Dam Break
Another Variety

This coming fall will mark 27 years since the tragic and sad day of loss struck Northeast Georgia that we will never forget.

After an intense and steady rain, the Kelly Barnes Dam near Toccoa simply gave way and burst in the early morning hours of November 6, 1977. In the dark of the night, 176 million gallons of water gushed over the college community, claimed the lives of 39 people and did devastating damage to the town and survivors who would never forget lost loved ones and their harrowing experience all those years ago.

So much has happened since then. The resilience, togetherness and unshakable faith in God of a community has carried Toccoa, Toccoa Falls College and the lives of those who have moved forward - but will always remember.

Today in our nation, a judicial storm is underway that threatens a dam of a different variety altogether. The direct consequences of this potential tragedy are not life and death, and admittedly pale next to the measure of tangible loss that hit Toccoa and our great state that November night. Nevertheless, the intent and purpose behind this would-be-tragedy is equally sinister.

I'm speaking of the thunderous and growing storm that is raining down on our society's most precious and traditional institution: the bond between a man and woman in marriage.

You've no doubt heard a great deal about the judicial saga concerning homosexual unions playing out in Massachusetts that affects all of us. But just in case you've missed it, here's a quick look at the landscape.

Late last year the left-wing, activist and un-elected judges on the Massachusetts State Supreme Court thumbed their collective nose at marriage, the American voter, the legislative branches in Massachusetts and Washington, and well… just about everybody… by handing down a ruling to provide anti-family forces the ammunition to carry out an all-out assault on marriage laws in every single state in the nation. Then, this past May, the Massachusetts Court's new definition of marriage took on full legal force - giving an open door for homosexual couples across the country to gain "marriage" status in Massachusetts, and return to their home states to test the limits of our legal system and the boundaries of marriage as we know it.

Don't think this is a scary proposition? Think again.

What if the anti-family crowd hell bent on tearing down marriage is successful? What if the definition of "marriage" is broadened universally in our nation to include the union between gay couples? What's next?

If the anti-family folks are successful in taking their newly found legal ammunition and having marriage re-defined by this nation to include homosexuals, you can bet your bottom dollar it won't stop there. Who knows, maybe the next battle will be to include the union between three people as A-OK and deserving of recognition under the marriage umbrella? Maybe they'll argue that an adult should be permitted to enter into a relationship with a minor and the resulting "couple" be considered married?

We know about the frequently harmful affect that the absence of either a mother or father in the life of a child has on that young person. What about the severe damage that will be done to our youth by replacing "mom and dad" with "mom and dad and somebody else" - or "dad and my schoolmate"??

As unbelievably outrageous and despicable as those propositions sound, if we stand by and allow this particular dam to break (knowing its sadly tenuous condition), these are the battles that will surely await us.

This week in Congress, I voted for a measure called the Marriage Protection Act (H.R. 3313). It's a bill that prevents these activist Federal judges and their courts from striking down a critically important provision contained in the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed Congress in 1996. The particular provision that would be protected provides that no state shall be required to accept same-sex marriage licenses granted in other states.

However, while passing the Marriage Protection Act out of the House is a good start - it really is just that, only a start. It still faces an uphill course in the Senate (which dropped the ball on this issue earlier in July) and even then, won't keep the anti-family forces at bay forever.

At the end of the day, the only way to stem the tide and buffer the dam to defend marriage from the growing left-wing judicial tidal wave is to amend our Constitution to stipulate that marriage should consist only of the union between a man and a woman. When that vote is held on the floor of the House, my ballot will be cast in favor of marriage, and against those who seek nothing more than its complete destruction.

Charlie Norwood
Charlie Norwood is the Republican Congressman from Georgia's 9th District, which surrounds Athens-Clarke County on all sides.

 Another Lie
Will More Die?

Cuba needs dollars. But a Cold War-era trade embargo prohibits American tourists from visiting. Fortunately, ingenious border control officers thought of a solution. When U.S. citizens arrive at Havana, the Cubans don't stamp their passports. When tens of thousands of Americans come back home to the U.S., they tell immigration that they were in Mexico or Canada instead. Which they were - to change planes.

Israel offers a similar courtesy. "Do you plan to visit any Muslim countries?" customs clerks ask travelers at Tel Aviv. If the answer is positive, they affix the visa stamp to a separate piece of paper. Nicholas Berg, the American entrepreneur beheaded in Iraq, didn't know to ask. His Israeli passport stamp got him picked up at an Iraqi checkpoint, and cost him his life.

For reasons ranging from economic dependence upon migrant labor (hello, Rio Grande!) to religion and politics, numerous nations fail to document the movement of foreign nationals through their territory. Sometimes, for reasons no one asks and nobody tells, border guards don't bother to stamp a passport upon entry from abroad. It's happened several times to me at JFK in New York.

Failing to stamp passports is commonplace. Yet the Bush Administration, operating on the assumption that most Americans don't know that, is floating the possibility of war against Iran based on that innocuous practice.

According to a Newsweek story about the new 9/11 Commission Report, "Iranian officials instructed their border inspectors not to place Iranian or Afghan stamps in the passports of Saudi terrorists traveling from Osama bin Laden's training camps through Iran." Calling this "the strongest evidence yet of a relationship between Iran and Al Qaeda," Newsweek notes that "eight to ten of the 'muscle' hijackers of the September 11 plot" crossed through Iran from Afghanistan, "undoubtedly help[ing] the 9/11 terrorists pass into the United States without raising alarms among U.S. Customs and visa officials… the report raises new, sharper questions about whether the Bush Administration was focused on the right enemy when it decided to remove Saddam Hussein."

The invasion of Iraq was preceded by similar trial balloons in the press.

Should Bush remain in office this November and the "we invaded the wrong Ira-" argument catch fire among a complacent and compliant media, we may be fighting a third unwinnable war against a Muslim state a year from now.

There's even less evidence of a link between Al Qaeda and Iran than between Al Qaeda and Iraq - but that's not stopping E-Z Boy warriors like Cheney and Rumsfeld.

First and foremost, there's no reason to believe that Afghan or Iranian visa stamps would have caused alarm at the U.S. border. My passport is thick with stamps from countries in Central Asia and the Middle East, including those issued by both the Taliban and Northern Alliance governments of Afghanistan. Only two countries, France and Israel, have asked me about them. Even after 9/11, U.S. Customs never examined them.

Furthermore, Iran doesn't stamp Saudi passports for good reason: the Saudi government, dominated by Wahhabi Sunni extremists, despises Shia Iran.

Viewing Shiites as pseudo-Islamic heretics more contemptible than infidels, the Saudi regime takes a dim view of those who travel to Iran - a fact that Iranian customs takes into account when welcoming Saudi visitors so they don't get into trouble back home.

Another mystery: Why does the December 2001 National Security Agency memo cited by Newsweek mention Afghan visa stamps? Iran has no more ability to issue Afghan visas than Mexico has to issue American ones.

The big reason to doubt an Iran-Al Qaeda connection is historical. In one of many events unknown to most Americans, Taliban forces under Mullah Mohammad Omar seized the Iranian consulate at Mazar-e-Sharif in 1998. After the Afghans murdered 10 Iranian diplomats and one journalist there, Iran massed troops on the border and threatened war against Afghanistan. (The crisis passed when the Taliban apologized and turned over the bodies.)

To say the least, it's extremely unlikely that Iran would have formed a cozy alliance with Mullah Omar's bosom buddies in Al Qaeda just two years later in 2000, as the Bushies now claim. In fact, despite having no diplomatic relations with the United States, Iran provided back-channel assistance to the Bush Administration during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, including turning over Al Qaeda suspects and offering to rescue American pilots shot down near the Iran-Afghanistan border.

"It's definitely the case that there was no love lost between Iran and the Taliban," John Pike, director of the defense think tank Global Security, said in 2002.

Odds are that others will see through the current attempt to tie Iran to 9/11. That's why they've already got a new argument in reserve: the "yet unknown role" Iran allegedly played in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia. It's the same tactic we saw during the run-up to war against Iraq: lie, retreat, repeat. The question is, will we fall for it again?

Ted Rall
Ted Rall is the author of a new book, Generalissimo El Busho: Essays and Cartoons on the Bush Years.

 

Animal Control
Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control responded to 67 calls.
      4 complaints of animal cruelty
      3 reported bite cases
      1 complaint of barking dogs
      3 citations for ordinance violations

53 animals impounded
      47 dogs
      2 cats
      1 raccoon
      1 bat
      1 copperhead
      1 garter snake

20 dogs placed
      10 adopted
      6 reclaimed
      4 turned over to other agencies

ACC Animal Control press release for the week of July 22 to July 28.