How safe is safe, and how do we achieve it?

There is very little that the average person on the street really knows about how our government keeps us safe, and actually it is a subject that really has no bearing on how we feel about our safety. The average citizen assumes that our police and military are doing what they do, and that is about the extent of it. We assume we are safe, because we have a police structure in place and that the various branches of the military are where ever they are doing what they do and we don't have to worry about anything except the hoodlum in our own neighborhood or the thieves and weirdo's of our own cities.

But do we really know what the real mechanism is that actually keeps us safe around the country? Is it really the police? Is it really the military? Yes, they do have their individual roles, but they are extremely limited in scope. Where our real protections come in is behind the scenes of what we assume to be truth.

It is our system of secret intelligence that has the front line of safety in our world. Not just our country, but our world. It is the efforts of secret agents that go into places we often never know about to learn about people and efforts around the world that seek to kill us. In their efforts, they are left with few remedies in which to "get information" from known terrorists. The ways that do work and the methods that are necessary are not always thought of as "proper", but let me pose a question to you. IF A CRIMINAL WAS IN YOUR HOUSE ABOUT TO HARM YOUR FAMILY AND YOU HAD THE MEANS TO STOP THEM, WOULD YOU? Even though, after the fact, everyone may question your means? Did you have to use such force? Was there another way to do what needed to be done? Maybe? The problem with most Americans is that you never know what you would do until you were placed in that very situation and had to make the split decision of whether to take drastic and lethal action, or stand by and let the police handle the matter when they arrive.

All scenarios are not the same. Not all victims end up the same and not all criminals are violent. A thief may not take anyone's life, but when you are the victim, you don't know that. You want to protect yourself and all you know is someone is there that doesn't belong. What do you do? Well, depending on what part of the country your in, you may get differing answers. You may also get differing answers from people with differing religious beliefs. And you will even get different answers from people with differing political beliefs.

However when it comes to our secret agencies and their mission they have one agenda and that is to gather intelligence, regardless of the means, that will help defer attacks by known enemies, foreign or domestic. And we do have both. We cannot afford to tie the hands of these people who put their own lives on the line in an effort to try and save ours.

When I think of the efforts of our own elected officials, (not elected by me), such as Senator. John McCain, it makes me just downright sick. We have enough problems in the world without our own legislature trying to purposely tie the hands of the very people we count on to try and save us from attack. The lame and pathetic excuses used in their efforts are as weak as they are as legislators. Who are they trying to kid? Anyone that has half a brain knows there is no link between what we believe in and what other countries and our religions believe in. Trying to say that we do not want to change the meaning of the Geneva Convention articles is ludicrous. The communists never followed the Geneva Convention, the Nazis never followed the Geneva Convention, and the radical Terrorists that we are fighting today do not and never will follow the Geneva Convention and thinking that we can play on their level and follow every rule to the letter and treat them as we would expect them to treat us is not only foolish, it is plain stupid and anyone that thinks not, needs to open their eyes and get a glimpse of reality.

And to prove the point in Senator. McCain's case here is an excerpt, written about him and his imprisonment while serving in the Vietnam war. Please read this and ask yourself why the Vietnamese did not follow the Geneva Convention rules. They were in effect at that time and because those captors were a military force, they were obligated to follow it to the letter. Yet they did not. Why? Read on!!!

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On October 26, 1967, McCain was shot down in his A-4 Skyhawk over Vietnam, by a Soviet-made anti-aircraft missile, landing in Truc Bach Lake. McCain was held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi for five-and-a-half years, mostly in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. He suffered two broken arms and a broken leg after ejecting from his plane. After he regained consciousness, a mob gathered around him and stripped him of his clothing. He was then tortured by Vietnamese soldiers who bayoneted him in his left foot and groin. His shoulder was crushed by another soldier's rifle butt. He was then transported to the Hanoi Hilton, also known as Hoa Lo Prison.
Once McCain arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, he was placed in a cell and interrogated daily. When McCain refused to provide any information to his captors, he was beaten until he lost consciousness.

When the North Vietnamese discovered his father was the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, (CINCPAC), in charge of all US forces in Vietnam, he was offered a chance to go home, in an effort to embarrass the American military. Senior POWs had ordered there would be no return home unless all POWs were permitted to, and McCain, as did most POWs, followed orders, and refused to be repatriated back to the United States.
McCain signed an anti-American propaganda message which was written in Vietnamese, but did so only as a result of torture (to this day, he cannot raise his arms above his head, due to his two broken shoulders from the severe beatings administered by the North Vietnamese). It is that period during his capture that he most regrets. After McCain signed the initial statement, the Vietnamese decided they could not use it. They tried to force him to sign a second statement. This time, he refused. He received two to three beatings per week because he refused to sign any more statements for his captors.
He was released from captivity in 1973. (used from info. on "Wikipedia")
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Now, does this sound as though Senator. McCain was treated under the rules of the Geneva Convention? No, of course not. There are very few countries that actually follow the old rules governing the treatment of prisoners during a time of war. Today's terrorist is no exception. How many be-heading have you read or heard about on news? Not just military personnel, but reporters, aide workers, civilians. They all meet the same fate and there is no regard for their rights as human being, nor for the rules of engagement according tot he Geneva Convention.

I am not an advocate against the use of the Geneva Convention. I was in the military and I would have hoped that if I had been captured, that my captors would have treated me humanely, but the fact remains that today's terrorists do not and will never abide by anything that is not a part of their fanatic beliefs. They want to kill Americans. They do not care who or what our status is, as long as we are dead. And that includes you and me. We need our secret agencies to be able to use every means at their disposal to obtain information from captives as to what may be planned and or how and where to prevent further attacks or killings.

There is no nice way to fight this war. And there is no gain to think we can right a wrong by trying to allow our terrorist enemy the same rights we are afforded under OUR constitution and laws. These are enemy combatants and trying to make them anything other than what they are, (terrorists), is a crime against our own sensibilities. We have a right to expect our government to do everything in it's power to try and protect us from foreign enemies and we expect them to fight for us, NOT fight for the rights of the enemy.

In my book, Sen. John McCain and his other leftist thinking friends are not doing us any favors, but actually inflicting great harm and danger, not only to us but to those who are working on the front lines on our behalf.

Here is a quote from Senator McCain during an interview to Newsweek

"While some enemies, and Al Qaida surely, will never be bound
by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those
Americans captured by more traditional enemies, if not in this
war then in the next." (Nov. 21, 2005 issue)

Sen. McCain knows full well that this enemy will never follow the rules of engagement that we set forth and we cannot expect them to. He is trying to use this as a political edge that will get some of the democratic vote. But I think he is stepping onto the proverbial limb that will be his undoing and rightly so. Just as Bill Clinton "loathed" the military, Sen. McCain's efforts here shows that he loathes the current administration and will do anything just to be president. Hopefully the majority of Republicans have seen through his thin facade and want nothing to do with him in 2008. He has proven himself to be exactly what this country does NOT need in a leader. Someone that has more concern for the feelings and respectability of our enemies than he does in the safety of the citizens. He is exactly what is wrong with the politicians of the day. Even in time of war, the politics are foremost on their agenda, and the people are subjugated to a place at the back of the political bus.

Mind you, I am not advocating torture as it were. None of this has anything to do with torture. I know that Sen. McCain was tortured, which is meant by the Geneva Convention analogy, but his actions serve to remove the available tools used by current operatives and leave the door open to allowing enemy prisoners rights equal to our own. We need to be able to use sophisticated, technological and possibly psychological surveillance and interrogation. And I am sure there are plenty reading this that even include physical torture to be okay, which I do not. Once we have the prisoner, we have him and we are not obligated to let him go. However, we do not need to stoop to giving him protections covered under our own American laws. He needs to be handled by the military system using military tribunals and let them never be included into our system of police rights.

This is a problem people and we need to take a stand and back our President and the measures he has been using to date in order to keep us safe, or we may find ourselves in 2 years wishing we had. Our safety in our country is crucial and the person leading that effort needs to be on the same page as our current president. If not, we are in for big problems following the 2008 elections and it may a problem we will regret for many years to come.