whose
unit had earlier rushed to help a supposedly beleaguered combat company in
Ware's battalion only to find the Iraqis sunning themselves on top of their
tanks, now watched as the division's missile-firing Apache helicopters
systematically began to annihilate the tanks. "It pissed me off," Hirstein
told me. "They were not firing."
>
>Charles Sheehan-Miles recalled that his 1st Brigade tank platoon also had
been told that morning to rush to the rescue of an American unit near Highway
8 that was under attack by a division of Iraqi soldiers. "We went up the
road blowing the shit out of everything. It was like going down an American
highway -- people were all mixed up in cars and trucks. People got out of
their cars and ran away. We shot them." Sheehan-Miles said that at least one
of his victims was in civilian clothing. "My orders were to shoot if they
were armed or running. The Iraqis were getting massacred."
>
>James Manchester was listening to the radio and heard Colonel Ware receive
permission to engage. "All of a sudden, all hell breaks loose," he said.
"It's surreal." At one point, the battalion's tanks were so eager to fire on
the retreating Iraqi forces that they moved off an embankment and got mired
helplessly in the sand. If the Iraqis had any intention of continuing the
war, Manchester explained, the immobilized American tanks made perfect
targets. The tanks were "helpless," but kept volleying cannon fire at the
Iraqis as they were being pulled out of the sand by tow trucks. What happened
along the causeway, he said, was "fucking murder."
>
>What we did was just seal the oilfield off so he" -- the enemy -- "couldn't
get out," Le Moyne told the Army oral historian. "Yup, it's about fifteen
kilometres long and ten to fifteen kilometres wide.... So by using artillery
we were able to seal the top and the bottom of it, and I'll tell you, that
once we did that the panic began to set in.... The Apaches strewed panic and
when the columns started rolling up there was just absolute pandemonium.
Everybody began to break and run. Run in blind fear and terror.... A Hellfire
missile hitting aT-72 tank -- it is an absolute catastrophic destruction. The
turret absolutely separates and blows off a hundred feet in the air, a
hundred yards away."
>
>The 24th Division continued pounding the Iraqi column throughout the
morning, until every vehicle moving toward the causeway -- tank, truck, or
automobile -- was destroyed. McCaffrey, in a written response to a question,
reported that his forces had removed a hundred and eighty-seven tanks and
armored vehicles >from the Iraqi arsenal, along with four hundred or more
trucks. The Battle of Rumaila was closely reviewed at the war's end by an
analyst for the C.I.A., who confirmed that the Iraqi losses were great. The
toll included at least a hundred tanks from the Hammurabi division. "It's
like eating an artichoke," one colonel had said of combat to Captain Bell.
"Once you start, you can't stop."
>
>One of the destroyed vehicles was a bus, which had been hit by a rocket. The
precise number of its occupants who were injured or killed is not known, but
they included civilians and children. One of the first Americans at the scene
was Lieutenant Charles W. Gameros, Jr., a Scout platoon leader, who called in
a Medevac team for the victims. At the time, he was "frustrated" by what he
saw as needless deaths, Gameros recalled in an interview. "Now I look at it
sadly," he said. Unresisting Iraqis had been slain all morning, but the
deaths of the children troubled many soldiers.
>
>Later that afternoon, a platoon sergeant informed Charles Sheehan-Miles that
he and a few colleagues might be handed a grisly mission. "He said, 'We've
blown away a busload of kids,' and warned us that we were going to get called
for a burial mission," Sheehan-Miles recalled. Dirty details were a way of
Army life, but this one would be special. "The sergeant gave us a heads-up so
we could prepare ourselves." The call never came.
>
>
>A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT OURSELVES
>
>
>
>McCaffrey was triumphant at battle's end. "He was smiling like a proud
father,"John Brasfield told me. The young soldier got a good look at the
commanding general, because the 2-7 Scouts had something McCaffrey wanted:
Soviet and Iraqi flags. The flags were not battle trophies but had been
pulled down by the Scouts very early that morning while they were walking
through a deserted Soviet construction plant along Highway 8. "We got orders
to drive up after the battle and present him with the flags," Brasfield
recalled. "McCaffrey and Ware were surveying the battlefield from the back of
the Bradley." James Manchester thought the scene almost comical: "He wanted
that flag. It was very important that he get the flag." The soldiers were
later told that McCaffrey had made a gift of one of the flags to General
Schwarzkopf.
>
>Le Moyne was jubilant as well. At the end of the battle, David Pierson
writes in "Tuskers," Le Moyne showed up at battalion headquarters. "Hot
damn," he exclaimed, according to Pierson. "I've killed more tanks today as
an infantryman than my daddy did as a tanker in all of World War II." He told
the Army historian, "This whole operation has been a practical demonstration
of what happens when you do things right. For the right kind of reasons. This
war has had no Lieutenant Calleys in it.... Has no Jane Fondas. It's just a
very professional army."
>
>That afternoon, Le Moyne took Linda Suttlehan on a helicopter tour. "I flew
around expecting to see a battlefield," Suttlehan told me. Instead, she
saw"millions of footprints in the sand" amid hundreds of smoking vehicles. "I
thought, Wow. This is not the kind of battle I thought I'd see."
>
>A couple of evenings later, Pierson was driving toward the causeway. "It
must have been a nightmare along this road as the Apaches dispensed death
>from five kilometers away one vehicle at a time," he writes. "I stopped as a
familiar smell wafted through the air.... It was the smell of a cookout on a
warm summer day, the smell of a seared steak."
>
>James Manchester also wandered among the dead after the battle, and he began
describing the scene during an interview, telling me about the vast number of
"burning vehicles and burning bodies." He stopped talking, and began to weep.
>
>Sometime after the battle, an interpreter for the 124th Military
Intelligence Battalion interrogated a captured Iraqi tank commander who,
according to an officer in the 124th, plaintively asked again and again, "Why
are you killing us? All we were doing was going home. Why are you killing
us?"
>
>
>After the engagement, reporters were flown by helicopter to McCaffrey's
assault command headquarters for a briefing and interviews. McCaffrey praised
the "initiative, intellect, and determinaton" of his troops, and added that
"Saddam Hussein still doesn't know what hit him." He also said, "We
dismantled the Iraqi Army, reduced it to a third of what it had been."
McCaffrey gave the press corps a statistical rundown of miles travelled,
weapons confiscated, prisoners captured, and tanks and trucks demolished. An
officer in his command post recalled that"one of the constant themes" was the
General's belief that "we hadn't destroyed enough."
>
>Analysts in Washington and at General Schwarzkopf's headquarters were
skeptical of McCaffrey's claim that the Iraqis fired first. A senior Iraq
analyst for the C.I.A. told me that he and his colleagues had concluded
almost immediately that there was "no way" the retreating Iraqi forces opened
fire on the 24th Division. People at the C.I.A. understood that the Hammurabi
tanks had a much more important mission than continuing an already lost war:
more than half the Republican Guard units made their way back to Baghdad and
helped to keep Saddam Hussein in power.
>
>Military analysts at the coalition headquarters asked to view the battle
films that were automatically recorded by cameras on board each Apache
helicopter. The footage clearly showed, one officer told me, that the Iraqi
tanks were in full retreat when the attack began, and in no way posed a
threat to the American forces. "These guys were in an offroad defensive
position -- deployed in a perimeter," the analyst added. Once the American
attack reached full force, some Iraqi vehicles did attempt to return fire.
"We saw T-72s in battle lines, firing away blindly in the air. They didn't
know what was killing them, but they were gamely shooting -- knowing they
would die." (An American could be overheard on the footage shouting, as a
missile tore into an Iraqi vehicle, "Say hello to Allah!")
>
>It was clear at the Pentagon, too, that something had gone awry. One colonel
assigned at the time to monitor war reports at the National Military Command
Center -- he is now a major general, and still on active duty -- told me that
the reports from the 24th Division were extremely ''unsettling,'' because "it
made no sense for a defeated army to invite their own death. It didn't track
with anything we knew about the theatre. It came across as shooting fish in a
barrel. Everyone was incredulous."
>
>The disquiet reached into XVIII Corps headquarters, where doubts about
McCaffrey's attack were widespread. On March 3rd, General Luck, McCaffrey's
immediate boss, flew to the 24th Division headquarters to ask McCaffrey what
had gone on. Luck, who retired from the Army with four stars, said of
McCaffrey, "I have a deep and abiding respect for anyone who serves his
country." But, he added, speaking carefully, "I felt when I was in command I
had a parental responsibility to my soldiers. You don't bring any limelight
on yourself. Better to give it to your soldiers."
>
>"I went straight up there," Luck went on. "I asked all the people I
suspected, 'What went on? Why did it happen at this time?' I went up in a
positive way and looked them in the eye. Everybody said, 'This is a fair
deal."'The Arms, he added, "has built everything on trust and responsibility.
I've got to respect what they say. When you give them every opportunity to
say what happened and nothing is said, what do you do?" Luck's dilemma was
acute: an official inquiry was unlikely to produce any evidence to contradict
McCaffrey's account, and would have undermined the Army's victory in the war.
>
>Colonel Frank Akers, who retired as a brigadier general, accompanied Luck on
his visit to the division's headquarters. "He was worried," Akers said of
Luck. The anxiety was shared by many on the staff of XVIII Corps. "Deep down,
there were several of us who said, 'Something doesn't feel right about this,'
" Akers told me. " 'It doesn't quite add up.' " The response to Luck's
questioning at 24th Division headquarters didn't help. McCaffrey's people
were "kind of looking at their feet and shuffling around," Akers said. One of
Luck's questions caused consternation, Patrick Lamar told Army investigators
in 1991. Luck"turned around and said, 'How's the ceasefire line going?' We
said, 'What ceasefire line?' "
>
>Lamar's staff showed the Corps commander the division's ceasefire deployment
lines, as of March 2nd. Luck said,"This isn't the right one, fellows." Lamar,
the loyal soldier, took the blame. "My guys screwed up," he said. He told
Luck that the division had deployed forward because someone made an innocent
mistake and got the coordinates wrong. McCaffrey said nothing.
>
>Lamar laughed at himself as he told me the story eight years later.
"McCaffrey played stupid in front of Luck," he said, adding that McCaffrey's
getting the coordinates wrong had been anything but a mistake.
>
>A few days after the battle, McCaffrey and the other Army generals who had
helped win the war took part in an extended review and planning meeting at
King Khalid Military City. The talks were headed by Lieutenant General
Yeosock, who, as the Third Army commander, had been responsible for much of
the Army's war planning. He was assisted by his operations officer, Brigadier
General Steven L. Arnold. One of the first steps in the review, according to
some of the officers who participated, was to discuss and compare the
reporting of each division -- the logs, journals, and situation reports --
with the available satellite data fixing the division's location.The officers
did not dispute McCaffrey's claim that the Iraqis had fired first, but the
overriding issue was the most basic one of all: why had the 24th Division
moved during the ceasefire into the path of the retreating Iraqis? McCaffrey,
in a May 8th letter to The New Yorker, stated that all the appropriate
headquarters always knew his position. "U.S. Army elements in Desert Storm,"
the letter said, "were the first military force in history that almost always
knew exactly where we were." The 24th Division "never falsely reported its
position," McCaffrey wrote. "I never did so and never instructed any of the
soldiers under my command to do so."
>
>A number of generals at the King Khalid commanders' conference remember it
differently. Most of the position reports to higher headquarters during the
war were accurate to within a few dozen metres, General Ronald H. Griffith
(Ret.), who commanded the 1st Armored Division in the war, recalled. "In
Barry's logs," Griffith added,"the distances were off dramatically -- dozens
of miles." McCaffrey spent much of the meeting insisting that he needed to
adjust his record, and was finally permitted to do so. "We all laughed about
it," the general said. "If we'd known that he was rewriting history, we'd
have protested more."
>
>The general's point was that the 24th Division was not always where
McCaffrey said it was. "Barry would tell you where he was going or where he
had been," General Yeosock told me later, "but his division isn't there. Some
commanders will tell you where they're going; others will not." For General
Arnold and the Third Army planners who were plotting the Iraqi retreat,
McCaffrey's antics masked a consequential discrepancy. They did not know that
the 24th Division would be blocking the causeway over Lake Hammar. "We gave
the Iraqis an area" of safe passage, which included the causeway, Arnold told
me. "We didn't know there were two American brigades there. We would not have
sent the Iraqis there." The planners would have told the Iraqis to get home
another way. None of the assembled generals, of course, had any reason to
suspect that an official investigation would take place into the March 2nd
counterattack, and the potential significance of McCaffrey's inexact
reporting escaped everyone at King Khalid Military City. Arnold recalled, "We
took it as an honest mistake and attempted to sort it out."
>
>According to the Army historian Richard Swain, who was the only outsider
allowed to attend the review, McCaffrey arrived without any detailed records,
and came close to turning the proceedings into a shambles. "He got dates all
wrapped around the axle," Swain said, and unsuccessfully tried to reconcile
his version of events with the versions of others. The goal of Arnold's
conference, Swain explained, was to create a broad narrative sequence of what
had happened, on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour basis, during the war. McCaffrey
"kept on insisting that things happened in different time frames. He was
confused, and, being McCaffrey, assumed everyone else was wrong and he was
right." At one point, Swain said, McCaffrey was arguing about which day was
which. By then, he said, the conference had degenerated into "an attempt to
get McCaffrey's times right."
>
>McCaffrey remained triumphant. According to "Tuskers," he told his troops
before they flew back to Fort Stewart, "You knocked them to their goddam
knees in the opening day of the war and they never got up." Later in the
speech, he said."You knocked them to their knees because they were like an
eighth-grade team playing with pro football players." He had never been "more
proud of American soldiers in my entire life as watching your attack on 2
March.... It's fascinating to watch what's happening in our country. God,
it's the damnedest thing I ever saw in my Life. It's probably the single most
unifying event that has happened in America since World War II.... The upshot
will be that, just like Vietnam had the tragic effect on our country for
years, this one has brought back a new way of looking at ourselves. "
>
>After the offensive, McCaffrey asked his senior aviation officer, Colonel
Tackaberry, to provide him with a list of pilots who deserved the
Distinguished Flying Cross. This time, Tackaberry did say no to his
commander. Or, at any rate, he didn't say yes. There was a second request,
and then a third. Tackaberry refused. "I put it in writing, and said, 'I do
not believe that any of these people deserved it."' His reasoning was simple:
none of his pilots had flown in a sustained battle, with the enemy firing at
them. "Our pilots were killing from three or four miles away," he said, and
were not in a "battle," as the authorized Army history later reported. He
never gave McCaffrey any names.
>
>There was a final Gulf War assignment for Major Brennan as well. McCaffrey
ordered him to find two Saudi Arabian camels and transport them to Fort
Stewart, where they could serve as constant reminders of the division's
success in the desert. "I'm the camel guy," Brennan told me. "Got the mission
personally from him. He said, 'I want a mascot.' " Two camels were found,
with the aid of the Saudi Arabian government, but the U.S. Department of
Agriculture refused to allow them into the country. McCaffrey persisted. "We
ended up buying some from a farmer somewhere in Indiana," Brennan said.
>
>
>III -- THE INVESTIGATIONS
>
>
>
>THE WHITE FLAG
>
>
>
>When the 24th Division returned to the United States, not long after the
March 2nd attack, there was a tumultuous rally at Fort Stewart. The Gulf War
generals became instant national heroes. "We had given America a clear win at
low casualties in a noble cause," Colin Powell wrote in "My American
Journey," his 1995 memoir, "and the American people fell in love again with
their armed forces."
>
>At Fort Stewart and at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, however, word began
spreading that some things had gone very wrong in the war. Shortly after
returning from Iraq, Sergeant Steven Larimore gathered five of his colleagues
>from the Ground Surveillance Radar teams of the 124th Military Intelligence
Battalion, and walked into the Fort Stewart branch of the Army's Criminal
Investigations Division, or C.I.D., office and met with two investigators.
>
>The men described what they had seen on March 1st, when Iraqis in civilian
clothes had been shot near a schoolhouse while holding a white flag. "All six
of us went and told what we knew," Larimore said to me. "The basic tenet was
that we didn't see anybody shooting at us" before the 1st Brigade platoon
opened fire. Larimore had the support of his company commander, Lieutenant
Charles Febus. Michael Sangiorge, one of Larimore's crew members, was anxious
about going to the C.I.D. "Are we going to get in trouble?" he recalled
asking.
>
>The C.I.D. is known inside the Army as a "stovepipe" command -- one whose
chain of command leads directly to the chief of staff, in Washington. The
goal is to insulate the reporting and investigation of any wrong-doing from a
local division commander, who has no interest in prosecutions that could
damage his career. Such interference is known as "command influence."
>
>Larimore and his colleagues heard nothing more from the C.I.D., and
continued with their day-to-day assignments. The next step gave everyone
pause. Colonel Le Moyne, the 1st Brigade commander, wanted to meet after work
with the men in the chain of command -- including Larimore, Lieutenant Febus,
and the commander of the 124th Battalion, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Reuss.
"Evidently," Larimore told me, "the C.I.D. stovepipe didn't work." Once in Le
Moyne's office, Larimore said, "We got this big long speech about how we had
never been in combat or in a firefight. We didn't know what it was like. He
ripped us pretty good."
>
>Febus, who is now a legal officer in the Army Reserve, was appalled by Le
Moyne's intervention, which took place before any of the issues were
officially investigated. "It was totally one-sided, totally confrontational,"
he told me. "Instead of 'What did you see?' or 'What was going on?' it was
'You haven't been in a firefight. You don't know what you saw.' He was
accusing my soldiers of not knowing what was going on -- of not being squared
away," he said. "If his beef was the way it got reported, he should have said
that. If his beef was what they saw, I got a problem with that." Sergeant
Larimore did not back off in the meeting, Febus said.
>
>Le Moyne also criticized Lieutenant Colonel Reuss, the battalion commander,
because his subordinates had made a report to the C.I.D. without Reuss's
prior approval -- approval that was unnecessary under Army regulations. Reuss
said little during the meeting, Febus recalled. (Reuss, who is now retired,
told me recently that he had "no recollection whatsoever" of the meeting.) Le
Moyne's intent seemed obvious: to get the men to withdraw their complaint. "I
was biting my lip to keep from getting in trouble," Febus said.
>
>When I interviewed Le Moyne recently, he defended his meeting with Larimore
and the other complainants as merely an attempt "to cut down on confusion.
You gather the key people all in one place, so there's no misunderstanding."
His message to the G.S.R. teams, he said, was that their allegations "would
be investigated fully and completely." He continued, "On issues of morality
and integrity, there is no substitute for looking them dead in the eye and
telling them of their rights.... McCaffrey's guidance to the chain of command
was that any report of any irregularity had to be investigated -- every
suspicion, war story, fairy tale, and rumor.
>
>I told Le Moyne that some of the young enlisted men felt that his message
was one not of reaffirming their rights but of intimidation.
>
>"Absolutely untrue," Le Moyne responded. "The only surprise I had is that
they lacked confidence in their chain of command" -- that is, in Lieutenant
Colonel Reuss -- "not to take it to him first. There are no secrets in a
military unit. Soldiers talk. Why, months later, had they not discussed this
with their chain of command?"
>
>Nonetheless, Le Moyne's showdown meeting badly rattled some of the young
radar operators. One battalion officer told me,"The men were terrified --
they said, 'We've got the Big Green Machine going after us.' "
>
>Le Moyne's next step was to authorize a captain in his brigade to conduct an
informal investigation, known as an AR15-6, and file a report. Such a step
was perfectly legal. However, a number of senior Army lawyers, in interviews
for this article, questioned Le Moyne's judgment. "As a general rule," one
military lawyer said, serious allegations should be "thoroughly examined by
an unbiased, neutral party outside of your command. You have a charge of
deaths allegations that rise above the norm. Having a captain? Why do it that
way? Is he" -- the captain -- "trying to come up with results his boss
wants?"
>
>A few weeks after Le Moyne's meeting with Larimore and his teammates, the
officers and men of the 124th Battalion were again summoned to his office,
this time to listen to the results of the brigade's investigation. There were
no surprises. "The captain laid out the course of his investigation,"
Larimore told me. "He said there was a group who observed no weapons" among
the civilians who had been shot and "there were also people who said they saw
weapons and muzzle flashes" from the Iraqi civilians. The captain then
concluded that the allegations of wrongful death were "unsubstantiated. "
>
>In Le Moyne's view, the case was now closed. The investigation, he said, had
produced a series of witnesses who "totally refuted the allegations." After
the captain's report, Le Moyne recalled, "I asked Larimore very specifically,
'Do you understand what's been said here?' and he said yes. 'Do you agree
with what's been found?' He said yes."
>
>Larimore's recollection of the encounter is rueful. "For some reason," he
explained, "I was tagged as the ringleader. Le Moyne asked me if I was
satisfied. I wasn't going to argue with an 0-6" -- a colonel. "I told him that
I was glad my soldiers could see the Army had a system to deal with things."
Larimore, who is still on active duty in Army intelligence, shrugged and
said, "I didn't like Colonel Le Moyne or the way he did business. I know what
I saw."
>
>Charles Febus, speaking of Larimore and the others, said, "They did their
duty and filed their report. And the Army chose to do what it did."
>
>
>THE HOSPITAL BUS
>
>
>
>Specialist 4 Edward Walker was tense, irritable, and quick to take offense
after his experiences with the 2-7 Scouts. He returned to the 5th Engineer
headquarters in Saudi Arabia around March 6th and immediately got into a
dispute with a battalion officer who wanted him to turn in an Iraqi pistol
he'd kept as a war souvenir. "I wasn't even there five minutes and they told
me, 'Give me your pistol,' " Walker related. "I got pissed and I start
screaming and yelling. 'No, you're not going to take this. I been out there
getting shot at. You motherfuckers -- out there shooting unarmed prisoners,'
and stuff like this."
>
>Within a few days, Walker found himself telling his story to a lawyer at a
nearby Air Force base. He remembered little about the meeting, but he did
recall that 1st Sergeant Rex A. Wertz, Sr., approved it. (Wertz, now living
in retirement in Pennsylvania, confirmed Walker's account, telling me that
"All I know is that this guy Walker said he wanted to talk to the I.G. and we
let him go.")
>
>Walker returned to Fort Leonard Wood and soon found himself going three
times to Fort Stewart, because the 1st Brigade had convened a second AR15-6
inquiry, into his allegations. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Kight was the
brigade's executive officer -- that is, Le Moyne's most senior deputy.
Walker recalled spending hours at one of the sessions going through maps and
documents in an attempt to recount the incident fully. When he was asked if
he had seen anyone actually get shot, Walker said what he always said: he
hadn't seen any prisoners fall, but he saw rounds being fired at them.
>
>Kight's investigation absolved Ware's battalion of any wrongdoing. Le Moyne,
in a conversation with me, depicted the inquiry as sweeping in its
absolution. "It not a hospital bus," he declared. "There were no wounded.
They were armed Iraqi officers and soldiers." Le Moyne added that Edward
Walker "wasn't even there. He was off in the distance." At the end of the
inquiry, Le Moyne said, he brought Walker to Fort Stewart to hear the
investigating officer's report. "You have to look him in the eye," Le Moyne
told me. "It's tough to find Walker as a credible witness. The kid never
connected with the Scout platoon he was attached to. This kid never took."
>
>Walker viewed Le Moyne's inquiry as a coverup. "The Colonel was up there
doing the talking, "Walker told me. "He was the one leading the whole thing,
and he was saying 'The Scouts ' " -- Walker's colleagues on the battlefield
-- " 'say this didn't happen.' " Walker said Le Moyne did reveal that one
lieutenant in the battalion remembered seeing the prisoners before the
Bradleys began shooting, but the lieutenant testified that he did not recall
what happened to them. "He went through the whole thing and my story," Walker
said. "By the time he got done, the Colonel looked at me and said, 'You
haven't got the slightest idea what you're talking about. You were just upset
and overwrought.' "
>
>"That colonel was basically just reaming my tush," Walker told me. He felt
abandoned by his former colleagues. "I had nobody backing me up anymore.
Everybody had changed their story." Sergeant Steven Mulig also felt helpless.
He and a few other Scouts had been summoned to testify, but he felt that none
of the brigade officers wanted to hear what they had to say. "We were all
getting upset," Mulig told me. The investigators tried to undermine the
Scouts' credibility by challenging their ability to read map coordinates and
suggesting that they had no idea where the alleged shootings took place.
"They made it look like we didn't know what was going on over there," Mulig
said. Lieutenant Colonel Kight kept "beating it to death. He just let it go
the way it went. It was just an officer coverup kind of thing."
>
>Kight's report, as summarized by the Army, concluded that, while the
Americans had fired in the direction of the Iraqis, no prisoners "had been
killed or wounded in the incident.... No bodies, graves, or wounded were
attributed to this incident-Iraqi or friendly." Another finding, the Army
report said, was that the Iraqis who died had contributed to their own
demise: "The Iraqi vehicles carrying surrendering soldiers had not been
marked with white flags."
>
>Former Lieutenant Kirk Allen, the Scout commander, who is now a major
serving in Georgia, told me that all the witnesses from the Bradley companies
denied that their bullets had struck any prisoners. Two important witnesses,
he added, turned out to be Le Moyne and the brigade executive officer, Major
Benjamin Freakley, whose armored vehicles were determined to have been in a
position to see the shooting -- and both men subsequently testified that they
saw no wrongdoing. One Army lawyer who was on active duty at Fort Stewart in
mid-1991 told me that the AR15-6 testimony even suggested that some of the
Iraqis had "feigned" their surrender, and had turned themselves into
prisoners with the intent of taking a shot at the Americans. "It was
essentially a ruse," he said.
>
>Some of the lawyers in the Judge Advocate General's office at Fort Stewart
came to believe that Le Moyne was far from independent in his handling of the
allegations. "Le Moyne is on the firing line," one senior lawyer told me,
"but McCaffrey is pulling the string." Le Moyne, in one of his conversations
with me, was categorical in asserting the independence of his role: "I
appointed one of my brigade officers to investigate . . . and his report was
that it was not true."
>
>McCaffrey had a different recollection of who appointed the investigators,
as he told two questioners from the C.I.D. in 1991. There were, he said,
"three allegations of enemy prisoners being fired on. In each case, I had
appointed an investigating officer, and I said you will get to the truth of
the allegations. You will interview everybody involved.... Which was done."
>
>For reasons not known, John Brasfield and James Manchester were never called
to testify in the 1st Brigade's investigation. David Collatt, their colleague
on the 2-7 Scout team, testified that he didn't actually see any prisoners
get shot. But he scoffed at the brigade's finding that none of the Iraqi
prisoners had been killed or wounded: "Our Bradleys turned and started firing
at the prisoners. And there was no wounded or killed? Rounds pumping right
where they're at, and they tell us nobody got hurt?" Collatt told me that he
had no hard feelings toward Edward Walker for not leaving the war behind him:
"Walker did what he had to do. We were just glad to be alive."
>
>"I knew I was a marked man as soon as I said something," Walker said. He was
not permitted to reenlist by the authorities at Fort Leonard Wood, and he
left the Army in the fall of 1991.
>
>
>MITCHELL'S INQUIRY
>
>
>
>Sometime late in the spring of 1991, three members of the 5th Engineer
Battalion at Fort Leonard Wood went to the Inspector General's office on
base. They told a story much like Larimore's and Walker's about the shooting
of Iraqi prisoners of war by soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the 24th
Division. The complaints became the responsibility of Fort Leonard Wood's
Inspector General, Major Thomas Mitchell. Mitchell, who had little experience
in investigations, Army law, or procedure, had spent his career in the Army
as an engineer and had agreed to become Fort Leonard Wood's Inspector General
only reluctantly. None of his superior officers did anything to help him out.
Of the three enlisted men who made the complaint, Mitchell said, "The kids
who came in were nice, and there seemed to be some validity to what they saw.
But we couldn't confirm anything illegal. Even if you have a witness, if you
can't substantiate it you can't report it as a finding." He did not recall
their names, but he did recall that their allegations involved "several
hundred" prisoners and some Iraqis who got "ripped up."
>
>Army records show that at least one company of engineers from Fort Leonard
Wood was assigned in the Gulf War to the 2-7 Battalion of the 1st Brigade.
Edward Walker told me that a number of his colleagues worked closely with the
various units in Charles Ware's battalion, and that some of those engineers
-- including, perhaps, those who made the complaint -- had swept into the
area along Highway 8 on the afternoon of February 27th. "Behind us was the
Bradleys, and right behind them were the engineers," Walker said. "They would
have seen it" -- the prisoners' shootings.
>
>It is far from clear that Mitchell, who has since left the Army, made a
serious attempt to substantiate the soldiers' story. In my first conversation
with him, by telephone, he told me that he had made a trip to Saudi Arabia
but was unable to establish that the Iraqi soldiers who were "ripped up"
were victims of wrongdoing by soldiers of the 24th. In a subsequent
interview, in Missouri, where he now lives, Mitchell provided a different
account. He said it was one of the enlisted men in his office who had
travelled to Saudi Arabia to look into an allegation that "hundreds were
involved in a shooting incident where dozens were killed." Mitchell shared
his information with the C.I.D. Office at Fort Leonard Wood, and was informed
that the C.I.D. had previously investigated the allegation and concluded that
the Iraqis had been killed in an exchange of gunfire among themselves.
Mitchell said he was told, "Where they found bodies, the wounds were from
Iraqi rounds. The shell casing on the ground did not match U.S. casing. We
were finding Warsaw Pact ammunition on the ground."
>
>A number of government and academic experts on the war told me that they
knew of no reports during or immediately after the war of Iraqi soldiers
shooting one another to prevent surrender. One analyst, Michael Eisenstadt,
of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, noted that the anti-Hussein
uprisings -- which were all violently suppressed -- did not begin in earnest
until after the war and involved the selected targeting of high-level
military and party officials. "Among stragglers in the war, it was every man
for himself," Eisenstadt said. I subsequently asked Mitchell if he or, to his
knowledge, any other government investigator had actually seen the Iraqi
victims, and examined their wounds. He said no.
>
>In the report that Mitchell prepared for his superiors at Fort Leonard Wood,
he found that the 5th Engineer allegations were "unsubstantiated." A draft of
those findings, which he gave me, concluded -- with no evidence cited -- that
the Iraqis had shot each other. "In a couple of instances," the draft report
said, "gunfire was exchanged within refugee groups and gunshot victims were
pointed out as Republican Guard morale officers keeping tabs on Iraqi
reservists. Some incidents were explained as internal vengeance and
retribution among Iraqis."
>
>Sergeant Tony Abernathy, one of the enlisted men assigned to the Inspector
General's office at Fort Leonard Wood, subsequently informed me that no one
from the office "went to the desert" during the investigation. Abernathy
also provided me with a far different account of Mitchell's investigation. "I
don't remember Mitchell doing anything about it," he said. "It was a big
situation that nobody wanted to mess with at the time. We weren't equipped to
handle it. I think it was not an investigation. The U.S. Army just didn't
want the publicity." Abernathy is now retired; before his assignment to the
Fort Leonard Wood Inspector General's office, he had spent much of his career
in the Special Forces.
>
>No one in the chain of command at Fort Leonard Wood seems to have objected
to Mitchell's investigation. He was apparently doing, as Abernathy
suggested, exactly what the system wanted.
>
>
>THE LETTER
>
>
>
>In August, 1991, Colonel Ernest H. Dinkel was a deputy chief of staff for
the Criminal Investigation Division. Dinkel, then forty-six years old, had
spent several years as an Army cop and was working out of the C.I.D.'s local
headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, near the Pentagon. "I'm walking down
the hall one afternoon," he recounted recently. "And the General's secretary
says, 'Don't go anywhere.' " A few moments later, Dinkel and some associates
were in the office of Major General Peter T. Barry, the director of the
C.I.D. command. Barry had just returned from the office of General Gordon
Sullivan, the Army's Vice-Chief of Staff. The Army had a problem. A carefully
typed, two-page anonymous letter had been mailed to the Army Inspector
General. It appeared to have been written by an officer serving in one of
McCaffrey's 24th Division command posts, for it was filled with information
that only an insider could have known. "That's what scared everybody," Dinkel
recalled. "This was >from someone who was there."
>
>The letter contained a number of allegations that were certain to be
explosive if they turned out to be true. Two in particular stood out. The
letter alleged that McCaffrey was guilty of a "war crime" in his March 2nd
assault on the retreating Iraqis, and had urged his brigade commanders "to
find a way for him to go kill all of those bastards. "The letter also claimed
that 24th Division soldiers had "slaughtered" Iraqi prisoners of war after
seizing an airfield on the fourth day of the war.
>
>The letter included a threat that, as its writer obviously understood, would
get the attention of the Army's leadership, which was still relishing the
warm glow of the Gulf War. "If you chose not to investigate, so be it," the
letter said. "Tapes, documents, and photos exist. Jack Anderson" -- the
columnist -- "would be very interested."
>
>Given the extent and severity of the letter's accusations, an investigation
was inevitable, and Dinkel was put in charge of it. His deputy, Warrant
Officer Willie J. Rowell, was the most experienced and respected C.I.D.
investigator in the Washington area. The inquiry was not merely to be kept
secret, as all such investigations were, but to be kept secret from every
other office in the C.I.D. It was believed that public knowledge of the
allegations -- and they were, of course, nothing more than anonymous
allegations -- would be devastating to McCaffrey's career and to the Army's
postwar reputation.
>
>Colonel Dinkel and his C.I.D. team arrived at Fort Stewart in mid-August,
1991, just three weeks after Le Moyne's 1st Brigade concluded its report on
the Edward Walker allegations, and well after it closed out its case on the
allegations brought by Sergeant Larimore, of the 124th Military Intelligence
Battalion. Both files were immediately made available to the C.I.D. In each
instance, the brigade's findings were taken at face value. The cases in Le
Moyne's brigade, once closed, stayed closed.
>
>Dinkel and his crew spent the next several weeks assiduously conducting
interviews and collecting data on the anonymous letter, at Fort Stewart and
at Army bases across America. They spent weeks looking into the letter's
charge of the slaughter of prisoners at an airfield, and could find no
evidence to support it. They never focussed on the hospital-bus shootings
described by Larimore and Walker.
>
>Dinkel was most concerned with the letter's charges about McCaffrey's
leadership before and after the annihilation of the Iraqis at Rumaila. One
C.I.D. team flew to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, to interview Colonel Michael
MacLaren (Ret.), who, as the division's G-1, or logistics officer, had been
in charge of its rear command post in Saudi Arabia.
>
>MacLaren was told six weeks after the war that the unit no longer needed him
around. MacLaren's testimony, released under the Freedom of Information Act,
provided support for one of the anonymous letter's most serious charges --
that a colleague had overheard McCaffrey urge his commanders on the command
radio net "to find a way for him to go kill all of those bastards." MacLaren
said that he had been troubled by the March 2nd engagement, especially in the
months after the war, when the division spun "numerous versions of how
contact was initiated by the enemy-tank fire, frontal assault, artillery,
R.P.G., Sagger missile. I was surprised that there were so many versions of
the truth," especially by late spring. "I thought we ought to have figured it
out," he said. "After all, it was these enemy actions which prompted us into
action."There was another troubling aspect of the March 2nd engagement,
MacLaren said: "Our apparent lack of 'measured response' in light of the
ceasefire. I thought we should have met enemy force with appropriate force --
not necessarily overwhelming force. Even the use of force on the battlefield
has its ethical restrictions." The term "turkey shoot," he said, had become
"common usage within the division when describing the March 2nd engagement."
>
>MacLaren also told the C.I.D. of a cryptic comment he said that McCaffrey
made at the beginning of an after-action review meeting later in March:
"Remember, the Iraqis started this one." When asked why he had not filed a
formal complaint about McCaffrey's actions, MacLaren said that he had no hard
evidence to back up his information. "I have no firsthand knowledge," he told
the C.I.D. "I believe it may have been a bad decision on someone's part."
>
>
>The C.I.D. also learned about McCaffrey's dispute with Patrick Lamar, and on
August 17th Dinkel and a colleague flew to Fort Stewart to interview Lamar.
Lamar, like all colonels, wanted to become a general, and he understood that
volunteering his views on the events of March 2nd would do little for that
ambition. And, like many Army officers, he had contempt for the C.I.D.;
investigators are known as "two by twos," because they travel in pairs and
conduct interviews jointly. "They're not real cops," Lamar told me.
>
>Lamar's testimony about McCaffrey alternated between praise and revelation.
"He is smart," Lamar told the C.I.D. "He's a combat commander I would follow.
I think he knows what he's doing -- otherwise he wouldn't be where's he's
at.... He has never treated me wrong." Nonetheless, Lamar told the C.I.D.
that he considered the attack to be a violation of the ceasefire, and that
the Iraqis had taken no action to provoke it. On March 2nd, Lamar testified,
he had been contacted by the 1st Brigade and told that lights, from vehicles,
could be seen in the distance. "I asked which way they were going," Lamar
went on, "and they said they were going north" -- to the causeway. "I said,
'O.K., stay away >from it, you don't need to have any contact with it.' " His
caution won him little favor. Hours later, Lamar said, McCaffrey "took
charge" and the attack began. "I'll tell you the truth," the Colonel said, "I
didn't support it because at that point in time I thought it was a slaughter.
But the bottom line was he was doing what was necessary to protect the force
because they had been fired on and nobody knew what these guys were liable to
do." Lamar denied the anonymous letter's report that he had described
McCaffrey's actions on March 2nd as a war crime, but he added, "What I did
tell him was that we better make darn sure that they were fired on first or
otherwise we would violate the ceasefire rule.... The bottom line is that he
wanted to keep pushing."
>
>The C.I.D. interview lasted for hours, Lamar says, and he was not contacted
again by its investigators.
>
>The Lamar interview convinced Dinkel that the C.I.D. was wasting its time.
"Boss, we ain't got shit," he recalls telling General Barry. "This is a
bullshit letter." A day or so later, Dinkel recalls, he was summoned to the
Pentagon along with General Barry, to meet with the Army's top brass in the
offices of General Sullivan, the Vice-Chief of Staff. It was Dinkel's first
visit to the Army's inner sanctum. There were at least six generals at the
meeting, many with two or more stars on their epaulettes. A few civilian
officials were also present. Dinkel says that he and General Barry were told
that it was unacceptable to stop the inquiry. There was worried talk, to
Dinkel's astonishment, of "another My Lai," and the C.I.D. was given a broad
mandate to investigate McCaffrey.
>
>The C.I.D. returned to Fort Stewart and began a series of interviews there,
and at Army bases around the country. Dinkel and his colleagues worked hard
over the next few weeks -- more than a hundred and fifty men and women were
interviewed. Had a soldier volunteered information about a crime, the C.I.D.
most certainly would have taken the complaint seriously, and begun an
inquiry. But few soldiers report crimes, because they don't want to
jeopardize their Army careers.
>
>The interviews went on, the questions were asked, and the answers duly
transcribed. In the C.I.D. interviews, released under the Freedom of
Information Act, soldier after soldier, including those in Ware's 2-7
battalion, reports that he knew nothing about the mistreatment of prisoners.
Several thought that the Iraqi prisoners, far from being abused, were treated
too well. Many testify that the Iraqis engaged in a variety of hostile acts
on March 2nd. The inescapable fact is that Dinkel and his team were left in
the dark by the senior officers of the 24th Division, and its 1st Brigade.
Dinkel told me he knew nothing of allegations involving an Iraqi hospital bus
or a large number of Iraqi prisoners of war: "If someone had said two hundred
people, I would have remembered that." He also said he never heard the name
Edward Walker, adding, "I don't know anybody at Fort Leonard Wood."
>
>
>JUST A LINE ON THE GROUND
>
>
>
>On August 27th, Dinkel and Warrant Officer Rowell conducted a two-hour
interview with McCaffrey in his office at Fort Stewart. When they arrived,
McCaffrey was "all smiles," Dinkel said, and greeted them cordially. There
was one jarring note, however. Before the questioning could begin, Dinkel
recalled, the General "took off his jacket and showed us his screwed-up arm."
Dinkel felt that McCaffrey was implying that he deserved special
consideration because of his war record -- an implication that Dinkel told me
he resented.
>
>No such resentment showed up in the transcript of the interview, which
lasted two hours. Dinkel and Rowell asked a total of eight questions.
McCaffrey was asked if he was "aware" of any incident in which Iraqi
prisoners were killed; whether he was "aware" of any actions by his division
to provoke the Iraqis into violating the ceasefire on March 2nd; and what his
understanding of the rules of engagement was. The final question was one
asked of all witnesses: "Is there anything you'd like to add to this
statement?"
>
>McCaffrey was asked nothing about Lamar's assertion that the ceasefire lines
had been ignored, inadvertently or not, at the end of the war. Nor did the
investigators pursue Lamar's claim that the senior staff didn't know or
communicate the precise boundaries of the division's area of operations.
>
>McCaffrey was careful, nonetheless, to explain to the C.I.D. investigators
that he was having "difficulty in remembering precisely times and days" --
the same issue that marred the commanders' conference at King Khalid Military
City. At the ceasefire, he said, his instructions were not to go more than
three or so miles east of the causeway, a map designation known as Phase Line
Crush. That map designation, he added dismissively, "did not have any meaning
in and of itself. It was just a line on the ground." His goal after the war
was to "close the division up on our forward positions," consolidating his
forces toward the front and standing by for further instructions.
>
>He had done so by the early morning of March 2nd, he said, when the
retreating Iraqis began firing at the 24th Division. The initial contact came
>from Iraqi infantrymen who fired R.P.G.s. "To be honest," McCaffrey said,
"it struck me wrong.... My guess was and still is" that some of the Iraqi
units "were hearing their own forces move through the area and may have
interpreted that as a counterattack . . . because it sounds sort of screwy to
engage an armor unit with R.P.G." -- grenades that posed little threat to
tanks or heavy tracked vehicles. Nonetheless, McCaffrey said, "I started
forces going about this time." He ordered one of the division's Apache and
Air Cavalry helicopter units to get in the air. Two flatbeds with Iraqi tanks
aboard were reported to be moving down the road. "There was a lot of
discussion on 'What the heck does that mean?"' McCaffrey recalled. "Because,
obviously, it is not an attack." By this point, around eight o'clock in the
morning, McCaffrey told the investigators, the Air Cavalry was reporting that
hundreds of Iraqi vehicles were moving. One of his commanders -- presumably
Le Moyne -- "comes up on the net," McCaffrey said, "and he said now we are
being engaged with tanks and Saggers." The brigade commander further reported
that his units were taking direct fire from Iraqi T-72 tanks, with Sagger
missiles, and were returning fire. "I said, 'O.K. Got it.' "
>
>At this point, McCaffrey's description of the battlefield situation began to
differ from his earlier accounts. McCaffrey told the C.I.D. that he
understood >from his brigade commander that "there were a couple or three
battalions, near Rumaila oil field -- armor, tanks." He was also told, he
said, that hundreds of Iraqi vehicles had already crossed the Lake Hammar
causeway. That fact "sort of surprised me because I thought the causeway was
down, so I was not quite sure if they were already over there or" -- and here
McCaffrey added a new element -- "had come out of Basra": not an army fleeing
its defeat in Kuwait but one looking for a new battle. "It sounds like
another brigade... headed up toward us." McCaffrey was now claiming he
thought that the 24th Division was under threat from a large Iraqi military
force from Basra, a regional center for the Republican Guard. "So we got
three chunks," he concluded. "A piece north of the river; we have got a chunk
in the Rumaila oil fields firing at us, and we've got some more back off to
the east in a pretty dicey situation."
>
>In the account provided to the C.I.D., McCaffrey was facing a three-pronged
threat -- from the Euphrates, from the infantrymen and tanks already engaging
with his troops, and from Basra.
>
>He went on, "What was I thinking at the time? Number one was: 'I am not
going to lose fifteen Bradleys and tanks in one sheet of fire and have one
hundred eight six killed and wounded. I flat ass wasn't going to do that. I
would almost say co-equally I was extremely aware of the political
implications of a ceasefire" -- that many were angered because the American
military was not taking the war to Baghdad. "You can bet your ass I knew that
was part and parcel of it. And indeed I was joking. . . that if we make a
mistake right now I will be selling ladies' underwear in Sears and Roebuck
before the week is out.... I would not say that I was reluctant to accept the
responsibility, but, baby, you'd bet your bottom dollar I knew that was going
on. So I was pretty keen on knowing what the situation was and making the
right calls." At some point, he added, "I finally ended up giving
instructions -- 'O.K., whack the guys in front of you.'
>
>"I was very proud of what we had done," he said. "I was just thrilled with
that. Was I ready to fight? You are darned tootin'. And, after this battle
was over on 2 March, I again gave instructions and we prepared for an attack
to secure the outskirts of Basra. So, had I been instructed to do so we would
have executed an attack."
>
>There were some war-crime allegations after the war, McCaffrey acknowledged,
and they were fully investigated, at his insistence. "The bottom line was I
said you may not drop this action until the soldiers involved understand that
the Army fully investigated this allegation, which was done," he told the
C.I.D. "So, my personal judgment is that no Iraqis were maltreated or killed
or engaged during any struggle. Indeed, the opposite of the case, in my
judgment."
>
>Near the end of his testimony, McCaffrey summarized his views on the issue
of prisoner rights and possible war crimes. As a combat commander, he said,
he routinely spoke to his soldiers about honor. "To a civilian that might
sound funny," McCaffrey added, "but one of those points [in his speeches] was
talking about your honor as a soldier . . . When you get out there and you
have helpless people in your grasp . . . If you kill or maltreat prisoners
you will violate international law and create a terrible political disaster
for us. But that is not important compared to the fact that you will violate
your honor as a soldier."
>
>
>Dinkel, who today is the principal of a Lutheran elementary school in Tampa,
Florida, made clear in a series of interviews that he has had no second
thoughts about the McCaffrey investigation. "The case was closed once we
confirmed that rounds were indeed fired," he said. "If I had the assets that
McCaffrey had, I'd have done the same thing."
>
>Rowell isn't as sure. When he was interviewed, he was the most senior
investigator in the C.I.D. -- thirty-six years on the job -- and its
highest-ranking warrant officer. He is now an instructor at the C.I.D.'s
training center at Fort Leonard Wood. "We never did think we got the whole
story on everything,'' Rowell told me. McCaffrey had emerged as a hero from
the war, and there was "some anticipation that he was to grow up and be Chief
of Staff. We knew that we have senior military officers looking at their
careers. There was a lot of sealed lips, and people with amnesia." Everyone's
story was that the Iraqis fired first, he said, and "We never had information
to the contrary.... Nothing to prove that they were lying to us."
>
>Rowell said he felt that he and his fellow-investigators had established
that, at best, only two rounds were fired by Iraqi forces at the 2-7 Scout
platoon on the morning of March 2nd. But, regardless of his and the others'
doubts about McCaffrey, he said, the Dinkel investigation "came up with
nothing that would have won a trial. If you're a two-star general, you can do
whatever you want to do, under the confusion of war."
>
>
>STANDARDS AND ETHICS
>
>
>
>The mere presence of the C.I.D. investigators, and their questions, posed a
Catch-22 for the men and women of the 24th Division. Those who wanted to tell
all about events that would tarnish the reputation of Barry McCaffrey -- men
like Sergeant Larimore and Edward Walker -- found that their firsthand
testimony wasn't enough. Without physical or documentary evidence -- without
some Iraqi bodies -- the C.I.D. would not consider pressing charges. Others
who would have talked, such as Captain Mike Bell and his young colleagues in
McCaffrey's assault command post, were not contacted.
>
>Some common understandings did emerge. General Peter Barry, the C.I.D.'s
commanding officer, assured me that by the time the investigation shut down
some of the Army's senior leaders realized that there was "a certain element
of truth" to the allegations made by the anonymous letter writer. "Whoever
wrote the letter had detailed knowledge," Barry said. "But establishing the
criminality is difficult."
>
>The issue of what to do about McCaffrey became an early litmus test for
General Gordon Sullivan, the Vice-Chief of Staff, who in mid-1991 was weeks
away >from becoming Chief of Staff. Dinkel's voluminous report cleared
McCaffrey of any criminal conduct. It was left to Sullivan to decide whether
to refer many issues deal ing with military standards and ethics to the Army
Inspector General's office. The most important of these dealt with the March
2nd assault and the proportionality of McCaffrey's response to the putative
Iraqi attack. Did McCaffrey violate the rules of engagement?
>
>Sullivan chose not to press these questions. McCaffrey had been cleared by
the C.I.D. of any criminal wrongdoing, and that was that. He would explain
later to a colleague that McCaffrey was an "honest-to-God" hero who had moved
his division farther and faster than any other general in the war. McCaffrey
also had the strong support of General Schwarzkopf, whose headquarters staff
in Saudi Arabia was quick to publicly endorse the March 2nd attack.
(Schwarzkopf reiterated his confidence in McCaffrey's attack this spring,
telling me that "the information that was relayed to me" made it clear that
the 24th Division had been fired upon by the Iraqis "and, for that reason,
the 24th ID [infantry division] attacked those troops.") Colin Powell, the
Army general who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also defended
McCaffrey's offensive. "They fired on us," he told the reporter Patrick
Sloyan, of Newsday. "It was their mistake." Later in 1991, according to a
senior aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Colin, like others in Washington,
heard the stories" about McCaffrey's problems with the C.I.D. and asked
Gordon Sullivan about it. "In the language of the Pentagon," this person
said, Powell "received reassurances" that McCaffrey had been unblemished by
the inquiry. Colin Powell told me that he had no "specific recollection" of
asking about McCaffrey, but added that he invariably made inquiries about an
officer he was considering for an important post, such as McCaffrey was to
receive.
>
>
>Later in 1991, the Army got a new Inspector General -- Major General Ronald
H. Griffith, who, like most generals, knew through the Army grapevine that
McCaffrey had emerged from the war under intense investigation. "If it had
come up to us," Griffith told me, "the first thing I'd do is go to Sullivan
and say, 'Chief, we've a got a problem.' " But nothing; showed up. "I can't
understand how the system could break down like this," Griffith, who is now
retired, told me. "If it had come up to the I.G., I'd have known of it."
>
>In his four years as Inspector General, Griffith said, he learned that "the
guys will go out and do the investigations and if they determine they can't
substantiate the allegations, the chief" -- referring to the senior agent --
"will call me and say, 'Sir, we can't find anything but there's a whole lot
of stuff out there that you can't go to court with.' So you have to ask if
you want to know. A lot of officers didn't want to ask about Barry McCaffrey,
because you knew what the answer would be" -- something negative. (One senior
C.I.D. officer laughed on being told of that comment, and said that the
Army's generals "didn't need to ask the C.I.D. about McCaffrey. They knew.")
>
>McCaffrey continued to serve as commanding general of the 24th Division at
Fort Stewart. Some of his fellow-generals have offered me theories about why
the Army decided not to press its investigation further. "They'd just won a
war and didn't want to shit in their mess kit," a retired major general told
me.
>
>A public controversy over McCaffrey's action might have raised questions
about the over-all conduct of the Gulf War, they point out, and, at the
least, raised public and congressional doubts about the advisability of
permitting the military to conduct a war without independent press coverage.
In the Gulf, the American military had tried, to an unprecedented degree, to
wage a war, judge its success, and tell the world's press what to write about
it.
>
>By early 1992, McCaffrey, by then a lieutenant general, was serving as an
assistant to Colin Powell. (The general who replaced McCaffrey at Fort
Stewart quickly donated his predecessor's camels to a Savannah zoo.) His
promotion, and the assumption that he would soon be promoted again, caused
consternation inside the Army -- with most of the complaints aimed at General
Sullivan, the Vice-Chief of Staff. A year later, a group of Gulf War generals
banded together to successfully lobby Sullivan not to name McCaffrey deputy
Chief of Staff for Operations, one of the Army's plum assignments. The
internal bickering also kept McCaffrey from being named commander of the Army
forces in Europe -- a job he had eagerly lobbied for.
>
>McCaffrey got his fourth star in 1994 and an unwanted assignment, according
to his aides, as commander-in-chief of the Southern Command, then based in
Panama City, which was responsible for all American military forces in
Central and South America. In 1996, he retired from the Army to join the
Clinton Administration as the director of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy -- the White House drug czar. The appointment was widely seen
as one that would boost Bill Clinton's standing with the military in an
election year and put a hero of the Gulf War to work on America's other war.
McCaffrey's new war is in Colombia, where he is the Administration's most
enthusiastic supporter of a greater American military presence to counter the
increasing strength of anti-government guerrilla groups.
>
>There was no hint when McCaffrey joined the Cabinet of any lingering
questions about his actions in the Gulf War. Leon Panetta, then the White
House chief of staff, told me that he and his colleagues put McCaffrey
through "the normal vetting process" and learned, to their surprise, that
Panama was going to be his last Army assignment. "There were problems in his
career -- problems of speaking his own mind," Panetta recalled being told.
"He'd rubbed some of his commanders the wrong way. He'd pissed off people."
But that was all. There was no suggestion from anyone in the Pentagon that
the issues surrounding McCaffrey were any more serious than that.
>
>
>James Manchester left the Army after the war and attended Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York, on a Navy R.O.T.C. scholarship. He
was planning, after graduation, to join the Marine Corps. Like many veterans,
he was still troubled by his war experiences -- even as he prospered
academically. "Everything was going good," he said. "But everything was not
good." One afternoon, while browsing in the school library, he ran across
Major Jason Kamiya's history of the 24th Division, which was published after
the war -- to McCaffrey's satisfaction. The history stated that a Scout
platoon >from Ware's battalion -- Manchester's unit-had been "engaged by
Sagger missiles" from the Iraqis and also received "direct fire from T-72
tanks" before the American counterattack. Manchester went into a funk. He
stopped sleeping. He eventually resigned from the R.O.T.C. program and wrote
a letter to his R.O.T.C. battalion commander, telling what he knew about the
shooting of prisoners and the origin of the McCaffrey offensive. The letter
was forwarded, with his permission, to the Judge Advocate General, in
Washington. A few weeks later, he was interviewed by two Army officers, who
arrived with a tape recorder and a warning that he would be wise to black out
his name on the complaint to avoid possible recriminations. "I told them
everything," Manchester said. The interview lasted several hours. A few
months later, on April 7, 1994, the Army's Office of the Inspector General
wrote him what it called "a final response" to his allegations.
>
>Manchester had accurately described, the letter said, an incident in which
both Iraqi prisoners and his Scout platoon had been fired upon by
fellow-soldiers in a battalion task force. "Another soldier" -- presumably a
reference to Edward Walker -- had reported the incident at the time, and a
"thorough and timely" AR15-6 investigation had been conducted. The letter
went on to tell Manchester that the investigation had discovered "no evidence
of Iraqi EPW injury or death," because his calls for a ceasefire had "served
to notify the task force" that the prisoners as well as his Scout platoon
"were in the zone of fire." The 1st Brigade's investigation was reviewed by
legal officers in the 24th Division and by the C.I.D., the letter added, and
"deemed technically and legally sufficient." Therefore, it concluded, there
was no need for further inquiry, "because no proof was available a war crime
had occurred." Manchester had not been summoned by that investigation, the
letter went on, because he had already left the Scout platoon. (Manchester
did leave the Scouts shortly after the war, but he remained on active duty at
Fort Stewart until July 31, 1991 .) There was a striking omission in the
Army's review: the American combat unit that fired, and managed not to strike
one Iraqi, was not identified. The letter spoke only of "unknown elements" of
the 24th Division.
>
>As for March 2nd, the Army informed Manchester that its earlier C.I.D.
inquiry had produced an eighteen-volume report that contained the sworn
testimony of a hundred and eighty witnesses. "The totality of evidence
supported the finding that the Iraqi forces had initiated hostile actions,"
the letter said. "It was concluded that the responding use of force was
appropriate to safeguard U.S. forces and within the allowable limits of the
ceasefire rules of engagement." Manchester was also told that the account of
the battle in the 24th Division history that triggered his letter "was not
accurate." Major Kamiya had compiled the history "from his memory and his
personal notes" and was not privy to the C.I.D. investigation.
>
>Manchester graduated first in his class and is now a senior manager at a
successful high-tech communications company. He remains convinced today that
the Iraqis did not initiate the battle on March 2nd. "I was as patriotic as
they come," he told me. "I was a gung-ho ass-kicking Commie-hating patriotic
son of a bitch. I hated the Arabs. We all did. I dehumanized them. Did the
Iraqis commit war crimes in Kuwait? Did they retreat back into Iraq to commit
war crimes against their own people? The answer is yes to both questions. But
does that make March 2nd justified? There have to be limits, even in war.
Otherwise, the whole system breaks down."
>
>
>
>HTML by <http://cryptome.org/>Cryptome.
>
>
>
The TSOG stalketh the land and the serfs bow and worship it.
It stealeth property, it burneth neighborhoods, it killeth
all opposition. Ye think it only doth its violence to
black people, or hispanics, or kooks with odd religions,
but its hand is at your own throat even now. TSOG FTHAGN!
What, are ye stupid, or something?
Abdul Alhazred, The Renonomicon
And the TSOG said,
By their pee shall ye judge them,
And by your pee shall ye be judged,
And all shall be judged by their pee,
And in the snow shall their names be written.
Book of Urinomics, Revelation X
Guarde el vuelo del lasagna!
Doug Berry wrote:
> "Rhonda" <rkit...@flash.net>, in a burst of mad inspiration, sat
> down on Mon, 19 Jun 2000 08:26:29 GMT to write:
>
> >
> >"Doug Berry" <grid...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> >> I find it amusing that people are now complaining that the
> >> Clinton administration is enforcing the laws. Isn't it usually
> >> that he isn't doing his job?
> >>
> >> Unless, of course, this is all hypocritical whinging from people
> >> who either are blinded by their hatred of the man, or only want
> >> the laws *they* like enforced.
>
> >In case you did not notice, this article originated from the Libertarian
> >Party's web sight. They have consistantly called for an end to the insane
> >war on drugs.
> >Why is it that if you criticize Bill Clinton, people assume that you are a
> >Republicrat?
>
> Did I say Republican or Democrat? Anywhere in my message?
>
> --
mark chan
Renee Boje writes:
.
I'd like to invite you to tune in to the Healing Herb Hour's show in
honor
of Peter McWilliams, this Monday evening from 5-6pm(PST), at:
http://www.pottv.net
Thank you!
In freedom & justice
Renee
For more info on the murder of Peter McWilliams see
http://www.reneeboje.com.
http://www.petermcwilliams com
Philip Jerome Holloway
with Bill Clinton, or with the judiciary?
It seems to me that the War Against Some Drugs is responsible, and those who
have co-operated in fomenting this War, and those in positions of power who
have, by their inaction, allowed it to continue and to escalate must take
some of this responsibility.
I am not a US citizen, and I am not in the US, but I have seen people I love
damaged by this insane witch hunt, both here in the UK and in the US. It
pisses me off.
I shall permit myself a wry smile at the image of Bill Clinton, the
President of the United States of America, supposedly the Most Powerful Man
in the World, wringing his hands in impotent frustration. Railing at his
inability to save all those poor souls found guilty of victimless crimes
from having their property seized, their homes repossessed, their cars
seized, their driving licences revoked, their employment prospects blighted,
their rights to vote removed, their educational opportunities curtailed and
even potentially life-saving medication withheld from them. I bet he lies
awake at night worrying about them. Maybe he even wishes he had inhaled, so
he could feel a greater sense of camaraderie.
I am touched by Doug's spirited defence of Clinton, but really, if the
elected leader of a democracy cannot be held accountable for a major
government campaign in that democracy after seven years in office, we are
doomed. Doesn't the phrase "The buck stops here" mean anything?
As for the veracity of the facts surrounding Peter's death, I have read some
of his books, and have corresponded with him by e-mail, and with others who
knew him and his circumstances. I have also read newspaper reports about his
case. I have no reason at all to doubt any of the facts that have been
related here. Do a web search for Peter's name and check out some archived
newspaper reports if you have any doubts.
Toodle-oo
Paul
Joe Long
Doug Berry wrote in message <8fasksce549ac4p7r...@4ax.com>...
>What the hell do you think the courts are for? Alabama could
>vote to reinstate slavery, but it won't survive a court
>challenge.
There is a large difference between laws that harm others (slavery) and a
law that helps an individual (medical marijuna). Your comparison is not a
valid one.
The people of California voted to allow people to use marijuana medicinally,
as you know. What right do the feds have to come into that state and violate
any persons right to treat themselves medicinally as prescribed by their
doctor? If Peter violated the growing law, fine... but, he still maintains
the right to be treated by his doctor and take whatever meds he may need to
insure his comfort and life.
Federal law needs to be changed if it is deemed legal to kill someone by
forcably denying them their medicine. In this case it certainly appears that
is exactly what happened. And yes, Bill (the baby killer) Clinton is
ultimately responsible... the law was enforced on his watch... and, how
long has it been since that f*cking hypocrite Clinton has had a drug test?
He's a pot smokin, coke snorting hypocrite...
--
jgl
they're coming for our guns
they won't succeed - but they will come
..
joe's world: http://members.bainbridge.net/~jlong
lost-america: http://www.lostamerica.org/
mark chan
if the people of a state, or the state legislatur, create a law that some
people find unfair, discriminatory, unjust etc. then that law may be
challenged in the courts. The president and/or Tsar may not
unilaterally nullify such laws by divine fiat.
But the Constitution is dead, and now the TSOG rules.
The TSOG [Tsarist Occupation Government] began replacing Constitutional
Government in the U.S. in 1945, when Gen. Rheinhard Gehlen, Hitler's Chief of
Soviet Intelligence, surrendered to the U.S. Army, after first
prudently burying several truckloads of "inside information" about the Soviet
Union at a secret location.
Gehlen was not only a master spy but a wizard negotiator. Within a week, he was
out of his Nazi uniform and into a U.S. Army General's uniform; the U.S.
intelligence services,
in return, got the info about the Soviets, including access
to Gehlen's agents in the Soviet government, a group of
Tsarists who had infiltrated both the Red Army and the KGB. Their leader and
Gehlen's major "asset," General Andrei Vlassov, had a fervent belief, not just
in Tsarism,
but especially in the "mystical Tsarism" espoused in the
19th Century by the novelist Dostoyevsky and even more by Konstantin
Pobedonostsev, an advisor to two Tsars
[Alexander III and Nicholas II].
Pobedonostsev was popularly called "The Grand Inquisitor" because of the vast
platoons of spies, snoops, agents provateur and informers he unleashed upon the
Russian people.
"Mystical Tsarism," a holy religion, or superstition -- as
you will --has two major tenets: (1) The Tsar is guided
by God and can do no wrong (2) Reason is "cold" and inhuman, faith is "warm"
and human; therefore we should
ignore reason and guide ourselves by faith in the Tsar,
our "Little Father."
This theology, or superstition, now governs this once-free nation. The laws
allowing doctors to decide what is best for their patients, passed
by 5 states and the Distrct of Cplumbia, have not been overturned
in the courts or even challenged there. Clinton and the TSOG
have simply nullified them by divine fiat.
mark chan
By William F. Buckley
Peter McWilliams is dead. Age? Fifty. Profession? Author, poet,
publisher.
Particular focus of interest? The federal judge in California (George
King)
would decide in a few weeks how long a sentence to hand down, and
whether
to send McWilliams to prison or let him serve his sentence at home.
What was his offense? He collaborated in growing marijuana plants.
What was his defense? Well, the judge wouldn't allow him to plead his
defense to the jury. If given a chance, the defense would have argued
that
under Proposition 215, passed into California constitutional law in
1996,
infirm Californians who got medical relief from marijuana were permitted
to
use it. The judge also forbade any mention that McWilliams suffered
from
AIDS and cancer, and got relief from the marijuana.
What was he doing when he died? Vomiting. The vomiting hit him while in
his bathtub, and he choked to death.
Was there nothing he might have done to still the impulse to vomit? Yes,
he
could have taken marijuana; but the judge's bail terms forbade him to do
so, and he submitted to weekly urine tests to confirm that he was living
up
to the terms of his bail.
Did anybody take note of the risk he was undergoing? He took Marinol -
-- a
proffered, legal substitute, but reported after using it that it worked
for
him only about one-third of the time. When it didn't work, he vomited.
Was there no public protest against the judge's ruling? Yes. On June 9,
the television program "20/20" devoted a segment to the McWilliams
plight.
Commentator John Stossel summarized:
"McWilliams is out of prison on the condition that he not smoke
marijuana,
but it was the marijuana that kept him from vomiting up his medication.
I
can understand that the federal drug police don't agree with what some
states have decided to do about medical marijuana, but does that give
them
the right to just end-run those laws and lock people up?"
Shortly after the trial last year, Charles Levendosky, writing in the
Ventura County (Calif.) Star, summarized: "The cancer treatment resulted
in
complete remission." But only the marijuana gave him sustained relief
from
the vomiting that proved mortal.
Is it being said, in plain language, that the judge's obstinacy resulted
in
killing McWilliams? Yes. The Libertarian Party press release has made
exactly that charge. "McWilliams was prohibited from using medical
marijuna -- and being denied access to the drug's anti-nausea properties
almost certainly caused his death."
Reflecting on the judge's refusal to let the jury know that there was
understandable reason for McWilliams to believe he was acting legally, I
ended a column in this space in November by writing, "So, the fate of
Peter
McWilliams is in the hands of Judge King. Perhaps the cool thing for
him
to do is delay a ruling for a few months, and just let Peter McWilliams
die." Well, that happened last week, on June 14.
The struggle against a fanatical imposition of federal laws on marijuana
will continue, as also on the question whether federal laws can stifle
state initiatives. Those who believe the marijuana laws are insanely
misdirected have a martyr.
Peter was a wry, mythogenic guy, humorous, affectionate, articulate,
shrewd, sassy. He courted anarchy at the moral level. His most recent
book (his final book) was called "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do." We
were old friends, and I owe my early conversion to word processing to
his
guidebook on how to do it. Over the years we corresponded, and he would
amiably twit my conservative opinions. When I judged him to have gone
rampant on his own individualistic views in his book, I wrote him to
that
effect. I cherish his reply -- nice acerbic deference, the supreme
put-down.
"Please remember the Law of Relativity as applied to politics: In order
for
you to be right, at least someone else must be wrong. Your rightness is
only shown in relation to the other's wrongness. Conversely, your
rightness is necessary for people like me to look truly wrong. Before
Bach, people said of bad organ music, 'That's not quite right.' After
Bach,
people said flatly, 'That's wrong.' This allowed dedicated composers to
grow, and cast the neophytes back to writing how-to-be-happy music. So,
thank me for my wrongness, as so many reviews of my book will doubtless
say, 'People should read more of a truly great political commentator:
William F. Buckley Jr.'"
Imagine such a spirit ending its life at 50, just because they wouldn't
let
him have a toke. We have to console ourselves with the comment of the
two
prosecutors. They said they were "saddened" by Peter McWilliams' death.
Many of us are -- by his death and the causes of it.
Doug Berry wrote:
> "Joe Long" <joe...@lostamerica.org>, in a burst of mad
> inspiration, sat down on Tue, 20 Jun 2000 05:34:18 -0700 to
> write:
>
> >
> >Doug Berry wrote in message <8fasksce549ac4p7r...@4ax.com>...
> >
> >>What the hell do you think the courts are for? Alabama could
> >>vote to reinstate slavery, but it won't survive a court
> >>challenge.
> >
> >There is a large difference between laws that harm others (slavery) and a
> >law that helps an individual (medical marijuna). Your comparison is not a
> >valid one.
>
> It was a bit of hyperbole, I admit. But us Californians have a
> history of voting for unconstitutional laws, which immediately
> get challenged in court.
>
> >The people of California voted to allow people to use marijuana medicinally,
> >as you know. What right do the feds have to come into that state and violate
> >any persons right to treat themselves medicinally as prescribed by their
> >doctor? If Peter violated the growing law, fine... but, he still maintains
> >the right to be treated by his doctor and take whatever meds he may need to
> >insure his comfort and life.
>
> The feds are claiming jurisdiction under the various laws that
> make drug control a federal operation. We are claiming that
> since no interstate commerce is involved, it's not their concern.
>
> This gentleman should have come up to the Bay Area, where we have
> several strong Medical Marijuana clubs. There's even a group
> that does home deliveries.
>
> I'd still like to see some dates and references for this case,
> since the website I was directed to yesterday didn't seem to have
> any hard facts. What I'd like is:
>
> 1. The person's full name.
> 2. Date and county of death
> 3. What county his trial took place in
> 4. A case number or other reference points so I can look up the
> trial record.
>
> >Federal law needs to be changed if it is deemed legal to kill someone by
> >forcably denying them their medicine. In this case it certainly appears that
> >is exactly what happened. And yes, Bill (the baby killer) Clinton is
> >ultimately responsible... the law was enforced on his watch... and, how
> >long has it been since that f*cking hypocrite Clinton has had a drug test?
> >He's a pot smokin, coke snorting hypocrite...
>
> If you want the law changed, you talk to Congress, not the
> executive branch. As many people continually point out, Clinton
> cannot make law by fiat. So, I guess he's damned if he does,
> damned if he doesn't, yes?
>
> I am not aware of any requirement that a President be tested for
> drugs. I'd personally like to see the Shrub take one.
Patrick Keenan
So get off your ass and use it in a way that *might* make some difference.
Blaming Clinton just lets the people who CAN do something about this off the
hook. Start petitioning your government representatives and let them know
that they *are* on the hook for this.. and that you want it addressed. Get
support from enough others to make the gov't reps fear for their seats.
And most of all, find a way to get this idea accepted by the groups most
against it, so that their gov't reps know that they can safely vote to allow
it.
It's just a misdirected, waste of energy to blame this on Clinton. Unless
of course, you really *don't* give a shit about Peter McWilliams, and really
just want to stir up hatred of your president.
-pk
mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:3953A9C1...@cruzio.com...
> PETER MCWILLIAMS, R.I.P.
> By William F. Buckley
>
> Peter McWilliams is dead. Age? Fifty. Profession? Author, poet,
> publisher.
> Particular focus of interest? The federal judge in California (George
> King)
> would decide in a few weeks how long a sentence to hand down, and
> whether
> to send McWilliams to prison or let him serve his sentence at home.
> <snip>
Bob Adams
<grid...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>"Philip Jerome Holloway" <p.j.ho...@btinternet.com>, in a
>burst of mad inspiration, sat down on Mon, 19 Jun 2000 23:51:48
>-0700 to write:
>
>>Does it really matter whether the blame for Peter McWilliams' death lies
>>with Bill Clinton, or with the judiciary?
>
>Well, yes. If you are going to around screaming that a person
>"murdered" someone, it helps for that allegation to be factual.
Well, no. There was no "screaming" going on. It was a subject line.
It's like a headline, it's designed to pique your interest and get you
to read the story. Obviously it succeeded.
>
>>I shall permit myself a wry smile at the image of Bill Clinton, the
>>President of the United States of America, supposedly the Most Powerful Man
>>in the World, wringing his hands in impotent frustration. Railing at his
>>inability to save all those poor souls found guilty of victimless crimes
>>from having their property seized, their homes repossessed, their cars
>>seized, their driving licences revoked, their employment prospects blighted,
>>their rights to vote removed, their educational opportunities curtailed and
>>even potentially life-saving medication withheld from them. I bet he lies
>>awake at night worrying about them. Maybe he even wishes he had inhaled, so
>>he could feel a greater sense of camaraderie.
>
>That's how it was *designed.* Clinton is not an absolute
>dictatoer, but instead the head of one of the three branches of
>government. Admittedly, he does have the most power, but that
>power is limited by law.
>
>Just as he cannot order enemies arrested on a whim, he can
>neither order that laws *not* be enforced. As I've pointed out
>before, the remedy is in the other two branches of government,
>the Congress and the courts.
>
>>I am touched by Doug's spirited defence of Clinton, but really, if the
>>elected leader of a democracy cannot be held accountable for a major
>>government campaign in that democracy after seven years in office, we are
>>doomed. Doesn't the phrase "The buck stops here" mean anything?
>
>Yes it does, but blmaing Clinton for doing his job? If you want
>to point fingers, point them at the Congress that has passed more
>and more legislation about drugs in the past few years, attaching
>them to other bills that the President has to sign to keep the
>country running.
>
>I'll make it plain. Outside of his veto, which can be overridden
>by congress, the President has *no* power of what laws are
>enacted in the United States. That is Congress. He is required
>to enforce those laws. That's his job. If he were to start
>selectively doing this, that would be an impeachable offense.
>
>>As for the veracity of the facts surrounding Peter's death, I have read some
>>of his books, and have corresponded with him by e-mail, and with others who
>>knew him and his circumstances. I have also read newspaper reports about his
>>case. I have no reason at all to doubt any of the facts that have been
>>related here. Do a web search for Peter's name and check out some archived
>>newspaper reports if you have any doubts.
>
>I have done a little research, and the case is outrageous. Here
>in San Francisco, we have an active cannibis buyers club that
>hasn't been hassled much.
>
>You want the laws to change? Petition Congress. They are the
>ones who make the laws.
Here's the deal: the Captain goes down with the ship. The fact that
the Owner ordered him to steer straight does not excuse him from
failing to avoid the iceberg, and does not clear his karmic account of
the deaths..
Patrick Keenan
The captain of a ship has (or should) the physical capability to change the
course of that ship, effectively enforcing his will.
Does your president have the real power needed to unilaterally revoke or
rewrite laws, *and* enforce them?
-pk
Bob Adams <b...@adamshouse.com> wrote in message
news:r7b7lsoa0e4eb2mde...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 23 Jun 2000 10:18:53 -0700, Doug Berry
> <grid...@mindspring.com> wrote:
<snip>
Joe Long
Patrick Keenan wrote in message ...
>Interesting, but I'm not sure it's a valid comparison.
>
>The captain of a ship has (or should) the physical capability to change the
>course of that ship, effectively enforcing his will.
>
>Does your president have the real power needed to unilaterally revoke or
>rewrite laws, *and* enforce them?
Yes, actually he does - explained in 2 easy words:
Presidential Pardon...
Bob Crawford
> Patrick Keenan wrote in message ...
> >Interesting, but I'm not sure it's a valid comparison.
> >
> >The captain of a ship has (or should) the physical capability to change the
> >course of that ship, effectively enforcing his will.
> >
> >Does your president have the real power needed to unilaterally revoke or
> >rewrite laws, *and* enforce them?
>
> Yes, actually he does - explained in 2 easy words:
>
> Presidential Pardon...
or
"Executive Order"
Bob Crawford
Bob Adams
<pkeenan...@look.ca> wrote:
>Interesting, but I'm not sure it's a valid comparison.
Of course you're not..
>The captain of a ship has (or should) the physical capability to change the
>course of that ship, effectively enforcing his will.
>
>Does your president have the real power needed to unilaterally revoke or
>rewrite laws, *and* enforce them?
>
First, he's not "my" president. He can be "yours" if you want.
And, second, why, yes, he does. In case you hadn't noticed, the folks
in charge of prosecuting in the federal courts work for him. There
seems to be no problem with his convincing them to prosecute, and I
think it rather obvious that if a short chain of phone calls had
reached the USA in LA with the message "Shelve this", that McWilliams
would not have been prosecuted. You can believe that or not, I don't
particularly care.
Third, the entire "Drug War" could be called off by the occupant of
the preident's office at any time. It won't happen, of course, but
that doesn't mean that it couldn't happen.
mark chan
MURDER IN CALIFORNIA
THE CASE OF PETER MCWILLIAMS (1949-2000).
>From "The Nation" by Dan Mindus
Ushering in outbreaks of hysteria, Peter McWilliams, best selling
author and medical marijuana activist, died on Wednesday. Some mostly
libertarians are freely tossing around the word "murder" to describe
the federal government's role in the 50 year old McWilliams' passing.
"What the federal government did is nothing less than cold blooded,
premeditated murder," charged Steve Dasbach, the national director of
the Libertarian Party.
Before we consign such talk to the Vince Foster lunatic fringe, perhaps
some background would be appropriate. Unless otherwise noted, the
quotes that follow are selected from three columns on the deceased
crusader by the hardly hysterical William F. Buckley Jr.
"For his illness [AIDS and cancer] he smokes every day. But after you
do that for a few weeks you cease to get high. Marijuana becomes just
something that stops nausea, eases pain, reduces inter ocular pressure,
relaxes muscles, and takes the "bottom" out of a depression. So where
do we go from here? To jail?"
Exactly.
"Six thirty in the morning, nine DEA agents crash into McWilliams'
house finding him at work on his computer. They simultaneously tell him
he is not under arrest and handcuff him. They spend three hours going
over every piece of paper in his house (they find one ounce of
marijuana, which is within the California legal limit) and walk away
with his computer. That is the equivalent of entering the New York
Times and walking away with the printing machinery."
How is this possible, given that California's Proposition 215 exempted
patients from criminal penalties for the cultivation or possession of
marijuana? "The feds take the position that the California proposition
is after all overridden by federal legislation."
McWilliams is arrested and charged. "The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles
intends to recommend that McWilliams spend the next 10 years in jail
for violating federal drug laws.... The meltdown is therefore now
scheduled.... One hopes that Peter McWilliams, something of a bird of
paradise, is left alone to take proper care of himself."
Sadly, this proved to be wishful thinking. The judge prohibited
McWilliams from mentioning that he had AIDS and cancer, thus denying
him the traditional common law defense that necessity, the need to
prevent greater harm, forced him to break the law. This despite the
U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals's unanimous ruling in 1999 that
"medical necessity" can be a viable defense for people accused of
breaking federal marijuana laws. One would think such a ruling would
apply to McWilliams, who suffers from a not uncommon side effect of
antiviral AIDS drugs: nausea. Without marijuana, McWilliams simply
couldn't keep his meds down.
The judge further prohibited McWilliams from mentioning Proposition
215, for this was a federal case. Facing the prospect of a ten year
mandatory minimum sentence, and no plausible defense, McWilliams pled
guilty. Bail was set at $250,000 and McWilliams' mother mortgaged the
family home.
"One aspect of the bail regulation would have pleased George Orwell: He
has to submit to a daily urine test to establish that he has not taken
marijuana. If such a test were to prove positive, back he'd go to
jail, and the family house, presumably, to the auction block."
According to McWilliams, "The Federal prosecutor personally called my
mother to tell her that if I was found with even a trace of medical
marijuana, her house would be taken away."
And so, the meltdown. Fearing foreclosure on his mother's house,
McWilliams stopped taking the marijuana that controlled his nausea. He
was found in his bathroom, having choked on his own vomit. One might
say that this is no more a murder than a plane crash, which can be
blamed on the airline or the FAA. But there's the crucial difference of
intent. Here, the prosecutors knowingly prevented McWilliams from
taking the medication marijuana that he claimed was saving his life.
Perhaps they didn't believe him, and perhaps they didn't know any
better, but these are the arguments of a defendant arguing that he is
only guilty of manslaughter in the second degree.
Look in the papers tomorrow for more wisdom on the subject from Mr.
Buckley.
Source: National Review Online (US Web)
Copyright: 2000 National Review
Contact: let...@nationalreview.com
Website: http://www.nationalreview.com/
Forum: http://www.nationalreview.com/soapbox/soapbox.html
Patrick Keenan wrote:
> It sounds like you're upset by this.
> So get off your ass and use it in a way that *might* make some difference.
>
> Blaming Clinton just lets the people who CAN do something about this off the
> hook. Start petitioning your government representatives and let them know
> that they *are* on the hook for this.. and that you want it addressed. Get
> support from enough others to make the gov't reps fear for their seats.
> And most of all, find a way to get this idea accepted by the groups most
> against it, so that their gov't reps know that they can safely vote to allow
> it.
>
> It's just a misdirected, waste of energy to blame this on Clinton. Unless
> of course, you really *don't* give a shit about Peter McWilliams, and really
> just want to stir up hatred of your president.
>
> -pk
> mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
> news:3953A9C1...@cruzio.com...
> > PETER MCWILLIAMS, R.I.P.
> > By William F. Buckley
> >
> > Peter McWilliams is dead. Age? Fifty. Profession? Author, poet,
> > publisher.
> > Particular focus of interest? The federal judge in California (George
> > King)
> > would decide in a few weeks how long a sentence to hand down, and
> > whether
> > to send McWilliams to prison or let him serve his sentence at home.
> > <snip>
mark chan
To: "Mark Chan" <ma...@cruzio.com>
Cc: "Alex Countey" <alex...@yahoo.com>
Murder is the charge. There might be president for the trial of homicidal
judges and prosecutors. Just doing there job in the knowledge of mortal
consequences is no excuse.
When and how will we stop the federal government
from murdering the innocent infirm?
This is first blood to be so clearly
seen. There is a need to find or compile data on deaths caused by nausea in
chemo and AIDS therepy. California indictments for murder of all federal
parties responsible.
Great to see Buckley take a stand.
Patrick Keenan wrote:
> It sounds like you're upset by this.
> So get off your ass and use it in a way that *might* make some difference.
>
> Blaming Clinton just lets the people who CAN do something about this off the
> hook. Start petitioning your government representatives and let them know
> that they *are* on the hook for this.. and that you want it addressed. Get
> support from enough others to make the gov't reps fear for their seats.
> And most of all, find a way to get this idea accepted by the groups most
> against it, so that their gov't reps know that they can safely vote to allow
> it.
>
> It's just a misdirected, waste of energy to blame this on Clinton. Unless
> of course, you really *don't* give a shit about Peter McWilliams, and really
> just want to stir up hatred of your president.
>
> -pk
> mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
> news:3953A9C1...@cruzio.com...
> > PETER MCWILLIAMS, R.I.P.
> > By William F. Buckley
> >
> > Peter McWilliams is dead. Age? Fifty. Profession? Author, poet,
> > publisher.
> > Particular focus of interest? The federal judge in California (George
> > King)
> > would decide in a few weeks how long a sentence to hand down, and
> > whether
> > to send McWilliams to prison or let him serve his sentence at home.
> > <snip>
mark chan
Peter McWilliams: Martyr for Medical Marijuana
Interview by: David Jay Brown and Sherry Hall
David: How has marijuana helped you deal with AIDS and cancer?
Peter: I was diagnosed in 1996. At the time I had not done any drugs for
more than two decades. After my diagnosis, I tried various anti-nausea
medications to me to help tolerate the chemotherapy and radiation. They
didn't work. I couldn't keep down the pills. Since I had done a lot of
work with AIDS patients, I knew that medical marijuana was on
everybody's list for ending nausea. I finally tried that, reluctantly
even, and it worked-- instantly. It was astonishing. I was absolutely
amazed that, in just a few puffs of this herb, I went from frantic trips
to the bathroom, to meandering raids on the kitchen.
I didn't expect it to work at all. People say it's just a placebo
effect. A placebo effect implies that you think it's going to work. I
was absolutely certain it wasn't going to work. Not only did it work, it
also got me back in touch with my creativity. It ended the pain of the
chemotherapy, and it allowed me to work through the emotional trauma of
maybe I'm going to die. Once I was doing creative work again, I thought,
my goodness, I missed those twenty years. At that point I decided to
help make this available to other ill people. This was before I even
knew whether I'd live or die, because with the kind of cancer I had--
non-Hodgkins Lymphoma-- if it gets to your brain, there's absolutely
nothing they can do about it.
But if they find it before it gets to your brain, it is readily
treatable. In fact, it is considered to be one of the most easily
curable forms of cancer, providing you can tolerate the chemotherapy. So
there was a period of about ten days while I was waiting for tests to
see whether it got to the brain. It looked like I might have very little
time to live. But the medical marijuana was working, and I said, if I
live, I will devote my life to getting medical marijuana to all the sick
people who need it, and I will not rest until that happens.
My life ended in 1996. This is free-time granted to me from medical
science and marijuana. The least I can do is put that same life on the
line to combat the war machine. The image I like is that wonderful guy
who stood in front of the tank at Tianamen Square. The tank stopped, and
there was no reason why it should have. I admire individuals who throw
their life on the line.
David: How did you get arrested?
Peter: I was fascinated by Todd McCormick's ideas about using different
strains of marijuana to treat different illnesses. He wanted to research
that, and I thought it was a wonderful idea. He knew a great deal about
how to grow medical marijuana. So I told him that I'm a publisher, and I
think it would be great if he wrote a book on how to grow medical
marijuana. Then, when his research was done, he could write another book
on what strains of marijuana are good for which illnesses. He agreed to
do it, so I gave him an advance.
Todd took the advance and rented the ugliest house in Bel Air. He
began his work and, quite amazingly, was arrested. It happened because
of a over-anxious, over-reaching DEA agent. They investigated him for
five days, and thought, boy, this is really great. At the same time
there were thirty different places around the country that were growing
and selling medical marijuana openly. Todd wasn't selling anything. He
was simply growing it for his own research purposes and personal use.
But that's the thing about bureaucracies; once the government has made
an arrest they don't know what the hell to do.
Sherry: This is after Proposition 215 passed?
Peter: Prop 215 passed November of 96. This was July of 97. When I heard
about Todd's arrest I knew that all I had to do was keep my mouth shut
and they wouldn't bother me. But instead, I, quite intentionally, got in
front of the tank. I sent out press releases pointing out that Todd
McCormick was not the drug dealer who bought the expensive house in Bel
Air with drug proceeds. He was a cancer patient who was conducting
research on marijuana, and the media turned around entirely.
The media turned around from, here's a drug dealer who is growing
huge amounts of marijuana for commercial purposes, to here's a cancer
patient doing research on medical marijuana. So by the time that Todd
was released from jail sixteen days later, all the media was there.
There were representatives from all the networks. Well, I did that, and
the government knew I did that.
So they began investigating me. A year later-- after coming into my
home, seizing my computer, going through all my financial records,
announcing to the employees of my publishing company that they better
find another job because the government would own this place any day
now, and intimidating people by having them testify in front of Grand
Jury-- they finally arrested me. My only connection to Todd's growing
marijuana was that I had financed it. I was the kingpin.
David: What were the conditions of your bail?
Peter: No marijuana use.
Sherry: Do you think that the government is intentionally hoping that
you'll die on account of being unable to use your medication?
Peter: I don't think anyone will cry over my death at the Justice
Department.
David: Why don't you flee to Holland?
Peter: I could. I had a whole year to do that if I wanted to, quite
legally. I decided to stay and fight, and if necessary die for this
particular cause. Martin Luther King said that "if you're not willing to
die for something, your life's not worth living." I decided that this is
something that I would die for. I easily could have fled to Holland for
that entire year. It was obvious that they were going to arrest me. They
were trying to gather any information that they could against me.
They would supeena my neighbors and everybody who ever worked for
me through Grand Jury testimony. They searched my home and my office.
They took away my computer. They kept sending supeenas for more
documents, even though they had every document that I ever had. It was
obvious over a period of time that they were going to arrest me to
retaliate for my defense of Todd McCormick. I knew then, that if I was
going to leave, this was the time. I had a whole year in which I could
have slipped away. Why don't I leave now? I'm staying to fight. Even my
death will be part of fighting, if that's what it ultimately ends up
with.
David: Why do you think the federal government refuses to legalize
medical marijuana?
The government has, for so many years now, said it has no medical
properties. For them to now admit that it has medical properties would
be to admit that they have tortured every cancer patient who has ever
been unable maintain their chemotherapy because of nausea, and every
chronic pain patient who hasn't been able to properly treat their pain.
When the National Association of Neuroscience finally published
data in 1997 saying that marijuana is an excellent pain-relieving
medication, they estimated that 97 million Americans could use it. All
those people who have been denied this medication for all these years.
We're in the throughs of *The Emperor Wears No Clothes,* and the
government is fighting very hard against that. This is because once you
realize that it's good medicine, you also have to realize that it really
isn't that harmful. It is certainly less harmful than alcohol or
tobacco. Why do these things get to be legal if marijuana isn't?
Of course, juries have the right not to convict people. However, if
the judge finds out that they've been informed by anything having to do
with the fully-informed jury, there is a devastating instruction the
judge gives. They say that you are not to vote based upon how you think
the law should be. The law is already determined. You are to vote based
upon whether the person violated the law or not.
The judge has the power to tell the jury pretty much anything that
he wants. Yet if you look at who truly has the freedom, there isn't
anything that tells a juror how to determine whether someone is guilty
is not. That's absolutely up to each individual juror. If one juror
says, no, I don't think they're guilty, then you have a hung jury, and
you don't have a conviction. If all twelve jurors say, I don' think the
person is guilty, however they arrived at it, they're not guilty, and
you can't try that person again.
Patrick Keenan
Actually, he can't ever be 'my' president. I'm Canadian. But we happen
to have similar bad laws here.
Now, my original question was just whether he had the power to intervene. I
accept that under your system of government he does. Thanks for the
answers.
Perhaps it might have been the case that Clinton could have intervened...
but is that a precedent you really want?
Pardon if I misunderstand you, but you seem to indicate with this line:
"There seems to be no problem with his convincing them to prosecute, and I
think it rather obvious that if a short chain of phone calls had reached the
USA in LA with the message "Shelve this", that McWilliams would not have
been prosecuted."
that Clinton was directly involved in McWilliam's prosecution. Is that
what you are saying? I've not noticed that in any of the posts so far.
I do agree that it's possible that P.McW. might have been able or, even
better, willing to cause the prosecution stayed.. but do we know that he was
even aware of - presented with the facts of - this case?
-pk
Bob Adams <b...@adamshouse.com> wrote in message
news:nsn7lsgdvkeefo53a...@4ax.com...
Patrick Keenan
McW.
-pk
Patrick Keenan
to take a meaningful stand yourself, is that it?
If you can't get tobacco executives or growers charged with murder, just how
will you get those charged with enforcing the laws indicted for murder? Do
you think that suggestions like this will get you taken more seriously?
Look, I'm not saying that these laws are good. Far from it. I'm saying
that you are just wasting time and energy. Go start compiling the data and
get it to those who can actually change the federal laws, and especially
those in the areas of the US who are most against marijuana and Hemp laws.
-pk
mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com> wrote in message
news:39540F4C...@cruzio.com...
> > > PETER MCWILLIAMS, R.I.P.
> > > By William F. Buckley
> > >
> > > Peter McWilliams is dead. Age? Fifty. Profession? Author, poet,
> > > publisher.
> > > Particular focus of interest? The federal judge in California (George
> > > King)
> > > would decide in a few weeks how long a sentence to hand down, and
> > > whether
> > > to send McWilliams to prison or let him serve his sentence at home.
> > > <snip>
>
Patrick Keenan
MANFRED the heat seeking OBOE <ExPre...@au.revoir.gov> wrote in message
news:nqX45.14325$3E6.1...@news1.alsv1.occa.home.com...
> "Patrick Keenan" wrote:
> >It sounds like you're upset by this.
> >So get off your ass and use it in a way that *might* make some
difference.
> >
> >Blaming Clinton just lets the people who CAN do something about this off
the
> >hook. Start petitioning your government representatives and let them
know
> >that they *are* on the hook for this..
>
> But they are *NOT*, Senior Management merely awaits the convenient crisis
> which will precipitate the 4th and 5th unofficial arms of govt
> to take their rightful place in what was once known as America.
>
> The IRS to reposess what rightfully belongs to gov't.
> The NSC to rightfully oppress those who Question Authority.
> As with the other three branches, these two are equipped
> with an independant Administrative corp, Circuit of Judicial Courts,
> and (of course) Police Force.
Bob Crawford
> >or
> >"Executive Order"
>
> Ah. So now we *want* Clinton to rule by decree.
The President already rules by decree. For good or ill, that is how it is.
So, if EOs will continue to exist, why not have a GOOD one?
> Shall I pull up
> a load of postings complaining about the overuse of Executive
> Orders?
No need.
> Why don't we just crown him King,
Unnecessary, since he already seems to rule by fiat. (Not just Clinton.. EOs
have been around for entirely too long Reagan and Bush both used EOs to sidestep
the legal process of lawmaking in the U.S. )
> and shoot Congress and the courts?
Oh my.
> That seems to be the general theme here.. you want a
> monarchy as long as it does exactly the things you want.
No such general theme exists.
But so long as we have a monarch, does the monarch NEED to be a dick?
> A short lesson, I served my time in the Army under Reagan and
> Bush. I did not vote for either of those idiots. Yet I accepted
> that the voice of the people had spoken.
When did We the People get to vote on the War on Some Drugs?
> I have spent the last decade working to change marijuana laws, with Prop 215
> being our
> greatest victory.
Which was summarily overridden by the Feds. Thanks for making my point.
> That's the way you do it, not by Imperial fiat.
Keep telling yourself that.
--
"I will have the tiniest, most invisible administration in history"
************************* Alan Yu for President!
Bob Crawford
cra...@powerclam.com
Patrick Keenan
'tough sledding'.
Going to be tough? Gee, better just give up.
MANFRED the heat seeking OBOE <ExPre...@au.revoir.gov> wrote in message
news:aL455.14383$3E6.1...@news1.alsv1.occa.home.com...
> "Patrick Keenan" wrote:
> >So, Manfred, your advice is to sit back and do nothing useful, then.
Right?
>
> The difference between opposing and being an unwitting part of the
> Manufactured Consensus by petitioning the very representatives
> who are dutifully working to nullify the Political Rights of constituency
> is tough sledding.
>
> Make no mistake, it is the 'people' who will beg our Emminent Leadership
> to take away our Rights; there is a very small but resolute corp of
> men and women within the Executive and Legislature who MORE THAN HAPPY
> to see this to its logical conclusion. These are the TRUE Haters of Man,
> and it is important that they be recognized 'for what they are'.
>
> That 'things' are going tragically awry is abundantly clear wherein the
policy
> is to bring Terror to your Doorstep, placing
> Terror and Terrorism on TV while
> our businessleaders in court.
>
> The reason this happens is that good people, even though a basic majority,
> have been Morally Disarmed into accepting (and believing) in notions
> that are harmful to their own interests.
>
> There is NEVER EVER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE where your Political Rights are
> subject to Popular Vote or Decree of Politician. Gov't *IS* the problem
when
> it is peopled by the 'type' of politician who knows and acts on NOTHING
BUT
> compromise. In any compromise with Evil, it is only Evil that can result.
> It is the appeasers who invite Evil to take over and enslave us all.
>
> Representation without accountability for both the Circumstance and
> Consequence of policy invites the Manufacture of Consensus,
> the nullfication of Political Rights,
> the Destruction of the Truth (as Clinton coined it)
> The road to Tyranny begins with the Destruction of the Truth.
> -- Clinton'95
>
> The very same people who enact policy in order to precipitate crisis
> are only TOO HAPPY to act on such crisis
> to reassure you,
> to convince you that:
> Your Life is not your Own.
> Therefore,
> Some must be Sacrificed that others may live.
> Such that,
> All MUST suffer Equally and Extensively BY Law rather
> than be suffered Equality Under Law.
>
> Thank YOU! Mr. President.
> May Your Merciful Shadow fall upon us all !!!
Bob Crawford
> Hmmmm. You seem to have stopped saying anything meaningful with the words
> 'tough sledding'.
I dunno, seemed to be basically true.
Otherwise sensible people are so petrified the the "Politically Correct" gang
that they have been convinced to unplug their brains.
>
> MANFRED the heat seeking OBOE <ExPre...@au.revoir.gov> wrote in message
> news:aL455.14383$3E6.1...@news1.alsv1.occa.home.com...
> >
> > The very same people who enact policy in order to precipitate crisis
Manfred: Didn't you mean that they enact crisis in order to precipitate policy??
Bob Adams
<pkeenan...@look.ca> wrote:
>Bob,
>Actually, he can't ever be 'my' president. I'm Canadian.
Sure, he can.
>But we happen
>to have similar bad laws here.
>Now, my original question was just whether he had the power to intervene. I
>accept that under your system of government he does. Thanks for the
>answers.
>
>Perhaps it might have been the case that Clinton could have intervened...
>but is that a precedent you really want?
>
>Pardon if I misunderstand you, but you seem to indicate with this line:
>"There seems to be no problem with his convincing them to prosecute, and I
>think it rather obvious that if a short chain of phone calls had reached the
>USA in LA with the message "Shelve this", that McWilliams would not have
>been prosecuted."
>
>that Clinton was directly involved in McWilliam's prosecution. Is that
>what you are saying? I've not noticed that in any of the posts so far.
Of course he's directly involved. He's the head man. What part of this
do you not understand? But that's not the point: the point is he could
have prevented it. You seemed to think he had not the power, but
clearly he does.
>I do agree that it's possible that P.McW. might have been able or, even
>better, willing to cause the prosecution stayed..
?? Try that one again, please??
>Sorry, meant to say that Clinton might have been able to do this, not P.
>McW.
>-pk
"Might"? No, not "might" - he most certainly could have.
>but do we know that he was
>even aware of - presented with the facts of - this case?
Makes zero difference, unless you're advocating the "Ach, ve dittent
no dey vass gazzing dem Choos" defense?
It's not just this case. There are literally hundreds of thousands of
people in prison for this, and literally thousands dead. It's
disgusting, it's wrong, it's constitutionally illegal... and it's
very, very profitable in several ways, which is why it's not going to
stop simply because the majority of the people don't want it....
mark chan
>From: "D. Paul Stanford" <stan...@crrh.org>
>To: res...@crrh.org
>Subject: FL: Reefer Madness Remains
>Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.200006...@mail.olywa.net>
>
>Newshawk: JohnC <http://www.november.org/>
>Pubdate: Sat, 24 Jun 2000
>Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
>Copyright: 2000 St. Petersburg Times
>Contact: let...@sptimes.com
>Website: http://www.sptimes.com/
>Forum: http://www.sptimes.com/Interact.html
>Section: Editorial
>
>REEFER MADNESS REMAINS
>
>If Americans were to look closely at the federal government's policy
>on medical marijuana, they'd have to wonder what their government is
>smoking.
>
>In every way possible, the federal government has tried to stymie the
>use of marijuana for highly limited medicinal purposes, even in the
>light of substantial anecdotal evidence that the drug offers
>significant relief for some symptoms of glaucoma, multiple sclerosis,
>AIDS and the side effects of cancer treatment. Worse, the government
>doesn't appear to want medical science to discern whether those claims
>are real or hype. It has enacted unreasonably high hurdles for
>researchers hoping to study marijuana's medicinal effects.
>
>While the federal government is busy obstructing research, voters in
>seven states and the District of Columbia have decided that science
>and compassion matter. They have tried to bypass official resistance
>by approving marijuana's limited medical use through voter
>referendums.
>
>Voters have approved medical marijuana in every state where the stand-
>alone question has been on the ballot, and politicians have taken
>notice. Earlier this month, Hawaii became the first state to authorize
>medical marijuana through legislative enactment. The law is narrowly
>drawn so that only those with certain qualifying illnesses may legally
>possess and use marijuana and only after obtaining a doctor's
>recommendation and registering with the state.
>
>As he was signing the bill into law, Gov. Benjamin Cayetano said how
>pleased he was to be adding this option for doctors and their
>patients. "My own feeling is, more states are going to come on,"
>Cayetano said.
>
>Not if the federal government can help it.
>
>Since states have liberalized medical marijuana, the Office of
>National Drug Control Policy has threatened the prescription-writing
>privileges of those doctors willing to recommend the drug under state
>guidelines, and Congress has taken steps to ensure that the District
>of Columbia's medical marijuana initiative would not take effect.
>
>The many claims of marijuana's medicinal benefits aren't necessarily
>true, but until the government allows significant medical research, we
>will never know. One recent analysis was conducted by the National
>Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. The study, released in
>1999 and funded by the White House drug policy office, concluded that
>"there are some limited circumstances in which we recommend smoking
>marijuana for medical uses."
>
>In accordance with the report's recommendations, the Department of
>Health and Human Services was supposed to ease restrictions on
>marijuana research. But the guidelines that went into effect in
>December were far from relaxed. Rather than put marijuana on a par
>with other synthesized pharmaceuticals under study, the guidelines
>impose procedural hurdles, including getting special approval by a
>Public Health Service ad hoc panel even after the Food and Drug
>Administration has approved the research protocols.
>
>There are plenty of examples of otherwise controlled substances, from
>codeine to morphine, that may be prescribed under strict medical
>supervision. If marijuana truly has medical benefits, then it should
>be available by prescription. But until the federal government stops
>its reefer madness, we'll never learn for certain what those benefits
>are, if any.
>__________________________________________________________________________
>Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
>receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
>---
>MAP posted-by: Derek
>www.mapinc.org
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 23:55:36 -0600 (MDT)
>From: Bryan Krumm <kru...@unm.edu>
>To: res...@crrh.org
>Cc: drc...@drcnet.org
>Subject: get paid for smoking pot?
>Message-ID: <Pine.A41.4.21.000623...@ben15.unm.edu>
>
>Our local alternative newspaper has been running an add that says you can
>get paid for smoking pot. Does anyone have info on
><http://www.confidentialreport.com/>?
> Bryan
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 08:11:27 -0700
>From: "Roger Dodger" <pro...@wwdb.org>
>To: "CRRH mailing list" <res...@crrh.org>
>Subject: Ralph Nader on Drugs
>Message-ID: <002001bfddee$a0d790a0$e2883ea6@proteus>
>
>This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
>------=_NextPart_000_001D_01BFDDB3.CBF85FC0
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>After reading about Ralph Nader and his stand on drugs on CRRH, I just =
>had to find the original quote. Here it is: source: =
>http://www.issues2000.org/Ralph_Nader.htm
>
>Ralph Nader on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>Supports legalization of industrial hemp=20
>On marijuana legalization: "If you know anyone who got high on =
>industrial hemp, tell the National Science Foundation and you'll get a =
>prize for the most unlikely scientific discovery ever. George Bush's =
>father was saved by a parachute made of industrial hemp."=20
>Source: Campaign Speech, Hartford Public Library, Hartford CT May 16, =
>2000=20
>Hemp is GREAT, Ralph! Now, give us some insight about marijuana =
>legalization (regulation). I think this was the original question.
>
>
>
>Roger Dodger
>
>"Nonsensical, repetitive behaviour is a trait of mental illness."
>->Dana Scully<-
>
>"Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a =
>species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of =
>reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation =
>and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law =
>strikes a blow at the very principle upon which our Government was =
>founded."
>A. Lincoln
>Illinois House of Representatives
>December 18, 1840
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 08:23:17 -0700
>From: "Roger Dodger" <pro...@wwdb.org>
>To: "CRRH mailing list" <res...@crrh.org>
>Subject: Other Candidates stand on Drugs and the Drug War
>Message-ID: <002901bfddf0$6d2b3160$e2883ea6@proteus>
>
>This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
>------=_NextPart_000_0026_01BFDDB5.73C3E3E0
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>Here are some quotes from 'Other' candidates about their stand on drugs =
>and the drug war:
>
>Rudy Giuliani on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>Drug policy should be an integral part of foreign policy=20
>We need to call on the on the federal government after having done our =
>job effectively [on crime reduction] to make [drug reduction] an =
>important part of our foreign policy, rather than a secondary part. =
>After all it has to do with the future of our children and it is just =
>important as international trade. And it's just a important as wars that =
>may be going on in different parts of the world, because it has to do =
>with how productive America is going to be into the next generation.=20
>Source: Speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government Sep 29, 1997=20
>Pat Buchanan on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>
>Drug usage is not a victimless crime; so keep marijuana ban=20
>I'm against the legalization of marijuana. People say it's a victimless =
>crime. [But the manager of a rehabilitation center] said that 10% of the =
>children in Iowa are born with some kind of drug affliction, and 5% of =
>them suffer permanent damage. As soon as I heard that, these little =
>children are going to suffer their whole lives because of drugs their =
>parents took, I think we can't quit the war on drugs and we can't =
>legalize marijuana.=20
>
>Source: Interview on "CNN Talkback Live" Jan 24, 2000=20
>
>
>Open Mexican border invites drug trafficking=20
>Look what happened as a consequence of NAFTA. We got a $25 billion trade =
>deficit with Mexico. Narcotics are now pouring across that border, =
>poisoning the hearts and minds and souls of American children. The =
>Colombia drug cartel moved its operations from Colombia to Mexico, =
>brought up truck plants and manufacturing plants. Why? So they could =
>pour them through that open NAFTA border and bring them into our country =
>and destroy the lives and souls of American children.=20
>
>Source: Remarks at Home Schools Event, Washington, DC Sep 24, 1999=20
>
>
>George W. Bush on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>
>Supports military package to Colombia to fight drug supply=20
>Bush has said little on the drug issue. His campaign spokesman said the =
>governor favors the Colombian military package [which would eradicate =
>drug suppliers], "to make sure their military is well-trained and =
>well-equipped to fight the drug traffickers." Bush is still trailed by =
>unsubstantiated allegations of cocaine use. Bush also is a strong =
>supporter of faith-based initiatives to fight addiction.=20
>
>Source: Boston Globe, p. A21 Mar 5, 2000=20
>
>
>Stronger penalties for first time cocaine possession=20
>As governor, Bush favored tougher laws for drug offendors, including =
>signing legislation that allows judicial discretion to sentence =
>first-time offendors possessing less than one gram of cocaine to a =
>maximum of 180 days in jail. (Previously, first-time offendors received =
>automatic probation.) Bush is still trailed by unsubstantiated =
>allegations of cocaine use.=20
>
>Source: Boston Globe, p. A21 Mar 5, 2000=20
>
>
>Identifies with former addicts based on former alcoholism=20
>Bush told a group of recovering drug addicts that he still identifies =
>with their struggle, more than a decade after he gave up alcohol. Bush =
>told the young men his Christian faith was critical in shaping his =
>turnaround. He cast his battle in simple terms, saying: "Just like you, =
>I'm on a walk, and it's a never-ending walk as far as I'm concerned. I =
>used to drink too much and I quit drinking. I want you to know that your =
>life's walk is shared by a lot of other people. Even some who wear =
>suits." Bush has said he was never addicted to alcohol. But since giving =
>up drinking in 1986 at age 40, he described that as a turning point in =
>his life.=20
>
>Source: Boston Globe, p. A12 Jan 22, 2000=20
>
>
>Full background checks on drug use for all appointees=20
>Bush was asked whether as President he would insist that he his =
>appointees undergo full FBI background checks, which include questions =
>about drug use. He would, he replied. "Could I pass the challenge of a =
>background check? My answer is absolutely," Bush said. "Not only could I =
>pass the background check and the standards applied to today's White =
>House, but I could have passed the background check and the standards =
>applied on the most stringent conditions when my dad was President -- =
>15-year period."=20
>
>Source: R.W.Apple, New York Times, p. A12 Aug 30, 1999=20
>
>
>Parents make up for past by warning kids against drugs=20
>Bush said that parents have a responsibility to make up for their =
>youthful mistakes by warning their children to stay away from drugs. =
>"One of the interesting questions facing baby boomers is, have we grown =
>up? Are we willing to share the wisdom of past mistakes? And I think the =
>message ought to be to all children, 'Don't use drugs. Don't abuse =
>alcohol.' That's what leadership is all about."=20
>
>Source: Mary Leonard, Boston Globe, p. A3 Aug 22, 1999=20
>
>
>Supports tough drug laws as well as drug education programs.=20
>Drugs and alcohol destroy lives. We have toughened laws for people who =
>sell drugs. We also spend millions of dollars on education programs such =
>as "Safe and Drug-free Schools" grants.=20
>
>Source: www.governor.state.tx.us/divisions/faq_index.html 12/31/98 Dec =
>31, 1998=20
>
>
>Encourages abstinence from tobacco, drugs or alcohol.=20
>Government can only be a part of the solution. I encourage all young =
>people to take care of their bodies and abstain from using tobacco, =
>drugs or alcohol. With clear minds, young people can achieve their goals =
>and dreams.=20
>
>Source: www.governor.state.tx.us/divisions/faq_index.html 12/31/98 Dec =
>31, 1998=20
>
>
>Al Gore on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>
>Science doesn't say medical marijuana is proper=20
>Vice President Gore today backed away from his earlier support of =
>medical marijuana, saying he sees "no reliable evidence" that it is an =
>effective pain reliever. During a candidate forum in New Hampshire last =
>December, Gore said, "I think that where the alleviation of pain where =
>medical situations is concerned, we have not given doctors enough =
>flexibility to help patients who are going through acute pain." But =
>today, when asked by a student where he stood on a medical treatment =
>that is legal in California, Gore took a stronger stance against use of =
>the drug. "Right now, the science does not show me, or the experts whose =
>judgment I trust, that it is the proper medication for pain and that =
>there are not better alternatives available in every situation," he said =
>during a school visit in a low-income neighborhood southeast of downtown =
>Los Angeles.=20
>
>Source: Ceci Connolly, Washington Post, pg. A10 May 12, 2000=20
>
>
>Mandatory weekly drug testing for state prisoners & parolees=20
>Gore proposed federal spending of $500 million a year to help states =
>test, treat, and counsel prisoners & parolees for drug use. Inmates in =
>state prison-mandatory testing already applies in federal prison-would =
>not be released until they could pass drug tests. Further, parolees =
>could be returned to prison if they failed the tests, which would be =
>administered twice a week. Parolees would also be subjected to stricter =
>supervision, to ensure that they paid child support, stayed off drugs, =
>and found jobs.=20
>
>Source: James Dao, New York Times, p. A18 May 3, 2000=20
>
>
>Drug treatment programs for every addict who wants one=20
>Gore called for expanding drug treatment programs for non-criminals, =
>though he offered no details. "I believe we should build a country in =
>which every single addict who finds the power to reach out and say, 'Now =
>is the time I want help and I want treatment' gets an immediate =
>response," he said.=20
>
>Source: James Dao, New York Times, p. A18 May 3, 2000=20
>
>
>Lead a national crusade against drugs=20
>Gore would fight for "get clean to get out" and "stay clean to stay out" =
>drug policies to help cut down on crimes by repeat offenders. Gore would =
>create a matching grant program to states and localities to help =
>systematically test, treat and sanction probationers, prisoners and =
>parolees. Gore would also lead a national crusade against drugs. Gore =
>would expand the number of drug courts and fight for tougher drug =
>penalties.=20
>
>Source: Press Release May 2, 2000=20
>
>
>Loosen restrictions on medical marijuana=20
>Breaking slightly with Clinton administration policy, Gore said he =
>supports giving doctors greater flexibility to presribe marijuana to =
>relieve patients' pain. Otherwise, Gore closely adheres to the framework =
>of current policy [which includes increasing Drug War spending to $18.9 =
>billion this year].=20
>
>Source: Boston Globe, p. A21 Mar 5, 2000=20
>
>
>Tougher drug policies; fight drugs in Colombia=20
>Gore said he would push for "tougher drug penalties and enforcement," =
>would increase drug interdiction efforts, would expand drug courts and =
>would institute a $2 billion national media campaign targeted at =
>preventing youth from using drugs. He is supportive of the Colombia plan =
>[which fight drugs via the Colombian military].=20
>
>Source: Boston Globe, p. A21 Mar 5, 2000=20
>
>
>Did pot when young, like young people do=20
>Gore said he used marijuana "when I came back from Vietnam, yes, but =
>not"[a lot]. Gore said in 1987 that his use of marijuana, which began in =
>college, had been "infrequent and rare." Pressed further, Gore said: =
>"When I was young, I did things young people do. When I grew up I put =
>away childish things."=20
>
>Source: Washington Post, by Howard Kurtz & Ceci Connolly Jan 24, 2000=20
>
>
>Decrease disparities in punishing crack vs. powder cocaine=20
>Al Gore all but said the laws that treat crack cocaine far more harshly =
>than powdered cocaine should be eliminated. A person currently caught =
>with 5 grams of crack cocaine would get the same 5-year sentence as a =
>person caught with 500 grams of powder, a 100-to-1 ratio. The Senate =
>voted to reduce the ratio to 10-to-1. But Gore said that is not enough. =
>"The remaining disparities should be dealt with," Gore said. The =
>100-to-1 law had become the top symbol of racism in the criminal =
>INjustice system.=20
>
>Source: Derrick Z. Jackson, Boston Globe editorial Nov 19, 1999=20
>
>
>Drug efforts are beginning to pay off; we must do more=20
>Our administration has secured the largest anti-drug budgets in history, =
>with more money for drug enforcement agents, for border & customs =
>control, for education & outreach, for treatment & prevention. Our =
>efforts have finally begun to pay off. Overall, drug use by adults has =
>dropped to more than half of its highest levels in 1979. Even drug use =
>by our young people, which seemed to be getting worse every year, has =
>finally begun to decline. But we know that we've barely begun. We must =
>do so much more.=20
>
>Source: White House Briefing, Washington, DC Feb 8, 1999=20
>
>
>Community disconnectedness is a source of drug problems=20
>To deal with the drug problem, we have to do more to expand opportunity, =
>to create jobs for our young people, especially in communities that have =
>too often been passed by in good times. That higher rate of drug abuse =
>in minority communities and impoverished communities, I think, comes =
>about partly because you have a higher vulnerability to feeling that =
>sense of being disconnected and alienated and not a part of what can be =
>possible in our future.=20
>
>Source: White House Briefing, Washington, DC Feb 8, 1999=20
>
>
>Drug Control Strategy: More $, more enforcement, more TV ads=20
>I am pleased to formally release our National Drug Control Strategy. =
>It's not a short-term plan designed to produce short-lived results; it =
>is a comprehensive long-term strategy. It has more money for drug =
>testing and treatment. It has better drug-law enforcement in our =
>communities and better drug control on our borders. It has better =
>anti-drug education for young people. Our plan is backed by the largest =
>anti-drug budget ever-nearly $18 billion.=20
>
> [The Strategy includes:]=20
> a.. strengthening the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Initiative and =
>encouraging more school districts to start after-school programs=20
> b.. increasing our efforts to promote drug treatment and prevention =
>programs=20
> c.. more drug testing of prisoners and parolees=20
> d.. more police on the streets of our communities to break the deadly =
>cycle between crime and drugs=20
> e.. maintain the vigorous maritime interdiction operations=20
> f.. step up anti-money laundering efforts=20
> g.. use the military to support our drug law enforcement efforts.
>Source: White House Briefing, Washington, DC Feb 8, 1999=20
>
>
>After-school programs prevent most drug use=20
>The hours between 2 & 6 are the most perilous hours of the day for our =
>children. A teenager is most likely to take up smoking between the hours =
>of 2 & 6. A teenager is most likely to do drugs and alcohol between the =
>hours of 2 & 6. A teenager is most likely to get caught up in crime =
>between the hours of 2 & 6. That means we must engage our children in =
>positive, constructive activities between the hours of 2 & 6, [by =
>expanding] access to quality after-school care for all our children.=20
>
>Source: Speech to National PTA, "Protecting Our Children" Mar 23, 1998=20
>
>Alan Keyes on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>Stricter drug penalties; more border security=20
> Keyes supports the following principles concerning drugs:=20
> a.. Support capital punishment for convicted international drug =
>traffickers.=20
> b.. Increase border security to stop the flow of illegal drugs into =
>the US=20
>Source: Vote-Smart.org 2000 NPAT Jan 13, 2000=20
>
>It's a moral crisis, not a drug problem=20
>[With drugs,] we're not dealing with a material problem, we're dealing =
>with a moral problem. In 1950, we didn't have a huge plethora of laws =
>dealing with drug abuse, and yet we also did not have an enormous drug =
>problem in this country. We proliferated laws because the fundamental =
>discipline that was prevailing in our society in 1950 has broken down. =
>We don't have a drug problem. We have a moral crisis. When we face that =
>reality, then we will have solved the problem.=20
>Source: Republican Debate at Dartmouth College Oct 29, 1999=20
>
>Drug problem is a symptom of governmental lack of discipline=20
>Q: How do you plan to continue with the war on drugs? A: The problem is =
>very simple: You can't sustain self-government without self-discipline, =
>and the drug problem is a symptom of that. We proliferate laws; we even =
>have started to invade property rights and do other things that are =
>tearing down our system of liberty. Why? Because we are out of control, =
>because we are a people who do not understand that if you enslave =
>yourself to chemicals, you cannot be free.=20
>Source: Republican Debate at Dartmouth College Oct 29, 1999=20
>
>Increase penalties for selling drugs=20
>Increase penalties for selling drugs. Impose capital punishment for =
>convicted international drug traffickers.=20
>Source: 1996 National Political Awareness Test, Project Vote Smart Jul =
>2, 1996=20
>Harry Browne on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>
>Drug War breaches 4th Amendment civil rights=20
>Browne spoke out today against H.R.2987, the Methamphetamine =
>Anti-Proliferation Act -- a bill that would trash your right to privacy, =
>due process and free speech. The bill empowers the police to conduct =
>secret searches of your property, often referred to as "black bag" =
>searches. It creates a new type of search warrant that allows police to =
>enter your home or place of business, conduct a search, seize or copy =
>files from your computer, and not tell you about it until months later. =
>Another provision of the bill allows government agents to seize your =
>property without giving you a list of the seized items.=20
>
>"This an outright assault on the Fourth Amendment," said Browne, "But if =
>you are out to demonstrate that you're a law and order politician, that =
>pesky amendment a real drag. But that's exactly what the Constitution is =
>supposed to be -- a drag on government power. The only way to stop the =
>politicians from further injections of unconstitutional authority is to =
>end the insane war on drugs."=20
>
>Source: Press Release "High on the Hill" May 27, 2000=20
>
>
>Only politicians pretend we're winning insane War on Drugs=20
>"I have never met anyone who believes we're winning the insane War on =
>Drugs. But politicians love to pretend that we are," said Harry Browne. =
>"Millions of Americans know that the Drug War is a cruel and brutal =
>failure." Browne pointed out that many of those armed criminals are drug =
>dealers. "Only Libertarians want to end the nightmare of Prohibition - =
>with its criminal gangs and drive-by shootings."=20
>
>"Besides," argued Browne, "the Drug War has led to the trampling of the =
>Bill of Rights. And that's the central issue with both guns and drugs: =
>the U.S. Senate has no business violating your constitutional rights, no =
>matter how noble the cause." Browne concluded, "On my first day in =
>office, I will pardon all federal, non-violent drug and gun offenders. =
>And during my term, I will lead the fight to end the insane War on =
>Drugs, and to remove federal gun-control laws from the books."=20
>
>Source: Press Release "The Non-Sense of the Senate" May 20, 2000=20
>
>
>Drug War makes streets a war zone=20
>I steadfastly oppose the Drug War. I believe it has made our streets a =
>war-zone with innocent bystanders caught in the confusion of drug raids =
>or drive-by shootings and that this war has wreaked havoc on our civil =
>liberties.. I would pardon all federal, non-violent drug offenders =
>because these people are not a threat to anyone and because we could use =
>the space to keep real criminals behind bars so those individuals cannot =
>add to their list of victims.=20
>
>Source: E-mail correspondence from the candidate Jan 27, 2000=20
>
>
>Decriminalize pot; end the war on drugs=20
>
> Browne supports the following principles concerning illegal drugs.=20
> a.. Decriminalize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes.=20
> b.. Decriminalize the production and use of industrial hemp for =
>agricultural purposes.=20
> c.. Eliminate federal funding for programs associated with the "war on =
>drugs."=20
> d.. Browne concludes, "Repeal all federal drug laws."
>Source: Vote-Smart.org 2000 NPAT Jan 13, 2000=20
>
>
>Admits pot use; but it's none of your business=20
>Q: Have you ever done cocaine or marijuana? A: I have nothing to hide. I =
>smoked marijuana about four times in the 1960s. But it's not the =
>question of MY life - it's the question of YOUR life. I don't believe =
>reporters and bureaucrats should be prying into your privacy and your =
>life. I feel that I should set an example, by saying that my life is my =
>own, so I'm inclined to say, "It's none of your business."=20
>
>Source: The Alan Colmes Show, WEBD NY 1050 AM Aug 26, 1999=20
>
>
>Crime rate soared in 70s Drug War like in 30s Prohibition=20
>Drug use today is many times what it was 30 years ago. The crime rate =
>peaked in 1933 when alcohol prohibition was repealed after a steady rise =
>during prohibition. The crime rate then fell for 30 years until drug =
>prohibition started in the 1960s. Cocaine wasn't a problem in this =
>country until temporarily the government succeeded in cutting of f the =
>supply of marijuana. When the government temporarily succeeded in =
>getting rid of cocaine, then crack appeared. A new supply will always =
>take its place.=20
>
>Source: The Alan Colmes Show, WEBD NY 1050 AM Aug 26, 1999=20
>
>
>Replace costs of enforcement with costs of addiction=20
>Suppose all drugs became absolutely legal tomorrow - would you start =
>snorting cocaine? We have the enormous costs of drug use already. So =
>what are we afraid of? Addiction affects a certain percentage in the =
>population. Most people are able to drink without becoming alcoholics, =
>and most people [would not become drug addicts]. We can't go running =
>people's lives.=20
>
>Source: The Alan Colmes Show, WEBD NY 1050 AM Aug 26, 1999=20
>
>
>Legalization removes the rebellious appeal of drugs=20
>[When asked about the Libertarian Party's pro-legalization stance on =
>drugs with regards to the chaotic conclusion of Woodstock '99, Browne =
>responded]: Part of the reason that that sort of thing happens is just =
>as in the '60s, [drug use] is a badge of courage against authority. It =
>is a way of rebelling. But you can't rebel against something that's =
>legal. People don't rebel against liquor, against smoking, against these =
>other things except in very minor ways, but they do rebel against the =
>drug laws.=20
>
>Source: Matt Drudge, 'The Drudge Report,' Fox News Jul 31, 1999=20
>
>
>Increased govt monitoring does nothing to reduce drug use=20
>You gave government the authority to [monitor bank accounts] when you =
>said they could search and seize people without a warrant and without =
>probable cause. The government rifles through your bank account looking =
>for evidence with which to hang you. It's going to be reading your =
>e-mails & taking your property. It's doing all of these things, & it's =
>not doing anything to reduce drug use at all. What I want to see is our =
>government abiding by the Constitution, which would end this nightmare =
>of prohibition.=20
>
>Source: Matt Drudge, 'The Drudge Report,' Fox News Jul 31, 1999=20
>
>
>Bank profiles aimed at drug dealers will fail=20
>Know Your Customer is a proposed regulation to develop a customer =
>profile [of] your banking habits. [Since financial tracking began in =
>1970, the purpose has been] to assure that you don't deal drugs. Why do =
>such programs fail? Because those at whom it is aimed make it their =
>business to know the regulations and circumvent them. A drug dealer =
>won't keep his money in the bank -- to have his transactions reported to =
>the government and his assets seized by zealous DEA or Treasury agents.=20
>
>Source: http://www.harrybrowne2000.org/ "Your bank account" 5/16/ Feb =
>19, 1999=20
>
>
>Pardon non-violent drug offenders to free prison space=20
>Browne does not building more federal or state prisons; nor funding for =
>"boot-camps" as alternative sentencing for adult first-time felons. =
>Browne says, "End drug prohibition and the War on Drugs, and immediately =
>pardon all federal non-violent drug offenders, in order to free prison =
>space for murders, rapists, and child molesters."=20
>
>Source: (Cross-ref to Crime) Project Vote Smart, 1996 May 1, 1996=20
>
>
>Govt has no Constitutional authority to prohibit any drugs=20
>End drug prohibition and the War on Drugs. The federal government has no =
>Constitutional authority to prohibit any drugs. It required a =
>Constitutional amendment to prohibit alcohol (which produced the same =
>explosion of crime that drug prohibition has caused).=20
>
>Source: Project Vote Smart, 1996, www.vote-smart.org May 1, 1996=20
>
>
>War on Drugs is a crusade against victimless crimes=20
>The crusade against victimless crimes reaches the apex of absurdity in =
>the War on Drugs. It is the quintessential example that government =
>doesn't work. Government has failed completely to stop people from =
>taking drugs. It can't stop drugs from coming into the country. It can't =
>even stop drugs from getting into its own prisons. And yet the =
>politicians keep telling us that the next freedom taken from us will be =
>the price that finally pays off in getting drugs off the streets and =
>away from our children.=20
>
>It ought to be obvious by now that this War will never be won. =
>Government can't stop the supply, it can't reduce the demand, and its =
>strong-arm tactics don't work. We have paid for this fruitless crusade =
>in billions of tax dollars, the corruption of police forces, the loss of =
>civil liberties, soaring crime rates, and gang warfare. The War has =
>served only to undermine our protections against reckless law =
>enforcement-and to make life easier for violent criminals.=20
>
>Source: Why Government Doesn't Work, by H. Browne, p.130-1 Jul 2, 1995=20
>
>
>Marijuana is not unconditionally evil; allow medical use=20
>Marijuana is very effective in relieving chronic pain; alleviating =
>nausea for cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy; and treating =
>glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, and other medical conditions. No =
>one has ever been known to die from smoking marijuana, and no scientific =
>study has indicated that smoking marijuana leads inevitably to heavier =
>drugs. But the Drug Warriors prefer to let patients suffer, rather than =
>acknowledge that marijuana isn't an unconditional evil.=20
>
>Source: Why Government Doesn't Work, by Harry Browne, p.133 Jul 2, 1995=20
>
>
>Truth is a casualty in the War on Drugs=20
>Truth is a casualty in the War on Drugs. Because they're in a losing =
>battle, the Drug Warriors grow progressively more hysterical in trying =
>to justify their activities. It has become impossible to discuss calmly =
>any issue concerning drugs.=20
>
> Lost in th hysteria are a few simple facts:=20
> a.. No one has ever been known to die from smoking marijuana=20
> b.. No scientific study has indicated that smoking marijuana leads =
>inevitably to heavier drugs=20
> c.. More people use mind-altering stimulants, sedatives, =
>tranquilizers, or analgesics than use cocaine or crack=20
> d.. Fewer people die from illegal drugs than die from accidental =
>poisoning by legal drugs and medicines.
>Much of the misery coming from illegal drugs occurs because they are =
>illegal. People sometimes die or become sick from poorly formulated =
>illegal drugs or from overdoses of them, because the law prevents =
>reputable companies from providing a safe product in standard doses.=20
>
>Source: Why Government Doesn't Work, by H. Browne, p.132-3 Jul 2, 1995=20
>
>
>John Hagelin on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>
>Legalize medical marijuana; educate for prevention=20
>
> Hagelin supports the following principles regarding drugs:=20
> a.. Expand drug education & treatment programs.=20
> b.. Decriminalize the use of medicinal marijuana & industrial hemp=20
> c.. Increase border security to stop the flow of illegal drugs=20
> d.. Hagelins supports "education that unfolds intelligence, =
>creativity, and self-confidence, raising life to be in harmony with =
>natural law & thereby eliminating the tendency towards drug dependence; =
>promote programs shown to dramatically reduce drug dependency."
>Source: Vote-Smart.org 2000 NPAT Jan 13, 2000=20
>
>
>Legal drugs won't save money.=20
>Legalization of drugs might cut dramatically crime-related drug costs. =
>About 20% of the cost of drugs is crime-related. 80% is health-related, =
>productivity-related, absenteeism, and so forth. It's loss of human =
>potential. Legalization could eliminate 20% of the costs of drugs; =
>there's no guarantee that drug use wouldn't increase by at least 20% if =
>people had access to drugs legally.=20
>
>Source: Natural Law Party National Convention Aug 24, 1996=20
>
>
>Legal drugs mean lost human potential.=20
>The legalization of drugs, and the statement that drugs are basically ok =
>or no worse than alcohol or whatever that would mean to the youth, is =
>sending the wrong signal to the youth. Even marijuana use, which is the =
>most mild hallucinogen, regularly over a six-month period results in a =
>reduction in the orderly brain functioning, a loss of EEG coherence, and =
>all of the different areas of the brain and personality, resulting in a =
>less integrated personality and a less integrated experience of life.=20
>
>Source: Natural Law Party National Convention Aug 24, 1996=20
>
>
>Solution to drugs is lessened demand through education.=20
>Outlawing drugs will never bring drug use under control--that's one =
>thing we can do to discourage the use of drugs, but it's better to hit =
>the demand side. The ultimate solution resides in education. Not just =
>educating people about the debilitating effects of drugs, which itself =
>would help, just like the smoking cessation campaign has helped, but =
>education that gives that gives deep satisfaction to the students and =
>will help them to fulfill their own objectives in a life-supporting way. =
>
>
>Source: Natural Law Party National Convention Aug 24, 1996=20
>Howard Phillips on Drugs=20
>
>
>
>
>More border security needed=20
>
> Phillips agrees with the following statements regarding drugs:=20
> a.. Border security is needed to win war on drugs=20
> b.. Increase border security to stop the flow of illegal drugs into =
>the US.
>Source: National Political Awareness Test, Project Vote Smart Jan 13, =
>2000=20
>
>
>
>
>Source: http://www.issues2000.org/
>
>Submitted by: Roger Dodger
>
>
>"Nonsensical, repetitive behaviour is a trait of mental illness."
>->Dana Scully<-
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 08:30:38 -0700
>From: "Roger Dodger" <pro...@wwdb.org>
>To: "CRRH mailing list" <res...@crrh.org>
>Subject: More on Harry Browne
>Message-ID: <003201bfddf1$9c960f00$e2883ea6@proteus>
>
>This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
>
>------=_NextPart_000_002F_01BFDDB6.79B42A20
>Content-Type: text/plain;
> charset="iso-8859-1"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>
>More headlines: Harry Browne on Drugs=20
>(Following are older quotations. Click here for main quotations.)=20
>
>
>
>Politicians apply drug laws to others and not themselves=20
>Q: Do you think candidates should acknowledge past drug use? A: The =
>worst kind of drug warriors in Congress say, "Put 'em in prison for life =
>and throw away the key" and then their son is caught with drugs and he =
>gets off with a reduced sentence - that's hypocrisy. If a Libertarian =
>candidate is caught with marijuana, he says "Everybody should be free to =
>do it," so there's no hypocrisy. He may not think it's a best idea in =
>the world, but people should be free to do it.=20
>Source: The Alan Colmes Show, WEBD NY 1050 AM Aug 26, 1999=20
>
>Drug-related problems result from prohibition, not drugs=20
>Companies like Seagram's and Johnny Walker do not hire kids to enforce =
>their territories. All of these things result from Prohibition and they =
>have existed with prohibition throughout all of recorded history.=20
>Source: The Alan Colmes Show, WEBD NY 1050 AM Aug 26, 1999=20
>
>Like 1920s Prohibition, govt intrudes on civil liberties=20
>Our cities have become totally unsafe: drive-by shootings, children =
>caught in the crossfire, kids carrying guns to school because they're =
>drug runners, all of these trappings of prohibition which we saw in the =
>1920s and we're seeing all over again with the war on drugs. It's not =
>going to end so long as the government keeps intruding on our civil =
>liberties, promising that if they just snoop enough in your bank =
>account, if they just start reading your e-mail, that they can stop this =
>drug flow.=20
>Source: Matt Drudge, 'The Drudge Report,' Fox News Jul 31, 1999=20
>
>Re-legalizing drugs would end many social ills=20
>Understandably, many Americans fear that ending the Drug War would =
>produce hundreds of thousands of addicts, crack babies, children trying =
>drugs, and other evils. But that's what we have now. Relegalizing drugs =
>would eliminate the criminal black market - ending the violence, the =
>incentive to hook children, and the production of bad drugs that destroy =
>people. And addicts could seek medical help openly and inexpensively -- =
>instead of hiding their habits from the law.=20
>Source: http://www.harrybrowne2000.org/ "7 Ways" 5/16/99 Jul 13, 1998=20
>
>We can't win the Drug War; escalating makes it worse.=20
>Nothing can win the Drug War, [so] it is constantly escalated -- =
>destroying more of your liberties with asset forfeiture laws, =
>drug-testing, and monitoring your financial transactions. This has =
>caused too many Americans to disrespect the law itself. Despite these =
>terrible costs, drug use continues unabated. Libertarians can see how =
>much safer America will be without the nightmare of Prohibition -- just =
>as the crime rate plummeted when alcohol Prohibition ended.=20
>Source: http://www.harrybrowne2000.org/ "7 Ways" 5/16/99 Jul 13, 1998=20
>
>Submitted by: Roger Dodger
>
>"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and =
>bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect against tyranny in =
>government."
>-> Thomas Jefferson <-
>
>"Nonsensical, repetitive behaviour is a trait of mental illness."
>->Dana Scully<-
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 08:37:27 -0700
>From: JT Barrie <rimch...@zdnetonebox.com>
>To: res...@crrh.org
>Subject: Vote on Wellstone amendment
>Message-ID: <3954D5...@zdnetonebox.com>
>
>How did our 2 illustrious "me too" senators vote on the Wellstone
>amendment? I guarantee that Smith voted it down; Wyden votes fashionably
>with the "mainstream" Democratic leadership - but slightly to the left
>[where the treatment solution to the problem - instead of taking care of
>the problem, of course - is fashionable].
> The rhetoric about the "gas price problem" is symptomatic of the 2
>party "solutions". Instead of addressing the problem and developing
>alternative energy to ease us from energy dependence, they go after a
>ridiculous anti trust suit against OPEC - whose economic clout stems
>from our inactivity. I guess if you don't address the problem, you can
>make a career out of government "solutions" to combat the symptoms. This
>is what we are doing with the war on drugs. The "doctors" are
>prescribing every solution to treat the symptoms of snakebite - except
>the anti venom [which is legalization].
>--
> The "war on drugs" is not about public safety - it's about increasing
>public safety budgets. The anti drug campaign is not about public
>service - it's about using public hysteria to protect the profit margins
>of those who are legally allowed to promote dangerous drugs to your
>children.
>
><a href = "http://www.geocities.com/rimchamp77/index.html">Social,
>political, and religious commentary not sanctioned by the lapdog
>media.</a><P>
>
><a href = "http://www.geocities.com/rimchamp77/campaign2000.html">JT for
>state rep district 34; the only candidate who:
>1] cares about public safety
>2] has a proven plan to reduce crime, violence, and teenage drug abuse
>3] will have a mandate for positive change
>The only meaningful vote for a candidate in district 34.
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 14:12:04 -0500
>From: "Paul Steiner" <st...@soltec.net>
>To: "Sam H. Clauder II" <cair...@att.net>,
> "CRRH mailing list" <res...@crrh.org>
>Subject: Re: Drug Czar McCaffrey Opposes IH in IL
>Message-ID: <01bfde10$15de5ac0$d5420540@default>
>
>Really late in replying but , I find the fact that they want to do a two
>year study in Illinois a waste of my tax money when there are records that
>already indicate that there are many areas in Illinois that are well suited
>for IH production. I am refering to a posting of the 1937 USDA guide to
>crops concerning all areas of the US. In which Champaign and Vermilion
>counties both are discussed in detail (heart of U of I country).
>
>Paul Steiner
>St. Joseph, IL
>
>S.H.A.R.E.
>Support Hemp Awareness Reforms & Education(TM)
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Sam H. Clauder II <cair...@att.net>; CRRH mailing list
><res...@crrh.org>
>Date: Wednesday, March 01, 2000 12:08 AM
>Subject: Drug Czar McCaffrey Opposes IH in IL
>
>
>>LADIES & GENTLEMEN:
>>
>>The following is a short release I just received and am forwarding to
>>you.
>>
>>Apparently, the ONDCP and the DEA are not as close to recommending
>>reclassification of IH as we previously thought they were. McCaffrey
>>tips their hand herein by opposing the Illinois bill, which does nothing
>>more than authorize and finance Illinois Universities to plant and study
>>test crops for the next two years, much like the Hawaii bill did.
>>
>>In light of this release, their previous claims that the ONDCP and the
>>DEA were re-considering their position on IH could more appropriately be
>>considered a political tactic to further stall any opposition from being
>>organized and mobilized in an effective manner.
>>
>
>snip
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 07:40:15 -0700
>From: "byrds" <by...@mail.rvi.net>
>To: <res...@crrh.org>
>Subject: e-mailing Democruds
>Message-ID: <200006240740...@mail.rvi.net>
>
>Well, I miss hearing from Peter and I am really pissed that they murdered
>him! He was a funny compassionate spirit and I wish I could go to Judge
>Kings courtroom and tell him how evil he is for killing freedom in
>America. The painful truth is that he has join the murdering McCaffrey on
>the list of War criminals and should be tried and convicted of the
>horrendous deliberate assassination of Peter McWilliams.
>So, I sent the demo-creeps a message but it's like peeing into the wind. I
>keep thinking of that day 30 years ago when my name was called and I went
>up to receive my award. It was for writing an award winning paper on
>freedom in America for the local chapter of the DAR. An organization I have
>been asked to join! Those old ladies are turning in their graves at the way
>this country's freedoms have been dissolved by Congress. And we keep voting
>the bastards in. Whichever "puppet" we elect this time isn't going to
>matter as the "industrialist" will run this country anyway they want. But
>I'm voting for Steve Kubby!!!!At least, I will know I am voting for a true
>American and someone who will stand up to them with all his might.
>Stand up! Don't give up the fight!!!See you in Harrisburg, Oregon for the
>most amazing Hempfest!July 14,15,16th...Spread the word...play The Toyes
>music...."Smoke Two Joints!"
>SueB
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 16:31:14 -0700
>From: webm...@drugsense.org (DrugSense)
>To: newsl...@drugsense.org
>Subject: DrugSense Weekly, June 23, 2000, #154
>Message-ID: <CN/U5giA8P...@drugsense.org>
>
>**********************************************************************
>
>DRUGSENSE WEEKLY
>
>**********************************************************************
>
>DrugSense Weekly, June 23, 2000 #154
>
>Read This Publication On-line at: http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm
>
>------------------------------------
>
>TABLE OF CONTENTS:
>
>* Feature Article
>
> Murder In California The Case Of Peter McWilliams (1949-2000).
> From "The Nation" by Dan Mindus
>
>
>Drug Policy-
>
> (1) Report - Heroin Tops Coke on Mass. Streets
> (2) Heroin Takes Deadly Hold on Md. County
> (3) Increase in Small Drug Labs
> (4) Editorial: Meth Lab Funding a Problem for All, not Just Sheriffs
> (5) Editorial: Jail Time For Addicts
> (6) Is Imprisoning Addicts The Best Policy?
> (7) Countdown to Ecstasy
> (8) Bush Flies Into An Air Force Cocaine Cloud
> (9) GOP Wants To Revive Stalled Spending Package
>
>Law Enforcement & Prisons-
>
> (10) Crime, In the Name of the Law
> (11) Editorial: Centac's Black Eye
> (12) Critics of Cops Still Need the Cops
> (13) Missouri Attorney General Sues Kansas City Police
> (14) 2 More Lay Dead, as Prohibition-Era Thinking Rules Day
>
>Cannabis & Hemp-
>
> (15) Analysis: The Murder of Peter McWilliams
> (16) Waiting for Medical Marijuana
> (17) Film Review: Grass
> (18) Going Dutch: The Answer to the Slightest Whiff of Trouble
> (19) UK: Joint Venture
>
>International News-
>
> (20) UK: Editorial: No Quick Fix
> (21) Contaminated Heroin Mystifies and Scares Britain
> (22) UK: Talks in London Today On Colombian Aid Plan
> (23) Colombia's Rebel Army Opens its Lair
> (24) China: US, Mainland Team Up to Fight Narcotics Trade
>
>* Hot Off The 'Net
>
> Peter McWilliams, R.I.P. by Wm F. Buckley
> Peter McWilliams Memorial Photos
> Sanho Tree on the Air
> "Grass" the Movie Dot Com
>
>* Volunteer of the Month
>
> Van Estes
>
>* Quote of the Week
>
> Harold E. Stassen
>
>************************************************************************
>
>FEATURE ARTICLE
>
>WEEKLY NEWS IN REVIEW
>
>=====================================================
>
>Domestic News- Policy
>---------------
>COMMENT: (1-2)
>
> McCzar's recent claim that we're "winning" the drug war was further
> refuted when two respected dailies reported sharply increased heroin
> use in their metropolitan areas.
>
>(1) REPORT - HEROIN TOPS COKE ON MASS. STREETS
>
>Despite ambitious state and local campaigns to combat heroin addiction,
>a new report shows that heroin, for the first time in more than a
>decade, has surpassed cocaine as the drug of choice on the streets of
>Boston and throughout Massachusetts.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: Boston Herald (MA)
>Copyright: 2000 The Boston Herald, Inc.
>Contact: letters...@bostonherald.com
>Address: One Herald Square, Boston, MA 02106-2096
>Website: http://www.bostonherald.com/
>Author: Kay Lazar
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n830/a01.html
>
>===
>
>(2) HEROIN TAKES DEADLY HOLD ON MD. COUNTY
>
>Today, Kristi Ziemski will not speak of the time between March 15 and
>April 9 of last year. The feelings she has - about killing her mother...
>
> [snip]
>
>Doris Ziemski was killed with a butcher knife and left sprawled for
>days in her foyer in what Kristi's prosecutor calls a heroin-related
>slaying. But her mother's life is hardly the sole one...
>
>Seven of its (Carroll County's) young people have died of overdoses in
>the last four years. Dozens of other residents in heroin's vise have
>turned up in emergency rooms. The county of 152,000 people has
>Maryland's first and only probation officer devoted solely to helping
>heroin-addicted youths, and bright yellow-and-black "Heroin Kills"
>billboards and bumper stickers have become common as residents fight
>back.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
>Source: Washington Post (DC)
>Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
>Contact: lette...@washpost.com
>Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
>Author: Annie Gowen, Washington Post Staff Writer
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n824/a07.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (3-4)
>
> The methamphetamine battle isn't going well either; two Western
> reports highlight how unwise tactics have simply compounded an
> environmental problem without reducing availability.
>
> The deferred environmental clean-up costs will ultimately be paid by
> the entire nation; not just a rural Oregon county.
>
>(3) INCREASE IN SMALL DRUG LABS
>
>Methamphetamine: Officials worry about explosions, pollution.
>
>Law enforcement officials call them Beavis and Butt-head labs. That's
>their grim private nickname tying the dim cartoon characters with a
>growing crowd of people who are cooking up volatile batches of
>homemade methamphetamine in their closets, kitchens and even
>children's rooms.
>
>As officers on the Peninsula and all over the Bay Area stumble upon
>more and more of these amateur drug factories, they openly worry about
>explosions -- both of the chemicals used to make the drug and in the
>numbers of users of the powerful and addictive stimulant.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
>Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA)
>Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News
>Contact: let...@sjmercury.com
>Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/
>Author: Sean Webby, Mercury News
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n815/a04.html
>
>===
>
>(4) EDITORIAL: METH LAB FUNDING A PROBLEM FOR ALL, NOT JUST SHERIFF
>
>Umatilla County Sheriff John Trumbo's frustration over a lack of money
>to clean up methamphetamine labs is understandable, but his directive
>to deputies that they put on blinders to these dangerous operations was
>extreme.
>
>The Herald obtained a memo Trumbo wrote to his staff, noting that
>Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality has no more money for
>hazardous waste cleanup at meth labs, ... He told his deputies he
>didn't want them to take any initiative in investigating
>methamphetamine labs.
>
>"Thank your snitches for the information they are 'not giving you.'
>Keep your eyes closed and pretend you have a cold. I don't want any 'I
>found a meth lab' calls... "
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: Tri-City Herald (WA)
>Copyright: 2000 Tri-City Herald
>Contact: let...@tri-cityherald.com
>Website: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n834/a08.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (5-6)
>
> The San Diego Union-Tribune wasted no time in airing arguments
> Californians will be hearing over and over from both sides on the drug
> treatment initiative which just qualified for the November ballot.
> Although not mentioned, it will also be a defining issue in the Senate
> race.
>
>(5) EDITORIAL: JAIL TIME FOR ADDICTS
>
>Ballot Initiative Would Hamstring Drug Courts
>
>It's really sad that California's public debate over treatment for
>addicted criminals could be co-opted by a few multimillionaires like
>George Soros on one side and the corrections officers' union on the
>other. Neither knows much about the disease of addiction.
>
>But instead of the public and lawmakers learning from the exhaustive
>research on addiction treatment and then crafting sound policies, we're
>in for another divisive, superficial battle over a ballot initiative.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
>Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
>Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
>Contact: let...@uniontrib.com
>Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
>Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n810/a08.html
>
>===
>
>(6) IS IMPRISONING ADDICTS THE BEST POLICY?
>
>We were raised to believe that the laws that govern us were set up for
>the greater good of the majority of our citizens. Somewhere along the
>line, some of that has changed.
>
>It is incredible to realize that today most families know of someone
>who has been incarcerated in a detention facility. Perhaps he or she is
>an immediate family member, a friend, or a friend of a friend. Few of
>us have been untouched by the prison growth of the past two decades.
>Behind the United States as a whole, California now has the biggest
>prison system in the western industrialized world, and we are the most
>overcrowded system in the United State.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
>Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
>Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
>Contact: let...@uniontrib.com
>Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
>Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
>Authors: Gretchen Burns Bergman and David Beck-Brown, gret...@abac.com,
>dbb...@pacbell.net
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n818/a04.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (7-9)
>
> Beyond heroin and cocaine, the problem of ecstasy awaits our drug
> warriors. For those curious about E's history, the Austin Chronicle
> got most of it right- except for a premature obit on Sasha Shulgin.
>
> Two other deferred problems served notice that they will resurface:
> George W's cocaine history and money for our military adventure in
> Colombia.
>
>(7) COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY- PART ONE OF THREE
>
>I Feel Love I'm sitting in one of the myriad coffee shops on Congress
>Avenue -- slouching, actually; it's a sunshiney spring Saturday
>morning, and the previous night keeps doubling back on me....
>
> [snip]
>
>"It was a life-changing experience. And I mean, like, for the
>better."
>
>Thrills, Pills, and Bellyaches
>
>Those are heady words, ones that are repeated ad infinitum wherever
>people talk about Ecstasy. There are more grinny, happy X-tales
>floating around Austin than there are wannabe film makers. Sometimes it
>seems like everyone here, at one point or another, has tried Ecstasy,
>"X," "E," whatever you choose to call it, at least once.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jun 2000
>Source: Austin Chronicle (TX)
>Copyright: 2000 Austin Chronicle Corp.
>Contact: lo...@auschron.com
>Website: http://www.auschron.com/
>Author: Mark Savlov
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n782/a08.html (Part 1)
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n817/a02.html (Part 2)
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n817/a03.html (Part 3)
>
>===
>
>(8) BUSH FLIES INTO AN AIR FORCE COCAINE CLOUD
>
>THE Republican front-runner for the White House, George W. Bush, was
>suspended from flying as a young pilot for failing to take a medical
>examination that included a drug test.
>
>Documents obtained by The Sunday Times reveal that in August 1972, as
>a 26 year-old subaltern in the Air National Guard, Bush was grounded
>for failing to "accomplish" an annual medical that would have
>indicated whether he was taking drugs.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: Times, The (UK)
>Copyright: 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd
>Contact: let...@the-times.co.uk
>Website: http://www.the-times.co.uk/
>Author: Tom Rhodes
>Bookmark: MAP's shortcut to Gov. Bush items:
>http://www.mapinc.org/bush.htm
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n828/a06.html
>
>===
>
>(9) GOP WANTS TO REVIVE STALLED SPENDING PACKAGE, MEASURE WOULD FINANCE
>KOSOVO, COLOMBIA EFFORTS
>
>WASHINGTON -- Under Pentagon pressure, congressional leaders want to
>revive and pass this month a stalled multibillion-dollar spending
>package for Colombia, U.S. peacekeepers in Kosovo and domestic
>disasters.
>
>The House approved a $13 billion measure two months ago. It has
>languished in the Senate because of Majority Leader Trent Lott,
>R-Miss., who said the bill was expensive and time-consuming...
>
>Now, Lott and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., would like to send
>the money, in a still undetermined amount, to President Clinton by June
>30, when lawmakers are to begin a week long Fourth of July recess, say
>congressional aides from both parties.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
>Copyright: 2000 The Salt Lake Tribune
>Contact: let...@sltrib.com
>Website: http://www.sltrib.com/
>Forum: http://www.sltrib.com/tribtalk/
>Author: The Associated Press
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n830/a10.html
>
>=====================================================
>
>Law Enforcement & Prisons
>---------
>
>COMMENT: (10-12)
>
> Stories from Florida and Ohio demonstrate LA isn't the only place
> where rogue cops find drug and forfeiture laws to their liking.
>
> Yet, as Clarence Page reminds us, we still need cops for society to
> function.
>
>(10) CRIME, IN THE NAME OF THE LAW
>
>Federal Court Testimony Reveals Corruption In The Delta Squad, An Elite
>Undercover Drug Team At The Manatee County Sheriff's Office.
>
>BRADENTON -- They prowled the streets of Manatee County, looking for the
>perfect victims -- poor, troubled people no one would believe.
>
>Then, they robbed them. Beat them. And even bragged about it.
>
>When it began to come apart, they hung together and conspired to keep
>quiet. They saw themselves as above the law.
>
>After all, they were the law.
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
>Copyright: 2000 St. Petersburg Times
>Contact: let...@sptimes.com
>Website: http://www.sptimes.com/
>Forum: http://www.sptimes.com/Interact.html
>Author: Alicia Caldwell, St. Petersburg Times Staff Writer
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n842/a02.html
>
>===
>
>(11) EDITORIAL: CENTAC'S BLACK EYE
>
>County's drug task force needs to make changes if it is to justify its
>existence and be an asset to justice
>
>Robert Tilton, the Stow police chief, scored an unintentional bulls-eye
>with his assessment of CenTac, Summit County's Central Tactical Unit.
>Said Tilton: ``I think that CenTac's record speaks for itself.''
>Indeed, CenTac's record does.
>
> [snip]
>
>In 1988, CenTac arrested brothers Albert and Thomas Thrower for a
>marijuana trafficking operation. The Throwers made a deal and forfeited
>in a plea bargain $3 million in cars, boats and rental properties. That
>established a pattern that made CenTac financially independent and
>virtually unaccountable as it moved beyond drugs.
>
> [snip]
>
>Sheriff Richard Warren, the nominal head of the CenTac governing board,
>knew too few specifics during the recent escorts case to know that
>CenTac agents were listening through motel walls while stakeout
>subjects had sex and that informants were buying sex with CenTac
>drug-buy money.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
>Source: Akron Beacon-Journal (OH)
>Copyright: 2000 by the Beacon Journal Publishing Co.
>Contact: v...@thebeaconjournal.com
>Website: http://www.ohio.com/bj/
>Forum: http://krwebx.infi.net/webxmulti/cgi-bin/WebX?abeacon
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n822/a04.html
>
>===
>
>(12) CRITICS OF COPS STILL NEED THE COPS
>
>WASHINGTON- Here's a twist. The Rev. Al Sharpton is complaining that
>the New York City police have not acted aggressively enough.
>
>Yes, this is the same Rev. Al who has charged police from Poughkeepsie,
>N.Y., to Riverside, Calif., with behaving too brutally.
>
>The shoe is on the other foot in the wake of the nationally publicized
>assault on more than 40 women by roving mobs of grabbing, groping and
>robbing hooligans in Central Park following the city's Puerto Rican Day
>parade last week....
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
>Copyright: 2000 Chicago Tribune Company
>Contact: ctc-Tri...@Tribune.com
>Website: http://www.chicagotribune.com/
>Forum: http://www.chicagotribune.com/interact/boards/
>Author: Clarence Page
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n832/a11.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (13-14)
>
> The Kansas City Star's series showing that police are still
> withholding seized assets from schools prompted the city to sue its
> police.
>
> On the eastern side of Missouri, two police killings during a crack
> bust followed a familiar pattern. Given the drug and the
> circumstances, mentioning the victims' color would probably have been
> redundant.
>
>(13) MISSOURI ATTORNEY GENERAL SUES KANSAS CITY POLICE BOARD
>
>The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners is holding $3.4 million
>in money and property that rightfully belongs to area county
>governments and school districts, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon
>contended in a lawsuit filed Friday.
>
>Nixon filed the lawsuit in an attempt to require the board to
>distribute the money and property, which the Police Department has
>collected mainly from seized, abandoned and unclaimed cash and property.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sat, 17 Jun 2000
>Source: Kansas City Star (MO)
>Copyright: 2000 The Kansas City Star
>Contact: let...@kcstar.com
>Address: 1729 Grand Blvd., Kansas City, Mo. 64108
>Feedback: http://www.kansascity.com/Discussion/
>Website: http://www.kcstar.com/
>Author: Matt Stearns, The Kansas City Star, mste...@kcstar.com
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n842/a04.html
>
>===
>
>(14) 2 MORE LAY DEAD, AS PROHIBITION-ERA THINKING RULES DAY
>
>A Futile War On Drugs
>
>Police said Ronald Beasley, 36, was not a target in the investigation
>but died mainly because he was near Earl Murray. Beasley's death, the
>lieutenant said, "was unintended, not a mistake."
>
>This unintended death that was not a mistake occurred six days ago in
>the parking lot of a busy fast-food restaurant on North Hanley Road
>when members of an undercover drug unit attempted to arrest Earl
>Murray. According to the cops, Murray was a drug dealer.
>
> [snip]
>
>As usual, I'd like to give the cops a break. It's the war I want to
>indict.
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)
>Copyright: 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
>Contact: let...@postnet.com
>Website: http://www.postnet.com/postnet/stories.nsf/Home
>Forum: http://www.postnet.com/postnet/config.nsf/forums
>Author: Bill McClellan <bmccl...@postnet.com>
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n832/a04.html
>
>=======================================================
>
>Cannabis & Hemp-
>-------------
>
>COMMENT: (15)
>
> Of the many reactions to Peter's untimely death, none expressed the
> appropriate sense of loss and outrage better Richard Cowan. If you
> have yet to read this piece, click on the URL right now.
>
>(15) ANALYSIS: THE MURDER OF PETER McWILLIAMS
>
>An Indictment, Not an Obituary
>
>Peter McWilliams, 50, best selling author, poet, photographer,
>publisher, libertarian crusader, medical marijuana activist, AIDS
>patient and cancer survivor, was found dead on the floor of his
>bathroom, apparently having choked to death after vomiting, for want of
>medical marijuana.
>
>There will be an autopsy, but whatever the immediate cause of death may
>have been, he was murdered by the United States Government as surely as
>if they shot him. Indeed, it would have been much more humane if they
>had just put a bullet in his head. No one should have to go through
>what he suffered at the hands of his country.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Fri, 16 Jun 2000
>Source: http://www.marijuananews.com
>Website: http://www.marijuananews.com/
>Author: Richard Cowan
>Related: http://www.mapinc.org/mcwilliams.htm
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n833/a06.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (16-17)
>
> Although hardly as outrageous, how an approved and funded medical
> cannabis study was trashed by a craven Washington state bureaucracy
> should at least incite some disgust.
>
> Speaking of craven: Ebert's inane "review" of 'Grass' qualifies; after
> succinctly listing the many failings of U.S. drug policy, he puts down
> the film for daring to imply change is needed.
>
>Indeed, Roger- what's YOUR point?
>
>
>(16) WAITING FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA
>
>The Antidrug Mafia Makes Sure Washington State Keeps Off The Grass.
>
>BACK IN 1996, an odd couple of state senators, Seattle liberal Democrat
>Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Spokane conservative Republican Bob McCaslin,
>introduced a bill allowing physicians to prescribe marijuana ...
>Thebill didn't make it through both houses, but funding to explore the
>feasibility of such a program did.
>
>Kohl-Welles,... was disappointed that her bill did not pass but
>satisfied that at least a start toward addressing the problem had been
>made. Four and a half years later, she is far from satisfied. Furious
>might be a better word to describe her feelings about the combination
>of bureaucratic inertia, academic fecklessness, and deliberate
>administrative obstructiveness that have rendered impotent the clearly
>expressed will of both the Legislature and the people of this state.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Thu, 15 Jun 2000
>Source: Seattle Weekly (WA)
>Copyright: 2000 Seattle Weekly
>Contact: let...@seattleweekly.com
>Website: http://www.seattleweekly.com/
>Forum: http://www.seattleweekly.com/forum/index.html
>Author: Roger Downey
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n839/a07.html
>
>===
>
>(17) FILM REVIEW: GRASS
>
>It is agreed by reasonable people that one of the results of anti-drug
>laws is to support the price of drugs and make their sale lucrative. If
>drugs were legalized, the price would fall, and the motive to promote
>them would fade away....Crime would go down ... and law enforcement
>would benefit from the disappearance of drug-financed bribery, payoffs
>and corruption.
>
>All of this is so obvious that the opposition to the legalization of
>drugs seems inexplicable--unless you ask who would be hurt the most by
>the repeal of drug laws. The international drug cartels would be put
>out of business. Drug enforcement agencies would be unnecessary.
>
> [snip]
>
>The film is unlikely to tell many of its viewers anything they don't
>already know, and unlikely to change our national drug policy....
>
>Am I in favor of drugs? Not at all. ...Have they given us the world's
>largest prison population, cost us billions of dollars and helped
>create the most violent society in the first world? Yes. From an
>objective point of view--what's the point?
>
>Pubdate: Fri, 16 Jun 2000
>Source: Chicago Sun-Times (IL)
>Copyright: 2000 The Sun-Times Co.
>Contact: let...@suntimes.com
>Feedback: http://www.suntimes.com/geninfo/feedback.html
>Website: http://www.suntimes.com/
>Author: Roger Ebert
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n837/a05.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (18-19)
>
> After all the outrage, a little comic relief from Europe was welcome;
> the British soccer fans' placid acceptance of unexpected defeat was
> noted by many- and it's fun to imagine McCzar's private thoughts on
> the Queen's choice of a study to be funded.
>
>(18) GOING DUTCH: THE ANSWER TO THE SLIGHTEST WHIFF OF TROUBLE
>
>The grass that mattered wasn't on the pitch - instead it kept football
>hooligans in check, writes Evan Fanning.
>
>THE reaction of the Dutch police officer said it all. ``They're doped
>up or dying or something,'' he muttered to his colleague as the masses
>of smiling English supporters strolled from the Philips stadium in
>Eindhoven despite having just watched their side snatch defeat from the
>jaws of victory against Portugal. Wiser words have rarely been spoken.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sun, 18 Jun 2000
>Source: Sunday Independent (Ireland)
>Copyright: 2000 Independent Newspapers Ltd
>Contact: sunday....@independent.ie
>Website: http://www.independent.ie/
>Author: Evan Fanning
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n832/a06.html
>
>===
>
>(19) UK: JOINT VENTURE
>
>Alex Benady Meets The Woman Who Has Won A Scholarship To Develop Her
>Interest In Cannabis
>
>As the heavy sweet smell in the corridor of any hall of residence will
>testify, many students are more than happy to invest considerable
>amounts of their own time and money in exhaustive private study of
>hemp and its properties.
>
>Not so Louisa Wood, a freelance fabric weaver from Southampton, who
>last week persuaded the Queen Elizabeth trust to part with A33,000 in
>the form of a scholarship to finance a month-long trip to the Chinese
>province of Yunnan, where she plans to study hemp production first-hand.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Tue, 13 Jun 2000
>Source: Guardian, The (UK)
>Copyright: 2000 Guardian Newspapers Limited
>Contact: let...@guardian.co.uk
>Website: http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/guardian/
>Author: Alex Benady
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n816/a06.html
>
>======================================================
>
>International News
>-------------
>
>COMMENT: (20-21)
>
> From Britain came a hint that a new approach to "drug treatment" may
> soon be forthcoming.
>
> Also from Britain, the lethal infection felling heroin injectors was
> finally identified as clostridial, but its source and point entry into
> the illegal market remain a mystery- and, of necessity- the means to
> remove it.
>
>(20) UK: EDITORIAL: NO QUICK FIX
>
>It Will Take More Than A Shot In The Arm To Wipe Out Addiction
>
>AT FIRST glance, vice vaccines look just great. These injections
>promise to inactivate drugs such as cocaine, heroin, speed and
>nicotine in the bloodstream before they reach the brain. Without the
>"hit", people just won't come back for more (see p 22).
>
>It's true that these vaccines are still being developed, so their full
>risks and benefits are not yet clear. But all the signs are that for
>people who are in danger of overdosing, or for addicts who want to get
>themselves clean but need some help to overcome their craving, the
>vaccines will be immensely valuable.
>
>But like many new technologies, they also bring difficult choices.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Sat, 10 Jun 2000
>Source: New Scientist (UK)
>Copyright: New Scientist, RBI Limited 2000
>Contact: let...@newscientist.com
>Feedback: http://www.newscientist.com/letters/reply.jsp
>Website: http://www.newscientist.com/
>Author: New Scientist Editorial
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n811/a03.html
>
>===
>
>(21) CONTAMINATED HEROIN MYSTIFIES AND SCARES BRITAIN
>
>GLASGOW -- They started showing up in hospitals here in the middle of
>April, gravely ill heroin addicts with huge, painful skin abscesses,
>skyrocketing white-blood-cell counts and dangerously low blood
>pressure. Since then, 63 similar cases have been identified, as far
>afield as Dublin, Liverpool and Manchester, and 32 people have died.
>
>The outbreak is most likely caused by bacteria in a contaminated batch
>of heroin, experts said. Doctors said they did not know whether the
>contaminated supply had been exhausted or whether there is more,
>perhaps much more, to come.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
>Source: New York Times (NY)
>Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
>Contact: let...@nytimes.com
>Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
>Forum: http://www10.nytimes.com/comment/
>Author: Sarah Lyall
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n806/a08.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (22-23)
>
> As a prelude to the Senate debate of "plan Colombia," President
> Pastrana pitched it to our European allies. Not to be outdone, Farc
> also sought to tell its side to a similar audience- minus the US, of
> course.
>
>(22) UK: TALKS IN LONDON TODAY ON COLOMBIAN AID PLAN
>
>Officials of the EU member-states, the European Commission,
>Switzerland, Canada and Japan are meeting in London today with the
>Colombian government to discuss President Andres Pastrana's appeal for
>massive aid. Mr Pastrana is asking the European Community to contribute
>$1 billion to his $7.5 billion development plan, known as "Plan
>Colombia", to support Colombia's peace process and combat trafficking
>in narcotics.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Mon, 19 Jun 2000
>Source: Irish Times, The (Ireland)
>Copyright: 2000 The Irish Times
>Contact: lett...@irish-times.ie
>Website: http://www.ireland.com/
>Author: Ana Carrigan
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n842/a08.html
>
>===
>
>(23) COLOMBIA'S REBEL ARMY OPENS ITS LAIR
>
>Turning point in civil war: International diplomats to gather under
>plastic awning for talks with FARC
>
>VILLA NUEVA COLOMBIA, COLOMBIA - In the fly-blown "capital" of its own
>pseudo-state on the edge of the Amazon jungle, Colombia's largest
>rebel army is preparing to play host to the world's diplomats.
>
>Canada's ambassador to Colombia will join 23 other foreign dignitaries
>and Colombian government officials at the unprecedented meeting with
>the Marxist FARC -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia --
>which specializes in kidnappings and revolution, and controls a
>section of the country the size of Switzerland.
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Wed, 14 Jun 2000
>Source: National Post (Canada)
>Copyright: 2000 Southam Inc.
>Contact: let...@nationalpost.com
>Feedback: http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary.asp?s2letters
>Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
>Forum: http://forums.canada.com/~nationalpost
>Author: Marina Jimenez
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n809/a03.html
>
>===
>
>COMMENT: (24)
>
> An item of unknown significance at this point: McCzar's Chinese junket
> pledging to cooperate in the oppression of junkies.
>
>(24) CHINA: US, MAINLAND TEAM UP TO FIGHT NARCOTICS TRADE
>
>The mainland and the United States yesterday signed their first
>agreement aimed at stopping the spread of illegal drugs, a move both
>sides hailed as a breakthrough in fighting crime.
>
>"Today the United States and China signed a mutual legal assistance
>agreement allowing both China and the United States to begin sharing
>evidence and information relating to crime and drugs," US national drug
>policy tsar Barry McCaffrey said. "This is an important moment and is the
>first legal agreement between these two great countries."
>
> [snip]
>
>Pubdate: Tue, 20 Jun 2000
>Source: South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
>Copyright: 2000 South China Morning Post Publishers Limited.
>Contact: jfe...@scmp.com
>Website: http://www.scmp.com/
>Author: Agence France-Presse
>URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n842/a03.html
>
>************************************************************************
>
>HOT OFF THE 'NET
>-------------
>
>Peter McWilliams, R.I.P. By Wm F. Buckley
>
>Too late for this weeks edition but a good addition for Hot off the
>'Net Is William F. Buckley's column on the passing of Peter McWilliams
>
>http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n849/a10.html
>
>Peter McWilliams Memorial Photos
>
>There are some pics of Peter on the website
>http://petertrial.com/photos.htm, both in low-res and hi-res. When you
>open the page you get a low-res version of the pic, there's a link on
>the page to download a larger, hi-res format version.
>
>Submitted by Doug McVay
>
>===
>
>Sanho Tree on the Air
>
>Sanho Tree appeared on the BBC World service chat show "Talking
>Point." It's an international hour-long call-in show and you can hear it
>with RealAudio at:
>
>http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/newsid_785000/785351.stm
>
>More importantly, the BBC website is still accepting email comments and
>thus far they are overwhelmingly against the US led drug war. Please
>feel free to add your thoughts and read viewpoints from around the world.
>The Beeb has done a good week-long series of stories on drug policy
>(linked at the website).
>
>===
>
>"Grass" the Movie Dot Com
>
>A wonderful new documentary on the subject of marijuana criminalization,
>entitled "Grass" is now playing in the theaters. You can learn more
>about this film here: http://www.missliberty.com/FilmGrass.html.
>
>************************************************************************
>
>VOLUNTEER OF THE MONTH
>------------
>
>Van Estes
>
>This month we recognize Van Estes also known as Doc-Hawk for his
>sustained support of the MAP editing/posting team and other volunteer
>work, both for MAP and the drug policy reform community.
>
>We asked Van a few questions:
>
> DS: When and why did you become involved in the drug policy area?
>
>Van: I really am honored to be chosen Volunteer of the Month. After
>some of the previous VOL's, even more so. Many have been eloquent
>writers who, like great artists, can paint a clear picture with words.
>Unlike the artist, my scientific bent helps my with the more technical
>tasks and eases the "mechanical" aspects of editing. That same logical
>direction has made it clearer than ever that something needs to be done
>about the way that users of drugs are treated in this country (and
>indeed around the world.)
>
>I served a tour of duty in the Army overseas...Key West in the early
>70s. As you can imagine, the atmosphere there was very open and
>marijuana use was common. It became clear to me that many of the
>"truths" about drugs told to me at the beginning if the "War on Drugs"
>were in fact lies. As a personal note, occasional use did not stop me
>from being rated the best in my field for the entire Army for 1974
>and 1975. For many years following military service, I watched quietly,
>thinking that the insanity of arresting marijuana smokers would be
>ended soon. Obviously, that has not happened.
>
>What really pushed me over the edge was when my daughter, then a
>teenager, started being harassed on a regular basis by the local
>police. Here is a beautiful young lady driving a wreck of a car,
>sometimes with a long-haired boyfriend. She was an easy target for
>local law enforcement. No resistance, no danger for the cops....just
>another notch toward promotion....and another victim of the drug war
>gets to go through the revolving doors of injustice.
>
>I started reading as much as I could on the Internet about drug policy
>reform. The first site that caught my eye was Dennis Peron's
>http://www.marijuana.org . That quickly led to Richard Cowan's great
>analysis at http://www.marijuananews.com . That led to DrugSense and
>MAP. I was stunned at the amount of good information and the apparent
>freedom from the customary censorship of the other media. I knew I had
>to do something.
>
>Over twenty-five years sitting on the sidelines and hoping that reason
>would prevail (while holding government or safety-related jobs) had to
>end. MAP made it easy to do a little at a time. Newshawking a few
>articles and writing a few letters was the start. About the same time, I
>found an old LIFE magazine and posted the articles for its 30th
>anniversary at http://www.WarOnSomeDrugs.com . Then a call went out for
>editors and I knew that was a way I could make a difference from the
>sidelines at home but on the front-line in cyberspace.
>
> DS: What do you consider the most significant story/issue of the past
> months?
>
>Van: One of the most important stories recently has been the death of
>Peter McWilliams. If you have not read "Ain't Nobody's Business If You
>Do", ( http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/ ) by Peter, you
>really need to. If his speech to the Libertarian convention is still
>Online, it is certainly worth listening to. Here was the government's
>worst nightmare...a gay man with AIDS, who was at once popular,
>intelligent and vocal in his support for the medical use of cannabis.
>
>In the end, the government got what it wanted, a death sentence, but
>the good that Peter has done will be magnified by his passing and the
>outrage that it has caused.
>
> DS: What are your favorite websites, besides the MAP/DrugSense sites?
>
>Van: Other than the MAP: DrugNews Index, my favorite site is
>CannabisNews at http://www.cannabisnews.com/ . Martha does a great
>job of posting relevant material and letting her viewers discuss the
>ramifications of today's drug policy news. She also really helps
>keep control if a troll pops up. Lately, time spent editing has
>reduced me to a lurker at CannabisNews, but it is always worth a
>visit.
>
>
>Van: Doc-Hawk is a name I acquired years ago while working on the HAWK
>anti-aircraft missile system. A small group of civilians got to fix all
>the really tough problems and I was the computer guru. I wore a white
>physicians smock and was soon called "Doc" by most of the GI's. HAWK
>rhymed and was fitting so it was added and stuck.
>
> DS: Thank you, Van, for all that you are doing! Van's name will be
> added to the list of honored volunteers at:
> http://www.drugsense.org/dswvol.htm
>
>
>***********************************************************************
>
>QUOTE OF THE WEEK
>------------
>
>`Whoever kindles the flames of intolerance in America is lighting a fire
>underneath his own home.' - Harold E. Stassen, 1947
>
>***********************************************************************
>
>
>
>DS Weekly is one of the many free educational services DrugSense offers
>our members. Watch this feature to learn more about what DrugSense can
>do for you.
>
>TO SUBSCRIBE, UNSUBSCRIBE, OR UPDATE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS:
>
>Please utilize the following URLs
>
>http://www.drugsense.org/hurry.htm
>
>http://www.drugsense.org/unsub.htm
>
>News/COMMENTS-Editor: Tom O'Connell (tje...@drugsense.org)
>Senior-Editor: Mark Greer (mgr...@drugsense.org)
>
>We wish to thank all our contributors, editors, NewsHawks and letter
>writing activists.
>
>NOTICE:
>
> In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
> distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
> interest in receiving the included information for research and
> educational purposes.
>
>REMINDER:
>
>Please help us help reform. Become a NewsHawk
>
>See http://www.mapinc.org/hawk.htm for info on contributing clippings.
>
>===
>
>NOW YOU CAN DONATE TO DRUGSENSE ONLINE AND IT'S TAX DEDUCTIBLE
>
>DrugSense provides many services to at no charge BUT THEY ARE NOT FREE
>TO PRODUCE.
>
>We incur many costs in creating our many and varied services. If you
>are able to help by contributing to the DrugSense effort visit our
>convenient donation web site at
>http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
>
>-OR-
>
>Mail in your contribution. Make checks payable to MAP Inc. send your
>contribution to:
>
>The Media Awareness Project (MAP) Inc.
>d/b/a DrugSense
>PO Box 651
>Porterville,
>CA 93258
>(800) 266 5759
>MGr...@mapinc.org
>http://www.mapinc.org/
>http://www.drugsense.org/
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 14:29:34 -0700
>From: "D. Paul Stanford" <stan...@crrh.org>
>To: res...@crrh.org
>Subject: TN: Cannabis Festival Focus On Marijuana, Hemp Use
>Message-ID: <4.3.2.7.2.200006...@mail.olywa.net>
>
>Newshawk: Sledhead
>Pubdate: Sat, 24 Jun 2000
>Source: Chattanooga Times & Free Press (TN)
>Contact: let...@timesfreepress.com
>Address: P.O. Box 1447, Chattanooga, TN 37403
>Website: http://www.timesfreepress.com/index.html
>Author: Ron Clayton
>
>CANNABIS FESTIVAL FOCUS ON MARIJUANA, HEMP USE
>
>NIOTA, Tenn. -- Organizers of a cannabis festival here say up to 2,000
>people may attend this weekend's Free Choice Fund Raiser.
>
>The festival is to be a teaching and training time, said Brian Palmer, who
>owns land where the festival will be held.
>
>"This is a free speech event," said Mr. Palmer. "There will be workshops on
>First and Fourth Amendment rights. Usually it betters people with
>education, and that leads to issues like the legal use of medical
>marijuana."
>
>The festival is being organized as a fund raiser for the Tennessee Cannabis
>Action Network (TCAN) to help the group get their programs off the ground,
>said Mr. Palmer.
>
>The group was founded earlier this year and centers on educating about the
>use of medical marijuana and industrial hemp, a material used for
>everything from making rope, to shoes and other clothing, said organizers.
>
>Thirty-two bands are expected for the event, some from as far away as
>England. Also, Mr. Palmer said booths selling hemp products and other items
>will be set up on the his farm.
>
>The 25-acre farm is located along and behind homes on County Road 351,
>several miles north of Niota.
>
>The two-day event will begin about 11 a.m. today and continue until 4 p.m.
>Sunday. Camping is allowed, and admission is free.
>
>Local authorities say they know of the event, but there are not permitting
>processes in the county, and since it is on private property there is
>nothing wrong with holding the event.
>
>Sheriff Steve Frisbie said he will have patrols, but unless complaints are
>filed about some illegal activity, not action will be taken.
>
>Organizers say the festival is to be a "family event" and participants from
>all over the United States and overseas are expected for the celebration
>and training sessions.
>__________________________________________________________________________
>Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
>receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
>---
>MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart
>www.mapinc.org
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 17:17:09 EDT
>From: Sw...@aol.com
>To: liberty-i...@topica.com
>Subject: Fwd: [cp] Vin Sends RE: Peter's murder
>Message-ID: <a9.761f5b...@aol.com>
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>Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 19:55:11 -0700 (PDT)
>Subject: [cp] Vin Sends RE: Peter's murder
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
>X-Mailer: Unknown
>
>FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0EDITORS: A SHORTER VERSION, AT 1,000 WORDS, ALSO
>MOVES=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 25, 2000 =A0=20
>THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz=20
>
>Drug war hypocrites kill a troublesome author=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Peter McWilliams, 50, author of the 1993 book "Ain't Nobody's Business
>If You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country," and
>accomplished public speaker on libertarian topics, died at home in Los
>Angeles June 14.. Struggling for breath in his bathtub, Peter choked to
>death on his own vomit.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>But it was not an accident.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>McWilliams suffered from both cancer and AIDS. A prescribed cocktail of
>toxic drugs was capable of holding his viral load to zero -- in effect,
>producing complete remission. Problem was, these drugs produced such
>severe nausea that McWilliams was unable to keep them -- or anything
>else -- down.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Fortunately, it turned out a natural and harmless herb exists which was
>almost fully effective in relieving McWilliams' nausea -- whereas a
>synthetic variant of the herb's dominant ingredient, the patented and
>thus pharmaceutically profitable Marinol -- proved only one-third as
>effective.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Unfortunately, following the effective yellow journalism campaign of
>William Randolph Hearst to identify this herb, Indian hemp, in the
>public mind as the dreaded tool of white women's seduction by minority
>Lotharios -- "Marihuana" -- the forces of racism and repression managed
>to outlaw it, progressively if unconstitutionally, between the years
>1916 and 1934.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Fortunately, the citizens of California since realized that mistake, and
>in the autumn of 1996 they re-legalized marijuana there for medical use
>on a doctor's "recommendation" -- no prescription required -- by a 55
>percent majority. Seven other states have since followed California's
>sensible lead.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Unfortunately, cops operating in California -- the same ones who used to
>snarl "If you don't like the law, change it" -- no longer pay any
>attention to the law. Now they just break into people's homes, trash or
>seize their property, and kidnap them because they feel like it.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"On Dec. 17, 1997, federal drug and tax agents raided McWilliams' home
>and offices, confiscating manuscripts and equipment and effectively
>shutting down his publishing business," according to J.D. Tuccille of
>Freedom Network News (www.free-market.net.) "The ostensible reason for
>the raid was a book advance paid to Todd McCormick, an author and fellow
>marijuana activist who rented a home where he wrote and grew marijuana
>with the money."=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Both men said the marijuana grown in the Bel Air mansion was intended to
>supply buyers' cooperatives that serve patients in California.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Mind you, this "crime" was committed, the arrests made, and the case
>proceeded in its entirety (start ital)after(end ital) the popular vote
>to legalize this activity.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Wait, it gets better. Why do you suppose the scum who run the War on
>Drugs in California decided to prosecute this case in federal court?=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>One might imagine a defendant like McWilliams would have had an
>open-and-shut dismissal, once he explained his deadly illness, presented
>medical testmony that only the medical benefits of marijuana were
>keeping him alive, and finally introduced evidence that he was being
>prosecuted in spite of the popular victory of Prop 215 in November of
>1996 -- that is to say, "the law."=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Ha ha. You see, in federal court, Judge George H. King ruled none of
>that information could be introduced into evidence. McWilliams couldn't
>even argue that the Ninth Amendment voids any and all federal drug laws.
>Nope. All disallowed. Any lawyer who tried to mention any of these facts
>to McWilliams' federal jury -- carefully screened in advance to
>eliminate any potential juror who opposed the War on Drugs, of course --
>would have been arrested, jailed, and disbarred.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Deprived of the opportunity to enter any of the facts which would have
>constituted his only sensible, valid, and true defense, McWilliams had
>no choice but to cop a plea in hopes of getting a reduced sentence. He
>was awaiting sentencing for his "crime" at the time of his death.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"Federal Judge George King ordered him not to use medical marijuana
>while he was on federal bond," explains McWilliams' friend, Don
>Wirtshafter. "Because his mother and brother had put up their houses for
>this bond" -- and because he was subject to periodic urine tests, of
>course -- "Peter felt obliged to follow this order."=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>As a result, McWilliams' viral count soared and he spent long hours in
>bed, fighting nausea. Unable to work, he defaulted on bankruptcy
>payments and recently lost his home.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>By thus violating the law which holds any adult of normal intellect
>responsible for acts which a reasonable man might expect to cause the
>death of another, Judge King -- along with all the other sadists still
>prosecuting the War on Drugs -- was directly responsible for the death
>of Peter McWilliams, whom they singled out and killed primarily for his
>outspoken political opinions.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"Peter McWilliams was a brilliant author and American patriot who was
>killed for his political beliefs -- by an overdose of government," said
>our mutual friend Steve Kubby, of Laguna Beach, this week. Kubby,
>California's 1996 Libertarian gubernatorial candidate and himself an
>adrenal cancer survivor being prosecuted for using legal medical
>marijuana, announced he will seek his party's vice presidential
>nomination in Anaheim this week "to force a debate about the failed
>police 'War on Drugs' onto center stage in the November election. ...=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"McWilliams' books inspired people to believe in and fight for their
>rights. Those responsible for the death of Peter have only added fuel to
>the fire." Kubby, 53, continued. "They killed the messenger, but the
>very message they tried to smother will burn more brilliantly than
>ever."=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>Ironically, the Inquisition-like nature of the McWilliams prosecution
>was exposed by John Stossel in an interview with McWilliams which aired
>on ABC'c "20/20 Friday" on June 9, five days before Peter's death. Even
>the usually statist Barbara Walters shook her head in dismay.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>But wait, we're not quite done. Scrunch down and check this out:=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"Although personnel files are among the most closely guarded of police
>secrets, a copy of [that of] Ellis "Max" Johnson II ... was leaked to
>the media after he entered the academy last fall, sparking a fierce
>debate over the city's hiring practices," wrote Jesse Katz, under a
>Denver dateline, in the Los Angeles Times last weekend.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"Nobody expects police departments to hire saints," reporter Katz
>continued, but "the confessions of Johnson, one of Denver's newest
>officers, were startling in their candor.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"Under questioning from background investigators, Johnson admitted he
>had used drugs on approximately 150 occasions -- not just marijuana, but
>also crack, LSD, speed, PCP, mescaline, Darvon, Valium. ... But Denver's
>Civil Service Commission, which sets the criteria for police hiring,
>insisted that the 40-year-old former karate instructor had been clean
>since 1987 and deserved a second chance. ..."=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>To become a cop, you understand. Busting teen-agers with nickel bags of
>dope. Jailing and killing people like Peter McWilliams.=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"With their frankness coaxed by a polygraph, 84 percent of Denver's
>police applicants -- and at least 65 percent of its recent hires -- have
>acknowledged past experimentation, according to civil service records,"
>reporter Katz continued. "In some cases, officers bust people for acts
>they themselves have committed. ...=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>"That police -- the ultimate symbols of order and authority -- are
>willing to tolerate its use 'tells us that our Draconian system of drug
>laws bears no resemblance to reality,' said Elliott Currie, a law
>professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of
>'Crime and Punishment in America.' ...=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>" 'Let's wake up,' said Paul Torres, the [Denver's Civil Service]
>Commission's former executive director. 'The days of Mayberry are long
>gone.' "=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>OK. I'll buy that. But it also sounds pretty much like what federal
>Judge George H. King should have said, in dismissing all charges against
>Peter McWilliams. Don't you think?=20
>=A0=A0=A0=A0
>The full text of "Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do" is available on the
>Internet, for=20
>free, at www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/.=20
>
>Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
>Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the
>Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or
>via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.=20
>***=20
>
>Vin Suprynowicz, =A0 v...@lvrj.com=20
>"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." --
>John
>Hay, 1872=20
>
>"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed --
>and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless
>series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken=20
>* * *=20
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>"America's drug war is so stupid that if you pay close attention to just how
>stupid it is -- it'll drive you to use drugs." -- Jim Hightower
>****************************************************************************
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>
>
>--part1_a9.761f5b8.26867f55_boundary--
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:03:15 -0700
>From: William Appel <ap...@crrh.org>
>To: res...@crrh.org
>Subject: A Classy Joint: The Compassion Flower Inn Bed, Bud and
> Breakfast
>Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.2000062...@mail.olywa.net>
>
>The Savvy Traveler:
>
>
>In Santa Cruz, California, a new kind of travel experience just opened up
>for those with open minds. It's a bed, bud, and breakfast where it is legal
>to smoke marijuana, if you have a doctor's note. Rachel Anne Goodman takes
>us on a tour of the Compassion Flower Inn.
>
>A Classy Joint: The Compassion Flower Inn Bed, Bud and Breakfast
>By Rachel Goodman
>
>Visit this page on Tuesday, June 27 to listen with RealAudio.
>http://savvytraveler.com/Show/Features/2000/06.24/bed.html
>
>In a cozy courtyard, bordered by vine-covered trellises, two guests of The
>Compassion Flower Inn soak up the early morning sunshine. Bill Panzer and
>his wife Christina Clemente came to Santa Cruz for more than the beach.
>They came so Christina can use her epilepsy medicine, which happens to be
>cannabis Sativa.
>
>http://www.compassionflowerinn.com/
>
>
>
> Web Site Administrator and Campaign Info:
>
> William Appel
> Portland, OR 97206
> Telephone: (503) 788-8817
> MediaRing Talk99: 1(503)7888817
> E-mail: ap...@crrh.org
> Netscape AOL Instant Messenger: "crrh cta"
>------
>CRRH's Oregon petition now has 67,207 signatures and needs 66,748 voters'
>signatures to qualify for a 11/7/00 vote.
>------
>*Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp*/*The Restore Hemp
>Store*
>CRRH ; P.O. Box 86741 ; 3554 N.E.Sandy ; Portland, OR 97286
>Phone:(503) 235-4606 Fax:(503) 235-0120 Web: http://www.crrh.org/
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 16:23:51 PDT
>From: "kim hanna" <onegr...@hotmail.com>
>To: DPF...@TAMU.EDU
>Cc: map...@mapinc.org
>Subject: toxic rio grande
>Message-ID: <2000062423235...@hotmail.com>
>
>lots of drugs cross this river.
>
>
>
>http://www.msnbc.com/news/413973.asp?0nm=N226
>
>________________________________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 18:19:55 -0600 (MDT)
>From: Bryan Krumm <kru...@unm.edu>
>To: Roger Dodger <pro...@wwdb.org>
>Cc: CRRH mailing list <res...@crrh.org>
>Subject: Re: Ralph Nader on Drugs
>Message-ID: <Pine.A41.4.21.000624...@pegasus.unm.edu>
>
>>On marijuana legalization: "If you know anyone who got high on industrial
>>hemp, tell the National Science Foundation and you'll get a prize for the
>>most unlikely scientific discovery ever.
>
>I want my prize! It's a fairly simple process to extract cannabinoids
>from industrial hemp and then isomerize them into delta-9 THC so you can
>get high. Industrial hemp IS marijuana. It just has a different
>cannabinoid profile than the marijuana that is grown to get high
>with. Anyone with a basic background in bio-chemistry can get high from
>industrial hemp.
> Bryan
>
>------------------------------
>
>Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 20:40:23 -0600 (MDT)
>From: Jury Rights Project <jri...@levellers.org>
>To: Jury Rights Project <jri...@levellers.org>
>Subject: Letters to the Editor: Doug Bruce Jury Education
>Message-ID:
><Pine.LNX.4.10.100062...@saturn.eagle-access.net>
>
>Below are some letters to the editor published in two Colorado Springs
>newspapers with regard to the following articles and editorial:
>Jurors dismissed, Doug Bruce tainting alleged, Colo. Sprgs. Independent,
>June 14, 2000
>http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2000-06-15/news2.html
>
>Bruce urges prospective jurors to follow conscience, not law, Colorado
>Springs Gazette, June 14, 2000
>http://www.gazette.com/archive/00-06-14/daily/loc3.html
>
>Editorial: Jury Manderingm Colorado Springs Gazette, June 15, 2000
>http://www.gazette.com/archive/00-06-15/daily/opin1.html
>
>These articles generated many letters that have not yet been published.
>In fact, so many letters were sent that the editor of one newspaper told a
>letter-writer that he would need to "take a number" because so many people
>had already written in response. To all the JRP list members that took
>the time to write, keep up the good work!
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>If you would like to help Douglas Bruce on his state senate campaign,
>Bruce's greatest need right now is for volunteers to walk the precincts in
>his district with him, distributing literature and creating awareness of
>his campaign. Bruce wants to cover most of the 85 precincts in Senate
>District 10 before the August 8th primary. He says he'll take
>everyone out to dinner afterwards.
>
>To contact Douglas Bruce:
>Email: taxc...@email.msn.com
>Phone: (719) 550-0010
>Web: http://www.douglasbruce.com
>
>Donations, of course, are also welcome:
>Taxpayers for Douglas Bruce
>PO Box 26018
>Colorado Springs, CO 80936
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Colorado Springs Independent
>Letters to the Editor
>June 22-28, 2000
>
>http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2000-06-22/letters.html
>
>Setting the record straight
>
>To the Editor:
>
>A few issues in your story ("Jurors dismissed, Doug Bruce tainting
>alleged," June 15; http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2000-06-15/news2.html)
>should be addressed. Most importantly, it should be noted that Laura Kriho
>was not "jailed," she was fined $1,200. The Colorado Court of Appeals
>overturned her conviction and fine, however. She has no conviction for
>contempt of court on her record. Her actions were simply legal, and not
>contemptuous.
>
>Judge Kennedy says that he has taken an oath to uphold the law. One part
>of the law he is sworn to uphold, however, is that jurors always have the
>prerogative to acquit if they believe the law is unjust, or is being
>unjustly applied. If he would merely give jurors an instruction to that
>effect in appropriate cases (i.e., at the request of the defense) it would
>prevent the issue from arising in inappropriate cases (such as sexual
>assault cases). I doubt if Doug Bruce, or anyone else, believes that laws
>against sexual assault are unjust.
>
>I can understand why, in a violent rape case, the defense would not want
>the jury thinking about jury nullification. Jury nullification is a
>shield, not a sword, and should not be used to lower the standard of
>reasonable doubt in abhorrent cases. However, if jury nullification
>instructions were made available at the request of the defense, it would
>prevent the issue from arising in inappropriate cases, while providing
>defandents an opportunity to put the righteousness of their actions before
>the jury.
>
>If a criminal defendant is willing to let the jury decide the justness of
>his or her actions, should not our government be willing to do the same?
>
>-- Clay S. Conrad, Esq., Author, Jury Nullification: The Evolution of a
>Doctrine (Carolina Academic Press, 1998)
>Houston, TX
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2000-06-22/letters.html
>
>Just doing their duty
>
>To the Editor:
>
>On June 15, the Colorado Springs Independent published "Jurors dismissed,
>Doug Bruce tainting alleged" by Cara DeGette.
>
>In the article we read:
>
>District Judge Thomas L. Kennedy said the jury pool was dismissed after a
>defense lawyer in a first-degree sexual assault trial scheduled to begin
>Tuesday complained.
>
>The judge then advised the attorneys for both sides of the disruption,
>and, after the defense lawyer objected, the entire panel was dismissed,
>causing a two-week delay in the sexual assault trial, and a ripple effect
>among other scheduled trials, Kennedy said.
>
>There was no reason to dismiss the jurors. Jurors who are upset should be
>upset with Judge Kennedy, not Douglas Bruce.
>
>The article also stated:
>
>The argument has mostly been used in cases where jurors have questioned
>the legality of drug laws. One of the highest profile jury nullification
>laws involved a Gilpin County, Colorado woman, Laura Kriho, who as a juror
>argued the legality of marijuana laws and eventually was jailed for
>contempt of court.
>
>Kriho was a juror in a methamphetamine case, not a cannabis case. Kriho
>prevailed over the government's persecution of her. She acted as a decent
>human being in rendering justice, not as a rubber stamp for the frequent
>injustice of the legal system.
>
>Finally the article said:
>
>Kennedy said he has never heard jurors similarly argue against laws
>against sexual assault, as was the case that was to be heard in his
>courtroom on Tuesday.
>
>"I have had on occasion in a drug prosecution a juror who believes the
>marijuana laws are unjust and the person says [they] cannot apply the law,
>and they would be excused from jury duty," Kennedy said. "But when you
>look at it in context, most jurists agree we need laws for violent crime."
>
>This is a non sequitur. Cannabis use has nothing to do with violent crime.
>Yes, we need laws against violent crime. What we don't need is laws
>against private consensual non-violent behavior that harms no one, except
>perhaps only the individual involved in the behavior.
>
>-- Tom Barrus, American Federation for Legal Consistency
>Golden, Colorado
>###
>The Colorado Springs Independent
>121 E. Pikes Peak Ave., Suite 455
>Colorado Springs, CO 80903
>tel 719.577.4545
>fax 719.577.4107
>Email: let...@csindy.com
>Web: www.csindy.com
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>Colorado Springs Gazette
>Letters to the Editor
>
>June 18, 2000
>http://www.gazette.com/archive/00-06-18/daily/opin3.html
>
>JURY NULLIFICATION
>Bruce seems to be working against himself
>
>I read the news story on Douglas Bruce with interest ("Bruce urges
>prospective jurors to follow conscience, not law," Metro, June 14). There
>are some alarming implications to his action encouraging jury members to
>pass judgment on the laws involved in the case. A contradiction appears
>rapidly - Bruce is running for a public office that has a major role in
>passing laws, yet he is asking jurors to ignore laws if they deem them
>unjust. Will he be advocating this action when he supports the passage of
>a bill?
>
>Another major implication: Bruce cites John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as
>examples of ignoring laws. I hope he understands that these two patriots
>were also revolutionaries. Will Bruce be advocating citizens take up arms
>against our government when they choose to disagree with how the
>government body (possibly the very body in which he is serving) is
>legislating?
>
>
>William I. Brown
>Colorado Springs
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>June 18, 2000
>http://www.gazette.com/archive/00-06-18/daily/opin3.html
>
>Act is one way to combat unjust laws
>
>So, Douglas Bruce distributes information to the jury pool, advising them
>of their right to vote their conscience, and the judge throws a fit,
>dismissing all the jurors. What a pity it is that even our judges do not
>understand the historical and constitutional purpose of juries: to be a
>safety valve for unjust laws. It was juries that brought an end to the
>Salem witch-hunts and it was juries that stopped the prosecutions under
>the Fugitive Slave Act, by the simple act of saying no.
>
>We were given three methods of combating unjust laws. We could vote out
>legislators who wrote bad laws - still possible, but we are rarely given
>good choices. The citizen militias, who originally enforced the laws,
>could simply choose to ignore them - but now we have professional police
>who, effectively, work for the prosecutors, not us. And, of course, we had
>juries, who could simply decide that a law did not apply in a given
>instance - but judges routinely now instruct juries that they must vote
>based solely on the law and teary-eyed juries routinely apologize to
>defendants for having been forced to convict them.
>
>Bruce has, once again, shown himself to be a hero, even if he is a
>Republican. May our judges and our citizen jurors learn the law as he
>understands it.
>
>
>John K. Berntson
>Public Information Director
>Libertarian Party of Colorado
>Colorado Springs
>
>###
>
>The Gazette (Colorado Springs, CO)
>The Gazette
>P.O. Box 1779
>Colorado Springs, CO 80901
>Fax: 636-0202.
>Letters: gt...@gazette.com
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Re-distributed by the:
>Jury Rights Project <jri...@levellers.org>
>Old Web page: <http://www.lrt.org/jrp.homepage.htm>
>New Web page: <http://www.levellers.org/jrp>
>To be added to or removed from the JRP mailing list,
>send email with the word SUBSCRIBE or UNSUBSCRIBE in the title.
>
>The JRP is dedicated to:
>* educating jurors about their right to acquit people who have been
>accused of victmless crimes and thereby veto bad laws;
>* protecting jurors from judicial and prosecutorial tyranny;
>* educating citizens about the history and power of juries;
>* distributing current news related to jurors and juries
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
mark chan
----- Original Message -----
From: Chris Whitten
Sent: Saturday 24 June 2000 8:05 PM
Subject: Peter McWilliams tribute
>
> Ms. McCormick,
>
> Some friends and I are putting together a tribute for Peter McWilliams.
> I hardly knew him personally, but I've been a fan of his writing for
> years, and I feel strongly that he deserves to be remembered.
>
> See http://www.forahero.com/ or the descriptive text about it below
> this message. The site just went live today.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Chris Whitten
>
> --
>
> Would you take a minute to help us honor a hero?
>
> Peter McWilliams died on June 14, 2000 at the age
> of 50, a casualty in the war on drugs.
>
> We all touch other people's lives, whether we know
> it or not. We all leave the world changed in some way.
> This tribute is our way of standing up for one good
> man, whether or not we knew him personally, even if
> we never heard the name of the man behind the good
> deeds until after his passing. It's our way of saying
> "we noticed."
>
> Peter McWilliams touched the lives of millions with
> his books on personal growth and individual freedom,
> such as "Life 101" and "Ain't Nobody's Business if
> You Do." He became a crusader for medical marijuana.
> Voters in his home state of California agreed with
> him that marijuana should be legal for medical
> purposes when they passed Proposition 215 in 1996.
> But the federal drug warriors ignored the voters,
> and his activism made him a target. For helping a
> friend produce medical marijuana, they charged him
> as a drug kingpin in federal court.
>
> In the end, he was facing five years in prison,
> bankrupt from legal battles, unable to work, and
> forbidden to use the medical marijuana he himself
> needed to keep down the medication for his AIDS
> and AIDS-related cancer.
>
> He was waiting for the final sentence from the judge.
> But he could not wait very long. He couldn't keep down
> his medication, and we lost a hero.
>
> Please take a minute to sign your name to the
> ForAHero.com Web page: http://www.forahero.com/
> If you want, jot down a thought in his honor,
> or write a word of condolence to his family.
> Give your location, if you wish, so we can see
> how far Peter McWilliams' life and death have
> been felt.
>
> All the names and personal expressions posted before
> September 1, 2000 will be printed in a book and given
> to McWilliams' mother as a record of his influence.
>
> Take a second and help us say "this one man will not
> be forgotten." Sign http://www.forahero.com/ and
> forward this message on to your friends and family.
>
> Thank you.
> --
> | Chris Whitten
> | Executive Director, The Henry Hazlitt Foundation
> | 401 N. Franklin St., Suite 3E, Chicago, IL 60610
> | (312) 494-9433 ch...@free-market.net
> | Publisher of Free-Market.Net: The Freedom Network
> | http://www.free-market.net/
> --
>
MANFRED the heat seeking OBOE wrote:
> Bob Crawford wrote:
> >> > The very same people who enact policy in order to precipitate crisis
> >
> >Manfred: Didn't you mean that they enact crisis in order to precipitate
> > policy??
>
> For instance:
> Regulatory Policy precipitated the Fuel Shortages of the 70's.
> why is it *SUCH* a mystery that similar policies are not the cause of
> the current $3.00+/gal gasoline?
> A: Opportunity for consensus manufacture,
> a mandate for even MORE intervention.
>
> National secrets slipping out our Nuclear Labs and State Dept?
> Culture of Lawlessness rampant in executive branch?
> A: Monitor foreign students as a threat rather than
> punish domestic violators who break the law.
> Why stop at JUST monitoring foreign students?
> Let's just keep track of *AND* punish everyone!
>
> Thank YOU! Mr. President.
mark chan
Reply-To: <rive...@sirius.com>
To: "Mark Chan" <ma...@cruzio.com>
Subject: re: Peter McWilliams
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 10:49:24 -0700
Organization:
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200
Bob -- even from the beginning, Peter made it easier for many of us (helping
hand, etc) to move from typewriter to computer -- what to look for, what to
ask, etc... a boon -- a major hand in creating that which allows this sort
of free, immediate discourse -- the internet would still be the ARPAnet if
he hadn't explained to us that computers were not just for mathematical
geeks, but also us verbal, literary, political, and etc other kinds of geeks
too.
But what is so chilling about this is to be forced to recognize the public
coldness, the depraved indifference of the act. They're not even ashamed
of it any more -- and to recognize that fact, that these people would write
a death penalty for a man who was trying only to medicate his disease (and
provide wherewithal for others to do the same), and not even have the
conscience to be embarrassed -- this tells us we're dealing with some sort
of chitinous thing without a central nervous system masquerading in
semi-human form.
And the recognition of such a malignancy -- grown to the point where it can
no longer be ignored, even by the causal observer -- is as hard for people
to accept in government as it would be when shown on xrays of our own lungs,
or colon, or stomach --- because it demands immediate action as the only
alternative to death.
It also demands abandonment of the various distractions we've used to keep
from having to make that hard recognition earlier, the amusements, the
rationalizations, the justifications, the emotional insulations.
This business of the state presiding over the death of Peter McWilliams can
only be described as monstrous. They have long gone too far, and now they
don't even take the trouble to cover it up.
Well, as Daniel Ellsberg pointed out why it made him optimistic to realized
that Kennedy lied and Johnson lied and Nixon and Kissinger et al, lied lied
lied -- because he believed they knew the American public would not stand
for it if they knew the truth -- I hope that's still true... people need to
see video or film -- see Peter's actual human image and understand the
government has just moved the game up a notch from stealing our homes and
possessions to taking lives, regardless of the law of the land.
For Bill Clinton -- last chance to save your petty, shrivelled, putrefying
soul.
Howard
For Lenny Bruce and Tom Paine:
"They just kept on and on,
punching the tar baby."
Bertie the Bunyip
<cra...@powerclam.com> wrote:
>Joe Long wrote:
>
>> Patrick Keenan wrote in message ...
>> >Interesting, but I'm not sure it's a valid comparison.
>> >
>> >The captain of a ship has (or should) the physical capability to change the
>> >course of that ship, effectively enforcing his will.
>> >
>> >Does your president have the real power needed to unilaterally revoke or
>> >rewrite laws, *and* enforce them?
>>
>> Yes, actually he does - explained in 2 easy words:
>>
>> Presidential Pardon...
>
>or
>
>"Executive Order"
Ah! A loon firend of Joe's!
Well any friend of Joe's...
Bertie
Bertie the Bunyip
<cra...@powerclam.com> wrote:
>Doug Berry wrote:
>
>> >or
>> >"Executive Order"
>>
>> Ah. So now we *want* Clinton to rule by decree.
>
>The President already rules by decree. For good or ill, that is how it is.
>So, if EOs will continue to exist, why not have a GOOD one?
Bwaaawhahwhahwhahhwhahwhahwahwh!
And he's a Klinton loon!
Bertie
Bertie the Bunyip
<cra...@powerclam.com> wrote:
>Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
>[stupid shit snipped]
>
>
>Hey Bertie, I just took a peek into A.D.A.
>What a garbage dump, thanks to you and a few others.
>I hope you're really proud!
Awww, you really are ready to think the worst of me, aren't you, Bob?
I think that once yuo get to know me a little better, you'll like me!
Really!
Bertie
mark chan
Re: Peter McWilliams dies (obit)
Date:
Tue, 27 Jun 2000 08:32:06 -0800
From:
mark chan <ma...@cruzio.com>
Organization:
none
Newsgroups:
alt.fan.rawilson
References:
1 , 2
THE BALLAD OF KILLER BILL
Oh, the sick can't get their meds, in the States,
The sick can't get their meds, in the States,
The sick can't get their meds,
They are hounded by the Feds,
They are dying in their beds, in the States.
And the sick can't get their meds, in Iraq,
The sick can't get their meds, in Iraq,
The sick can't get their meds,
And bombs fall on their beds,
Are we off our fucking heads? That's a fac'
"Peace comes of communication."-- Ezra Pound
"Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech
or of the press..." -- Anon
"To live effectively is to live with adequate information"-- Norbert Weiner
Las die Lasagne weiter fliegen!
Paul Scott wrote:
> RMJon23 <rmj...@aol.comnotrash> wrote in message
> news:20000621020504...@ng-bk1.aol.com...
> > (Culled from the LA Times website. In my opinion, McWilliams was murdered
> > indirectly by the State...If you haven't read his book _Ain't Nobody's
> Business
> > If You Do_, you might make a note to check it out soon. I wonder why that
> book
> > wasn't mentioned by Whitcomb?-rmjon23)
> >
> > Peter McWilliams, Medical Marijuana Advocate, Dies
>
> This is probably a dumb idea, but what are the possiblilites of a class
> action suit by medical marijuana users or their unfortunate survivors suing
> the Government of the United States for criminal negligence? I can guess
> that the government could say that since there is no officially sanctioned
> evidence, just a lot of hearsay, they would win the case. That is the
> trouble with the Tsarist Overlord Government; they kinda have the deck
> stacked in their favor.
Greg
> > >"Executive Order"
> > Ah. So now we *want* Clinton to rule by decree.
> The President already rules by decree. For good or ill,
> that is how it is. So, if EOs will continue to exist, why
> not have a GOOD one?
That is as well thought out as saying, "the kidnappers already
killed four hostages, so if they are going to kill again, may
as well give them the tools to make it as quick and painless
as possible."
--
Tyranny is kept at bay by guns and will. Our government
knows we have the guns, but they don't know if we have
the will. Nor do we.
The only lawful gun law on the books- the second amendment.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
cyeager
by Liberal idiots that think nomosexuality is not harmful... Like you. The
truth is: The greatest invention was the sewer. It has saved more lives than
any drug. The sexual conotation of the use of these area's for pleasure is
wrong. The Gore syndrome is the plain simple reason for Leftist leaning
right.
Mark S. Bilk <m...@netcom.com> wrote in message
news:8k3e17$ro6$1...@slb0.atl.mindspring.net...
> In article <ii67ls0bac1ldqdg0...@4ax.com>,
> Doug Berry <grid...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >Clinton is not an absolute dictator, but instead the head of
> >one of the three branches of government. Admittedly, he does
> >have the most power, but that power is limited by law.
> >
> >Just as he cannot order enemies arrested on a whim, he can
> >neither order that laws *not* be enforced. As I've pointed out
> >before, the remedy is in the other two branches of government,
> >the Congress and the courts.
>
> told the American people the truth about marijuana -- that
> the scientific evidence shows it is not a dangerous drug,
> and should be legalized under approximately the same
> restrictions as alcohol. He could then have directed the
> DOJ and DEA to stop prosecutions against people for medical
> use of marijuana, especially the sort of *selective* prose-
> cution that was carried out against Peter McWilliams (cancer
> victim and medical marijuana advocate) in order to silence
> him.
>
> He could also have kept Joycelyn Elders as Surgeon General,
> and told the American people that masturbation is not harmful,
> that Fundamentalists are wrong when they say it is, and that
> the effects and legal status of marijuana should be researched
> objectively, as Elders suggested.
>
> He could have said that homosexual people are not harming
> anyone, and should be allowed to marry and have families like
> anyone else. He could have vetoed the "Defense of Marriage
> Act".
>
> He could also have told us that he had been right to protest
> the Vietnam War, which the U.S. fought against people who
> were going to elect Ho Chi Minh as their leader by 70% of the
> vote until the U.S. stopped the election, and slaughtered
> several million people in the area in order to make profits
> for wealthy American businessmen.
>
> Clinton could have done all these things, because as U.S.
> President, he has more access to the media than anyone else
> in the entire world.
>
> He didn't do any of these things because his method has
> always been to formulate his public policy mostly on the
> basis of what will gain him the most popularity, even when
> that popularity is based on delusions that people have
> because they've been fed lying propaganda by the anti-human
> Right-wing for decades.
>
> Clinton, and the whole DLC (Conservative/Center) branch of
> the Democratic Party, have failed to speak out on these
> issues and many others, and to back up what they say with
> the scientific and documentary evidence, and to keep on
> publicizing that evidence until the Conservatives and
> Fundamentalists are shown to be wrong beyond any doubt.
>
> The result of that failure, in the face of the enormous
> decades-long flood of Right-wing lying propaganda from
> the Republicans and the Conservative newspapers, magazines,
> "think-tanks", TV and radio shows, cable networks, websites,
> etc., is that public opinion is drifting more and more in
> the direction of the anti-human, pro-wealthy policies of
> the Right.
>
> And the policies of the DLC-Democratic Party are drifting
> to the Right with them in order to stay popular.
>
> This will lead to the democratic election of a de facto
> Fascist government in the United States, which is exactly
> what is desired by the wealthy people who finance the
> Right-wing political machine and the DLC branch of the
> Democrats.
>
> Note: the Democrats are still far more pro-human than the
> Republicans. Vote Democratic, while exerting pressure
> on the Democrats to return to their pro-human Liberal roots.
>
>
Lee Harrison
on 7/6/00 9:29 PM:
> Hey there are rich on both sides. These issues are addressed and manipulated
> by Liberal idiots that think nomosexuality is not harmful... Like you. The
You mean pneumosexuality, a euphemism for blow jobs. Blow jobs are not
dangerous unless taken too literally; actually blowing into the organs can
be painful. Blowing on them does almost no good. Pneumosexuality:
breakfast of champions.
> truth is: The greatest invention was the sewer. It has saved more lives than
> any drug. The sexual conotation of the use of these area's for pleasure is
> wrong. The Gore syndrome is the plain simple reason for Leftist leaning
> right.
Sex isn't dirty unless you're really good at it. Sounds like you have
nothing to worry about.
________________
General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said
about war?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don't think I do, sir, no.
General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the
generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But
today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the
time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no
longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination,
Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and
impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
- From Dr. Strangelove
The Lone Weasel
Not-So-Secret-Hideout
http://leeharrison.simplenet.com/weasel/index.html
My Weasel Board
http://leeharrison.simplenet.com/weasel/bboard.mv
Petition To Require NICS Background Checks On All Gun Sales
http://leeharrison.simplenet.com/weasel/nics.mv
Mark S. Bilk
Darlene J Dowling
to smoke it and I know from those I associated and first hand
experience, IT IS DANGEROUS AND SHOULD NOT BE LEGALIZED!!!!! I don't
want my kids to have mush for brains and that's all marijuana does.
Because YOU want to toke on a joint doesn't mean it's right to do so.
There are others in this world besides yourself.
As far as homosexuals...what do they base their philosophy on, or yours,
for that matter? There is nothing in the Bible which taken personally
would harm a person and is there for our instruction and our good. I
have PERSONALLY been in the homosexual community and know FIRST HAND of
the domineering tactics and oftentimes hierachy, including having
slaveboys, it presents. Not only that but we are all responsible for
one another. If there is a behavior which is harmful and is going to
cause life to be difficult, rather than trying to stuff it down everyone
else's throat as acceptible, why not rather live a life with principles
and morals? You do not seem to know what those are. Rather, you would
justify yourself by accepting what you know within yourself to be wrong.
Abraham Lincoln walked ten miles to return a penny and learned to read
by using the Bible as his tutor. George Washington believed in God and
"In God We Trust" was our motto. Now it's "get high" and who cares what
influence it has on our young and impressionable, and "get off" sexually
and let your sexual preference determine your political stand. Since
when has sticking your you know what in someone's behind been a factor
in the politcal arena. Has everyone gone totally
nuts??????????!!!!!!!!!!!! Why should someone whose sexuality is
against all I believe in have political clout? And why is it that those
who live respectable lives and work hard are criticized the most?????
Let me you something, the flesh in and of itself is a monster unless it
is taught the difference between right and wrong. All "urges" are not
something which should be satisfied as an example, if someone has an
"urge" to steal and is caterogized as a cleptomaniac, does that jusify
stealing? Of course not! You teach that person that stealing is
wrong. Rather than saying homosexuality is correct why not rather teach
that it is wrong. Not even the animals revert to such perservsity.
But then of course the whole sexual thing is so strong, and expecially
in males, the thought of not being able to "get off" with another man
makes them angry. They want the whole world to agree with them that
it's ok for men to be with men. As it is stated in the Bible "the whole
head is sick"........
This is disgusting what is being perpetrated.
laurie corzett
Or vote third party (Ralph Nader and the Greens are looking good in the
polls) and send a strong message to the Democrats and Republicans that
if they won't do the job we the people have hired them for and represent
our interests, we can fire them and hire someone who will.
laurie corzett
Mark S. Bilk
murdered by the U.S. government, which prohibited him from
using the medical marijuana that was keeping him alive:
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=638276338
http://www.deja.com/=dnc/[ST_rn=ps]/getdoc.xp?AN=636041006
In article <39660503...@mediaone.net>,
Darlene J Dowling <ddowl...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Where do you get the idea that marijauana should be legalized???
Because, according to many scientific studies, it causes
very little harm (perhaps as much as coffee does). Also
it is beneficial for recovering contact with aspects of
one's mind that have become suppressed (in other words,
for enhancing consciousness), and for treating glaucoma,
nausea (especially due to cancer chemotherapy drugs), loss
of appetite (often from the same drugs), and depression.
>I used
>to smoke it and I know from those I associated and first hand
>experience, IT IS DANGEROUS AND SHOULD NOT BE LEGALIZED!!!!!
Exactly what in your experience with it leads you to that
conclusion (which is opposite to what scientists and almost
everyone who's tried it conclude)?
Many Fundamentalists (like yourself) may be uncomfortable
in a relaxed, free state of mind, rather than the rigid one
which their religion promotes.
>I don't
>want my kids to have mush for brains and that's all marijuana does.
So your brain is now "mush"? What does that mean?
>Because YOU want to toke on a joint doesn't mean it's right to do so.
>There are others in this world besides yourself.
It is absolutely right for anyone to do anything they want
as long as it doesn't harm anyone else.
The only sane and useful definition of morality is that it
is wrong, bad, evil to harm someone. The moral rule of not
harming people is what we need to follow so that we can
all live together in this world happily and successfully.
>As far as homosexuals...what do they base their philosophy on,
Homosexuality is a sexual preference, not a philosophy.
However, it is moral according to the principle described
above, which can also be stated, "Do what you wish, if it
harms no one." Homosexuality doesn't harm anyone (if the
same precautions against disease are taken that are necessary
with heterosexuality). Homosexuality is beneficial (like
heterosexuality) because it enables people to have pleasure
and closeness with each other, which often leads to caring
and love, and the creation of a family.
>or yours, for that matter?
The books described on this web page are a very good start:
http://www.aliveness.com/msb.html
>There is nothing in the Bible which taken personally
>would harm a person and is there for our instruction and our good. I
It orders people to murder women who have had sex outside of
marriage (Leviticus), and also recommends that people take
the children of non-believers and smash their heads against
a rock to kill them (Psalms).
Most people would regard these instructions as harmful.
>have PERSONALLY been in the homosexual community and know FIRST HAND of
>the domineering tactics and oftentimes hierachy, including having
>slaveboys, it presents.
Yes, among some people, just as it occurs in the heterosexual
community. I'm sure you know that some heterosexual men beat
their wives and molest little girls. Dominating and harming
other people is a pandemic emotional illness in the world
today; it has nothing to do with homosexuality. See the book
_The Chalice and the Blade_, described on the above web page.
>Not only that but we are all responsible for
>one another. If there is a behavior which is harmful and is going to
>cause life to be difficult, rather than trying to stuff it down everyone
>else's throat as acceptible, why not rather live a life with principles
>and morals? You do not seem to know what those are. Rather, you would
>justify yourself by accepting what you know within yourself to be wrong.
There is nothing harmful or wrong about homosexuality,
because it does not harm anyone. The only reason some
people don't accept it and are disgusted by it is that
they've been *told* that it's bad since their early
childhood. The same disgust and hate is felt by white
people who've been told that blacks are bad, and Christians
who've been told Jews are bad. Bigotry is always the
result of teaching -- programming -- the bigot as a child.
>Abraham Lincoln walked ten miles to return a penny
We hope he eventually learned to use his time more
effectively.
>and learned to read by using the Bible as his tutor.
Since it was the only book he had?
>George Washington believed in God and
>"In God We Trust" was our motto.
So what? There is no connection between believing in "God"
and being a good person. Many people treat others well --
act morally -- without believing in "God", because they
realize that if we don't harm others, we can all live
together.
On the other hand, some believers in "God" have slaughtered
many millions of people in the Crusades and the witch-burnings;
they've done this *because* of their belief in "God".
>Now it's "get high" and who cares what
>influence it has on our young and impressionable,
"Getting high" is a very vague term. Different drugs have
different effects. Rendering oneself grossly drunk with
alcohol is bad for a person and for any impressionable chil-
dren who may observe it. On the other hand, moderate use of
marijuana generally doesn't lead one to do stupid things,
and in fact may help a person to be more sensitive to the
feelings and needs of others, and to communicate with them
more closely.
>and "get off" sexually
>and let your sexual preference determine your political stand. Since
>when has sticking your you know what in someone's behind been a factor
>in the politcal arena. Has everyone gone totally
>nuts??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!
The only connection between homosexuality and politics is
that Fundamentalists take it upon themselves to denigrate
and attack homosexual people, and deny them their civil
rights. So homosexual people seek protection from the
government, just as Black people do when attacked by white
racists.
>Why should someone whose sexuality is
>against all I believe in have political clout?
Because they are not doing any harm, and because you have
no right to harm them, regardless of your beliefs.
>And why is it that those
>who live respectable lives and work hard are criticized the most?????
They aren't, unless by "respectable" you mean "attacking gay
people".
>Let me you something, the flesh in and of itself is a monster unless it
>is taught the difference between right and wrong.
The idea that one's body and one's sexual desires are evil
is a horrible form of mental illness, which unfortunately
is spread by Fundamentalists. People rarely have the desire
to force themselves sexually on anyone unless they have been
emotionally abused.
However, everyone should certainly be taught that it's wrong
to harm other people.
>All "urges" are not
>something which should be satisfied as an example, if someone has an
>"urge" to steal and is caterogized as a cleptomaniac, does that jusify
>stealing? Of course not! You teach that person that stealing is
>wrong.
Correct, because stealing harms other people.
>Rather than saying homosexuality is correct why not rather teach
>that it is wrong.
Because homosexuality *isn't* wrong, since it doesn't harm anyone.
>Not even the animals revert to such perservsity.
Incorrect -- homosexuality is observed among animals.
>But then of course the whole sexual thing is so strong, and expecially
>in males, the thought of not being able to "get off" with another man
>makes them angry. They want the whole world to agree with them that
>it's ok for men to be with men.
It *is* ok, because it doesn't harm anyone. They want people
to stop attacking and harming *them*.
>As it is stated in the Bible "the whole
>head is sick"........
>
>This is disgusting what is being perpetrated.
The disgust that you have been *programmed* to feel by your
religious training does not in any way entitle you to deny
civil rights to homosexual people, or to denigrate or attack
them in any way.
stinky larue
Darlene J Dowling wrote:
> Where do you get the idea that marijauana should be legalized???
because it has more medical benefits than say, tobacco or alcohol, which are
already legal, for starters. furthermore, since it is a schedule I drug,
there is no research allowed on the drug in the us, which means, the
government decided it was "bad", but wont let anyone do the research to
actually prove whether or not its "bad" ... if you read the report that the
nat'l unstitutes of mental health (nimh) gave to the us congress & surgeon
general (i think the date was something like 1967) they stated that
preliminary tests of cannibis show that schedule I is an unwarranted
reaction against the drug out of fear .. hmm, i wonder what the gov't was
afraid of? well, historically speaking, the first anti-cannibis laws were
that black folks couldnt smoke it. later, as many civil rights people &
otherwise revolutionary-minded people came to be associated with the drug,
the gov't decided that pot had something to do with the revolutionary
sensibilty, and the anti-cannibic laws are really just a sort-of sideways
attack at that "fringe" or "sub-" cultural element in our society.
> I used
> to smoke it and I know from those I associated and first hand
> experience, IT IS DANGEROUS AND SHOULD NOT BE LEGALIZED!!!!!
i take it, that means you couldnt "handle" your pot <lol> ... seriously,
most people who claim that something should be illegal because "i've been
there, and i know how bad it is", are usually trying to create a false sense
of expertise, and especially so in regards to political "hot buttons" like
legalization of cannibis.
> I don't
> want my kids to have mush for brains and that's all marijuana does.
there are no studies which can conclusively prove that there is such a
long-term effect on the brain by the active ingredients in marijuana (ie,
delta-9, delta-7 and delta-3 tetro-hydro-cannibinol). there is also no
substantial evidence to prove the existence of the so-called "amotivational
syndrome".
> Because YOU want to toke on a joint doesn't mean it's right to do so.
but there really isnt anything that says its *wrong* either .. human beings
have been using various substances in a recreational fashion since time
immemorial ... as long as you arent harming yourself (ie, becoming
physically addicted and destroying vital organs) or others (ie, causing
dui-type accidents), and as long as it doesnt affect how you function in
society (ie, holding a job & paying the bills) there shouldn't be any issue
with it. btw, there is also no evidence to prove that cannibis is
physically addictive, and most studies that have been done on cannibis's
negative effects on the body show that when the herb is smoked without a
filtration device, the effect on the lungs is actually less harmful than
that of an unfiltered ciggarette. studies relating to its effects on the
liver, kidneys, and spleen are inconclusive.
> There are others in this world besides yourself.
true enough. it's just a shame that you havent seemed to take that into
account when you have presented your poorly researched and poorly thought
out arguments. perhaps that's what irks you the most, that there are other
people in this world besides you, and that there is no law anywhere that
says they have to think exactly like you.
> As far as homosexuals...what do they base their philosophy on,
as someone else pointed out, i didnt realize that homosexuality was a
philosophy ... <slaps forehead> wow, i must have missed that class while i
was working on my ba in philosophy .. perhaps, i was just too entirely
focused on the kant -- who can be rather difficult to understand -- and
that's why i'm so unfamiliar with it.
> or yours,
> for that matter?
well, i cant speak for anyone else in here, but my philosophy is based upon
logic & reason (which is what all philosophy is based upon)
> There is nothing in the Bible which taken personally
> would harm a person and is there for our instruction and our good.
oh there's plenty of advocation for harming and doing violence to others, as
well as inciting general stupidity amongst those who read it too literally,
or use it as the basis for a logical argument -- doing so is considered a
fallacy, as there isnt a clear logical argument presented therein; or a
cop-out, as those who cant come up with an adequate defense for their
debate-stance tend to say things like "but the bible says ..." (as you do)
> I
> have PERSONALLY been in the homosexual community
wow, so you're *gay*? <lol>
> and know FIRST HAND of
> the domineering tactics and oftentimes hierachy, including having
> slaveboys, it presents.
maybe for the s&m folks, but that's a fetish issue, and not a homosexuality
issue.
> Not only that but we are all responsible for
> one another.
*bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt* sorry, wrong answer. we are only responsible for
ourselves. if x murders someone, and is found guilty, only x can be held
accountable for that action. not you, not me, not anybody else.
> If there is a behavior which is harmful
homosexuality is not harmful. whether or not cannibis is harmful in its
"pure" form, remains to be seen.
> and is going to
> cause life to be difficult,
???
> rather than trying to stuff it down everyone
> else's throat as acceptible,
what, like what you're doing in this post ... <sound the hypocrite alert>
> why not rather live a life with principles
> and morals?
ahh ... and what principles and morals are those? who decides? who
benefits by society adopting those morals? and why should i or anyone else
care what they think?
> You do not seem to know what those are.
well, maybe if you'd be a bit more specific, we'd understand what the heck
you're trying to get at here ...
> Rather, you would
> justify yourself by accepting what you know within yourself to be wrong.
what??? that's not even a real sentence ...
> Abraham Lincoln walked ten miles to return a penny and learned to read
> by using the Bible as his tutor.
he also had a homosexual relationship, gave his wife syphillis -- which he
contracted after an extended relationship with a prostitute, and enjoyed
tearing the heads off of geese and ducks with his bare hands as a youth ...
so what's your point?
> George Washington believed in God
george washington also smoked pot.
> and
> "In God We Trust" was our motto.
in god we trust was never officially adopted as our motto, and it did not
appear on our currency until the mid-twentieth century (come on, dont you
watch "who wants to be a millionaire?" ? .. that was a question about 2
months ago)
> Now it's "get high" and who cares what
> influence it has on our young and impressionable,
sure, but its also "sell, sell sell" and who cares what kind of effect
*that* has on our young and impressionable? certainly not busy-izzies like
you, who are more concerend with what goes on in a couple's bedroom and in a
college dorm, than anything else that goes on in this country and/or world.
> and "get off" sexually
well, we wont have young & impressionable, if no-one gets off sexually, will
we?
> and let your sexual preference determine your political stand.
so then, when someone wants to make their heterosexism the basis of their
political *stance* (see, i can spell) that's incorrect as well? please,
please, a little consistency in your argument please.
> Since
> when has sticking your you know what in someone's behind been a factor
> in the politcal arena.
the moment that somebody decided they couldnt keep the government's nose out
of the populace's crotch.
> Has everyone gone totally
> nuts??????????!!!!!!!!!!!!
<checking to make sure i haven't spotaneously morphed into a pecan ... or
worse (!) a filbert>
> Why should someone whose sexuality is
> against all I believe in have political clout?
and why should a heterosexist have any political clout, when their argument
comes down to "its wrong because i say so"?
> And why is it that those
> who live respectable lives and work hard are criticized the most?????
define respectable? ... oh, you mean heterosexists that can't formulate a
logical argument without using a bible as a prop, right?
> Let me you something,
wait, you're doing what to me, exactly?
> the flesh in and of itself is a monster unless it
> is taught the difference between right and wrong.
wow, i didnt know "flesh" could atually "learn" anything ... and that's not
even the half of it. monster? oh, please. right and wrong? again, whose
right and wrong? yours? dont make me laugh. you're pathetic.
> All "urges" are not
> something which should be satisfied as an example, if someone has an
> "urge" to steal and is caterogized as a cleptomaniac, does that jusify
> stealing? Of course not!
if someone is calssified as a cleptomaniac, then the act of stealing is
outside their control .. it's a mental disorder, and they should seek
professional help. cleptomania is a red herring, as it has no bearing on
the act of stealing as being right or wrong.
> You teach that person that stealing is
> wrong.
yes, but why? what is the argument that proves it's wrong? most people
would say because it financially harms the person you are stealing from. or
that it is wrong, because one should earn one's possessions for oneself.
> Rather than saying homosexuality is correct why not rather teach
> that it is wrong.
it is neither correct nor wrong. it just is.
> Not even the animals revert to such perservsity.
most animals have displayed homosexuality, as perhaps as difficult as that
may seem to you, since you obviously read very little.
> But then of course the whole sexual thing is so strong, and expecially
> in males, the thought of not being able to "get off" with another man
> makes them angry.
<ahem> 1) there are also lesbians 2) women also have strong sex drives 3)
getting off is *fun*, maybe if you tried it sometime, you wouldnt have so
many hang-ups.
> They want the whole world to agree with them
wow, just like you want the whole world to agree with you (and without even
giving us the benefit of a well-crafted argument <tsk, tsk>)
> that
> it's ok for men to be with men.
and how! ;)
> As it is stated in the Bible "the whole
> head is sick"........
again with that bible thing ... you really cant base your argument on a
document which is self-contradictory, sweetie, it makes you look like a
moron.
> This is disgusting what is being perpetrated.
i agree, usenet should not allow your sophism to continue!
<mark s bilk's original post snipped, as darlene's reply had absolutely
nothing to do with it>
-- stinky la rue
------------------------------------------------------
"the fact that my neighbor is an atheist in no way picks my pocket or breaks
my leg." -- thomas jefferson
Joe Long
Darlene J Dowling wrote in message <39660503...@mediaone.net>...
>Where do you get the idea that marijauana should be legalized?
I get the idea from the *FACT* that the people in the state where I live,
*VOTED* for it to be *LEGAL* for medicinal purposes...
That is pretty cut and dry...
--
jgl
they're coming for our guns
they won't succeed - but they will come
..
lost-america: http://www.lostamerica.org/
joe's world: http://members.bainbridge.net/~jlong
MindYurOwn
forever.His murder will be remembered forever...
Peter McWilliams books online free
http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books
Joe Long
MindYurOwn wrote in message
<20000708020407...@ng-cb1.aol.com>...
Thanks for the link -
For all of you, who dislike Clinton, and this is not meant in any way to
detract from the seriousness of Peter's death, actually I hope he would
approve... I submit the following list of wallpaper files...
A great site...
http://www.jokewallpaper.com/html/195.htm
http://www.jokewallpaper.com/html/251.htm
http://www.jokewallpaper.com/html/236.htm
http://www.jokewallpaper.com/html/190.htm
http://www.jokewallpaper.com/html/010.htm
Joe Long
Volt wrote in message <39794900...@news.mindspring.com>...
>On Fri, 7 Jul 2000 19:18:33 -0700, "Joe Long"
><joe...@lostamerica.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>Darlene J Dowling wrote in message <39660503...@mediaone.net>...
>>
>>>Where do you get the idea that marijauana should be legalized?
>>
>>I get the idea from the *FACT* that the people in the state where I live,
>>*VOTED* for it to be *LEGAL* for medicinal purposes...
>>
>>That is pretty cut and dry...
>
>
>Should you be allowed to use morphine whenever the mood strikes you?
>
> Volt
Volt - how's my favorite:
V O L T
irtual n ine roll?
If my doctor says I can use marijuana for my pain - and the State has passed
a law that says this is legal... then I have to answer your question with a
resounding...
"You Betcha!!!"
Rob Robertson
<snip>
> Should you be allowed to use morphine whenever the mood strikes you?
Of course. I'd advise against it, but as long as I'm not harming
anyone else, I have the right to use morphine, and I *definitely*
have the right to carry morphine and a syringe in my backpack when
I hit the deep woods, and noone has the right to tell me otherwise.
_
RR
johnz`
Volt...@mindspring.com wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Jul 2000 19:18:33 -0700, "Joe Long"
> <joe...@lostamerica.org> wrote:
>
> >
> >Darlene J Dowling wrote in message <39660503...@mediaone.net>...
> >
> >>Where do you get the idea that marijauana should be legalized?
> >
> >I get the idea from the *FACT* that the people in the state where I
> >live,
> >*VOTED* for it to be *LEGAL* for medicinal purposes...
> >
> >That is pretty cut and dry...
>
> Is Morphine used as medicine in your state, Joe?
>
> Should you be allowed to use morphine whenever the mood strikes you?
Gosh, Voltboy, looks like you are quite the conservative Republican.
First you supported the Christian Right and Pat Robertson, and now this.
Did you find (to use your phrase) "Gawd"?
Are you going to be speaking at the next "Christian Right" rally,
Voltboy? - maybe you could give a speech about how this country should
never execute "Christian" pickaxe murderers, or even say mean things
about them.
JS
>
> Volt
>
> Ecrasons l'infame
>
> Join the War on Right Wing Ignorance
> http://clusterone.home.mindspring.com/
>
> Campaign 2000
> http://clusterone.home.mindspring.com/campaign2000.html
>
> =============================================================
> "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
>
>
> --Tom Waites
> =============================================================