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Friday, April 20. 2007
Mass Murder and Chronic Lying
A.G. Alberto Gonzales testifying before the Senate Judiciay Committee
On Monday we were told the gunmen was a Chinese national here on a student visa, but he wasn’t a VT student. Tuesday the gunman was identified — a South Korean who had been living in Virginia with his family for over a decade and was a student at VT. The first person he shot was his girlfriend … well now she was just a female acquaintance, not even a friend. Bear in mind that all the information coming out in those first few hours was from “sources close to the investigation.”
The networks will go on and on with information, trotting out the family members who lost someone in the carnage, grinding out every little detail of home and family life; wringing every tear from every eye; talking with the police and F.B.I.; former police and former F.B.I. agents who are “experts;” the details of how and why the campus security allowed it to go on after the first two women were murdered will be debated, analyzed and various scenarios of how the campus police might have, could have and should have handled it after the first two killings …
Brian Williams of NBC interviews the president and First Lady — but this isn’t the time for policy debate according to the president. He was in Blacksburg to help with the healing, although on Monday, after the murders were all over the airwaves, he made sure his message, given through the press secretary, included his rock solid support of the NRA.
Now is the time for a policy debate about firearms in this country. Everyone not connected to Virginia Tech (and plenty who are) have been talking about nothing but the 2nd Amendment since Monday. But the realities of our national fascination with firearms aren’t mentioned, let alone discussed. Man, how I hate admitting this, but Pat Buchanan did, on Hardball with Chris Matthews did bring up one reality: firearms as personal possessions will not go away. Banning firearms, in particular hand guns, will not change that. It just means millions more Americans will be breaking yet another law. Further more, we can ban assault weapons, automatic weapons, banana clips and 15 round clips and armor piercing bullets — cop killers — but millions of those items are already in the hands of private owners and those private owners aren’t in a mood to hand them over to authorities.
When California passed its anti-assault weapon law, I knew of only one person who got rid of his assault rifles and machine guns. He didn’t turn them into the police though, he sold them to another gun enthusiast living in Arizona! More laws aren’t the answer. The shooter in Monday’s massacre bought his weapons legally. How do you stop that?
He could have been on a list that said he was found to be a danger to himself and others, as the psychiatrists found when he was involuntarily committed to a hospital; he had been stalking two female students at VT two years ago, the school knew he was troubled and yet the system went about its business as if he was your average student.
Some of his instructors were troubled by his writings and even had sent him to a school counselor. That obviously wasn’t enough to have campus security at least keep a close eye on the guy.
But here’s another reality that Pat Buchanan didn’t mention on Tuesday, and one the NRA and fanatical gun advocates never want to admit is true because it flies in the face of the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument. Firearms make the killing much easier, faster and safer for the killer. That’s a fact. Guns are far more deadly than knives, swords, machetes, hammers and the chainsaws in the various blood-spattered movies that pass for entertainment in our society. If someone is charging at me with a knife, I stand a chance of defending myself, But if that same maniac is standing off some 20-50 yards with a gun, he just has to aim the gun and pull the trigger — there isn’t much protection against that. And that’s a fact.
Today, everyone is piling on NBC for airing parts of the profanity-spewed manifesto the murderer sent to the network in the middle of his killing spree. Six of one, half a dozen of the other if they should have run with that story. It explains a lot about the killer’s delusions, but it was painful for the victims and their families to see and hear that broadcast.
This has sparked the interest of everyone across the nation, taking these stories off the front pages: The Iraq War — Bush’s War — and all the Shia cabinet ministers loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr quit the government because the Prime Minister wouldn’t set a time table for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Wednesday was the bloodiest day since Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” — 171 people killed in blasts around Iraq, 140 in one bombing alone! If the bomb wasn’t enough, a sniper then opened fire on people after the blast.
That crisis continues to spiral into Hell, despite the cheery note the White House tries to spin it into with their increasingly fantasy-filled remarks.
The War Czar? No one wants the job, so it’s been renamed and I can’t for the life of me remember what the new name is, but it was funny!
Retired Marine Corps general John J. “Jack” Sheehan, former head of NATO and one of five four-star generals to reject the White House job offer, said this about the job: “The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going.” If that wasn’t damning enough, he added, “… rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, ‘No, thanks.’ ”
Apparently, he is unhappy with the “leadership,” especially that of Vice President Dick Cheney and his hawkish subordinates who pushed this war and manipulated people and information to do it.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gave testimony under oath in the Senate Thursday (April 19). He didn’t remember much. He didn’t remember 45 times before lunch; over 70 times throughout the day of testimony. But it was entertaining! He remembered making the decision to fire the eight prosecutors, but he couldn’t remember when or why he made the decision!
The poor guy didn’t have any supporters … well, Orrin Hatch of Utah had some weak support … in that Senate hearing. Conservative Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma told the Attorney General, “I believe you ought to suffer the consequences that these the fired attorneys] have suffered …” he made that even more clear when he informed everyone and Gonzales in particular, “…the best way to put this behind us is your resignation”
Republican Arlen Specter, who presided over Gonzales’s confirmation hearings as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, all but called for the attorney general to resign. Specter opened the hearings with a statement that pretty much set the tone for the day: “We have to evaluate whether you are really being forthright. Your characterization of your participation is significantly, if not totally, at variance with the facts.”
When Specter asked Gonzales if he had prepared for this hearing, in which he claimed he could not remember anything, the AG responded, “I prepare for every hearing.” Comedy, you gotta love it!
And Paul Wolfowitz, one of the chief architects of the disaster in Iraq, gave his girl friend a high-paying job in the State Department when he went to work with the World Bank (working together would have been a conflict of interest). Before that, when he was still under-secretary of Defense, wolfie personally recommended his GF get a contracting job through the State department for some travel to Iraq.
What a week. And it looks like it will be even better next week.
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And for you history buffs, today is the birthday of Adolph Hitler, the most horrific mass murderer in human history, although one could argue Uncle Joe Stalin murdered more people, but why quibble when the numbers are in the millions! Adolph Hitler, born April 20, 1889.
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