| Dear Congressman Dicks,
I began writing this after the 6th Congressional District Caucus. I was traveling by plane to my parent’s 50th anniversary taking a red-eye with a few stopovers.
I was saddened that you had to leave after you finished your remarks Saturday. It has been a great disappointment to me that we have not had a chance to speak at length on the campaign trail.
First let me say that I would like to thank you for some of your past good work. One thing I’ve never heard you take credit for is your instrumental role in ending a nuclear weapons program. You used your clout and experience and led this effort. This is not something that merely the people in the sixth District should thank you for; this is something the world should thank you for.
But I am concerned that the person that showed vision and leadership in this past crisis has been missing in action for a long time. It is not just your decision to continue funding of the war and occupation this past Thursday. There are at least three positions you have taken consistently that make me say this. These are:
1) Your votes in favor of the Iraq War and Occupation, and its continued funding;
2) Your continued support of laws that take away from our civil liberties and weaken the Bill of Rights; and
3) Your support of “free trade” agreements that undercut basic protections to labor, the environment and give corporations greater rights than governments.
Individually these are all distressing. But taken together these form an integrated attack on the most fundamental rights we are granted under the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Taken together these point us to a society where the rights of corporations are placed above those of citizens. Taken together these point us to a society that is no longer really a Democracy or very much of a free society. Our country has faced many such challenges before, and it has survived because people have stood up, spoken out and said “no more.” That is what is needed now.
- The Iraq War and Occupation
Our County invaded Iraq not because of weapons of Mass Destruction – our weapons inspectors have known since 1992 there were none. Our country did not invade Iraq because of involvement in September 11, 2001 – there was no Iraqi connection. Our country invaded Iraq because it suited the interest of some private corporations, including a contractor called Halliburton/Kellogg Brown and Root with close ties to the present administration and offices in Qatar.
The Iraq War and Occupation has brought us more than 4,000 young Americans killed and 30,000 seriously wounded.
To get a picture of what this means think back to the town of Shelton where we just spoke. Shelton High School which serves the surrounding region houses 1,200 young adults. Think for a moment about all the halls and classrooms filled with those young people, chatting, discussing their hopes and dreams. To visualize the more than 4,000 dead replace each of these young high school students with 3 or 4 corpses of young people a few years older than these High School Students. That gives you a way to visualize the 4,000 + U.S. Soldiers killed in this illegal effort. This gives you a way to start to visualize what part of this war and occupation means.
Now think back to the town of Shelton. It is a town with about 8,000 people according to the last Census. Think about its people in their homes, the cities parks, churches and stores. To visualize the 30,000 seriously wounded replace each of the people in Shelton with 4 people, most of them a few years out of high school and all of them seriously and permanently damaged. Some of these young people have parts of their skulls missing and have difficulty putting words together to express their simplest thought or desire. Some of these young people may never be able to move a muscle or feel anything much below their necks. These young people now need their families to change their catheters several times a day, so they don’t soak in their own wastes. Some of these young people are hooked to machines that are keeping them alive, helping them breath or replacing some other organ’s function. That begins to tell you what part of this war and occupation means.
As for the Iraqi people, reports are now that there are easily tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands, and perhaps over a million Iraqi dead. Think about the entire 6th District. There are by some of the lowest estimates more Iraqis dead as a result of this war and occupation than there are people living in the 6th District. This does not include the Iraqi wounded. This does not include the Iraqi refugees who have lost their homes, been driven from their land. Add in these numbers and you begin to have more people whose lives have been destroyed by our “mistake” in Iraq than live in Washington State.
At the time of the vote, authorizing entry into the war many of us hoped for the dynamic leadership you’d displayed in years past. We did not get it. Despite your many, many years in politics, you claim that you did not believe the President might be lying. You went along with the war and the results were a disaster.
In the times that have followed many, many more of us have made our voices heard and let it be known that this war and occupation are a debacle, and that we want out of it, and we do not want another such war and occupation. I understand the vast majority of delegates at the 2004 Democratic Convention felt this way. I understand that the Democrats won their majorities in both houses in 2006 because the voters felt this way. I have read the local party platforms in our district and it is something the Democratic Party’s rank and file asks for again and again. And it is not just the Democratic Party; the vast majority of the Country feels this way.
Last week, thankfully, when the Bush administration asked for another $162 Billion dollars with no strings attached, to keep moving this war and occupation forward, the majority of Democrats said “no.” The Majority of Democrats voted to stop funding for this war. And the majority of Republicans didn’t go forward with this either. A few Republicans joined the Democrats in saying no, and their majority simply said “present” but did not vote.
Still a minority of Democrats and some 60 Republicans voted to continue funding for this war with no strings attached.
That minority of Democrats who voted for continued funding of the Iraq War and Occupation included you.
Estimates are that the war will produce a 3 trillion dollar deficit. To put that in perspective this is approximately one hundred (100) times the 2008 budget for the state of Washington according to Governor Gregoire’s website. This figure does not include care of the wounded for the war which is expected to easily be another 3 trillion if they are given adequate care. That’s approximately 60 times the personal wealth of Bill Gates, the world’s richest man just to care for the veterans already wounded.
Remember again, this was a war for which there was no good reason. It was a war fought to benefit a few corporations
2) Attacks on the Bill of Rights
Even the late Conservative Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist realized we lose our basic civil liberties in times of War. He wrote an entire book about it a few years before he died called “All the Laws but One.”
Since this current administration has come to power there has been a continued attack on the rights that have made the United States a model for the rest of the world. We are the now the only democracy on the planet who’s government can now spy on its citizens, listen in on their phone conversations, and intercept their emails without a warrant.
A lot of these attacks came in the form of the PATRIOT Act. It attacked or eliminated some of the most basic and fundamental protections U.S. Citizens have enjoyed since the founding of the Republic. It attacked the right of habeas corpus which guaranteed that a person accused of a crime and held in confinement could always be produced, and receive proper judicial process. Under the PATRIOT Act that protection is gone. The rights to Counsel provided under the 5th and 6th Amendments of the Bill of Rights are gone under the PATRIOT Act as well. The protections against Search and Seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights are gone under the PATRIOT Act. And the First Amendment is in trouble as well. (Do you remember the protesters confined to a caged area under a bridge at the 2004 Democratic National Convention)?
In the months that I’ve run for office I’ve gone to many of the local Democratic clubs and conventions. I’ve asked hundreds of the Precinct Committee Officers, and Delegates and Rank and File membership if they like the PATRIOT Act or if they think it’s compatible with the Constitution. I’ve asked them to put up their hands if they do. So far of these many hundreds of committed Democrats, only one person has raised their hand.
The vote on the PATRIOT Act was at a time when we needed bold honest leadership, when we needed cool heads that could look at what this law is doing. This was why many people worked hard to put you in office, and to keep you in office. You didn’t provide that leadership, (I don’t think you read the law before you voted on it.) And you’ve failed to provide that leadership since. We need our elected representatives to come forward and get rid of this abomination. You have failed to do so as well.
And the attacks go beyond the PATRIOT Act. The 2007 Defense Authorization Act repealed Posse Comitatus and reinstated the Insurrection Act. This means the military can be used against the domestic population for the first time in 130 years. None of the Democrats I’ve spoken to have said they are for this. And they are almost all shocked when they learn that you voted for it.
And the same is true about the recent Homegrown Terrorism Act. This sets up study groups to among other things determine which “ideologies” ought to be illegal. This is dangerously close to the “thought crimes” described in Orwell’s 1984. An article in the Baltimore Sun described how this would likely lead to McCarthy commissions traveling around the United States and administering Oaths. Do you want to guess how the voters act when they learn you’ve not only voted for, but co-sponsored this?
I really hoped that someone with your experience and leadership abilities would be taking the lead in protecting our rights. You haven’t. You’ve taken us in the opposite direction.
When you look at these attacks in conjunction with the illegal war run for the benefit of a few individuals and corporations, and ‘free trade’ laws that place the rights of corporations above our most fundamental rights, the picture of what we’re becoming is terrifying. This is why we need fundamental change.
3 Free Trade Agreements that Hurt the U.S.
One of the things you’ve seemed proudest when I’ve heard you speak are the protections you say you’ve brought to our environment, and the jobs you say you’ve brought to our region. But you’ve also been a consistent supporter of “Free Trade” Agreements. These agreements allow environmental protections, consumer protections, workers’ rights to all be challenged as “barriers to fair trade.” You’ve supported these laws even when the rest of the Party hasn’t as when you were one of the few Democrats to vote in favor of CAFTA.
These laws hurt us on a fundamental level. Not only do they undercut any environmental protection or workers rights that you give us, they place the power of foreign corporations above the power of our own government.
Together these are an attack on the fabric of our country
Let us please pause for a minute to consider what putting these together fundamentally means. Under these “Free Trade” laws governments are now in service of foreign corporations. Do you remember what former Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini’s definition of Fascism was? It was the government in service of the corporations, and the two of them bound together, with all the citizens in the service of the corporate state.
Let us look at this in combination with a war fought for the benefit of corporations, many like Halliburton-Kellogg Brown and Root, with offices in other countries, and laws that attack our most fundamental rights and protections. Together we are frighteningly close to losing everything this country stands for.
This is the time when we need the sort of leadership you provided many years ago, and to be giving us more than work projects for parts of the region. As Senator Derek Kilmer said at the start of Saturday’s meeting the Democratic Party is the Party of the Constitution. As I said that day I believe that, and that is why I chose to run as a Democrat. I also believe that no one who values the Protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights would allow these attacks upon the Constitution and Bill of Rights to move forward and do nothing.
This is why I look forward to talking with you more on the campaign trail and exchanging views with you in the debates. I am truly interested to learn why someone with your background has done this, and whether you plan to vote this way in the future.
Yours truly,
Paul Richmond, Democrat
Candidate for Congress, Washington’s 6th District
Submited May 19, 2008
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