OGBOF TYMHM & MORE PART 50

WELCOME TO OPINIONS  BASED  ON FACTS (OBOF)

&

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR THREE

 

Name	Published
OVERVIEW
OBOF & TYMHM PART 14	Dec  18, 2012
OBOF & TYMHM PART 15	Jan.  02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16	Jan.  08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 16 EXTRA	Jan.  11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 17	Jan.  15, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 18	Jan.  22, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 19	Jan.  29, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 20	Feb.  05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 21	Feb.  14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 22	Feb.  20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23	Feb.  27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 23 SPECIAL	Mar.  06, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 24	Mar.  07, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25	Mar.  12, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 25-EXTRA	Mar.  14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 26	Mar.  19, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 27	Mar.  26, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 28	Apr.   02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 29	Apr.   08, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 30	Apr.   17, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 31	Apr.   23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 32	Apr.   30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 33	May   07, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 34	May   18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 35	May   21, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 36	May   30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 37	June  05, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 38	June  11, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 39	June  18, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 40	June  25, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 41	July   02, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 42	July   09, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 43	July   16, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 44	July   23, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 45	July   30, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 46	Aug.  06, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 47	Aug.  14, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 48	Aug.  20, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 49	Aug.  27, 2013
OBOF & TYMHM PART 50	Sept. 05, 2013

 

 

IN THIS ISSUE

 

 

1.  My own commentary.

2.  Where Labor Day came from and where

           is it going.

3.  Obama's political capital and the slippery

           slope of Syria.

4.  The White House walk & talk that changed

          Obama's mind on Syria.

5.  Obama should reveal secret Syria intercepts.

6.  Seizure of hundreds of dogs in multi-state

          organized dog fighting raid.

 

 

 

 

 

A LITTLE OF MY OWN

COMMENTARY.

 

By Floyd Bowman

Publisher "Opinions Based On Facts."

September 5, 2013

 

Labor Day is over and I wonder what it meant to you?  I am sure it meant different things to different people.  The first article in this issue is very interesting in trying to answer that question.  It doesn't get specific about our individual problems as a country or person, but it does give you something to reflect on as individuals.   I think you will find it worth you time. 

 

NOW, the following articles are some of the best I have come across for some time, that sets up where we are today, both with what is ahead of us in our country and various thoughts about our country's position relating to Syria.  I am sure you have all heard something lately about Syria so I'll not get into that as these articles give you plenty to think about.

 

I am going to say however, that based on what facts I can obtain, it is very difficult for us, as a country, to set aside and watch people, including children, put to death with chemical weapons, if that is what is happening.  I have to admit, that after Iraq, I am still doubtful and one of the articles below addresses this point.  At the same time, the U.S. simply cannot police every dictator in the world, particularly when it is looking more and more as though we may well be doing it alone, if we do it. 

 

To go into a situation such as this with a plan of limited strikes is absolutely ridiculous.  It won't be a limited strike and almost everyone knows that.  Past recent history tells us that.

 

I am going to give you a short prevue from  Robert Reich, author of our second article today, which just shows how ridiculous our entering this Syrian mess is as it relates to other things our country faces.

President Obama’s domestic agenda is already precarious: implementing the Affordable Care Act, ensuring the Dodd-Frank Act adequately constrains Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, saving Social Security and Medicare from the Republican right as well as deficit hawks in the Democratic Party, ending the sequester and reviving programs critical to America’s poor, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, above all, crafting a strong recovery. 

Now, add to that a big fight that will probably take place in the next two to three weeks over getting enough money to keep this country running.  WE SIMPLY HAVE TO START TAKING CARE OF U. S. PROBLEMS AND REALIZE WE CAN'T SAVE THE WORLD.  The countries across the Atlantic have been fighting and committing atrocities since the beginning of time. 

Congress reconvenes on September 9th for a ridiculous 9 days.  The Republicans are going to try hard to ambush Obama so as to get rid of the Affordable Care Act.  I hope he has something up his sleeve to counteract their devious ways.  There is going to be some very important developments coming in the next few weeks and I will try hard to keep you informed with articles that I feel give you the most accurate picture I can find.  I already have some now, but it would simply make this posting too long and they will be just as important next week as they are now.

~~~

Where Labor Day Came from, and

Where it’s Going

 

 

Jim Hightower

NationofChange / Op-Ed

Published: Sunday 1 September 2013

 

 

 

Webster’s dictionary tells us that Labor Day was “set aside for special recognition of working people.”

That's nice, but “set aside” by whom?  It certainly wasn’t the Wall Street corporate and political powers that be.  They nearly swallowed their cigars when the idea of honoring labor’s importance to America’s economy and social well-being was first proposed in 1882.  Rather, this holiday was created by the workers themselves, requiring a 12-year grassroots struggle that finally culminated with an act of Congress in 1894.

The campaign helped coalesce unions into a national movement.  And its message of labor's essential role also countered the haughty insistence of the robber barons of that time. The barons insisted they were America's "makers" — the invaluable few whose monopolistic pursuits should be unfettered. For they claimed that they and their corporations were the God-ordained creators of wealth.

Despite their bloated sense of self-importance, notice that the American people do not celebrate a CEO Day.  Indeed, as Abraham Lincoln put it, the real makers are the many ground-level workers who actually do the making:  "Labor is prior to and independent of capital," Abe declared in his first state of the union address.  "Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."

Yet on Labor Day 2013, robber barons are again ascendant, declaring that they owe nothing — not even a shared prosperity — to the workers, consumers, taxpayers, and other American people who sustain them.  Quite the opposite, they and their political henchmen are blithely shredding America's social contract and again insisting that the corporate elite must be unfettered, unions eliminated, and middle-class jobs Wal-Marted.

 

This intentional hollowing out of our middle class is not just ignorant, but also immoral

Yet today's establishment economists are asking: Why are so many people so glum?  The Great Recession ended in 2009, they note, and even job creation is picking up. So come on people — get happy!

Maybe Labor Day is a good time to clue them into one big reality behind this so-called "recovery:" Most Americans haven't recovered.

Not by a long shot.  In June, median household income was still $3,400 less than in 2007, when Wall Street's crash started the collapse of our real economy.

Why are working people still so far down?  Take a peek at those new jobs the economists are hailing.  They're really "jobettes," paying only poverty-level wages, with no benefits or upward mobility. In the recession, about 60 percent of the jobs we lost were middle-wage positions, paying approximately $14 to $21 an hour. Most of those jobs have not come back.  Instead, of the jobs created since the recovery began, nearly six out of 10 are low-wage, paying less than $14 an hour. A central fact of the new American economy is that working-class people are increasingly unable to make a living from their jobs.

To grasp this widening inequity, befuddled economists might bite into a burger or pizza.  Seven of the 12 biggest corporations that pay their workers the least are fast-food giants.  Yum! is one.  It's a conglomerate that owns Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell. Workers don't find these chains so yummy; for pay averages $7.50 an hour, with no health care, pensions, etc. In contrast, Yum!'s CEO hauls off about $20 million a year, even as even as he dispatches lobbyists to oppose any hike in our nation's miserly minimum wage.

This is no way to run a business, an economy, or a society.  Fast-food giants are hugely profitable.  (Yum! quaffed down $1.3 billion in profits last year alone.)  They are more than able to pay living wages and decent benefits, as many local, independently-owned fast-food businesses do.  Deliberately and unnecessarily holding down an entire workforce by funneling rightful wages into the coffers of a few ultra-rich executives and big investors is shameful — and dangerous.  After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over ... and being kicked.

At last, workers are beginning to kick back.  All across the country, broad coalitions of religious leaders, unions, civil rights groups, community supporters, and others are joining thousands of fast-food workers in a rolling series of one-day strikes against particular chains, publicly shaming them for profiting through gross exploitation of employees.  As one Baptist church leader said of his presence in these protests, "It's a matter of justice."

Yes — and that's what Labor Day has always been about.

~~~

Obama’s Political Capital

 and the

 Slippery Slope of Syria

Robert Reich

NationofChange / Op-Ed

Published: Wednesday 4 September 2013

 

Even if the President musters enough votes to strike Syria, at what political cost?  Any president has a limited amount of political capital to mobilize support for his agenda, in Congress and, more fundamentally, with the American people. This is especially true of a president in his second term of office. Which makes President Obama’s campaign to strike Syria all the more mystifying.

President Obama’s domestic agenda is already precarious: implementing the Affordable Care Act, ensuring the Dodd-Frank Act adequately constrains Wall Street, raising the minimum wage, saving Social Security and Medicare from the Republican right as well as deficit hawks in the Democratic Party, ending the sequester and reviving programs critical to America’s poor, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, and, above all, crafting a strong recovery. 

Time and again we have seen domestic agendas succumb to military adventures abroad — both because the military-industrial-congressional complex drains money that might otherwise be used for domestic goals, and because the public’s attention is diverted from urgent problems at home to exigencies elsewhere around the globe.

 

It would be one thing if a strike on Syria was critical to America’s future, or even the future of the Middle East. But it is not.  In fact, a strike on Syria may well cause more havoc in that tinder-box region of the world by unleashing still more hatred for America, the West, and for Israel, and more recruits to terrorism. Strikes are never surgical; civilians are inevitably killed.  Moreover, the anti-Assad forces have shown themselves to be every bit as ruthless as Assad, with closer ties to terrorist networks.

Using chemical weapons against one’s own innocent civilians is a crime against humanity, to be sure, but the United States cannot be the world’s only policeman.  The UN Security Council won’t support us, we can’t muster NATO, Great Britain and Germany will not join us. Dictatorial regimes are doing horrendous things to their people in many places around the world. It would be folly for us to believe we could stop it all.

Obama and his secretary of state, John Kerry, are now arguing that a failure to act against Syria will embolden enemies of Israel like Iran and Hezbollah, and send a signal to Iran that the United States would tolerate the fielding of a nuclear device. This is almost the same sort of specious argument — America’s credibility at stake, and if we don’t act we embolden our enemies and the enemies of our allies — used by George W. Bush to justify toppling Saddam Hussein, and, decades before that, by Lyndon Johnson to justify a tragic war in Vietnam.

It has proven to be a slippery slope: Once we take military action, any subsequent failure to follow up or prevent gains by the other side is seen as an even larger sign of our weakness, further emboldening our enemies.

Hopefully, Congress will see the wisdom of averting this slope. 

~~~

The White House walk-and-talk that changed Obama's mind on Syria

 

By Chuck Todd, NBC News

 Chief White House Correspondent

 

A stroll around the White House grounds with his top adviser on Friday evening changed President Barack Obama’s mind about getting Congress to sign off on a military strike in Syria, senior White House officials told NBC News.

Obama had been leaning toward attacking Syria without a congressional vote for the past week, the officials said.  Obama was convinced he had the evidence to back up a strike and as a result dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to make a passionate case for U.S. action.  But only hours after Kerry called Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "a thug and a murderer" and accused his regime of using chemical weapons to kill 1,429 people, Obama changed his mind as he walked across the South Lawn with Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the officials said.

NBC's Chuck Todd describes the political process for seeking congressional authorization for a strike on Syria, and says that the president's decision to wait on Congress is a departure from 30 years of strengthening executive branch power

Returning from that walk, the president called his advisers in the early evening to inform them of his new decision.

The plan was immediately met with robust resistance from a whiplashed Obama team who had listened to Kerry lay out the administration's strongest case yet for action against Assad. "My friends, it matters here if nothing is done," Kerry had argued.  "It matters if the world speaks out in condemnation and then nothing happens."

Obama's National Security Council had believed since last weekend that requiring a vote was not even on the table and that “consultation” in the form of congressional briefings and behind-the-scenes conversation was all that would be needed before a strike.  One senior official noted that no key leaders in Congress had specifically requested a vote on military intervention.

Officials said that after the president met with national security advisers on Aug. 24, they determined the evidence showed Syria’s Assad regime had used chemical weapons in an attack earlier this month.  At that time, the president indicated he was leaning toward a strike.

But a growing number of Congressional members were beginning to question the administration’s strategy by the end of the week.  And an NBC News poll released Friday morning showed that nearly 80 percent of Americans agreed that the president should seek approval in advance of taking military action.

Officials said Obama also was influenced by Thursday’s lively debate in the House of Commons, where Prime Minister David Cameron lost a vote in Parliament to authorize participation in an allied strike against Syria.  Cameron had been a staunch advocate of military action but was chastened in the wake of the vote.  “It is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action,” Cameron said.  “I get that, and the government will act accordingly.”

While Obama's advisers argued Friday night in private that the humiliating defeat for Cameron starkly illustrated the risks of asking for congressional input, the president responded that the vote in Parliament demonstrated exactly why he should seek a vote on this side of the Atlantic, senior officials told NBC News.

And, the president insisted, seeking legislative backing was the approach most consistent with his philosophy.  While debate within the administration continued into late Friday, by Saturday morning the senior advisers acquiesced.

Speaking to the nation early Saturday afternoon, Obama said he was “mindful that I'm the president of the world's oldest constitutional democracy.  I've long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”     

President Obama says the nation should and will take action against the Syrian government, but not without congressional approval.  The president also noted, “while I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization, I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course, and our actions will be even more effective.”

White House aides said they are fairly confident that Congress will grant them the authority to launch a strike, although they maintain that Obama would be acting within his constitutional authority even if Congress rejects the authorization and Obama orders military intervention.

Congress is not scheduled to return to Washington for debate until Sept. 9.  The administration decided not to call them back early due to the Jewish holidays this week, a delay that the Pentagon also signed off on, saying that the wait won’t diminish U.S. military capabilities in the region. There’s an upside to that cooling-off period too, aides said. The delay gives Obama time to make his case to Congress and to keep pushing for international support.

 

“Here's my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community,” the president said Saturday.  “What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?” 

While the United States does not believe it needs military help in a strike, Obama will push allies for political backing when he attends the G20 summit in Russia next week.

Reaction from Congress was mostly positive in the hours after Obama detailed his position.  A statement from House Speaker John Boehner other GOP leaders stated: “We are glad the president is seeking authorization for any military action in Syria in response to serious, substantive questions being raised” and noted Congress would begin debate when they return to Washington.  And House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said, "President Obama is right that the debate and authorization by Congress for action will make our country and the response in Syria stronger.”

But a key group of Syrian rebels who have been fighting the Assad regime reacted in surprise and anger to the decision.

"The death will continue in Syria because of the (failure of the) leadership of the United States to act decisively at this point," said Louay Safi, a spokesman for the Syrian National Council. "Obama had the moral responsibility (to) act and not waiver."

Carrie Dann contributed to this report. 

This story was originally published on Sat Aug 31, 2013 6:11 PM EDT

 

COMMENTS RELATING TO THE ABOVE ARTICLE:

 

Below is a part of one of many comments that followed a listing of Politicians reaction to the President requesting approval from Congress regarding military action against Syria.

 

 

For those detractors of the president, this should give you a peek at his ability to use the flaws of the GOTP to his advantage. He knows they have no choice but to oppose and obstruct anything he does, and this plays right into that weakness by 'allowing' them ownership of a no-win situation after he tested the waters and found them a bit too hot for his comfort.

It's an interesting style of governing, but a lot more effective than trying to butt heads with the teabillies. There are only three possibilities here, and the president wins in all of them ... 1) the GOTP does nothing, shifting the world's focus to them and taking the president off the hook; 2) The GOTP votes 'yes' and they own the conflict if it heads south but take a back seat to the president if it works out since it was his idea; 3) the GOTP says 'no' and gets blamed for doing nothing to stop the illegal use of chemical warfare by a terrorist regime.

They didn't even see it coming.

~~~

Obama Should Reveal

 Secret Syria Intercepts

 

Now is the time to release intelligence—but not act on it.

 

By Tim Naftali|Posted

 Thursday, Aug. 29, 2013.

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Here we go again.  Maybe.  Ten years ago Colin Powell publicly presented the United Nations with formerly top-secret information about a Middle East tyrant and weapons of mass destruction to justify military action against him.  The tyrant was Saddam Hussein and the briefing turned out to be a concoction of misinterpretation, wishful thinking, and, in the case of information from a German spy codenamed “Curveball,” complete fabrication.  In a memoir published last year, Colin Powell wrote that this presentation would forever be a blot on his reputation. The same could be said for U.S. efforts at creating global support for armed action.

Reports from various sources this week suggest that the Obama administration has hard evidence—communications intercepts—proving Syrian government involvement in the recent chemical weapons attack on civilians that left at least 350 dead.  Although the Los Angeles Times is reporting that some of this information comes from Israel, other reports suggest that the information is the product of CIA eavesdropping. It also appears that Washington is preparing to release some of it. How can we do it right this time?

There are only two officials in the U.S. government who can declassify information on their own authority: the president and the director of the CIA.  During the Bush years Dick Cheney argued that the vice president could, too, but no one hears Joe Biden making that argument these days.

White House residents have used this power to influence policy. Leaving aside the Bush administration’s great fail, the efforts have brought mixed results, and these efforts don’t happen often.  The two most famous examples took place in 1962 and 1986. During the Cuban missile crisis, John F. Kennedy decided to show the world photographic evidence that the Soviets were placing offensive missiles on Cuba. In 1986, Ronald Reagan revealed intercepts from the Libyan government to make his case that Muammar Qaddafi was involved in targeting U.S. service members in Europe and bombing the LaBelle discotheque in Berlin, which killed three people and wounded scores more.

The U.S. intelligence community does not like this kind of declassification.  The eavesdroppers, in particular, worry that once you blow a communications source by revealing intercepted information, the target country will react by improving its communications security.  The favorite example in NSA-world is ULTRA, the information obtained by breaking Nazi ciphers during World War II. Had Hitler learned how vulnerable his communications were, ULTRA could have been lost and the battle for Europe would have lasted considerably longer.

But presidents are elected to make the bigger call and overrule intelligence security officers when necessary.  There are times when international reputation requires giving up an intelligence source to show that the United States is not engaged in some imperial adventure.  In light of recent events in Syria, this is one of those times.

Kennedy decided to reveal actual U-2 photographs of Cuba, in the process giving away some tradecraft secrets, such as the resolution of these spy photographs. Reagan was a little more circumspect. In his televised speech on April 14, 1986, he provided paraphrases of the intercepted information and not the raw reports themselves.

“On March 25th, more than a week before the attack, orders were sent from Tripoli to the Libyan People's Bureau in East Berlin to conduct a terrorist attack against Americans to cause maximum and indiscriminate casualties. Libya's agents then planted the bomb.  On April 4th the People's Bureau alerted Tripoli that the attack would be carried out the following morning. The next day they reported back to Tripoli on the great success of their mission.”

Nevertheless, Tripoli learned enough from this revelation to improve its security.

There was, however, a big difference between President Kennedy and President Reagan’s motives: Kennedy released the information to build international support for the removal of the missiles. Reagan released the information after the U.S. Air Force had bombed Tripoli, to justify unilateral action.

President Obama needs to be thinking along the lines of building international support for action, but not necessarily military action.  A unilateral military attack by the United States—or one by NATO-light involving the addition of only the United Kingdom and France—is a bad idea.  Unless cruise missiles or gravity bombs kill him, an attack will not unseat Assad. Instead it will be manipulated by the Syrian regime and others—Russia—to further inflame anti-American passions. And if history is a fair judge, it will not have a deterrent effect.  The 1986 attack on Libya did not end Qaddafi’s sponsorship of terror. He immediately retaliated by having his secret service “buy” one of the U.S. hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon—Peter Kilburn, a librarian at the American University in Beirut—and kill him. Two years later, Qaddafi ordered the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103, which crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland and killed 270 people.  Unless the U.S. attack kills Assad, the madness will continue.

It is not really clear why this is our fight.  What did President Obama really mean last August when he apparently drew a red line over the use of WMDs by the Syrians?  Obama said that his reluctance to intervene would change if he received evidence of a “whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”  He never made clear what a “whole bunch” meant or why this made the issue a U.S. military rather than a humanitarian issue. If he were thinking about civilian deaths as a threshold, why would it matter whether the deaths were caused by unconventional weapons?  Until historians have at the entrails of the Obama administration in 40 years (or before then if the Obama team produces better than average memoirs), we may not be able to figure out whether the president just goofed. It is hard to believe that he thought a statement would deter a desperate tyrant. Moreover, the statement seems too uncharacteristically inarticulate to have been planned.

In any case, there is an opportunity here to help Syrians attacked by their own government and strengthen international ethics. If the Obama administration were just to release the information it has and not act as if it wanted permission for a decision already made, it might be able to transform this situation from Assad vs. Obama into what it ought to have been all along: a case of Assad vs. the conscience of the world.

Assuming that the intelligence is of the Kennedy/Reagan and not the George W. Bush standard, the release would encourage a welcome global discussion of Assad’s criminal behavior without the distraction of yet another annoying and self-righteous “Why must Americans act like the world’s policeman” gripe session among European elites.  Some will claim that the information is deception from the United States and Israel, but if the actual intercepts are released the case will be harder to dispute. (If there is audio, the accents and vocabulary would give the Syrians away.)  At the same time, this release would expose Assad’s international supporters to the condemnation that they deserve.  The Soviet Union finally acknowledged what the photographs showed, that it put missiles in Cuba.  And this time, U.S. intelligence evidence would similarly complicate Russia’s ability to help a troublesome ally.

As human beings, we ought to be concerned about the plight of Syrian civilians.  But this crime against humanity should not be viewed as an American policy challenge—that’s a bit arrogant, isn’t it?  It is the world’s problem.  Obama has the opportunity to shame the world into doing the right thing.  If that’s what he meant by saying during the 2012 campaign that we are “the one indispensable nation in world affairs,” great.  Let’s use some of the products of the many billions we probably spend on intelligence each year to force international action to deal with yet another Middle East tyrant.  The raw intelligence should be shared with the United Nations, with Doctors Without Borders and with the International Court of Justice at the Hague without being processed into a sanitized U.S. government white paper. Let those organizations, helped by social media, spark a global conversation over what the world community ought to do about it.

Meanwhile, we could join the British and the French (and I would expect, the Canadians) in working behind the scenes with some newly developed nations to demand action in the U.N. General Assembly.  Among the responsibilities of being the sole global superpower is the obligation to use restraint when prudent.

However, if what is meant by “indispensable nation” is that we ought to launch tomahawks at Damascus to send a message (because we can), everyone should take a deep breath and be reminded of yesterday’s news from Baghdad, where a rash of car bombs has delivered yet more death and destruction to the civilian population of a former foreign policy project of ours.

~~~

Seizure of Hundreds of Dogs in Multi-State Organized Dog Fighting Raid

 

 

By Matthew Bershadker
ASPCA President & CEO

Some good news on a topic laden with horror: Last Friday, the ASPCA helped end the torture of hundreds of abused dogs in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas and brought to justice those who—for profit and perverse pleasure—betrayed and defiled the trust that connects humans and animals.

In an operation that involved 16 animal welfare organizations, including The Humane Society of the United States, as well as at least 10 federal and state law enforcement agencies, 367 dogs across multiple locations in the Southeast were seized in the second-largest dog fighting raid in U.S. history.

I spent several years overseeing the ASPCA’s anti-cruelty group, where I witnessed or heard first-hand accounts of unspeakable acts of cruelty, but rarely have I encountered suffering of this size and scope.  Dogs ranging in age from several days to 12 years were found emaciated and bearing typical scars of dog fighting, and left to suffer in extreme heat with no visible fresh water or food.  Some were tethered by chains and cables to cinder blocks and car tires. Remains of dead animals were also discovered where the dogs were housed and allegedly fought.

These are the tell-tale signs of the horrors of dog fighting, the ultimate betrayal of the unique relationship that exists between humans and animals.  Manipulating a dog’s intense desire to please its owner, perpetuating a life of chronic and acute physical and psychological pain, is the most horrific form of animal abuse.

The only consolation to this tragedy was the fact that, for the long-suffering animals who survived, lives of brutal torture and neglect had come to an end, and days of medical care and attention were about to start.  Never again would they be forced to fight, live in squalor, or be neglected and deprived of bare necessities. No animal on earth—much less those often described as "man's best friend"—should have to endure such brutality at the hand of man.

As part of our raid, which we assisted at the request of the United States Attorney’s Office and the FBI, federal and local officials also seized firearms, drugs, and over $500,000 in cash from dog fighting gambling activities.  All of these efforts were the result of a three-year investigation initiated by the Auburn Police.

Ten suspects were arrested and indicted on felony dog fighting charges.  If convicted, they could each face up to five years in prison.

I believe these atrocities and the subsequent results will have positive and practical reverberations that will make a difference. The raid elevates the issue of dog fighting -- a reprehensible and vile activity – to people who will not only be appalled, but moved to share news and information, and fight for common-sense legislation.  Dog fighting is a felony in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, but that doesn’t seem to stop the atrocity. Earlier this year, the Animal Fighting Spectator Prohibition Act was reintroduced in the U.S. Congress, which would make it a federal offense to attend an organized animal fight and impose additional penalties for bringing a minor to a fight, expanding the implications of participation in this terrible crime.

I'm very proud that we saved these animals, and the unprecedented ways we did.  This is not the last dog fighting ring we'll break up, but you can be sure we'll be working hard until the day we can finally say it is.

~~~

If the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again next Tuesday September 10, 2013.

God Bless You All

&

God Bless the United States of America.

Floyd