I first became politically active in the anti-Apartheid movement around Houston as a teen. It led me to the anti-death penalty case with Clarence Brandley. I still owe many thanks to a man named Mike and my family friend Linda for taking me to meetings and the various satellite topics on race, poor struggle, and housing issues.
But after the release of Mandela, Sisulu, Clarence Brandley and the beginning of a young man's life, I went to sleep as a citizen only occassionally standing up to my boss, and being a regular person with my own chutes and ladders to deal with.
I grew up with all the American images in my life from Rambo on the big screen, duck and cover, Rocky beating the Russian, fall of communism. I grew up reading Soldier of Fortune, Stephen K Hayes ninja books, Pistolero, and other very military oriented books on aircraft, Sun-tzu, and of course James Bond was always available.
Since my father passed away when I was 13, I didn't have a very strong father figure to get me through transformative years from boy to man, I had to find them in the culture and from the few who I would be around. Even then, my father wasn't a military man, nor were his family members. My mothers side had military members though and
Visions of flying helicopters led me to recruiters at 17, and stability for my family led me back at 25. I didn't enlist either time after I realized I was being lied to about what was to be given to me or my family in return for service. But outside of that, I was the demographic, young caucasian man who was a retail manager for stores and had good credit.
Then the governor of Texas ran for the White House. As a parent who already didn't like the condition of Texas after his governorship, I certainly was worried about his assent to the highest office.
The furvor from the right wing of America was so inconsistent with the George Bush I knew anything about. For one, as a musician in Houston, my friends included a lot of older musicians who had gone to drug or alcohol rehab and among a couple of of them, there was a certainty that Bush had gone to a program like the Palmer Drug Abuse Program (PDAP). Because I didn't know the centres I just took it as a possibility at best, not evidentiary in substance.
Alarm number one, Cheney picks himself as candidate for VP. WHAAA?!? How in the hell does that happen? And more clearly the next question was, how can you trust the person next to him who says, "Sounds good to me!"
Now, I based some of my view on my background as a manager where I had to hire or was in the process and we looked at candidates for management and services. Here was a Presidential candidate, Bush, who was already suspect in my mind picking Dick Cheney, who frankly I didn't know much about. But it wasn't the "left wing" media that convinced me this was about to go awry.
On July 27, 2000, I was at the hospital days before my maternal foundation, my grandmother, and so was my retired Master Chief uncle. When candidate Bush came on TV, he said, "That's my President!" in a room full of family, and she said,...and I'm ironically glad to quote, "Over my dead body!"
I will never share fully how much she meant to me, and that her death transformed me, but those words were Liberty. She spoke with a strength that defied her cancer riddled body. And this was from someone who never acted very political in front of me before. She was also his mother, and as they say, "Honor thy mother and thy father."
His rationale was that Bush understands what it means to be afloat on a ship built by the lowest bidder. I was shocked to hear him say this until I considered what he did in my life time, which was sit in an office and chaperone new recruits to our home to eat a good meal from time to time. We were in Houston and he was south of Dallas. Isn't Dallas pretty far from water for a navy boy?...I digress.
But that notion of spending money at a high level means you are getting good product and what it is worth. Further, I was often hearing about very advanced technology and defense spending and it was already fathoms above the next closest nation. Then I remembered how this same man stood by when my grandmother's abusive boyfriend hit me as a 14yr old and his warrior soul took a siesta on that day.
So here was a man who had clearly shown he wasn't able to defend much of anything talking about spending defense money and backing an AWOL governor who was running with a deferment king, and I'm supposed to think I'm getting protection? Please explain this theory to my wushu teachers.
In time I'll go into details about a skip from then to now, other than the primary shift needed to complete this tale for now. After doing radio related to KPFT in Houston, I was exposed to activists from many walks again and was focused on key issues of FCC ownership, death penalty, environmental, and of course, the anti-war crowd.
I started to videotape the news and events on a regular occasion before 2000, but with 9/11, I started a collection of video tapes of news, I'll never fully be able to watch fully, but I can skip around and go back to see how news presented events at the time, and now match up articles I certainly missed while being a stupid primate who watches the finger pointing at the moon, while missing the moon.
I have been fortunate to capture all the 9/11 commission hearings aired on CSPAN, other offical testimony, MeetthePressfacenationthisweekonfoxnewsunday60minutes...you know..the circuit. And it was the one story bubbling along the way that I locked on to and have been most intently focused on for almost 2 years now. The Outing of Valerie Plame was the case that woke me up.
Why is this case such an indicator of what is wrong with this administration and its almost hydra like behavior? Here was a servant of the people who even in the memo released seems more focused on finding WMD than being a politico. And since when did her political affiliation have to be called into question as if an Enemy of the State?
What news wasn't I getting about the Niger documents, and certain lead-up facts that further inform me about context of this War on Iraq. I didn't know about Rocco Martino, Nicolo Pollari, Elizabeth Burba, and about the breakin at the Niger embassy, much less about uranium mines in Niger. I knew about diamonds, water rights, nationalist infighting, and Lamumba, Charles Taylor...does that count?
So I dug, and I dug, through the internet and the congressional staff, and became more focused on what this was all about. I would find lead after lead into areas that are still not exhausting themselves with deadends or with resolutions.
Then I realized that I was mainly digging out the manure pile that has been lumped on us by Karl Rove, Ken Mehlman, Cheney, and of course the right wing media not limited to FoxNews, National Review, NewsMax, and Washington Times, but including the abomination of Robert Novak and others who were still spinning "facts" that no longer matched my sources.
What were my sources? Well, for instance, I took the time to download the Senate Intel report that supposedly confirmed Valerie Plame sent Joe Wilson and that he was some sort of liar. Its a massive document for someone who doesn't read this sort of stuff on a regular basis, but with a cup of coffee and video processing on my main computer, I chose to read the document bits at a time.
Because I had now read this document, each time Brit Hume ran his mouth on TV, I knew where he had read the document and where he had cherry picked portions to justify a continued mitigation of the actions of this administration, and the smear of Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson.
Because I was now reading the the Libby case documents, I knew testimony that was being reguritated on TV, I could still see where there were authors who were not updating their accounts. I don't know their motivations, but my guess is they are a combination of lazy, bought in, not objective at all, and in some cases, willfully obtuse.
I'm going to work on demonstrating aspects of this case, and closely related topics, for the coming years. I want to examine how we hear stories now, compared to the very details at the early stages that are glossed over later.
1. Why was Alberto Gonzales waiting 12 hours?
2. Did Andy Card notify those who were involved?
3. What was the VP campaign's full scope in leaks?
4. How were advocates of Libby and Cheney using their editorial spaces to distort the facts?
5. Who are the players and what are their records in other scandals or important events?
I can only hope that it will useful in at least helping me focus on what is important to follow and to not be had again.
A court jester once said, 'Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again'.
I'd hate to think I'll spend the next few years being fooled by Fmr. Amb. Joseph Wilson and his wife because I was not able to resolve the vast inconsistencies between the majority of the most credible sources and the squawking of the mouthpieces like Brit Hume, Byron York, Fred Thompson, Gulliani, Tony Snow, and the Libby Defense Fund.
END OF OPENING TOME
FOOTNOTES: Call congress and tell them to uphold their oath to defend the constitution and this nation against threats Foreign and Domestic. I'll be typing away and collecting more articles.
