-Caveat Lector-
--
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant
facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For
a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and
falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its
people."
President John F. Kennedy
> Resisting Bush's War
> Rep. Dennis Kucinich, AlterNet
> February 25, 2002
>
> [Editor's Note: The following is a speech that Dennis Kucinich, U.S.
> Congressman from Cleveland, Ohio, gave this past weekend at the University of
> Southern California. Rep. Kucinich is the leader of the Progressive Caucus and
> a longtime defender of free speech, civil liberties and international peace.
> This speech makes him the first member of the United States Congress to openly
> repudiate President Bush's war rationale.]
>
>
> I offer these brief remarks today as a prayer for our country, with love of
> democracy, as a celebration of our country. With love for our country. With
> hope for our country. With a belief that the light of freedom cannot be
> extinguished as long as it is inside of us.
>
>
> With a belief that freedom rings resoundingly in a democracy each time we
> speak freely. With the understanding that freedom stirs the human heart and
> fear stills it. With the belief that a free people cannot walk in fear and
> faith at the same time.
>
>
> With the understanding that there is a deeper truth expressed in the unity of
> the United States. That implicate in the union of our country is the union of
> all people. That all people are essentially one. That the world is
> interconnected not only on the material level of economics, trade,
> communication, and transportation, but innerconnected through human
> consciousness, through the human heart, through the heart of the world,
> through the simply expressed impulse and yearning to be and to breathe free. I
> offer this prayer for America.
>
>
> Let us pray that our nation will remember that the unfolding of the promise of
> democracy in our nation paralleled the striving for civil rights. That is why
> we must challenge the rationale of the Patriot Act. We must ask, why should
> America put aside guarantees of constitutional justice?
>
>
> How can we justify in effect canceling the First Amendment and the right of
> free speech, the right to peaceably assemble?
>
>
> How can we justify in effect canceling the Fourth Amendment, probable cause,
> the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure?
>
>
> How can we justify in effect canceling the Fifth Amendment, nullifying due
> process, and allowing for indefinite incarceration without a trial?
>
>
>
> How can we justify in effect canceling the Sixth Amendment, the right to
> prompt and public trial?
>
>
> How can we justify in effect canceling the Eighth Amendment which protects
> against cruel and unusual punishment?
>
>
> We cannot justify widespread wiretaps and internet surveillance without
> judicial supervision, let alone with it. We cannot justify secret searches
> without a warrant. We cannot justify giving the Attorney General the ability
> to designate domestic terror groups. We cannot justify giving the FBI total
> access to any type of data which may exist in any system anywhere such as
> medical records and financial records.
>
>
> We cannot justify giving the CIA the ability to target people in this country
> for intelligence surveillance. We cannot justify a government which takes from
> the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a
> right to total secrecy. The Attorney General recently covered up a statue of
> Lady Justice showing her bosom as if to underscore there is no danger of
> justice exposing herself at this time, before this administration.
>
>
> Let us pray that our nation's leaders will not be overcome with fear. Because
> today there is great fear in our great Capitol. And this must be understood
> before we can ask about the shortcomings of Congress in the current
> environment. The great fear began when we had to evacuate the Capitol on
> September 11. It continued when we had to leave the Capitol again when a bomb
> scare occurred as members were pressing the CIA during a secret briefing. It
> continued when we abandoned Washington when anthrax, possibly from a
> government lab, arrived in the mail. It continued when the Attorney General
> declared a nationwide terror alert and then the Administration brought the
> destructive Patriot Bill to the floor of the House. It continued in the
> release of the Bin Laden tapes at the same time the President was announcing
> the withdrawal from the ABM treaty. It remains present in the cordoning off of
> the Capitol. It is present in the camouflaged armed national guardsmen who
> greet members of Congress each day we enter the Capitol campus. It is present
> in the labyrinth of concrete barriers through which we must pass each time we
> go to vote. The trappings of a state of siege trap us in a state of fear, ill
> equipped to deal with the Patriot Games, the Mind Games, the War Games of an
> unelected President and his unelected Vice President.
>
>
> Let us pray that our country will stop this war. "To promote the common
> defense" is one of the formational principles of America. Our Congress gave
> the President the ability to respond to the tragedy of September the Eleventh.
> We licensed a response to those who helped bring the terror of September the
> Eleventh. But we the people and our elected representatives must reserve the
> right to measure the response, to proportion the response, to challenge the
> response, and to correct the response.
>
>
> Because we did not authorize the invasion of Iraq.
> We did not authorize the invasion of Iran.
> We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea.
> We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan.
> We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
> We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention.
> We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas
> corpus.
> We did not authorize assassination squads.
> We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO.
> We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights.
> We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution.
> We did not authorize national identity cards.
> We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout
> our cities.
> We did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of
> innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of
> innocent villagers in Afghanistan.
> We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow
> it pleases.
> We did not authorize war without end.
> We did not authorize a permanent war economy.
>
>
> Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy. The President has
> requested a $45.6 billion increase in military spending. All defense-related
> programs will cost close to $400 billion. Consider that the Department of
> Defense has never passed an independent audit. Consider that the Inspector
> General has notified Congress that the Pentagon cannot properly account for
> $1.2 trillion in transactions. Consider that in recent years the Dept. of
> Defense could not match $22 billion worth of expenditures to the items it
> purchased, wrote off, as lost, billions of dollars worth of in-transit
> inventory and stored nearly $30 billion worth of spare parts it did not need.
>
>
> Yet the defense budget grows with more money for weapons systems to fight a
> cold war which ended, weapon systems in search of new enemies to create new
> wars. This has nothing to do with fighting terror. This has everything to do
> with fueling a military industrial machine with the treasure of our nation,
> risking the future of our nation, risking democracy itself with the
> militarization of thought which follows the militarization of the budget.
>
>
> Let us pray for our children. Our children deserve a world without end. Not a
> war without end. Our children deserve a world free of the terror of hunger,
> free of the terror of poor health care, free of the terror of homelessness,
> free of the terror of ignorance, free of the terror of hopelessness, free of
> the terror of policies which are committed to a world view which is not
> appropriate for the survival of a free people, not appropriate for the
> survival of democratic values, not appropriate for the survival of our nation,
> and not appropriate for the survival of the world.
>
>
> Let us pray that we have the courage and the will as a people and as a nation
> to shore ourselves up, to reclaim from the ruins of September the Eleventh our
> democratic traditions. Let us declare our love for democracy. Let us declare
> our intent for peace. Let us work to make nonviolence an organizing principle
> in our own society. Let us recommit ourselves to the slow and painstaking work
> of statecraft, which sees peace, not war as being inevitable. Let us work for
> a world where someday war becomes archaic. That is the vision which the
> proposal to create a Department of Peace envisions. Forty-three members of
> congress are now cosponsoring the legislation. Let us work for a world where
> nuclear disarmament is an imperative. That is why we must begin by insisting
> on the commitments of the ABM treaty. That is why we must be steadfast for
> nonproliferation.
>
>
> Let us work for a world where America can lead the way in banning weapons of
> mass destruction not only from our land and sea and sky but from outer space
> itself. That is the vision of HR 3616: A universe free of fear. Where we can
> look up at God's creation in the stars and imagine infinite wisdom, infinite
> peace, infinite possibilities, not infinite war, because we are taught that
> the kingdom will come on earth as it is in heaven.
>
>
> Let us pray that we have the courage to replace the images of death which
> haunt us, the layers of images of September the Eleventh, faded into images of
> patriotism, spliced into images of military mobilization, jump cut into images
> of our secular celebrations of the World Series, New Year's Eve, the
> Superbowl, the Olympics, the strobic flashes which touch our deepest fears,
> let us replace those images with the work of human relations, reaching out to
> people, helping our own citizens here at home, lifting the plight of the poor
> everywhere. That is the America which has the ability to rally the support of
> the world. That is the America which stands not in pursuit of an axis of evil,
> but which is itself at the axis of hope and faith and peace and freedom.
>
>
> America, America. God shed grace on thee. Crown thy good, America. Not with
> weapons of mass destruction. Not with invocations of an axis of evil. Not
> through breaking international treaties. Not through establishing America as
> king of a unipolar world. Crown thy good America.
>
>
> America, America. Let us pray for our country. Let us love our country. Let us
> defend our country not only from the threats without but from the threats
> within. Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good with brotherhood, and
> sisterhood. And crown thy good with compassion and restraint and forbearance
> and a commitment to peace, to democracy, to economic justice here at home and
> throughout the world. Crown thy good, America. Crown thy good.
>
>
> Dennis Kucinich is a Democratic U.S. Congressman from Cleveland, Ohio.
>
------ End of Forwarded Message
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