Have We Caught Any Terrorists Yet? If So Where Are They?
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ December 22, 2005
Shortly following the 9/11 debacle at the World Trade Center the local National Guard facility in our town installed concrete barriers around its facility giving the impression that our nation might be invaded or the National Guard unit in our strategically insignificant little city might come under attack. It seemed almost ludicrous at the time but after four years the barriers are still there. Propaganda is not all about words.
A few days ago Federal Airport Security forces shot to death an agitated man at the Miami Airport. He was apparently acting strangely and the story being given the public is that he claimed to have a bomb in his back pack.
The government has hired over forty thousand personnel to individually screen and sometimes search airline passengers. Federal Agents are flying on many of our airplanes. Our best minds are engaged in ferreting out vulnerability. Someone claimed that Arabs are buying bogus college degrees and might use them to legitimately enter United States. Initially we were told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was about to unleash them on our soil. We have been told that a nuclear or biological attack is imminent. Every State and every town has an organization to combat terrorism. Our President now admits the intelligence used to gain support for the war was faulty but with typical vapidity he claims the war is proper even though the reasons for starting it were not.
In 2004 and again in 2005 the Des Moines Register ran articles by Bert Dalmer questioning government figures on the number of terrorist being prosecuted. His investigation revealed inconsistencies and apparent efforts by the government to inflate insignificant numbers.
Testifying before congress former Attorney General John Ashcroft mentioned 379 arrests and 179 convictions while the President Bush’s 2003 budget claimed 1283 arrests. The discrepancy was not explained.
Billions of taxpayer dollars are being spent to support anti-terrorist activities. Americans have sacrificed the legal bulwark that protected their freedoms and already have tasted police state tactics. With the tremendous sacrifice being required of our citizens both personally and financially one would think that a horde of terrorists had invaded our nation and that our Herculean efforts would result in thousands of arrests.
A Google search on “Terrorists arrested in United States” produced millions of entries. I scanned the first 40 with very limited results. In 2003 Daniel Pipes, a prominent Zionist, provided a list of less than fifty arrested since 9/11. A father and son were arrested in California, an immam was arrested in Ohio, Professor Al-Arian was arrested by the FBI in Tampa, Florida. It was reported of the jury that “Most of them had trouble seeing a crime, or even a plan to commit one. They saw no hard evidence of a conspiracy linking Tampa and the bloody streets of Israel. And so the case against Al-Arian and three co-defendants fell apart, ending in acquittals and mistrials.”
There were several other arrests recorded of small numbers of individuals with ties to groups defined as terrorists. If there are not thousands of legitimate arrests and prosecutions that have not been publicized, the cost per terrorist apprehension must be astronomical.
Missing was any review of the results produced by the thousands of employees of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that day by day processes hundreds of thousands of individuals through lines, X-ray equipment, searches, and intimidations in an effort to prevent terrorist from boarding airplanes. Is the killing of the man in Miami their only accomplishment?
Our mendacious congresspersons, all under oath to uphold the Constitution, in direct violation thereof, as a Christmas present to citizens have voted to extend the USA Patriot Act that violates at least six of the provisions of the Bill of Rights. What has the USA Patriots Act accomplished? Have these invasive freedom robbing measures costing billions of dollars and involving every state in the nation resulted in the apprehension of terrorists? Maybe, but I have read nothing that would indicate they have.
Recently a suspected terrorist cell was apprehended in Spain. Others have been arrested in England and in other nations around the world but I have not seen anything of note about arrests inside our borders even though they are more porous than most.
Smart, soft spoken Karen Hughes a Bush advisor who several months ago returned with her family to Texas has come back to Washington as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs. With obvious sincerity she describes George W. Bush as a man of highest character who believes fervently in the policies he has pursued. You really want to believe her but then you must consider that when she left the White House she returned to Texas with a book advance of one to one-and-a-half million dollars, several speaking dates at $50,000 each and a sizeable stipend from the Republican Party.
On balance, our President is an enigma. To his supporters he is a man of high Christian Character who favors policies that will return the nation to righteousness. Our foremost Christian leaders are his ardent supporters. But there is another side, a side mostly reserved to those who judge his character by his background, by the family he comes from, the advisors he uses, and the results of the programs he supports.
The words “harlot” and “whore” are no longer used in polite society. They are five and six letter words relegated to the “four letter word” category. The only dictionary definition involves call girls, prostitutes and those who sell their bodies for sex. The Bible uses these words in a slightly different way.
Nearing the end of the Old Testament nestled between Daniel and Joel is the strange Book of Hosea. God told His prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute so that some of his children would be born to him from other men; born of an adulterous relationship. There is a distinct sexual overtone to this rather complicated double analogy. God uses the names of Hosea’s children to foretell his dealing with His people while at the same time using the marriage between Gomer (the prostitute) and Hosea (the Prophet) as an example of the unfaithfulness of His people. Soon Hosea’s adulterous wife gives birth to a son; God named him Jezreel (notice who chooses the name) as notification of God’s intent to destroy the nation of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel. Then she births a daughter; God named her Lo-ruhamma (meaning ’no more mercy”) signifying wrath to come, and next another son; God named Lo-ammi (not mine) to tell the people they were harlots, were no longer His, and that He would no longer be their God.
Initial sexual relationships begun with ones wife in the bond of marriage are both satisfying and enduring, encounters outside and before marriage often focus the sex drive on indelible deviancies that persist through life.
The lure of sex with its titillation and self abandonment has a corollary in forsaking God and falling into harlotry. The excitement of the sin intrinsic in all of us tends to call us deeper into it. How good it feels to steal revenge from God when justice demands it!
Adam and Eve were securely focused on their creator before the fall but following the fall there is always the tendency to fall again and the constant need for forgiveness. That initial fall was crucial.
When His people follow and worship other gods, He calls it “harlotry” just as a whore allows the gift of procreation to be sullied, disobeys her God’s Commandments, and allows her body to be desecrated, God’s own people allow the gift of His selection to be sullied, disobey His Commandments, and allow their relationship to Him to be desecrated.
There is an ineffable relationship between the sex drive and the place God craves in our being. His strict Laws regarding sexual behavior reflect it.
Our Christian God is displeased when President Bush plays the harlot by catering to the New Religion, cursing and using foul language, praying with Muslims and Jews, and trying to tie our exclusively Christian God to things He hates. When the presidential Christmas cards record a Holiday message rather than a Christian message they fail the authenticity test given to us by Christ who claims that if we do not acknowledge Him before men He will not acknowledge us before His Father in Heaven. Catering to diversity rather than acknowledging Christ at Christmas is playing the harlot.
The authenticity of Christian ministry must always be measured by the fruit it produces. Our President and his policies must be separated from the claims he makes about his personal experience with God.
Are the Draconian programs foisted on Americans in the name of safety actually producing safety or are they only restricting the freedom our nation was founded to produce? It appears that relatively few terrorists have been apprehended and that the preparations have been far more extensive than the threat.
Is it possible to bring freedom to another nation at the point of a gun? Come on America, wake up! Everyone should know that freedom cannot be achieved by conquest and that the motive behind the conquest is always to enslave rather than to set free.
This president, our president, has launched an aggressive war in a foreign land against the sage advice of our Founders and for reasons that are more false than just dubious. Christian or not he supports world government and is in league with those who are little by little stealing America from its citizens by melding its existence into a world government. A man of that character is perfectly capable of using the 9/11 attack to force us into his plans at the point of the same gun he is using in Iraq.
We are created beings and the only freedom we can know is available when we live under the Commandments of our Creator. Humans are incapable of creating lasting freedom. Wake up America, repent and obey your Creator!
As American Christians attempt to celebrate the birth of Christ in the midst of the pagan culture that has quickly overtaken us, please consider the tragic meaning of the following incident:
I have a friend that works at a Middle School in our town. Recently, a well dressed young woman approached her desk seeking to pick-up her son. She was shaken and in tears. She told my friend that as she entered the school building the police had handcuffed a child who was being arrested and put into a patrol car. It was not her son but witnessing first hand the true condition of our society had actually overcome her demeanor.
This, dear reader, is the true condition of our nation that two score and ten years ago was still a city on a hill - and our President is pushing it farther down.
There is a New Year coming. Wake up America!
Al Cronkrite is a free-lance writer from Florida. He can be reached at fmsinfla@hotmail.com