Bush Given Authority To Sexually Torture American Children

[Anthony from Brooklyn]

i have faith in them.

 

Seriously? These are the people who voted for Bush the second time, because Kerry "doesn't seem like a guy I could have a beer with."

 

This is an actual quote. I read it in one of the papers around election day, and it's permanently burned into my brain.

[lord_casek]

Seriously? These are the people who voted for Bush the second time, because Kerry "doesn't seem like a guy I could have a beer with."

 

This is an actual quote. I read it in one of the papers around election day, and it's permanently burned into my brain.

 

well, i think the elections were stolen. especially since there's tons of evidence and testimony from for employees of diebold, etc that there are built in backdoors etc in the electronic voting machines. anyhow, kerry was the fall guy. he was meant to lose and he knew it from the get go.

 

 

i do think alot of people voted for bush, but they had the wrong impression. people make mistakes.

[--->]

Make no mistake! Bush DID NOT win either election. It was a coupe and everybody in power played along with it and pretended Bush won. There's actual court footage of the guy that invented the program to hack the election boards computers testifying about what he did.

[lord_casek]

Make no mistake! Bush DID NOT win either election. It was a coupe and everybody in power played along with it and pretended Bush won. There's actual court footage of the guy that invented the program to hack the election boards computers testifying about what he did.

 

yes, him and several others now. they are all coming froward because they are scared to death. they woke up and got a conscience.

[Mainter]

has anyone really thought what the world would be like if John Kerry won or even Al Gore (would it be just as fucked up or would he have pulled the troops out(the issues that are happening go way beyond the president, i was just wondering if would really matter who got in office???

[lord_casek]

has anyone really thought what the world would be like if John Kerry won or even Al Gore (would it be just as fucked up or would he have pulled the troops out(the issues that are happening go way beyond the president, i was just wondering if would really matter who got in office???

 

 

at this point, i don't think it would have mattered. the same people

behind all of this shit would more than likely be behind any other president

we have. i'm including our next president.

[--->]

has anyone really thought what the world would be like if John Kerry won or even Al Gore (would it be just as fucked up or would he have pulled the troops out(the issues that are happening go way beyond the president, i was just wondering if would really matter who got in office???

 

 

 

 

All that doesn't even matter. What matters is what's happening to OUR country NOW.

Fuck what's going on in the middle east. That shit needs to get put on the back burner for real.

 

 

 

 

 

.

[Mainter]

hilary for president

[lord_casek]

hilary for president

 

that would be the biggest mistake ever. bigger than bush.

[--->]

hilary for president

 

And you KNOW that's just another rouge. Just like Kerry. I beleived in that douche. He conceded the FIRST NIGHT!!! when we should have been shutting shit down in the streets like they are in Mexico right now.

[fermentor666]

Bush couldn't have been re-elected because he was never elected in the first place.

 

Really though, what's the point in getting pissed off at everyone on here and trying to goad people into flame wars like -->, why not just get off your computer and go out and do something, get involved. Join up with other people instead of acting boss on the internet. That's not intended for you casek although I think you should do it.

 

Just don't join up with LaRouche.

[lord_casek]

fermentor: i do enough on my own. i call, email, write, etc.

i try.

 

here you go guys, just to liven up the place a little. even though clinton

wasn't the greatest, he did havea sense of humour.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN1OCrRrgVw

[--->]

Bush couldn't have been re-elected because he was never elected in the first place.

 

Really though, what's the point in getting pissed off at everyone on here and trying to goad people into flame wars like -->, why not just get off your computer and go out and do something, get involved. Join up with other people instead of acting boss on the internet. That's not intended for you casek although I think you should do it.

 

Just don't join up with LaRouche.

 

 

Shit, fuck that! I agree with you 100%.

[HardyHarHar]

fermentor: i do enough on my own. i call, email, write, etc.

i try.

 

here you go guys, just to liven up the place a little. even though clinton

wasn't the greatest, he did havea sense of humour.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN1OCrRrgVw

 

 

Aw that's great. HEY REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS KNOW HOW TO HAVE FUN TOO. AND NOT JUST FROM CLEAR CUTTING OR DEFYING THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS!!!

[¤Shark¤]

This is ABSOLUTE fucking bullshit. As if they would do that for ANY reason at all. The media is whats gonna end up destoying the world with all this bullshit they spread!!!

[lord_casek]

This is ABSOLUTE fucking bullshit. As if they would do that for ANY reason at all. The media is whats gonna end up destoying the world with all this bullshit they spread!!!

 

read the bill. if you protest, report, etc. on the govt. and they don't like it, you are gone.

military tribunals for everyone.

[--->]

This is ABSOLUTE fucking bullshit. As if they would do that for ANY reason at all. The media is whats gonna end up destoying the world with all this bullshit they spread!!!

 

 

It's not bullshit.

[LOTUS of Weaver Heights]

Waiting to cut out the deadwood.

Waiting to clean up the city.

Waiting to follow the worms.

Waiting to put on a black shirt.

Waiting to weed out the weaklings.

Waiting to smash in their windows

And kick in their doors.

Waiting for the final solution

To strengthen the strain.

Waiting to follow the worms.

Waiting to turn on the showers

And fire the ovens.

Waiting for the queens and the coons

and the reds and the jews.

Waiting to follow the worms.

 

Would you like to see Britannia

Rule again, my friend?

All you have to do is follow the worms.

Would you like to send our colored cousins

Home again, my friend?

 

All you need to do is follow the worms.

 

-Pink Floyd's Political Commentary on WWII in the song "Waiting for the worms" still holds true today... in 1984, i mean, 2006

[lord_casek]

here's who voted on the torture bill, from state to state

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2006-491

[shameless self promotion]

Is this crossfire? What the fuck? How the hell did i get in here?

[lord_casek]

A Personal Declaration of Independence

 

I refuse to accept as my government actions by the current administration and its obsequious servants, the Republican Congress and the Republican Senate.

 

By William A. Cook

 

“If there’s any comparison between the compassion and decency of the American people and the terrorist tactics of extremists, it’s flawed logic … It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.” (President George W. Bush, Sept. 15, 2006 report by AP’s Terence Hunt)

 

09/29/06 "Palestine Chronicle" -- - -Citizens of the United States of America bear an awesome responsibility to maintain control of their government’s behavior since that government derives its powers from the consent granted it by the citizens. When the government ceases to act in accord with the dictates of the respective consciences of its citizens as determined by its foundational documents – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights -- , when it violates the established principles that give this nation legitimacy before the nations of the world through mutually accepted agreements, charters, and conventions, when it abrogates the inalienable rights granted the citizens by the Creator, when it declares unequivocally that the citizens cannot dissent with an action or actions taken by the government, then it is the right and the duty of the citizen to “alter or abolish” that government.

 

For the past five years, the present government of the United States, including the Executive branch, the Congress and the Senate, has committed a “long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object (that) evinces a design to reduce them (the citizens) under absolute despotism.” As a citizen of these United States for 70 years, I refuse to be ruled by a tyrant who imposes despotic, autocratic control on the citizens of these United States through a series of clandestine actions that usurp the rights of the people.

 

I refuse to accept as my government actions by the current administration and its obsequious servants, the Republican Congress and the Republican Senate, that include

 

* spying on its citizens without their knowledge or consent, an action contrary to existing law;

 

* elimination of personal privacy through the Patriot Act, an action that presumes culpability, not innocence until proven guilty;

 

* preemptive invasion of other nations determined by the unilateral judgment of an all powerful executive that eviscerates the power of the peoples’ representatives;

 

* acts of extrajudicial execution and the abandonment of rule by law thereby making the President, in effect, judge, jury and executioner;

* acts of torture and the unilateral infliction of “acceptable” torture techniques thus casting America before the world as an amoral nation beholden to no international agreement and placing at risk the soldiers who defend it;

 

* imposition of illegal actions of war instituted through an orchestrated control of lies communicated to the citizenry thereby negating their democratic right to know that they might vote in accord with their conscience;

 

* levying an incredible tax burden on the citizens to pay for the consequences of these lies that will cost them and their children dearly for decades to come while corporations reap a windfall of profit from closed bids and corruption;

 

* infliction of a forced military occupation on a nation against the desires of its people and enabling that occupation to use illegal weapons of war contrary to the Geneva Conventions thus implicating its citizens in acts against humanity;

 

* development of diverse nuclear weaponry in direct violation of the UN Charter even as it decries other nations for attempting to acquire their own nuclear weaponry;

 

* acceptance, indeed, complete complicity and support of the barbaric and genocidal actions of the state of Israel against the people of Palestine, and most recently, and most deplorably, the abandonment of all pretense to the behavior of a civilized nation through its almost unanimous acceptance of a resolution written by the American Israeli Political Action Committee to endorse the Israeli state’s wanton destruction of the state of Lebanon.

 

These are not the actions of a democratic state; these are the actions of an autocratic state, an amoral state, an arrogant state that rules by force and acts more ruthlessly than the “extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective,” negating by its actions the unthinkable comparison the President decried.

 

For six years I have tracked the deception of this government as it surreptitiously acted to acquire more and more power by instilling in the American people the fear necessary to propel the autocrat to absolute power. Fear suppresses individual inquiry even as it enables control of the people, ostensibly to provide protection for them. Fear creates victims, especially in the minds of those who have not been violated. It is the unknown, what might be that metastasizes into the mental slave, the compliant citizen who marches to the drum of those who would control a society. It is the instrument of tyrants and dictators.

 

This government hobbles its citizens by using fear to manipulate their belief in end time prophecy, by implanting fear of imminent threat from “Islamofacist” fanatics, and by immersing the people in a false sense of “victim hood” that links them with the state of Israel as the only “friend” in the mid-east suffering from the same terrorist scourge. It is time to dispel this fear that enslaves. It is time to declare that this government no longer serves the people, that, indeed, it surpasses in its behavior “the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.” It is not the “compassion and decency of the American people” that is in question; it is the absence of “compassion and decency” in this administration that is at fault.

 

It is time to withdraw recognition of it as the government of these United States.

How can a citizen withdraw recognition, one might ask? I would answer simply that no person with a conscience could recognize the validity of this government that commits the actions listed above, each more heinous than the last, the worst being its near universal acceptance of the genocide perpetrated by Israel on the Palestinians, actions that are inclusive enough to incorporate almost all the others. If every person of conscience gave sign of their aversion to the behavior of this government by wearing a black armband or posting a black flag or ribbon on the door or window ledge or by flying our flag upside down, the numbers who distrust this government would be manifest for the nation and the world to see and we would not have to wait till election time to cast our conscience on the screen.

 

I tell you this, each day that passes casts more gloom over this nation as hundreds more die and thousands more are maimed, and all for a lie and all in our name. Appealing to our representatives accomplishes nothing; they are but lackeys to the administration and to the primary lobbing groups that determine for them America’s foreign policy, AIPAC and the lobbies for the military/industrial complex. We can no longer wait for the ballot box to determine our future; it may not be our conscience that is voted to office. Should we not act to declare this government unjust and hence unfit to be our government, then we will be no better than those who dictate and inflict these atrocities on the innocent. I will not have my conscience held hostage by an elite few who rule without a conscience. The honest citizen carries no weapons against his brothers and sisters; the honest citizen marches forward in tune with reason and common sense not fear and ignorance.

 

Think how many Lebanese died, how many were maimed, how many went homeless, how many die now after the cease fire because Israel left its calling card in the form of miniature mines for children to play with, how much destruction and wanton devastation this government inflicted in our name while our representatives waited for AIPAC to pen the resolution that gave license to such slaughter. If any justice came from this invasion it was this: the world was witness to the savagery and barbarism of Israel that ruthlessly devastated another people out of sheer anger turned to vengeance, a behavior that it has inflicted at will on the Palestinians behind locked gates and its Wall of Infamy.

 

Think now of the holocaust being inflicted on the people of Gaza, the reign of fire that comes with missiles launched into crowded civilian neighborhoods randomly killing mothers and children, a reign of terror that has lasted over three months as the Israelis lock the gates to prevent access to medical care, food, employment, and business, a reign of terror that starves the children, denies the people electricity and water, a reign of terror that is calculated, vicious, and inhumane. But it is done behind the Wall, out of sight of our conscience, locked out of public view by the Israeli IOF and its government that has closed access to Gaza by air, sea, or road. Americans cannot complain because our representatives have capitulated to an Israeli government gone mad, driven by racism as it surreptitiously rampages through schools, refugee camps, factories and homes killing, demolishing, executing at will a population that is cornered, starved, and near total death; yet America supports this mayhem justifying it as “self-defense.” How does an illegal occupying force operating on stolen land defend what they do not own and call it self-defense? What non-sense guides this crippled republic that our representatives would defend such dementia?

 

Where does one turn for guidance out of this morass? Will our Christian leaders proclaim the teachings of Jesus from the steeples of their churches? Will they condemn the government for its ruthlessness? Will they march in the streets to demand change? Will they echo Tolstoy’s astute observation, “to kill is incompatible with man’s uprightness…(for) A Christian, whose doctrine enjoins upon him humility, non-resistance to evil, love to all (even to the most malicious), cannot … join a class of men whose business it is to kill their fellow-men.” (Writings on Civil-Disobedience and Non-Violence). Oh, there are those who cry in the wilderness, congregations that have divested themselves of the atrocities inflicted by Israel and they are to be praised even as they are ignored by our representatives. There are the Christian Arabs in Bethlehem who weep each day as they see their flock decimated and their brothers and sisters murdered, maimed, and humiliated as that malicious Wall surrounds the birth place of their God and our representatives turn their backs. And there are voices for peace, millions of voices that decry the wanton brutality of this regime, Christian and Jew and Muslim, men and women who know they are drenched in the blood of the innocent because this despotic “President” has determined how they must think and how they must behave and our representatives kneel on bended knee before his throne.

 

But the horror of America today rests not just in the dementia of its leaders but in the distorted madness of its evangelical fanatics who have cloaked themselves in the armament of prophecy declaring themselves God’s voice on earth as they propel their sheep to wage endless war against God’s creatures. Men who follow not in the footsteps of the humble and peaceful Jesus but in the footsteps of prior fools and idiots that ran rampant in other days and times inflicting mayhem and death on the innocent. These fanatics do not know the teachings of Jesus; they read from a gospel of fear that has metamorphosed Jesus into a General who wields a bloody and fiery sword, stomping over the hills and valleys of the earth wreaking havoc and death, thus does the God of light and peace, of brotherly love, become the new Satan to whom these TV evangelists pay homage.

 

They are men of war who stand behind their pulpits in glistening cathedrals of gold and glass while they send the children of their congregations to slaughter. These men are criminals not Christians. They do not understand the bells of penitence for sin; the only bells they ring intone the opening of the Stock Market or the cash register.

 

Pastors like John Hagee, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, Benny Hinn, and all the others who crowd the Cathedral of Television lead their respective laity into battle each day, marching at their head, holding aloft their missiles of fire and brimstone, tearing incendiary passages from the Old Testament and Book of Revelation that pour like acid from their mouths and flame forth against perceived disbelievers and infidels. Their exhortations on behalf of their malicious God pits dementia against the teachings of Jesus, pits vengeance against brotherhood, pits fear against love, and power against compassion.

 

Have we transformed a nation respectful of all, protective of the rights of all, assertive of the inherent rights that give personal authority to our conscience, into a nation that denies these values in order to inflict our will on all peoples of the mid-east? Has this nation granted to its President and Congress absolute authority to determine what we as a citizenry must obey if we are to be Americans? Have we returned to the days of McCarthy, days of fear and loathing, forcing on all the demented ideology of a few? Have we willingly accepted their lies that brought forth the invasion against the Iraqi people, the subterfuge that perpetuates the genocide of the Palestinians, the fear they use to compel loss of individual rights? Have we handed to this administration the one force that gives us power in this nation, our right to dissent? Liberty is not liberty if it is defined for you; freedom is but a word if it does not give you peace of mind; and conscience does not exist if you do not exercise it.

 

I would assert that as long as the compassion and decency of the American people are defined by this administration, we are a nation without compassion and without decency and as long as this administration directs the behavior of this nation, any comparison to Islamic extremists who “kill innocent women and children” pales in comparison with the hundreds and thousands this administration has slaughtered in our name in Palestine and Iraq and Lebanon. There is but one response and that is to deny it my consent.

 

-William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Depception: Bush's Mideast Policy He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU.

 

Copyright © 2003 palestinechronicle.com

 

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15156.htm

[lord_casek]

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 - 2006)

 

By Molly Ivins

 

With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.

 

09/29/06 "TruthDig" -- -- AUSTIN, Texas—Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth, of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.

 

Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?

 

The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.

 

This bill is not a national security issue—this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.

 

Death by torture by Americans was first reported in 2003 in a New York Times article by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.

 

The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of the Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.

 

For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, “Let’s give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him.”

 

This gets passed on as “Don’t touch the mayor unless he really screws up.”

 

And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as “We can’t say anything negative about the mayor.”

 

The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to.”

 

In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,” which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.

 

The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.

 

The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.

 

As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism—you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and substituted “serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”

 

In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”

 

Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary—these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.

 

I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.

 

To find out more about Molly Ivins and see works by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at http://www.creators.com.

 

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15163.htm

[WORDISM45]

Make no mistake! Bush DID NOT win either election. It was a coupe and everybody in power played along with it and pretended Bush won. There's actual court footage of the guy that invented the program to hack the election boards computers testifying about what he did.

 

i saw that footage on 'freedom to fascism'

 

if we're talkign about the same hting, he doesnt actually say that they rigged the elections, he jsut says that it is possible to do so on voting machines.

 

dont get me wrong i think the election was rigged as fuck just saying from what i know the dude didnt admit it on camera

[MESTHREE]

makes me sick.

 

your country is fucking itself. it starts with a little crack in civil liberties like the patriot act, then hey why not disregard the UN, and ends up with essential obliteration of anything that means anything in the constitution.

 

Im sure most people think the war goes on some place far away with suicide bombers and 'extremeists' etc but... at least half of it takes place in their own country and there are no bombs and explosions. its more a war of increments. incremental destruction of everything it means to be a good human being. People are so stupid. they want their freedom above anything else but freedom for freedom's sake is such a perversion of (what I think) democracy is meant to be.

 

maybe this will make people angry enough to do something but probably not. People will most likely be content in the fact that the terror alert stays below orange.

 

Bejamin franklin may be on the hundred dollar bill but no one cares or thinks about what he stood for: He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither. (yes I know he didnt necessarily say those words but you know...)

 

im so glad im not american. Canada isnt a whole lot better but at least we havent gone this far yet.

[Obvious]

[Larry Pubes]

Canada isnt a whole lot better but at least we havent gone this far yet.

 

no, canada sits back and talks shit from the moral high ground while reaping all the good shit that comes from the bad shit the US does..

 

[Obvious]

pretty much. canada is like that self-righteous kid at school that cowardly has someone do all his "dirty work" and reaps all the benefits while hypocritically condemning that "dirty work." canada benefits greatly from the u.s. economy. yeah the u.s. benefits from canada but not as much as they other way around.

 

as far of lack of wars/violence, it's been only a few decades since quebec had that violent uprising and tried to secede from this "morally great" canada.

[MESTHREE]

maybe thats because we HAVE the moral high ground. hah.

 

Im kidding.... really though, im not claiming to speak for all of canada. we have uneducated, selfish, powerhungry, assholes here too, I mean we voted in Harper who is little more than a henchmen for Bush.

 

But.... why not talk shit? What good shit is canada getting out of america fucking about in the middle east? We arent getting good shit. we are getting lumped in with the rest of the white infidels. And even if we were getting 'good shit' are you saying that Canadians should be thanking America for something?

 

I said I was happy to not be american because if I lived in a country that was as flagrantly dismanteling its ability to be a humane nation I would be unhappy and frustrated (more than I already am). oh and... free health care.

[Obvious]

i get free health care cuz i served in the military. true everyone in the u.s. doesn't get free health care but i think if you're in the government or worked for the military u get it.

[MESTHREE]

pretty much. canada is like that self-righteous kid at school that cowardly has someone do all his "dirty work" and reaps all the benefits while hypocritically condemning that "dirty work." canada benefits greatly from the u.s. economy. yeah the u.s. benefits from canada but not as much as they other way around.

 

as far of lack of wars/violence, it's been only a few decades since quebec had that violent uprising and tried to secede from this "morally great" canada.

 

 

What does the Quebec Soverignty issue have to do with anything? I did not claim that violence and moral trangressions never take place here. You say cowardly but maybe most canadians just do not want to be involved in a war that has nothing to do with 'terror' and everything to do with money. why should canada send troops? Why should we participate in missile defence plans?