09-17-06 Reader Comments:

Mike-
In response to your comments on the Chapman situation yesterday, I have mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, Mexico certainly drags her feet when it comes to honoring our requests; on the other hand, the guy IS wanted for a crime (yes, it's a crime for Dog to have kidnapped someone for return to the US--he isn't a law enforcement agent in the US and do we want bounty hunters to do the same thing in the US). Other countries use our adherence to the law against us without honoring laws themselves, and it's not fair, but DO WE WANT TO PLAY THEIR GAME AND LET OUR IDEALS GO? Hard call. -SZ

Mike's Response:

As far as the law goes... It used to be against the law to work overseas as a mercenary. No one pays any attention to that law now that we are engaged in a global war on terror and very short-handed. Interesting. What if I decided to go to Pakistan and capture Bin Laden and managed to turn him over to US Authorities for the reward? Would our country turn me over to Pakistan after they had Bin Laden in custody? They would have an American revolution on their hands if our government pulled something like that. This situation is not much different. Our government gladly took custody of Luster from Chapman and the apprehension was not considered to be a violation of his rights because of the way it happened. I once turned down a contract to travel to a foreign country to capture a US Army deserter in Peru and return him to the US. (not enough money for the risk involved) Laws are bent all the time in our society, despite what the average citizen would like to believe. Part of our response to this problem may be to change our laws and we can start with this one. Bounty hunters legally perform valuable services for law enforcement and the courts all over America and there is no logical reason why we should not at least look the other way if they want to risk their lives overseas to capture American criminals. We CAN choose to look the other way on this Chapman incident for the time being.

Of course I agree that America stands for higher standards than other countries. Laws are written (and often altered or discarded) to preserve those high standards. But when we discover the law is compelling us to do something inappropriate or wrong we need to fix the problem instead of walking blindly down the dark alley of self-mutilation toward our own destruction.

As far as us "playing their game", we are caught in yet another conundrum here. You are right, this is a hard call. However, the game they are playing is the same old game they have been playing for years... using our law against us. When are we going to wake up and stop playing into their hands?

It may be time for us to provide Mexico with a list of violations that THEY have committed against US and tell them we will start playing fair again once the list is in balance. They could start by handing over that doctor who tortured our DEA agent to death (several times) for a solid week.

Duane 'Dog' Chapman is famous for his reality based bounty hunter TV program. In 2003 he apprehended convicted serial-rapist and bail-jumper Andrew Luster in Mexico after Luster had evaded U.S. law enforcement for over six months. Luster was subsequently returned to the US and sentenced to 124 years in jail.

Now Chapman himself is under arrest by US Marshals in his own country. Bounty hunting is illegal in Mexico, even if an American Bounty Hunter apprehends an American criminal on the run from US law enforcement, apparently. Chapman and his group were arrested in Mexico for kidnapping three years ago after they took down Luster. They each posted $1,500 bail and then returned to the US, figuring (one assumes) that no one would enforce any Mexican warrants due to the nature of the situation.

Wrong!

Mexico now wants Chapman and his bounty hunting squad returned to Mexico to face charges of Kidnapping and somehow... in the bizarre world in which we now live, the corrupt government of Mexico has convinced our own government to honor their warrants for Chapman and his group. It appears they miss the convicted rapist (who was from a very wealthy family, by the way... with lots of money to bribe local officials) who Chapman removed from their country.

The real question here is WHY WOULD US FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITIES AGREE TO ARREST CHAPMAN ON A MEXICAN WARRANT??? Chapman broke no American laws and in fact rendered great assistance to American law enforcement by arresting the rapist.

Mexico has always been, and remains one of the most corrupt countries on the face of the planet. Arrests are made routinely in Mexico so the Police Officers can make money by accepting bribes to release the individual arrested. Mexico also has a long history of ignoring the rights of American citizens and failing to act when American citizens are robbed, abducted or killed in Mexico. There are many examples of this but two stand out among the endless incidents in recent years.

One was the murder of a Snohomish County (WA) Sheriff and his entire family while they were on vacation in Mexico in their motor home. No action was ever taken on that by Mexican officials. It remains an unsolved murder that no one in our own government is pressuring Mexico to solve.

Another was the abduction and torture-murder of DEA agent Kiki Camerina. Kiki was on undercover assignment in Mexico working to identify drug lords, supposedly with the support of Mexican Law Enforcement authorities. Kiki was tortured for an entire week under the supervision of a medical doctor who brought Kiki back from the verge of death numerous times just so he could be tortured again and again before he was finally allowed to die. The doctor was identified by American law enforcement but despite numerous requests from the top levels of American government, Mexico refused to hand him over. They DID agree to hand over the horribly mutilated body of Kiki though. Our own government has decided to bury their head in the sand on this one as well.

So here we are again... shooting ourselves in the foot to assist a corrupt government (Mexico) while we stand by and take it when that government ignores similar requests for assistance from us.

I love America, but I do NOT love what our government does sometimes. Chapmen and his group did our government a favor by arresting Luster at great risk to their own lives. They are heroes, not criminals. I am myself, a retired law enforcement officer but I have to say that the US Federal Judge in Honolulu who signed the arrest warrant for Chapman and those US Marshals who arrested Chapman should be ashamed of themselves. This is NOT what the America I love is all about.

Yes, I know... Chapman's Bounty Hunter TV show is considered rather distasteful to a good chunk of the American audience. I train bounty hunters (Bail Enforcement Agents) from time to time and I can tell you none of them looks or acts like Dog and his group. But it is a TV show and they do what it takes to capture their target audience along with the bad guys. This has nothing to do with a TV show though. This is a moral, nation-defining issue and an opportunity for our own government to take a stand that will send a message to our neighbor to the south that we are not wimps.

Chapman and his associates are now out on bail in Hawaii and fighting extradition to Mexico. We all need to call or write every US State Department official or congressman we can to get this extradition stopped.

Those are my opinions, for what they are worth. Do you agree or disagree?

In recent months there has been a lot of talk and discussion about the Geneva Convention of 1949 and whether or not the United States is in compliance or in violation of it in our detention of POWs and interrogation practices. The bulk of this discussion centers around article three of the document. There are 159 articles in this very long document. Article three deals with the specifics of acceptable prisoner of war treatment. To allow readers to understand what all the discussion is about and make their own decisions about our country's compliance or non-compliance, I am including the exact text of the first three articles of this document here for your review. My personal comments follow the document.

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THE GENEVA CONVENTION
Preamble:

The undersigned Plenipotentiaries of the Governments represented at the Diplomatic Conference held at Geneva from April 21 to August 12, 1949, for the purpose of establishing a Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, have agreed as follows:

Part I: General Provisions

Article 1-
The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.

Article 2-
In addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace-time, the present Convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or of any other armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized by one of them.
The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.
Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations. They shall furthermore be bound by the Convention in relation to the said Power, if the latter accepts and applies the provisions thereof.

Article 3-
In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria. To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
o violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
o taking of hostages;
o outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
o the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

2. The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for.
An impartial humanitarian body, such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, may offer its services to the Parties to the conflict.
The Parties to the conflict should further endeavour to bring into force, by means of special agreements, all or part of the other provisions of the present Convention.
The application of the preceding provisions shall not affect the legal status of the Parties to the conflict.

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Michael's Comments:

We (America) stand for fundamental ideals that the rest of the world admires. At least we strive to do so. Incidents like Abu Grabe and the rape and murder of that young Iraqi girl and her family have done incredible damage to those ideals. Our credibility is eroding away, bit by bit, with each such incident and if they continue, we run the risk of eventually finding ourselves in the position of having nothing significant to fight for that separates us from those we are fighting. Our only salvation when such incidents occur is to strike the culprits (of such incidents) with a big hammer immediately. In this way, we may be able to turn these incidents to our advantage by using them to show the world that Americans as a whole do indeed deplore such actions. In the end, the message has to be that no country is perfect but we must all continually be on guard and deal severely with anyone who violates basic standards of acceptable human behavior. We have to be very open and very clear and consistent about this. The problem is there will always be those members of the radical extreme who will chose to ignore our efforts to respond appropriately to such incidents and focus on the incidents themselves as examples of how America is a truly godless society that deserves to be wiped off the face of the earth. But that is just the nature of things and we will never fix that.

I agree that POWs should be allowed to face their accusers in court (if possible and reasonable) and be sentenced according to a perhaps more limited version of the rule of law such as a tribunal. However, I do not believe such proceedings should require that our nation reveal intelligence gathering operations that could be detrimental to our country's security. I also believe that our internal process of civil and criminal law is too liberal and cumbersome to work effectively for POW trials in time of war. (We found that in the events leading up to 9-11.) These individuals are not criminals, they are enemy combatants... Prisoners of War. This is (or should be) a significant difference and if that difference has not thus far been defined clearly enough, we need to do so now. Also: they are NOT American citizens. They are in fact, fighting to create a world where American values do not exist at all. We therefore owe them nothing in terms of providing them with the protections that American citizens have. To assume otherwise is to presume that America has a right to shove our values down the throats of the rest of the world, thereby ignoring THEIR right to exist in any form they choose (as long as their choices do not threaten surrounding cultures and/or countries). This kind of presumptive and elitist attitude amounts to a sort of cultural and philosophical global domination and this is precisely what is angering much of the rest of the world. It is in fact I believe, the very root of the problem.

These are my opinions, for what they are worth. Do you agree or disagree?

NOTE FROM Mike Jaquish: "TN" is a friend and former associate from my years in Africa. He responded to my September 11th blog entry and I wanted to give everyone a chance to read (and respond to) his thoughts on the global war on terror.


Dear Mike the Merc,

At this moment five years ago America was a united country, and the world was united with us. Today, five years on, America is ideologically divided, alienated and polarized, and the world wants little to do with us. I wish we had a better state of affairs to report to the three thousand killed on 9/11.

Little progress has been made. In fact, instead of having to contend with a few hundred or thousand al-Queda operatives in Afghanistan, we face the prospect of hundreds of thousands of young, angry Muslims and Arabs eagerly wanting to test themselves against our troops. It would be easy to point out the many mistakes made by this administration, but the bigger issue is what we should to today. The invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder, but our president has made it impossible to leave.

Little progress will continue to be made until our leadership recognizes that the enemy is not one who "hates our freedoms". Rather... it is an enemy who resents that our freedoms are paramount over the rest of the world. These millions of disaffected youths hate that it has been American leadership that propped up the dictatorships throughout the Middle East that limited their lives and made it easy for radicals to persuade them that better lives could be lived through Jihad. Robert Baer in his books describes rather well the history of our relationships with those dictatorships over the decades and how they crossed party lines. To think that there would be no consequences is naive. Foreign policy experts have warned about this possibility for years, so there should have been no surprises.

Instead of terrorists threatening our freedoms, I expect that many in America would consider the greatest threat to be from our own leadership. We have yet to suspend rights and restrict freedoms in conflicts that we didn't later regret and apologize for.

Until we know and understand who we're fighting we'll continue to plod.

-TN

MIKE'S RESPONSE:

Unlike when we invaded Afghanistan with the full support of the world, our image has deteriorated since we invaded Iraq and found no WMDs. The borderline Muslim fundamentalists have been motivated to become activists and align themselves with terrorist groups all over the world. We have successfully stirred up an angry nest of hornets that will be around to harass and harm the civilized world for decades to come. Diplomatic solutions are far more difficult as a result.

I am not sure I agree with you that Bush is not taking the GWT (Global War on Terrorism) seriously. I see no reason to believe he does not take it VERY seriously. He is inept and inappropriate in his approach at significant moments though, so one can easily receive the overall impression he is not focused on the problem as much as he could or should be.

Let us not forget that GW inherited this problem, he did not create it. This problem has been growing for decades, going all the way back to the Carter administration. These previous administrations contributed to the growth of terrorism by a variety of failures or by simply ignoring all the red flags and trip-wires. The war began officially when bin Laden issued his Fatwa and we (those in positions of power within our government) failed to take him seriously or even consider the possibility he represented a serious threat to western civilization. (It IS true we had him in our cross-hairs and failed to take him out due to politics in DC.) During this time, we were distracted by Saddam in Iraq who was considered the greatest threat in the region.

The attacks on 09-11-01 caught many off guard and drew GW into the game. Prepared or not, he picked up the banner and struggled to react in the best interest of the United States. It was no secret back when GW was elected that his lack of global awareness was a significant liability. I still recall this being a topic of discussion back when he was running for president. This has proven to be a very serious disability for our country. I do not believe GW ever actually lied about anything, but I do believe he was given inaccurate information and that he made poor choices in terms of who to believe when he was deciding what approach to take. There again... our poor Intel was a result of negligence that went back years to a point where the decision was made to cut back on intelligence gathering operations following the end of the cold war. (You may want to read Robert Baer's book: See No Evil, listed on my website as recommended reading.)

Unfortunately, the GWT is being politicized by both political parties and the truth(s) of the situation are getting very blurred in the process. I believe we need to dispense with all the political rhetoric and get focused on the fundamentals in order to win the GWT. The fundamentals are: (1) We ARE at war. (2) This IS a religious war, which makes it far more difficult to fight than any conventional war ever waged. (3) If we do NOT win this war, our civilization will cease to exist. (4) The enemy is smart, adaptable, hard to find and numerous. (5) Just as we did in WW ll, we must all be willing to alter or temporarily suspend our expectations of personal liberty in the interests of intelligence and security until we win this war. (Remember... loose lips sink ships?) (6) We must be willing to change standard rules of war if necessary in order to avoid providing our enemy with advantages in the fight. (Rules of engagement must be flexible enough to deal with the constantly changing face of our threat.)

These are only the fundamentals. Leadership should take each point and expand upon it with specific details that will allow us to accomplish the task. If they fail in this, all that we hold dear will be forfeited.

-Michael Jaquish (AKA: "Mike the Merc")

Okay... despite all the prior debate and vitriol (or perhaps because of it), I decided to go ahead and watch the 5+ hour ABC movie, THE PATH TO 9-11. After all the criticism I expected to encounter numerous inaccuracies so I was rather surprised to find that this was not the case. Overall, I was impressed with the brilliant effort the writers and producers did to present a historically accurate story. Those who take the time to objectively follow the events in the piece carefully (with an open mind, that is.) should come to understand some of the many complicated political and policy issues that worked together to prevent us from cutting off the snake's head when we had the opportunity to do so prior to 9-11. (At least three opportunities, actually.)

This is very instructive. It points out some very specific things we can do to improve our deterrents to terrorism in the future if we can simply learn from our mistakes and move forward. It is not reasonable to expect that we will be able to totally prevent all terror attacks but if we openly evaluate our past mistakes and seek out ways to fix the problems, we may have a chance of actually winning this war. The solution involves altering current attitudes, laws, policies and procedures. Some of these have already been addressed but we still have a long way to go. This is not an easy task perhaps, but it is possible if we can manage to drop the politics and begin working together for the mutual survival of our society.

Good job, ABC!

These are my opinions, for what they are worth. Do you agree, or disagree?

-Michael Jaquish

This morning I opened my vote by mail packet and found an information pamphlet informing me that I would have to register myself as voting democrat or republican in order to vote in a partisan race and to then vote with that party for all partisan races. I was stunned. This law violates my rights as a citizen to vote for who I chose. Although I tend to vote conservative most of the time, I have always voted for individual positions as an independent instead of for parties. I cannot do that any longer. Well, this is unacceptable. I decided not to vote at all to express my resistance to this goofy law and I sent my voter packet back without any entries along with the following letter.

If you feel the same as I, please feel free to copy and paste the text of my letter, modify it as you see fit and send it to your county auditor along with your own voter packet.



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September 11, 2006

Pat McCarthy
Pierce County Auditor
2401 South 35th Street, Room 200
Tacoma, WA 98409-7484

RE: Pick a party primary law.

Greetings,

I received my mail-in voter packet in the mail and opened it all ready to do my patriotic duty and vote when I encountered your voting instructions sheet.

Please be advised that I have always voted independent. Having to pick a party violates my right to vote the way I chose. I do not know what fool decided it was a good idea to force partisanship down the throats of citizens but I strongly disagree with this "law". The law is the servant of the people, not the other way around. Laws are (or should be) written to preserve rights, not take them away. This law has stolen my right to vote the way I want and I consider it to be a violation of fundamental principles of democracy. I know of no one who agrees with this law and I consider myself pretty informed and politically savvy. (I even write a blog on my website (www.countrycopbooks.com) that frequently addresses political issues.)

I have lived overseas under dictatorships in the past so I have very personal reasons to cherish my right to participate in the election process. I therefore feel compelled to register my opinion by refusing to vote in this and all future primaries until this law is rescinded. I am hereby protesting by returning your voter packet without any entries. I recommend you work to change this law immediately or face lower voter participation in the primaries.


Sincerely,

Michael James Jaquish
Retired law enforcement officer and International Security Consultant
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These are my opinions, for what they are worth. Do you agree, or disagree?

Steve Irwin's death caught on videotape
Cairns (Australia), Sept 5. (AP): Dramatic videotape of 'Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin's last moments shows him pulling from his chest the poisonous stingray barb that killed him, officials said today, as tributes poured in for the beloved naturalist famed for getting dangerously close to deadly beasts.'
-From: The Hindu news update service: September 05, 2006

Steve Irwin was truly larger than life and infected the entire world with his zest for the animals with which we share this planet. Without doubt, he fought nonstop to preserve animals and their habitats. He will be greatly missed by all who followed his adventures and marveled at his courage.

As sad as the loss of Steve is though, it should be pointed out that it was predictable. Much like the Grizzly Bear Man of some fame (Timothy Treadwell), who was eventually killed along with his girlfriend (and partially consumed) by the bears he loved, Steve met an early end to his life because he stepped over the line all the time.

I grew up on a cattle ranch and lived in Africa for many years. Animals love me and I love them. But I have always been aware that there is a line that cannot be crossed without exposing yourself to great danger. As much as we would all like to believe that a Doctor Doolittle exists and that animals are really just people dressed up in different skin, animals live in a world of their own that cannot ever be fully understood or penetrated by human beings. We can love them, but we must always give them space and respect. If we fail to do that, we expose ourselves to unnecessary risk. Ironically this could turn out to be the greatest lesson that Steve may have left for us.

Those are my opinions, for what they are worth. Do you agree, or disagree?