Spiderman,
I lost the original link I had with that info, but I found another. The original bonus was offered against allied fighter planes, most of which are American planes from the Kuwaiti bases, that any of his units were able to bring down.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/746066/posts
I'm looking for the other link that gave an exact date as to when he extended the bonus to include ALL American deaths in acts of terrorism. I know it was in 2002, but I'll get the story for you and be back with it ASAP.
Exaulted,
You, yourself, just illustrated why I don't argue with foreigners about US policies and laws. You don't understand them, nor do you know their history. If you believe yourself to be smarter than me based solely on a brief exchange between us on a message board, I won't argue that point either. I personally don't know whether you are or not, although your grammar and ineptitude for spelling suggest you are merely making an attempt at being cute with your comment more than an assertion of your mental superiority. Just as Oversoul said, witty and funny, and I'll give you credit for that much.
I, perhaps, made an incorrect assumption as to your age and worldly experience, although I doubt it. However, I gleaned my assumption from your own words. The part about telling your history professor how wrong he is......that kind of leads me to believe you are in college unless Canada has inter-office classes on history. If you are in your early twenties or late teens, which your statement leads me to believe, you aren't going to have that much wordly experience. You can be offended by that if you want, but it's not meant to offend.
Now, back to what you originally condemned the Patriot Act for. Unwarranted searches have been a part of the U.S. justice system since long before the Patriot Act. These can occur under many different sets of circumstances, and can only occur with probable cause deemed by the officer or agent authorizing the search. The legality of the search is challengeable in a court of law, and any evidence stemming from the search can be deemed inadmissable if the search is determined to have been conducted without presence of probable cause.
An example of probable cause would be as follows:
Your house has been broken into, and there is a burglary in progress. Your neighbor calls the police and reports the break-in. The police arrive, and in the process of detaining the suspect and searching for possible accomplices, they spot a set of postal scales, a box of plastic sandwich bags, and a pack of cigarette rolling papers sitting on your kitchen table. Perhaps there is even an odor that one of the officers deems to be marijuana in the air. This gives the officers probable cause to search the residence because the items on the table are consistent with the sale and promotion of sale of drugs. This search can be conducted even though you are not present and even though the original call was with you as a victim, not a suspect.
Now, if the officer had opened a cabinet in your kitchen that wasn't big enough to hold a person and found those items, even a search warrant may not make this evidence legal because the original finding of the items would likely be determined to be the result of an illegal search. He was supposed to be looking for suspects in a burglary, and juries won't believe that he was looking for a suspect in that cabinet.
Why is it an invasion of privacy for the government to know I'm moving large amounts of cash around? For those people that think the Patriot Act created this law, they had better take a closer look at the U.S. Code and the U.S. Tax Code because these are OLD laws designed to prevent money laundering. I've found that most people don't even know what money laundering really is. They may know one definition, but there are far more ways to define it than one. Example why it is imperative that the government know about large cash transactions:
Joe has a car for sale. The price is $20,000.
Ben wants to buy the car, but he is a drug dealer, hence he has no viable means of income to use as collateral for a loan.
However, Ben can pay for the car in cash easily. So, Ben goes down to the bank and withdraws $20,000 from his account to buy the car. The red flag goes up and a form is drafted for Ben to sign stating that he is withdrawing the funds and that the attendant at the window verifies his I.D. (covering her own butt in the event this isn't really Ben).
Ben buys Joe's car and heads home.
Three days later, an FBI agent gets a look at this form and sends it over to the IRS agent down the hall to get a cursory look at Ben's tax records for the last couple of years to see how he's got this kind of scratch and if he's been paying his taxes or has an outstanding tax debt. For the most part, this stuff is innocent and the guy is just making a withdrawal that is unusually large, nothing more, nothing less.
Upon looking at Ben's tax records, the IRS agent discovers that Ben appears to have not even held a job in 4 years because he hasn't paid any taxes at all. His last tax return shows him as having made $30,000 that year......5 years ago. How does Ben have $20K in the bank?
This is how they catch even the most careful of drug dealers, loan sharks, illegal gambling rings, and it's one of the ways that terrorists were moving money in the U.S. By continuing to use this method and lowering the amount of cash you can withdraw or deposit without getting a glance from an IRS agent, it makes it even harder for these kinds of despots to continue their illegal activities. If you aren't doing anything wrong, then there's nothing to hide, now is there?
As far as information given to the government that they shouldn't have.......what exactly would that be? Social security number.......they gave that to me, so they already have that. My banking institution? They already know that because I have to declare my interest income in savings accounts on my taxes, and the institution itself sends in a copy of the form declaring that income whether I do it or not. They don't give the balance of the account or the account numbers, so there's no problem there, so exactly what is the problem?
Competitors cannot look at my financials, nor can I look at theirs. This form is sent directly from the financial institution to the U.S. government. If anyone else sees this form, it is considered an invasion of privacy and the responsible party is subject to litigation.
WesternUnion, MoneyGram, and any other institution that transfers money in any form is also subject to the same laws that banks are. However, they are also under the same constraints as far as what they can and can't divulge. Like I said before, and perhaps you missed it, the form is very simple and all that is included is the following:
1. Name of the financial institution
2. Amount transferred
3. How it was transferred (cash, wire transfer, etc)
4. Name of the attendant who performed the transaction for you
5. Your name with a certification that the funds transferred belonged to you, and were legally obtained by you, i.e. not proceeds from illegal activity.
PayPal, FirePay, and other online companies like that run on their own set of rules, actually. PayPal will simply alert authorities if they deem of their own accord that you are using their service as a means of transferring ill-gotten gains. They don't actually send in forms of delcaration because it's still up to the financial institution that you use to fund your PayPal account to send the form in if you are transferring large chunks of cash around to and from the PayPal account.
Without these rules, it wouldn't exactly take a genius to hide money from illegal trading of any kind from the government. The Patriot Act didn't create this law, it just reinforced it.
As far as Michael Moore goes, I've seen the man himself admit that his Farenheit movie was "more like an op-ed piece", which means that he is showing you his thoughts and opinions more than facts. Documentaries are all about facts, not opinions and personal feelings.
I didn't know that when you put a URL up, you had to add any URL found on the page as well. I kind of thought you would be able to find those links yourself when you went to the URL I provided.........silly me.
Look, I've seen interviews with Moore by many of the talking heads on the networks. He always quotes the same garbage over and over again. "Bush is sending kids to die in Iraq".....untrue. Nobody is asking them to die. We are asking them to do the duty they swore to do when they signed on for the U.S. military. Nowhere in the oath they swore does it say "unless of course you don't agree, have something better to do, or just changed your mind when you realized that we were serious".
He also makes it a point to ask everybody he can "would you trade your child's life to end the war in Iraq?"....what the hell answer do you expect from that? I wouldn't trade my child's life to end ANY war. I wouldn't have traded my child's life for Hitler's for God's sake. "Would you volunteer your child for military service?" Well, no. Honestly, I can't do that anyway. No parent can walk into the recruiter's office and sign their kid up. If my child decides he wants to serve his country, I will support that decision, though.
Michael Moore is a smart man who knows what to say in order to make himself look right. His questions and statements are meant to stir certain emotions, and they generally succeed. The problem with his questions is that they don't resemble real life. It's like asking me if I'd give my life to save some Chinese guy I've never heard of from dying of AIDs. For one, I can't save him by dying, and for another, why would I help this guy that I don't know? He may be a child molestor or a mass murderer and my death may let him continue on with his wickedness.
The man is a propagandist and an opportunist. He makes his living off the tragedies and trials that others experience in life by offering up conspiracies and opinions on what COULD have been the reason for (fill in the tragedy here) happening. Not to mention that I don't see any room for a 320lb man whose entire face jiggles when he talks to be lecturing anybody on the dangers of overconsumption.
Oh, and my "assumptions" on Moore's financial status came from Moore himself. Don't take my word for it. Go here:
http://www.arcataeye.com/top/020312top02.shtml
I couldn't find any useful links on that page when I got to it, but you can find links for their classified ads, their front page, and a lot of other things that have to do with this particular website....
Oh, and the deal with Miramax.....you haven't enlightened me one bit. I knew all of that already, thank you very much. The fact is, he knew a year in advance that Miramax was not going to market his movie, and he tried to enrage his supporters with the claim that he was being censored. No matter who Disney told in Moore's company that they would not allow Miramax to distribute the movie, I GUARANTEE you Moore got the message far sooner than a year later. If he didn't get that message, Disney/Miramax is not to blame. The idiot that didn't tell him "Oh yeah, I know we're all done making this film and all, but I got a call from Disney about a year ago, and they aren't going to distribute this film for us. Guess I forgot to tell you. You can line somebody else up, can't you?" Yeah, I'm sure that's how it went down.
In closing, I'll give you credit for a well-worded and thought-out plan for Iraq. I do beg to differ with you as well on a couple of points, though.
1. The events of 9/11 were an act of war planned and carried out by a terrorist organization. They cannot be treated as a criminal act. We've tried that before, and it didn't work. See the bombing of the WTC in 1993 as an example. Simply nabbing the one's responsible for the act itself and not destroying the entire network leaves an enemy stronghold intact with a base to continue further onslaughts in the future.
2. U.N. reports didn't exactly show Saddam to be WMD free. When the inspectors left Iraq in 1998, they still showed Saddam to have plenty of WMD, the components to make more, and even a blueprint for a nuclear weapon. Saddam denied the existence of these weapons and was asked to simply show the proof of their destruction. Although he agreed to keep these records (when, where, and how destruction took place) he couldn't provide proof on any weapon destroyed after the inspectors were out of the country. Do you take the word of Saddam Hussein on this matter? Not me, not ever.
3. By our "allies" I assume you mean people like France, Germany, etc. Allies who had a financial stake in Saddam Hussein remaining in power (see oil for food program) either through industrial interests, or corruption. Most any Ally who has opposed toppling Hussein has also had a financial reason for doing so.
People yell that we should have given the inspectors 2 more months......well, give me a reason why. The man had 13 years to get the job done, and he kept kicking inspectors out time and time again when they got close to something he didn't like. At what point do you finally say, enough is enough, you've had MORE than ample time to comply, yet you continue to thumb your nose. The fact is, for some people, there could never be "enough". Some people sadly will do ANYTHING to avert war of any kind, no matter what the stakes. They'd have given him the two months......then 6.........then a year. It would have never ended.
