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CounterPunch
September
18, 2002
Goodbye to All That
by Rep. Cynthia McKinney
[This is a transcript of Rep. McKinney's
remarks on September 14 at the reception for the Congressional
Black Caucus.]
This is an important week for all of us, although
it is a particularly important week for me. This week we had
three very successful Braintrusts: Afro-Latinos and their rising
tide of political empowerment all over Latin America; Hip Hop
Power and the importance of Hip Hop as a communications medium
in the absence of a real communications industry other than Radio
One now, inside our community, owned by our community spreading
the good news about our community;
And finally, COINTELPRO II: The Murder
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. where we learned that there really
are linkages between the murders of JFK, MLK, and RFK. And that
the COINTELPRO process was "to neutralize" the black
leader--in the words of the CIA--assassinate, and then replace
that leader with someone whose skin color was black, but whose
loyalty was to their plan and not us. Yesterday, Judge Joe Brown
told us unequivocally that the so-called murder rifle was NOT
the weapon that killed Dr. King.
So, I think we did some very important
work in these three braintrusts, connecting, communicating, and
educating. And at least for the next two years, I will not be
at the CBC Weekend as a Member of the House of Representatives.
As everybody probably knows by now, I didn't cross the finish
line first this time. Despite the fact that I easily won the
Democratic vote, 40,000 Republicans maliciously crossed over
and overtook the Democratic Primary. And because AIPAC had telegraphed
in newspaper articles that they were going to target both Earl
Hilliard and me, the Democratic Party was paralyzed.
Therefore, if Alabama represents the
heart of the civil rights movement and Georgia represents its
brain, the black body politic has sustained a mortal blow.
What does this portend for the future
of independent black leadership in this country, particularly
given what we learned really happened during the COINTELPRO period,
and what will happen soon now that the USA Patriot Act, Homeland
Security, and the Funding for the War on Terrorism Act have significantly
changed the legal landscape.
The Operation TIPS program of John Ashcroft,
by the way, is nothing new in the annals of the FBI, but executive
authority always seemed to be there to override such ambitions.
That's not the case now. And so, I'm proud of the votes I cast
against those bills and I'm proud of the legislation I've authored
that really does seek to move our country forward.
For instance, the legislation to override
the President's executive Order denying our troops their rightfully
earned overtime pay. George Bush has asked our young men and
women to make the ultimate sacrifice, but he doesn't want to
pay them for it.
And the legislation I authored to stop
the use of weapons with depleted uranium which seems to be causing
health effects and abnormal births and even deaths among the
troops of our allies and maybe even our own.
I'm proud of the bill to stop the importation
of coltan into the United States, the source of so much pain
and suffering in eastern Congo because it's a key ingredient
in our computers, palm pilots, Sony Playstations, and Oneboxes
that people are willing to kill to get their hands on it.
I'm proud that we extended the benefits
for our veterans who are suffering from Agent Orange because
those benefits were about to expire and I authored the legislation
that was passed into law to help them. But I'm most proud of
my work to hold this Administration accountable to the American
people.
And after I've asked the tough questions,
here's what we now know:
- That President Bush was warned that
terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and crash
them into buildings in the US;
- That in the weeks prior to September
11, 24-hour fighter cover was placed over the President's ranch
in Crawford, Texas;
- That in the weeks prior to September
11, Attorney General Ashcroft stopped flying commercial aircraft
and instead flew Government aircraft;
- That the US received numerous high level
warnings from a wide range of foreign intelligence services warning
of impending hijackings and terrorist attacks;
- That a number of FBI agents were pleading
with their superiors to conduct intensive investigations into
the suspicious activities of various men in US flight schools;
- That in the days prior to September
11, highly suspicious stock market activity in aviation and insurance
stocks took place indicating that certain well-placed people
had advance knowledge of the attacks.
And now this week we learn that the FBI
had an informant living with two of the actual 9-1-1 hijackers.
All of this has become public knowledge since I asked the simple
question: What did the Bush Administration know and when did
it know it.
Now against this backdrop of so many
unanswered questions, President Bush wants us to pledge our blind
support to him. First, for his war on terrorism and now for his
war in Iraq. How can we, in good conscience, prepare to send
our young men and women back to Iraq to fight yet another war,
when we have tens of thousands of our service men and women poisoned
and still suffering from the first war?
And what of those veterans who are sleeping
on our streets? Within five minutes of where we are today, you
can walk there, and see them, and talk to them: Vietnam Veterans,
Gulf War veterans, veterans of our wars. George Bush can count
me out of his war-making plans.
Throughout my career, we have proudly
brought blacks and whites, Asians, and Latinos together. I'm
proud that everywhere around me the human rainbow has been represented.
And I know that as we continue to speak out on behalf of the
poor and the marginalized in this country, my supporters across
the spectrum, and across America will be right there with me.
And that as we continue to speak out
on behalf of those who are sick and tired of greed being more
important than human needs, my supporters will be right there.
And finally, as I ponder the future of
America where voices of dissent are snuffed out by selfishness
and intolerance, I'm reminded of the words of Bobby Kennedy,
who we learned yesterday, was considering Martin Luther King,
Jr. as his Vice Presidential running mate. Bobby Kennedy, truly
a great man who selflessly lived and died for his country, shaped
an entire generation with his thoughts, his words, and his deeds.
And it was Bobby Kennedy who reminded
us that: "The task of leadership, the first task of concerned
people, is not to condemn or castigate, or deplore: it is to
search out the reason for disillusionment and alienation, the
rationale of protest and dissenta*"perhaps, indeed, to learn
from it. And we may find, that we learn most of all from those
political and social dissenters whose differences with us are
most grave: for among the young, as among adults, the sharpest
criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and
love of country."
Today's Features
Wayne Madsen
The Shoney's
Snoop
America's Horst Wessel
Tariq Ali
Debating
Daniel Pipes
on Bush's Wars
Ahmad Faruqui
American
Primacy at Bay
Kurt Leege
Voices
for Peace
M. Shahid Alam
A New Theology
of Power
Robert Fisk
Bush's War
Dossier:
Blindness, Hypocrisy & Lies
Dave Randall
Mad, Mad World:
J. Edgar Hoover's Obsession with Mad Magazine
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- Hunting Commie Perverts:
The Scarlet Professor
- DC's Best Political
Mind; DC's Most Dangerous Man;
- Dershowitz the Torturer:
Guess Why He Wants Clean Needles;
- Lese Majeste: That's
Against the Law Too;
- The Greatest Endorsement
AAA Will Ever Get;
- Merle Haggard on Civil
Liberties;
- Dullness Hailed: The Press on the Defeat of McKinney,
Traficant and Barr;
- National Review Puffs
into Town.
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September
17, 2002
Adam Federman
All
That Matters is Oil
Linda S.
Heard
Paranoid
Americans
Hussein Ibish
The Incident
at Shoney's
Francis Boyle
Is Bush's
War Illegal?
Let Us Count the Ways
Heidi Lypps
Bush's
Crackdown on
Medical Marijuana
Riad Z. Abdelkarim,
MD
Why
Do They Hate Us?
September
16, 2002
Wayne Madsen
The Shoney's
Snoop
America's Horst Wessel
Tariq Ali
Debating
Daniel Pipes
on Bush's Wars
Ahmad Faruqui
American
Primacy at Bay
Kurt Leege
Voices
for Peace
M. Shahid
Alam
A New Theology
of Power
Robert Fisk
Bush's War
Dossier:
Blindness, Hypocrisy & Lies
Dave Randall
Mad, Mad World:
J. Edgar Hoover's Obsession with Mad Magazine
September
14 / 15, 2002
Ben Tripp
Notes for
Future Historians:
The Bush Administration Explained
Tom Crumpacker
Democracy & US Policy on Cuba
David Vest
Neither-Handed
Behzad Yaghmaian
A Letter
from Istanbul
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Fire Next Time:
Nuclear Plants & Terrorism
Anis Shivani
The Warped
World of
Bernard Lewis
Uri Avnery
A Witness from the Past
Robert Fisk
Bush Across
the Rubicon
Josh Frank
Lacking Tenacity
Christini, Alam, & Krieger
Poems
September
12, 2002
Paul de Rooij
A Glossary
of Occupation
James C.
Faris
Riefenstahl
at 100:
The Fascist Aesthetic
Gary Leupp
Presidential
Honesty on Iraq
Tarif Abboushi
A Conversation
with My Arab-American Self
Ron Jacobs
Shelter
from the Storm
Rick Giombetti
Paxil
and Addiction
Krystal Kyer
From NAFTA
to CAFTA
Another Rotten Trade Deal
John Jonik
Overcome
in Philly
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By
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and Jeffrey St. Clair
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