-Caveat Lector-

 Don Stacey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

 PLEASE ASK EVERYONE YOU ARE IN CONTACT WITH IF THEY KNOW ABOUT THIS.
 MOST LIKELY YOU WILL BE SHOCKED THAT SO FEW HAVE HEARD ANYTHING
 ABOUT IT.  IF YOU WILL DISTRIBUTE THIS TO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE --
 AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE -- YOU WILL BE DOING A GREAT SERVICE !


 http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1999/08-02-99/vo15no16_canal.htm

    Perfidy in Panama --  The United States is on a suicide course
    that will surrender its American Canal in Panama into the hands
    of a hostile and dangerous foreign power

 Save Our Canal!
 by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer

 The control of the Panama Canal is far more important to our
 national security than is the control of the Kiel Canal to that
 of Germany, or the Suez Canal to that of Great Britain.  Its
 protection is more essential than the protection of any part of
 our coast or any of our seaports, however important, because it
 is the key to the protection of many seaports and thousands of
 miles of coast-line.

    -- Henry L. Stimson, Former Secretary of War (1913)

 The United States appears to be sleep-walking on a course to sure
 destruction, and America's leaders, who have plotted this course,
 appear to be completely oblivious to the mortal danger they are
 leading us into.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the
 imminent giveaway of the U.S. Canal in Panama.  In just a few
 months, unless the American people raise a terrific outcry, this
 strategic waterway, so vital to our economy and national security,
 will be turned over to Panama.  But Panama, a tiny country of only
 2.8 million people, does not even have an army.  It has the
 capacity neither to defend nor maintain this valuable transoceanic
 thoroughfare.


 China Takeover

 In reality, if we allow this suicidal course to continue, we will
 be transferring our strategic canal not to Panama, but to whichever
 power moves in to fill the vacuum.  And there is no longer any
 cause to wonder which power that will be.  Over the past several
 years, the People's Republic of China has made unmistakably clear
 its designs upon the Panama Canal.  In fact, it has already moved
 in and begun to take control of this critically important asset.

 Yes, that is true; it is one of the great untold stories that have
 been completely ignored by our news media.  If we proceed along
 our present course, by the end of this year, on December 31st,
 Communist China will become the de facto new owners and rulers
 of the Panama Canal.  This is the same Red China that has been
 so heavily involved in massive espionage efforts to steal our
 satellite, missile, and nuclear weapons technology; the same
 totalitarian regime that massacred thousands of students at
 Tiananmen Square, yet still denies this atrocity; the same Red
 China that is supplying terrorist regimes such as Iran, Syria,
 Libya, and North Korea with missiles and weapons of mass
 destruction; the same Beijing thugs who are threatening Taiwan,
 Japan, and the Philippines, who are helping Pakistan's nuclear
 weapons program, and who call the United States their "number one
 enemy"; the same Red China that has so thoroughly penetrated our
 government and our military research laboratories during the
 Clinton Administration.

 Over the past year, the American people began to get a glimpse of
 the enormity and gravity of the multitude of ongoing Clinton
 scandals known collectively as "Chinagate."  However, Clinton's
 allies in the media have been only too willing to help the White
 House divert attention from these serious matters.  Thus, the
 public has remained largely uninformed on these vital issues,
 and we have not seen a sustained, determined attempt in Congress
 to hold accountable those individuals responsible for some of
 the most devastating betrayals of our national security.

 As injurious as the many Chinagate treacheries have been to our
 nation's security, the impending surrender of our Panama Canal is
 more serious still.  Tragically, Americans have come to take the
 Canal and its myriad benefits for granted.  One of the great
 engineering marvels of the world, the Canal is not only a tribute
 to the genius, vision, determination, and political will of an
 earlier generation of Americans, but a crucially important artery
 and choke point for our Navy and merchant marine vessels.  Its
 value far exceeds the $32 billion we have invested in it over the
 years, though that price tag alone is reason enough to question the
 sanity of those who are so determined to relinquish this valuable
 property.

 Over 13,000 commercial vessels transit the Panama Canal every year
 with some 190 million long tons of cargo.  In the past year our
 Naval vessels used the Canal countless times.  This 51-mile
 waterway cuts 8,000 miles off the trip around the southern tip of
 South America, saving as much as two weeks of transport time.
 In warfare, time means lives, and that much time can mean the
 difference between defeat and victory.  The Panama Canal has played
 a crucial role in World Wars I and II, the Korean War, Vietnam,
 Desert Storm, and many other conflicts.  I find it unfathomable
 that this tremendous asset -- which was bought at such a cost in
 gold, lives, sweat, and labor at the beginning of this century,
 and that is still so necessary to our nation's safety -- could be
 surrendered nonchalantly now at the close of this tumultuous
 century.


 "In Perpetuity"

 From the time that Vasco Nuñez de Balboa first crossed the Isthmus
 of Panama in 1513 and gazed upon the Pacific Ocean, the idea of a
 transisthmian canal was a mighty fixation in the minds of many men.
 In 1826, Simon Bolivar called a congress in Panama City at which
 construction of a canal was proposed, but the project was dropped
 for lack of funding.  In 1850, in an attempt to head off British
 encroachments in the area, the U.S. signed the Clayton-Bulwar
 Treaty with Great Britain, providing that the signatories would
 share in the construction and control of any inter-ocean canal.

 In 1881, Ferdinand de Lessups, the famed builder of the Suez Canal,
 began a French effort to construct a canal through Panama.  But
 high costs, financial mismanagement, and deaths from tropical
 diseases brought that effort to a halt in 1887.

 In 1898, the Spanish-American War underscored the need for a canal
 when the U.S. had to send a battleship from San Francisco to Cuba
 around the tip of South America.  In 1903, during the
 administration of President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States
 concluded the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty with the new Republic of
 Panama, conveying to the United States "in perpetuity" a
 ten-mile-wide strip across the isthmus for construction of a canal.

 The tremendous feat of engineering and construction was completed
 in 1914 and the Panama Canal was opened to traffic on August 15th
 of that year.  A paramount concern in the minds of many American
 leaders at that time was the necessity of properly defending this
 new strategic asset.  The quotation from Henry Stimson at the
 beginning of this article is taken from an essay entitled, "The
 Defense of the Panama Canal," which was published in Scribner's
 Magazine in July 1913, the year before the Panama Canal's
 completion.  The arguments made by Stimson, who had served as
 Secretary of War under President William Howard Taft (and later
 again under Franklin Delano Roosevelt), are more valid and apropos
 today than they were when he wrote them.

 "The military importance of the [Panama] canal to the American
 nation," wrote Stimson, "... has not been so clearly recognized by
 the people at large.  While they have been quick to see how
 important it is that in time of war the canal should be open to our
 own fleet, it has not been equally appreciated how important it is
 that the canal should be closed to the fleet of our enemy."

 Stimson continued:

     If we are ever unfortunate enough to be at war, either with a
     nation strong enough to have fleets in both the Atlantic and
     the Pacific, or with two nations, one in the Orient, and the
     other in Europe, this difference of policy as to the canal
     would be vital.  The closure of the canal to our enemies would
     permit our fleet to operate on interior lines and would compel
     the other fleets to operate on exterior lines eight thousand
     miles longer than ours.  It might easily make the whole
     difference between victory and defeat.  [Emphasis added.]

 The only way to guarantee that we could close the Canal to our
 enemies while keeping it open to our own fleet, of course, is to
 have the Canal amply protected and completely under American
 control.  Why is it that this principle so widely recognized and
 accepted back then is now regarded as unimportant?  In 1880, a year
 before the French launched their Canal effort in Panama, President
 Rutherford B. Hayes, in a message to the Senate, said:

     The policy of this country is a canal under American control.
     The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this
     control to any European power or to any combination of European
     powers.... An inter-oceanic canal across the American Isthmus
     would essentially change the geographical relations between the
     Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States and between
     the United States and the rest of the world.  It would be the
     great ocean thoroughfare between our Atlantic and Pacific
     shores and virtually a part of the coast line of the United
     States.... No other great power would, under similar
     circumstances, fail to assert a rightful control over a work
     so colossal and vitally affecting its interest and welfare.

 The following year, in 1881, Secretary of State James G. Blaine
 cogently remarked:

     If a hostile movement should at any time be made against the
     Pacific coast, threatening danger to its people and destruction
     to its property, the Government of the United States would feel
     it had been unfaithful to its duty and neglectful toward its
     own citizens if it permitted itself to be bound by a treaty
     which gave the same right through the canal to a war-ship bound
     on an errand of destruction that is reserved to its own navy
     sailing for the defense of our coast and the protection of the
     lives of our people.

 Can we honestly believe that we are less at risk today than we were
 a century ago when Secretary Blaine made that observation?  Is our
 government not being "unfaithful to its duty and neglectful toward
 its own citizens" by its continued insistence on surrendering this
 vital lifeline through the fraudulent Carter-Torrijos Treaties?

 When I testified on the Panama Canal and United States interests
 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on June 16, 1998,
 I stated that our military readiness was at an all-time low as
 regards our ability to defend our country, and at an all-time high
 as regards the threat to our national security, especially in our
 own hemisphere.

 I noted that although we had engaged in more so-called
 "contingency" military operations than under any previous
 administration in the history of our nation, our military forces
 had suffered 14 consecutive cuts in the defense budget,
 invalidating the long-standing policy of our country to be able to
 win in two major regional contingencies simultaneously.  The United
 States Marine Corps, by its own admission, is prepared and trained
 to fight one -- not two, but one -- major contingency at the
 present time.  According to Representative Floyd Spence (R-SC),
 chairman of the House National Security Committee, it is doubtful
 that we could win even one major contingency at this point.  This
 is a particularly grave assessment coming from Chairman Spence,
 who, as one of our top elected civilian officials in Congress, is
 charged with overseeing our military preparedness and regularly
 receives detailed updates and evaluations from all the branches of
 our Armed Forces.  Unfortunately, I see no reason to contradict
 this alarming appraisal.

 I further pointed out in my testimony before the Senate committee
 last year the actual approximate figures on specific cuts which
 greatly endanger our nation:

 -- The Army was cut 14.2 percent, from $74.3 billion in 1993 to
    $63.8 billion in 1999; the Department of the Navy, which
    includes the Marine Corps, suffered a similar cut of 14.1
    percent, down from $94.7 billion in 1993 to $81.3 billion in
    1999; and the Air Force is weathering a 14.4 percent cut, down
    from $89.5 billion in 1993 to $76.6  billion in 1999.

 -- In overall manpower, active duty military personnel suffered
    a 17.8 percent cut, down from 1,776,000 in 1993 to 1,459,000,
    despite the many so-called military contingencies and
    peacekeeping operations around the globe.

 Since I delivered that testimony, our armed forces have been
 involved, of course, in the newest major "contingency" known as
 Kosovo.  We are accepting military commitments, one after another,
 under the aegis of the UN or NATO, while simultaneously disarming
 America.  Meanwhile, we have seen an alarming increase in tensions
 between North and South Korea, where we have tens of thousands of
 American soldiers at risk, without adequate naval and air support,
 because of our force commitments to Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, and
 elsewhere.


 Trouble Ahead

 Ironically, 20 years ago we were in better shape militarily than we
 are now.  Today, unfortunately, the fears and concerns of those of
 us who have had military experience over a great number of years in
 a great many different situations have been absolutely confirmed.
 I have been honored to serve as this nation's commander in chief
 of the Pacific Fleet, commander in chief of the Atlantic and the
 Atlantic Fleet, Chief of Naval Operations, and Chairman of the
 Joint Chiefs of Staff.  I truly cannot remember a time when I have
 been more concerned about the security of our country.  That remark
 may seem strange, considering the history of World Wars I and II,
 the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  But it is a statement I will
 stand behind for the following reasons.

 Since 1812 no war has been fought against a foreign enemy on
 American soil.  This is a very long time ago.  I am an old sailor
 now, but I know trouble when I see it, and I see big trouble in
 Panama, trouble that could evolve quickly into a conflict in our
 own hemisphere with worldwide implications.  As I stated earlier,
 the impending transfer of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian
 government, under the circumstances which now exist, amounts to
 handing over control of the Canal to Red China, an aggressive,
 brutal, expansionist, totalitarian regime that has shown, by word
 and deed, that it is our enemy.

 China's penetration of Panama is of utmost significance to the
 United States, but the Clinton Administration and its media friends
 have turned a blind eye to this dangerous development.  In light of
 what has already become public concerning Beijing's massive payoffs
 to Clinton-Gore and the Democratic National Committee, and
 President Clinton's subsequent radical changes of policy to benefit
 the PRC, it is fair to ask if this willful blindness to so clear a
 danger is another quid pro quo for Chinese cash.

 The Chinese penetration of Panama has been effected primarily
 through an entity known as the Panama Ports Company, a front
 corporation for Hutchison-Whampoa Limited, a Communist
 Chinese-controlled company owned by Hong Kong billionaire Dr. Li
 Ka-shing.  Dr. Li's business empire has long been intertwined with
 enterprises that front for the Communist military and intelligence
 arms of the People's Republic of China.  Ten percent of his Panama
 Ports Company is owned by China Resources, the commercial arm of
 China's Ministry of Trade and Economic Cooperation.

 Two years ago, on July 16, 1997, Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) was
 quoted in the South China Morning Post as stating that China
 Resources was "an agent of espionage -- economic, military, and
 political -- for China."  Shen Jueren, the Communist official who
 heads China Resources, and Li Ka-shing are both partners in the
 Riady family's Hong Kong Chinese Bank.  Dr. Li is also a principal
 in the PRC's huge China Telecom, and the China International Trust
 and Investment Corporation (CITIC), a ministry-level conglomerate
 with global assets of $21 billion run by Chinese "princeling" Wang
 Jun.  As chairman of Poly Group, Wang Jun also serves as the PRC's
 main arms dealer to Communist regimes, terrorists, and rogue
 states.  Nevertheless, Shen Jueren and Wang Jun, like many other
 notorious Red Chinese agents bearing campaign gifts, were welcome
 guests at the Clinton-Gore White House.


 Communist Control

 Dr. Li's Hutchison-Whampoa is a partner with the China Ocean
 Shipping Company (COSCO), the merchant marine arm of the People's
 Liberation Army (PLA).  Hutchison-Whampoa also controls countless
 ports around the world.  Because of its relationship to the PRC
 and the potential impact this implies for our global maritime
 interests, this should be of major concern to the United States.
 But my specific concern is that Beijing, operating through this
 company, has virtually achieved, without a single shot being fired,
 a stronghold on the Panama Canal, something which took our country
 so many years and such tremendous effort to accomplish.

 This stronghold of power has been almost completely accomplished
 through something called Law No. 5, passed by the Panamanian
 legislature on January 16, 1997.  This law gives Hutchison-Whampoa
 -- and, therefore, China -- exclusive concessions, including,
 among other things:

 -- Responsibility for hiring new pilots for the Canal.  Pilots
    have complete control of all ships passing through the canal.
    They determine which ships may go through and when.

 -- Control of the port of Balboa on the Pacific end of the canal
    and the port of Cristobal on the Atlantic end.  In addition to
    these critical anchorages, Hutchison was granted a monopoly on
    the Pacific side with its takeover of Rodman Naval Base, a
    U.S.-built, deep-draft port facility capable of handling,
    supplying, refueling, and repairing just about any warship.

 -- Control of the order of ships utilizing the entrance of the
    Canal on the Pacific side, and even authority to deny ships
    access on either side if they are deemed to be interfering with
    Hutchison's business.  This is in direct violation of the 1977
    Panama Canal Treaty, which guarantees expeditious passage for
    the United States Navy.

 -- The right to transfer "contract rights" to any third party
    -- i.e., any company or nation.  This means Hutchison could
    transfer rights to China, Russia, Cuba, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
    or corporate fronts for the Russian mafia or Colombian drug
    cartels.

 -- Control of certain public roads, such as Diablo Road, allowing
    access to strategic areas of the Canal to be cut off.

 -- Control of U.S. Air Station Albrook and Telfers Island.

 In addition, we can expect that China will also move, sooner or
 later, to take control of Howard Air Force Base, Galeta Island,
 Fort Sherman, SOUTHCOM Quarry Heights Headquarters, Ancon Hill,
 Amador, and other vital military facilities built by Americans
 with U.S. taxpayer money.


 "Bucketloads of Money"

 How has this come about?  At the same time that China's Communist
 leaders were buying their way into the Clinton White House, they
 were also directing large sums of cash into Panama's political
 process.  Panama is a small and relatively poor country, and China,
 a major power with $45 billion in cash reserves, has had a fairly
 easy time getting its way with bribery.

 As Congressman Leopoldo Bennedetti, a member of Panama's
 Legislative Assembly, put it in an interview with El Siglo,
 "Bucket loads of money from Asian contractors are pouring in."
 President Ernesto Balladares and members of his administration
 and the legislature have been very cozy with Hutchison-Whampoa
 and the PRC, as well as with Fidel Castro and the drug lords of
 Colombia.  They rigged the bidding process to guarantee that
 Hutchison would get the bid.  They were lured on, no doubt, by
 Hutchison's bid of $22 million per year, but we do not know how
 much additional money changed hands "under the table," as one
 Panamanian legislator put it.

 We know that the Panamanian administrator of the Panama Canal
 Commission, Alberto Aleman Zubieta, is also the owner of a private
 company, CUSA, which has been awarded multi-million-dollar
 contracts to tear down facilities at the strategic Amador military
 base.  Then there is Balladares' Foreign Minister, Jorge Ritter,
 who has purposely torpedoed base talks in Panama, even though polls
 have shown that 80 percent of Panamanians want the U.S. to stay.
 Previously, Ritter served as Panama's ambassador to Colombia during
 the time that dictator Manuel Noriega was servicing Colombia's drug
 cartels.  In truth, Ritter was Noriega's "point man" to the cartels
 and has been noted in the press for his many connections to the
 most notorious and violent of the drug capos.

 On January 28th of this year, Fidel Castro's Radio Havana reported
 that "Cuba and Panama signed at the Panamanian capital an agreement
 for the promotion and protection of investments in the two
 countries, as well as a basic cooperation agreement between the two
 governments.  The documents were signed by Cuban Foreign Investment
 and Economic Cooperation Minister Ibrahim Ferradaz and Panamanian
 Foreign Minister Jorge Eduardo Ritter.  Following the signing of
 the two documents, Ibrahim Ferradaz emphasized the importance of
 this event, which strengthens Cuban-Panamanian ties...."  Yes, this
 is the same Jorge Ritter.

 Another major player in the current Panama drama is President
 Balladares' National Security Adviser, Gabriel Castro.  Communist
 Chinese Ambassador Ju stated in an interview in Panama's La Prensa
 that Gabriel Castro is the best friend that the PRC has in Panama.
 Castro has pulled every string available to aid Red China and to
 sabotage their opponents and competitors.  The Chinese Communists
 have been allowed to order the Panama Canal Commission out of their
 ports, thus creating large zones into which anything, including
 armaments, could be shipped in sealed containers without monitoring
 or inspection.  Such sealed containers could contain missiles with
 nuclear warheads that could be easily launched to reach targets
 within the continental United States.  It was not so long ago that
 Chinese officials warned that U.S. intervention in any PRC-Taiwan
 conflict could result in the nuclear vaporization of Los Angeles.
 With a missile base in Panama, China would be in a good position to
 carry out such a threat, or to blackmail us into submission.


 Deception and Fraud

 In 1978, I, along with Admiral Robert Carney, Admiral George
 Anderson, and Admiral Arleigh Burke, pleaded with President Carter
 not to give away the Panama Canal.  We pointed out the vital
 security needs of the United States that were at stake.  He did
 not listen.  In fact, he and his negotiators engaged in deception
 and fraud, presenting the U.S. Senate with completely different
 treaties than those agreed to by General Omar Torrijos, who was
 then Panama's dictator.

 There are two Panama Canal Treaties involved: The first provides
 for the piecemeal transfer of the Canal and all facilities by
 December 31, 1999.  The second promises permanent neutrality and
 open access to the Canal for all nations.

 The treaties were fatally flawed, even if taken at face value,
 because they ignored completely the vital national security
 interests of the United States.  But we were to learn later that
 secret Carter-Torrijos agreements had made the treaties far more
 dangerous than we had feared.  In order to gain Senate
 ratification, President Carter acceded to the DeConcini Reservation
 which guaranteed to the United States the right to use military
 force, with or without Panama's consent, to keep the Canal open.
 This was a false hope even if it had been made with honorable
 intentions.  How can the "right" to go into the Canal with military
 force after it has been taken over by a hostile force compare to
 the advantage of occupying defensive bases that could prevent the
 takeover of the Canal by an enemy in the first place?  Retaking the
 Canal and its fortified positions would not only be costly, but
 could also end up rendering the Canal inoperable.

 However, even the weak DeConcini Reservation was unacceptable to
 General Torrijos.  So Carter allowed him to have a secret
 counter-reservation that was never submitted to the U.S. Senate.
 This counter-reservation conditioned any U.S. military intervention
 in Panama to that based on "the principles of mutual respect and
 cooperation."  In other words, Torrijos was allowed to establish a
 secret (and , therefore, invalid) treaty claim that the U.S. could
 not rightfully intervene in the Canal without Panama's
 "cooperation," which is a complete repudiation of the DeConcini
 Reservation's defense guarantees.

 The Panama Canal treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate are radically
 different from, and completely contrary to, the treaties agreed to
 by Torrijos.  This makes them null and void, since both parties
 did not agree to the same document.  Dr. Charles Breecher, one of
 the State Department's most knowledgeable treaty authorities, was
 certainly right in calling the Carter-Torrijos Treaties "the
 greatest fraud ever perpetrated against the United States and
 against the American people."

 In 1978 I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee
 concerning the Panama Canal.  I stated:

 The defense and use of the Panama Canal is wrapped inextricably
 with the overall global strategy of the United States and the
 security of the free world.  I submit that if the United States
 opts to turn over full responsibility for the maintenance and
 operation of such an important waterway to a small, resource-poor,
 and unstable country as Panama and then withdraws all United States
 presence, a vacuum will be created which will be quickly filled by
 proxy or directly by the Soviet Union, as is their practice in
 every opportunity.

 The Soviet Union's thinking and conclusions about the Canal, and
 its approach to gain control of this important, strategically
 situated waterway, were not lost on the Chinese Communists.  They
 have replicated the Soviet Union's intent to the letter -- quickly,
 silently, and successfully.  Simultaneously, they are establishing
 bases on Tarawa in the Spratly Islands near the Philippines, with
 the obvious intent of controlling another key maritime choke point,
 the Malacca Strait, through which much oil and other strategically
 important trade commodities are transported.  The Chinese have
 shown repeatedly that this is a favorite tactic, to get behind
 their enemies' lines of supply and interrupt their access to
 vitally needed goods.  There can be no doubt that their intent is
 inimical to our national interests.  Yet we are being told by our
 elected leaders to trust our security to fraudulent agreements.


 Paper "Guarantees"

 I agree with the statement of Secretary Stimson in 1913, that
 "a canal protected by international agreement could not possibly
 meet the requirements of the United States."  Stimson went on to
 point out very persuasively why paper agreements are no substitute
 for concrete defense measures.  He said:

     We could not afford to risk our national security upon the
     faith that an international guarantee would be stronger in our
     behalf, in some future crisis, than it was, for instance, in
     1793, when Prussia, after having guaranteed only two years
     before the independence of Poland, joined in the partition of
     Poland; or in 1807, when Great Britain entered the harbor of
     Copenhagen, belonging to a nation with which she was at peace
     and under relations of amity, and destroyed the Danish Fleet;
     or in 1904, when Japan, after having guaranteed the
     independence of Korea, violated the sanctity of the harbor of
     Chemulpho by attacking there the Russian fleet.... To insure,
     therefore, that the Panama Canal will always be open to our
     own fleet and closed to the fleet of our enemy, it must be
     under American control, complete and unhampered, and every
     step must be taken in time of peace, by the construction of
     fortifications and the preparation of other military defenses,
     to make that control effective in the emergency of war."
     [Emphasis added.]

 We must face some hard realities.  Since Mr. Stimson penned the
 above warning, our century has witnessed hundreds of treaty
 violations, most especially by totalitarian regimes.  We have also
 seen ample proof of the maxim that nature abhors a vacuum.  If we
 abandon the Panama Canal, as currently planned, China will take
 our place.  As we have noted, it is already doing so.  We are thus
 setting ourselves up for inevitable conflict.  We will be forced,
 as a matter of national survival, at some not too distant point in
 the future to go to Panama and win back militarily what we have
 bought and built, and what is rightfully ours.  When that happens,
 we will have to pay a high price in blood and treasure -- because
 the alternative will be far worse.


 A Golden Opportunity

 But that does not have to happen; we do not have to place ourselves
 in that situation.  On May 3rd of this year, Mireya Moscoso was
 elected as Panama's first female president.  Mrs. Moscoso is the
 widow of former President Arnulfo Arias, whose administration was
 overthrown by General Omar Torrijos 11 days after taking office,
 in 1968.  A businesswoman and a pro-U.S. political moderate, Mrs.
 Moscoso defeated Martin Torrijos, the son of the man who had
 deposed her husband three decades earlier and who had been heralded
 as the favorite in the election.  She is scheduled to take office
 on September 1st.  Between now and the end of the year we have a
 golden opportunity -- perhaps our last opportunity -- to rectify
 the terrible fraud perpetrated through the Carter-Torrijos
 Treaties.  Many of Panama's political, business, and intellectual
 leaders have voiced their desire to have the U.S. stay in Panama,
 and, as previously noted, the Panamanian people in general have
 overwhelmingly indicated their support for a continued U.S.
 military presence.

 However, President Clinton has made no effort to contact President
 Moscoso and other Panamanian leaders to avert the impending
 surrender of our Canal.  That is not surprising, since it would
 require him to go against the interests of his main campaign
 contributor, Red China, something he has shown time and again he
 will not do.  What is surprising and distressing, though, is that
 no Republican members of Congress are making any substantive effort
 to stop this mad rush to disaster.  They say that it is too late,
 that the surrender of the Panama Canal is already a fait accompli
 that we must accept.  Well, I do not accept it.  As an individual
 who has laid his life on the line for our country for many years
 and led numerous others into battle who have paid the ultimate
 price, I for one cannot understand why our government leaders
 passively permit this dangerous travesty to continue.

 If you have not already contacted your representative and senators
 on this most urgent matter, I cannot implore you more earnestly to
 do so.  The hour is late, and it is high time the American people
 let our elected leaders know with unmistakable clarity that we will
 not allow them to place our nation at risk by allowing the Panama
 Canal to fall into enemy hands.



 Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, USN (ret.), one of America's foremost
 military authorities, and one of this country's most highly
 decorated officers, has served as Commander of the 7th Fleet,
 Supreme Allied Commander of the Atlantic, U.S. Commander in Chief
 of the Atlantic, Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet,
 Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, Chief of Naval Operations,
 and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


 The New American
 August 2, 1999


   © Copyright 1999 American Opinion Publishing Incorporated


 http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1999/08-02-99/vo15no16_canal.htm





.

DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing!  These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically  by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Om

Reply via email to