Benderman Defense Trust

I challenge anyone who is wanting to continue this illegal war in Iraq to put their money where there mouth is; go to the local military recruiter of your choice in your area, join the branch you want, have them put in your contract you are to go to Iraq as soon as your training is over, make it where you are to be there for fifteen months and that you are willing to do multiple tours there.

 If you are not willing to do this then you need to shut the hell up about staying the course in Iraq .

We have made such a mess of that country it is pathetic, and we cannot continue to lay all of the blame at the feet of this administration. We have our culpability in this debacle as well as anyone. If you are a citizen and you did not work to actively prevent this from happening you are as responsible as George and Dick. I am responsible for it as well because I did go over there as a United States Soldier, but I did not think I would be used in such an outrageous manner as this. This has nothing to do with defending the United States Constitution and the moment I realized that I could no longer participate in it.

I did speak out about the things going on over there to the Senators from the state of Tennessee as the time by writing letters to them about the things I knew were going on over there. Senator Bill Frist and Senator Fred Thompson received letters from me stating things that were happening I knew were out of control.  I made the attempt to fix some of the things I saw and it didn’t get me anywhere but in military prison.

I want the rest of you who feel afraid to stand up and demand your constitutional rights to think about something, what scares you more, doing the right as an American citizen or facing the possibility of losing what is left of your constitutional rights? I can’t speak for anyone else but me, I do not want to lose anymore of my rights and I am going to continue to fight back against the people who want to take them away.

I suggest if you want to remain a free and lawful people, that you do the same. If you think the people in this cabal will hesitate to start water boarding American citizens I suggest your think again. I learned of an incident at the Ft. Lewis Regional Corrections Facility while locked up, of a inmate who was kept in the device known as a restraint chair for (4) four days and was not let out to use the toilet or shower or even eat by himself. Guards fed him some granola bars and gave him some water and he was lucky to get that. This United States citizen was tortured right here in the United States while everyone went about their daily routine. You know why this treatment was applied to this person? Because he had the audacity to point out the facility was not following its own rules. The situation came up because the regulation stated that female guards were not allowed to be on the cell block where the male inmates could be seen using the toilet and showers. Well the command element of the facility decided they did not have to follow the regulations and would assign duties of this type to female guards anyway. The inmate questioned this practice and pointed out that this was against the regulations and he ultimately wound up in the chair for that period of time.  While in the chair he relieved himself there because he was not allowed out of the chair on the orders of one SFC Parham.

Let’s recall the things this cabal has enacted that will allow this to happen on a widespread basis in America; The USA ANTIpatriot Act, Illegal wiretapping of Americans telephone and e-mail (to which some phone companies freely followed unquestioningly), executive orders stating that in an emergency, to be determined by George, he will become the sole authority of the United States removing all powers of congress and other branches of government. (I wish I were delusional and making this up but you can read it for yourselves, if you care to)

 And the hits just keep on coming, I suggest to all Americans to stand up for your constitution now or forever hold your peace.

I have received e-mails and phone calls from people telling me how scared they are to speak out about what is happening in our country now. Again, I have to ask, what is scarier, demanding your legal rights or totalitarianism?

As I listened to a NPR program the other day Zalmay Khalilzad, our esteemed ambassador to Iraq and the U.N. came on to say the U.N. needed to do more to help stabilize Iraq. This is coming from one of the members of the Project for the New American Century who screwed it up in the first place. Did you know that prior to our invasion and occupation of Iraq , they never in their history had a suicide bombing there? Think about that for a minute would you?

Now this administration is trying to make it sound as  though the U.N. would not help in Iraq from the beginning of this mis-guided and apparently illegal war. I recall this administration saying they did not want anyone’s help because they knew just what to do. It seems to me they have screwed this up so royally it will be years before the Iraqi people will be able to sort this mess out.

But it will be the Iraqis who have to straighten it out because we cannot tell them how to run their country. This country had to fight a war between its citizens in order to determine the path it wanted to take and so will the Iraqi people. It is unfortunate that we, the American people sat back and watched this happen. I cannot believe there are some in this country who are still blind to what George is up to.

They have destroyed our constitution and our freedoms and yet some continue to support this insanity. Congress just let him walk all over the fourth amendment to the Constitution by expanding the warrant-less wire tapping of Americans. This is supposed to be the congress elected in 2006 to put an end to this and they rolled over and gave him more power. Are they in on it as well? Are they more concerned with maintaining their power than following the will of the American people and the United States Constitution?

People, our freedoms are being destroyed. Are we going to continue to wait on a spineless congress to do the right thing and impeach the entire lot of criminals currently in the White House? If the congress will not follow the law of America then we must, we are responsible for ensuring the laws of this nation are being implemented.

Read the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and you will see where it gives the responsibility to the people and not to governments. The reason this is so is because they knew the people in government becomes corrupt and drunk with their so called power over the regular people. Well, they are not elite and this no such thing as a “regular" American in the sense they want to impose on us. They will have you believe they are our superiors and we are just the poor little creatures they pity and shower with their kindness.

I say it is far past the time to break that mindset and stand up and be AMERICANS, the kind of people who can stand on their own and do the things for themselves the government has no business meddling with. If we do this together we can make America what we want it to be and not the aggressive war starting and military occupation entity these individuals want it to be.

I can’t speak for anyone else but I know my ancestors did not make the sacrifices they did so these people could use America to further their twisted view of the world. I am against this cabal who would use every one of us to benefit themselves only. I am for us, the United States citizens, working together in our communities to straighten out the problems we face. I know we can do it and I am ready to commit myself whole-heartedly to this idea.

Are you? 

This movie can make more money in a weekend than I have been able to raise for the returning United States service members in more than three years. Monica and I have been working on this program for about 3 years now and you want to know how much we have received? Well, I will tell you, it is a measly Seventy-five thousand dollars. We need about one million dollars all told to get this program up and running for the American soldier, after which it will become self-sustaining. But we cannot even get the American public to get out of the self induced fog they live in to do something real.

We see the very substandard care the service members get from the government and we get all up in arms for a very short moment and then we go to the Simpson’s movie. Or we watch Lindsay Lohan or Brittany Spears have an alcoholic moment and we forget about the wounded soldiers coming home to this……….

The film took $29.1 million on its opening day in the United States , the eighteenth highest grossing opening day, and third highest non-sequel opening. It grossed a combined total of $74 million in its opening weekend, taking it to the top of the box office, and making it the fifth highest opening weekend for a July release ever, and highest July opening for a non-sequel, thus outperforming the expectation of $40 million that Fox had for the release. It set several American box office records, including the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a non-CG animated film, surpassing The Lion King; the record for highest grossing opening weekend for a film based on a television series, surpassing Mission Impossible II; and overall it had the third highest grossing opening weekend for an animated film, behind Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third. It opened at the top of the international box office taking $96 million from seventy-one overseas territories, including $27.8 million in the United Kingdom, Fox's second highest opening ever in the country. It helped break the record for the highest weekend attendance to British cinemas, with 5.5 million overall seeing a film that weekend with 2.6 million seeing The Simpsons Movie. In Australia , it grossed $13.2 million, the biggest opening for an animated film and third largest opening weekend in the country. The film has a current worldwide gross of $218.8 million.

The apathetic American public needs to pull their heads out of the comfortable little hole in the sand where it has been for far too long and do something about the way our country is being stolen from us by an administration that has its well-being and only its well- being in mind.

Our congressional representative have no spine when it comes to doing what needs to be done to stop the war that the Project for the New American Century has pushed down the throats of the American public. This group has hi-jacked the country out from under us and we are standing by and letting them get away with it.

I remember my father watching the Watergate trials of the Nixon White House and I remember the nation having the spine to go after them with a vengeance for something that is much less worse than what the current White House is doing. The Nixon White House wanted to know what the opposition party was doing to get elected to the presidency and so they staged the break-in of the opposition headquarters to get that information.

President Nixon was impeached for this and yet we sat back and let a so called President violate the United States Constitution, The Geneva Convention, and the Nuremberg Tribunals by starting a war in Iraq . This is a country that has been proven time and time again to have nothing to do with the September, 11^th 2001 attacks on our country.

The “interrogation” methods used and authorized by this administration very specifically violate our constitution because our constitution states that any treaty we sign and ratify becomes the law of the land. We signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions of 1949 which made it a law of America .

“Article. VI. - Debts, Supremacy, Oaths” “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

Below is the date the United States congress signed and ratified the Geneva Convention into United States law.

Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. signed 12-08-1949 and 02-08-1955

More people in this country are worried about the latest gossip about Hollywood than things that really matter. I can’t believe I went to jail for trying to defend my constitution from this group of anti-constitutionalists while the country just sets back and watches while it takes place. I also cannot believe the people who put those magnets on their car and then think that absolves them of any responsibility to do anything more substantial than this. If this is the best you can do to support the “troops”, then don’t bother yourself.                                        

Never mind that soldiers are dying every damn day in Iraq .

I was told by many groups that I would have their un-ending support for taking a principled stand against this, but as I sat in military prison waiting to see some justice from the people who should come up with a sound and reasoned argument that would put and end to this madness, I watched those same groups go their merry way.

For those who did support me as much as they could I am very grateful, but for those who went and bought pink shirts and paid for balloons to put on the mall in Washington , thanks for nothing. These actions have done nothing to hold this administration to account for starting this war, as a matter of fact; these actions have hindered those of us who are working on a serious plan to provide some real assistance to the service members that continue to die in this war of choice (of choice for a select few).

I am posting this story from today's headlines about the house of representatives passing a bill that would give the American service members as much time at home as they are deployed. The republicans and President Bush are saying they oppose the measure, which leads me to ask, WHY?

All of the hoopla they put out about how much they care about our men and women in the armed services and this is how their true colors look. I have said time and time again this group of people who are hi-jacking our country from under us care only for themselves.

In 2004 I sent an e-mail to George and I told him that he was not worth the dust off the soldiers' boots. Well, I will reiterate that today and I will include any republican congress member who continues to side with George over the men and women who serve this nation. They swore to defend the constitution of the United States, the least the United States could do for them is to give them the true respect they have earned.

America, it will take much more than just putting one of those stupid magnets on your car to really help the people who serve in the military. It will require us to show some true back bone and to stand up to this group of demagogues who are doing a very good job of destroying every thing our constitution and our country stands for.

Democrat-backed House bill requires more troop rest